Page 30 of Dirty Daria
16
Daria
There’s a part of me that knew all along agreeing to attend a wedding with Mack was a bad idea. For starters, weddings are all about romance. Which is primarily why I hate them. Second, weddings have dancing. Lots of dancing. And third, dancing with Mack is lethal.
I’m not sure if it’s how his body moves or the way ours align, but it’s one hundred percent dangerous, and I should not be doing it. Again. For the third time. He has this way of making a standard ballroom dance stance intimate and near indecent. Pulling our joined hands into his chest, which makes my body go flush against his, he pins me against him with his other hand. Next thing I know his mouth is at my ear and he’s humming or singing, the tenor of his voice reverberating through my body and directly connecting with my libido.
Apparently, I’m in the mood to torture myself.
The bandleader announces they are going “old school Bono” and then starts singing a song with a chorus of “all I want is you.” And, of course, Mack knows the song.
Kill me now.
It doesn’t even matter what the rest of the words are in the song. And I’m not even sure if he’s singing all of them. The only part I hear is the chorus. My head is in a Mack-fog. The proximity to his body, the affect it has, his voice, the way he smells, how he moves, it all makes me dizzy. Before I met Mack, I would have told you there was no man alive who could have such an impact on me.
I was wrong.
It’s the only way to explain why I kissed him the first night we met at Turgenev’s party. Or anything I let happen between us thereafter. I’ve been with men before, as a means for sexual release, never as a girlfriend or partner. I didn’t feel the need. But something about Mack made me want to crawl inside him just to get closer.
The singer changes to a woman and she starts singing the song from the latest remake of the movieA Star is Born, both of which I love. The song is one I clung to when I broke up with Mack. Playing it over and over again until I cried. The one totally girly thing I did after that night. The feelings it evokes have me trying to step even closer to Mack to circumvent the meaning and what it stands for: our breakup.
Which is how I find myself dancing to a fourth song with Mack. Not wanting to leave his arms if I don’t have to.
It’s such a foolish way for me to think or feel. There’s nothing that can turn back time, just like there’s nothing that can change the events in our lives that prevent us from being together. But there is that tiny piece of my heart that is a die-hard romantic, always holding out for a miracle. Lucky for it, the rest of my heart, as well as my brain, knows there’s no such thing as a miracle.
Mack must pick up on the slight change in my mood because he turns his head and presses his lips to my temple. An innocent enough gesture, but one that’s packed full of meaning and inappropriate given what we are supposed to be doing here. Sadly, it’s also exactly what I need to help me through the funk the song immediately puts me in. He reads me so easily.
But he also takes advantage by moving his hand an inch lower on my back from where it was resting. Said hand is large enough that even though his palm is technically at the small of my back, his pinky finger stretches down to my ass. Which wouldn’t be a problem except my dress is backless and dips low. So that his entire hand lies directly on my bare skin and that pinky finger is toying with the T-strap of my thong underwear. It’s distracting to say the least.
The music morphs from the angsty rock song into something a bit jazzier, but still slow. Which helps me to relax a bit, but Mack does little to change our body positions or proximity. Leaving it up to me to stop his antics before things get out of hand.
“Move your hand,” I hiss.
He wiggles the fingers on the hand that is holding mine to his chest.
“The other hand.”
“No way.” He dips his hand lower, two fingers now inside the lower back of my dress. One softly caressing the top of my booty cleavage, making me squirm.
I shimmy my hips against him, which only serves to move his hand lower and make his dick harder. “You have no shame.”
“Says the woman with the wicked shimmy,” he returns.
“Fine. Whatever. It’s not like we don’t know we’re attracted to one another. No reason to pretend otherwise. Doesn’t mean anything will ever come of it again.”
“What if we teamed up?” Mack asks.
“What do you mean ‘teamed up’?”
Mack moves us through the other couples to the edge of the dance floor, and then off to the side of the stage where there aren’t any tables and very few guests.
“You know, like help each other with things we are working on.” His eyes light up. He’s excited about this idea.
“Meaning your cases at work?” I don’t like to say who he works for aloud. For various reasons. One, no one here needs to accidentally overhear me and make him as an agent. Two, it acts as a constant reminder of why we can’t be together. In my own weird little way, just using the word “work” to refer to his career, allows me to stay in denial about what he really does and how much power he has over me. And I suppose, me over him as well.
While I think my father could easily get me out of jail were I to be arrested, I don’t think there is anything my father, or anyone, could do for Mack if he’s found out to be aiding and abetting a criminal, even if it is by omission of fact.
It would be so much easier if he would just leave his job. He could open his own security firm and do whatever he wants. Plus, he’d have FBI contacts to work with. It’s not something I would ever suggest to him though. Mostly because Ican’tbe the reason he leaves his career. If he thinks of it on his own, sure. But not if it comes from me.
