Page 68 of Win Some Love Some
Please, I prayed for the hundredth time since dinner was over and the dancing had started. Please don’t play a slow song.
It had been a steady stream of dick twitches. Nora bent down to fix the tiny buckle on her shoe and I could see down her dress. In the church, she’d laughed louder than anyone else at a joke in the vows and buried her head in my shoulder. She took her first sip of white wine and did a happy little shimmy.
There had been enough dick twitching. I was dick twitched out.
Someone hip checked me, sending my beer sloshing over my hand. I held it away from me so it wouldn’t spill all over my only suit and looked down to find Nora with a glass of wine standing next to me. She wasn’t out there singing, which surprised me. She loved this song.
“You don’t look like you’re having fun,” she said with a scowl that probably matched mine.
“You don’t look like you’re having fun either.”
“Everyone wants to hear my story,” she said as she sipped her wine. “It’s exhausting.”
“That sucks.”
“The only bright side is, this will be the same crowd for Julie’s wedding, so by then I’ll be old news and everyone will leave me alone.”
“You can always tell them to mind their own business,” I pointed out.
“Sure,” she looked at me out of the corners of her eyes, the lights from the dance floor playing across her skin and hair, reflecting in her eyes. I caught myself staring and quickly looked away. “If I were you, then all I would need is my snarly face to keep people away.”
“I don’t have a snarly face.”
She pulled a face that I guessed was supposed to mimic mine but looked more like an ogre.
“I don’t look like that.”
“You one hundred percent look like that.”
The music changed and Taylor was replaced by soaring violins and a romantic piano.
Oh shit.
Couples gravitated together. Arms wrapped around necks and waists.
I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants.
“Are you okay?” Nora asked me. “You look a little sick.”
“I’m fine,” I said and put my beer on the table behind me. “Do you want to dance?”
“You mean now?”
“Yes. To this song. Dancing. I hear people do it at weddings.”
“Uh…yeah. Sure. Why not? It’s just a dance.”
“Exactly. No big deal.” Then why did my voice sound like Kermit the Frog’s?
I took her wine glass and set it on the table. She stepped out onto the crowded dance floor and I followed her, my eyes on the gleam on her shoulders. The delicate hairs on the nape of her neck. Once she was in the middle of the floor she turned and faced me, and for a moment it was like neither one of us knew what to do. How to act.
She smiled, that crooked half smile. Nervous, but trying.
I guided her arms around my neck and focused on keeping my hands north of her ass. Her waist was so tiny, it felt like I could wrap my hands around her entirely.
Slowly, we moved. Her thigh touched mine. My knee brushed hers. I could feel the muscles in her waist and I couldn’t stop my fingers from squeezing, testing the strength of her body beneath this fairy tale of a dress.
I bent low, drawn to the scent of her hair.
