Page 76 of Opposites (Never) Attract
I put her hands on my shoulders, my hands around her waist. “Look down.”
“Huh?”
“Look down at my feet and watch me!” I shouted.
She did and I started showing her the basic steps. One step forward, one step back. One step back, one step forward. She quickly picked up on my pace.
Sunshine Calloway may not have had a traditional school experience, but she wasn’t uncoordinated. Same with her horseback riding. Once I’d gotten her up on Shirley, she’d taken to riding pretty easily. It made me think of all the other things she might have missed out on as a kid, because everyone just assumed she was one thing, when she was actually so many things.
“Okay, now look up at me, darlin,” I told her. “You’ve got the steps.”
When she did, she was smiling. “I’m dancing!”
“Tell me you haven’t been to one of those big city clubs.”
She rolled her eyes like I was ridiculous. And, of course, that made sense, too. She’d only been sixteen when shestarted college. She wouldn’t have been able to get into the clubs and bars her classmates went to. By the time she could, she was already an associate at that fancy firm of hers and was probably doing nothing but working hard hours to prove herself.
“I know Mike used to make fun of me,” she said. “To my face, sure, but also behind my back.”
The dance floor was tight, we could only move a few steps in any direction, but I made sure to direct her in a way where no one was bumping into her.
“Mike Palmer was, and is to this day, an ass. Stay away from him.”
“I think he was trying to flirt with me,” she said, with a rueful smile. “He used to call me the Ugly Duckling of the Calloway sisters.”
So she did know what was said about her.
“Those bets he was talking about…it was about losing my virginity, wasn’t it?”
“No comment,” I said.
“Was the bet who would be brave enough to try it with the ugly Calloway sister, or was it how old I would be when I finally lost it?”
“You don’t want to know?” she asked, tilting her head.
“No,” I said, and leaned down so only she could hear me. “I just want to know that when I finally do fuck you, darlin, you’ll let me know I’m the best you’ve ever had.”
She pulled away and smiled again. “Cocky,” she accused me.
“Factual,” I said. “Let’s go get some air out back. This place is a sauna.”
I caught her hand and pulled her with me toward the back where there was a line for the women’s room and a slightly shorter line for the men’s. There was a door at theend of the hallway that was supposed to stay shut, but any time the men’s line became too long, business was taken care of out back.
I pushed through the door, took a quick peek around to find a few smokers lingering, and pulled Sunshine out into the night.
She tilted her head back and sucked in some of the fresh night air.
“If you pulled me out here to convince me to leave with you, you’re going to be disappointed,” she said. “I promised Bliss I would stay the whole time. It’s important to her that I see her in action and I’m trying…”
“What are you trying?” I prompted her when she fell silent.
Her eyes glittered in the moonlight. “I’m trying to be a better sister? Or should I say, half-sister.”
The Stand faced the town square, so the only thing behind it was a small kids’ park and rolling hills as far as the eye could see. By mutual consent, we walked until we got to the old carousel and each of us picked an animal. I picked the white horse with the green eyes and she picked a frog with a crown.
“What are we doing out here?” she asked.
“Just wanted some air,” I told her. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about kissing.”
