Page 5 of We Were Something
“You act like that would be surprising to me,” I respond, my hand reaching up and over to his face, my thumb brushing along the sprinkles of gray in his beard. “Hate to break it to you, but I wasn’t assuming we were the same age.”
He takes in a sharp breath as my hand grazes against him, but then he exhales on a laugh, this time something deep and low that causes me to lose my own breath for a second.
“You know, if I were a betting man, I’d say you are quite a bit of trouble,” he tells me, and something about the way he says it implies he isn’t sure whether it’s a good thing or not.
I shrug a shoulder, letting my hand fall away as I take a sip of my drink, all the while watching him over the rim of my glass. When I’m done, I set it on the bar and move just slightly closer to him, this time bringing our bodies almostalmostagainst each other.
“I’m alotof trouble,” I reply, looking him square in the eye, enjoying how the alcohol in my veins bolsters my natural boldness. “You candefinitelybet on it.” Then I reach one hand up and grasp the lapel of his suit, stroking down the expensive fabric with my fingers without looking away. Rising up onto my tiptoes, I whisper in his ear. “But it’s the best kind.”
When I pull back slightly, he stares at me for a long moment, and it feels like I can see so many things happening behind his eyes. Attraction, definitely. Anticipation. Desire. Lust.
But there’s something else there, too. Something I’m not as accustomed to seeing.
Hesitation.
And seeing that, even just a little bit of it, makes me suddenly rethink myself. My words. My behavior. Makes me wonder if I’m misreading this situation entirely.
Ultimately, I decide to give him a beat. A chance to think. I might be a tiny thing, but Iama lot of woman to handle, and not every man knows what to do with me.
“Let me know if you feel like getting into some trouble,” I finally say to him, before rising up on my tiptoes again and pressing my lips softly against his cheek.
Then I give him a wink, spin around, and wander off into the crowd, glancing back to find his eyes following me as I go.
An hour and two more drinks later, I’m feeling just the right amount of happy.
Well, kind of.
The world is filled with a full range of drunks.
My friend Wyatt is the brooding kind, slinking into himself and contemplating deeply about the world and his place in it.
That’s just too much mental work.
Then there’s the sleepy drunk. That’s Wyatt’s girlfriend, Hannah—Lucas’ half-sister. One drink too many, and she just wants to curl up and take a nap. It could be anywhere: on the couch or in a chair or on the floor.
There’s no fun in that.
Lucas is the ‘everyone is my best friend’ type, always expressing how much he loves everybody, from family to complete strangers. And Lennon is the quiet, bleary-eyed drunk who smiles along all night but won’t remember any of it tomorrow.
But me? I’m the dancer. The one who has been known to hop up on tables at clubs or strut out to the dance floor and shake my ass for hours…whether I’m feeling a good buzz or not.
Which is a great, fun thing to be when I’m at a club. Or a dance. Or a house party. Or in a dark bedroom with a man and the right song on the stereo.
It’s a lot more difficult when I’m stuck at a boring society event filled with stuffy, upper-crusty families and people I went to school with.
All I want is to head over to the tech booth, which has been steadily churning out boring elevator music likely curated by Lennon’s blue-blooded mother, and beg them to play something fun and upbeat. Something that will encourage even the stuffiest, upper-crustiest of the bunch to shake their groove thang.
Instead, I remind myself of the last time I hijacked an event—my cousin Chastity’s wedding a few weeks after I moved back from New York—and how infuriated my mother was.
I mean, I was going through quite the personal upheaval, and getting so blitzed I didn’t know my own name sounded like the perfect way to deal with it at the time.
But tonight isn’t supposed to be that kind of night. I may be a little drunk and a lot desperate for a good time to distract myself from the realities of the world, but I can exercise at least a modicum of restraint when I choose to do so.
So, like I said: happy kind of drunk, wrong kind of place.
“How come you’re sitting here all by yourself?”
I turn my head and beam when I see Lennon sitting next to me. She looks beautiful, as always, not a single hair out of place even though I know she’s been running around like a crazy person all evening.
