The rest of the world drifts away. I tuck my head up beside his, delicately tilting my nose and mouth toward his hair. Not a kiss. But now he can feel me too.
Our hips shuffle back and forth. Suddenly, I feel mine moving without thought or control, pressing into him.
From the nearly silent moan Orlie releases, I have my confirmation.
Orlie Wynters is hard for me.
And if I extrapolate that a bit, that means he wants to fuck me. Because he’s attracted to me.
My head is spinning.
“I’ve never seen people dance to the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ like this.”
I rip myself away from Orlie when I hear my sister Harley’s voice.
“What?!” I nearly shout.
Harley throws her head back in laughter.
Sure enough, the ‘Cha Cha Slide’ is playing through the loudspeakers and everyone on the dance floor is doing the steps except for us two fools who hadn’t even noticed the music had changed.
I glance at Orlie; he’s red-faced, running his hand through his hair. He looks cute when he’s embarrassed.
“Well, sorry to interrupt,” my little sister says. Well, lies through her teeth, really. “But I need to pull Kira away for a moment. Sister stuff.”
Orlie clears his throat and stands a little taller. “Of course. Don’t let me keep you from that.”
I give him a look of apology, but he doesn’t seem to take it. That front he always puts on, like he’s seeing through me, goes right back up. As if the dance didn’t even happen.
So much for…whatever that was.
“Come on!” Harley grabs my hand and drags me out of the tent and back into the Pacific Ocean air.
It’s dark now, the sun having set in the time Orlie and I were dancing.
Harley leads me down a path to a little clearing where my other three sisters stand together, looking like witches in the night with their ethereal dresses. Especially Amy whose lacy wedding dress seems ripped from a Victorian novel.
“Got her! She wasdancing,” Harley cries out.
“With whom?” Amy gasps with wide eyes.
I grab Harley by the arm. “I’ll murder you.”
Harley grins. “Orlie Wynters.”
Great, now I have to plan the murder of my little sister. This isn’t how I wanted the night to end, but…
“Ooooh! I always thought he was handsome,” Gillian remarks.
“Can we hurry this up? I have to pee,” Dana says, clutching the underside of her very pregnant stomach.
“You just peed!” Amy says.
“I have a baby sitting on mybladder,Amy!” my eldest sister hisses. Dana usually keeps it together for all of us as the eldest, the one who stepped up after our mother left. But pregnancy has been a whirlwind of hormones. I don’t blame her for being edgier than normal.
Harley and I join our sisters, the five of us standing in a circle. “What are we doing?”
“I just wanted a moment. Just us girls,” Amy says. She takes Dana and Gillian’s hands and the rest of us follow suit. As kids, we would play Ring Around the Rosy just like this. “So much has changed in the past couple of years.”