CHAPTER 11
THE DANCE NUMBER
The Wildhorse Saloon was huge, with multiple open levels, a stage, and fancy lighting shaped like rays of the sun. Even though the room was large, it appeared intimate, which was almost enough to take my mind off that phone call.
After Deanna had excitedly shaken Chad’s hand, she introduced us to her two best friends, who were already seated at a long, polished wood table.
“This is Meredith; she goes by Mere. And this is Keyondra. Please don’t call her Kiki; she stopped responding to that years ago, when she decided she wanted to be taken seriously.”
I already knew Mere was married, liked cats and red wine, and taught kickboxing on weekends, and that Keyondra, who incidentally hated cats (or at least was allergic to them), liked fruity cocktails, had an African art collection, and spent her time being followed around by her “skinny-ass White boyfriend.” Her words, not mine. That’s literally how she’d introduced him, because what self-respecting 180-pound proud-to-be-Black woman fell for a tall, lanky White guy with no ass?
Keyondra (an eighteen) helped Deanna with party organization and decoration, and Mere (a fourteen) did the accounting. I only occasionally envisioned people as double digits past ten, but sometimes it fit. The three women were like a well-oiled machine in business and friendship. They made sense. They all liked the same books, which they discussed in an official book club along with three others, including the elusive Chuck’s sister and Grant’s girlfriend, Elaine, the newest member of their club. Though she’d been mentioned the least, and what did that say about their relationship? Surely that meant ... of course I didn’t care.
I liked these women, but I’d known Deanna for weeks; they’d known her for years. I tried not to let it eat at me.
I ended up wedged between Chad to my left and Elaine to my right, and they were the only people I could hear because of the noise. I wasn’t really paying attention anyway. I clutched my phone, sneaked peeks at the screen, and stress-ate “Nashville Hot” chicken dip.
“Everything okay?” Grant asked, leaning over Elaine so I could hear him.
I’d tried calling Erin back three times, but my call had gone straight to voicemail every single time. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that call, the equivalent to her accidentally lighting me on fire and then running a few blocks away to get a fire extinguisher after telling me to hang tight.
I didn’t tell Grant any of this. Instead, I smiled, nodded, and tucked my phone under my thigh.
“What do you do, Chad?” Grant yelled across me and Elaine (a seven, a perfect, sparkling seven) as caramel apple pie was being delivered to the table. “Are you in finance like Penelope?”
“Attorney,” Chad answered. “Criminal law. You build houses, right?”
“Essentially ...” Grant trailed off, which was odd because Grant could converse with a tree stump and very likely had.
“What do you do, Elaine?” I tried to cover the awkwardness that might or might not be in the air while also trying to distract myself so I wouldn’t place a fourth call to Erin.
“Oh, I’m a therapist.”
I accidentally frowned. Elaine looked like she was going to say something else, but the lights dimmed, and music started.
“It’s go time!” Keyondra’s skinny-ass White boyfriend, whose real name was Conner, said as he stood up and put a bowler hat on his head. He stuck his arm out to Keyondra, who latched on and rose.
“You guys coming?” Keyondra asked. Mere and her husband, Devon, stood, followed by Grant and Elaine and William, who went to stand by Deanna, hand outstretched.
Deanna looked back at Chad and me. “What about you guys?”
I shook my head.
“Electro-swing night!” Conner interjected. “You gotta come!” His feet were already moving to the mash of vintage swing and the thumping beat of more modern hip-hop. It made me want to move, too, only ... out of the saloon.
Keyondra dragged Conner away from the table. Mere shrugged, grabbed her husband’s arm, and left too. Grant and Elaine were already on the dance floor. Elaine laughed, touching Grant’s arm as he instructed her on how to slide a few feet to her left.
Chad put his hands on the table as if to lift himself up and out onto the dance floor. “You wanna show ’em what we got?”
“What who has? And how do you know about this?”
“Andy’s into this.” I’d never met Andy. He was one of the lawyers at Chad’s firm. “One night me and the guys got drunk, and Andy made us all learn to shuffle. It’s easy. Follow my lead.” He snapped his head toward the others as I shook my own.
The only way I was getting out on that dance floor was after hundreds of private lessons with a guy on YouTube before I attended an in-person class as a beginner so as to impress my teacher with how quickly I was picking up the dance steps I had supposedly never seen before.
I glanced at the now-crowded dance floor, bodies gyrating together like they were in a blender.
No, I wasn’t going out there. And even if I could dance, Erin could call any minute.
Chad’s crossed-arm pout suggested I was ruining the only fun event of the evening. To his credit, he’d tried, but after his second drink, it was obvious he didn’t want to be here. He joked about the crappy food and the cowboy hats the tourists wore. After the fourth comment, I dug my fingernail into his thigh. He stopped talking, but then he started drinking ... a lot.
Deanna wouldn’t go without us, so the three of us, me, Chad, and Deanna, watched everyone else. My phone rang once, a wrong number. After biting the caller’s head off because they weren’t Erin, I decided I needed to tuck my phone into my purse and look back at the dance floor. But why wasn’t Erin calling?
Keyondra and Conner were actually pretty good.
Grant came back to his seat. “What’d you think?”
He was looking at me when he asked, but Chad answered, “I think we do it better up north.”
“You must’ve missed me out there then,” William added, so winded he barely got the words out.
“Oh, I think he saw you.” Deanna rubbed her husband’s back. “Why don’t you sit down.”
“Good idea.” William flopped into the chair and drank from a glass I wasn’t sure was his.
“I didn’t see you out there,” Grant said to Chad. If he’d been drinking, too, I couldn’t tell.
Chad’s eyebrows went up on his forehead. “Oh, I can shuffle. Pen didn’t want to get out there.”
“I guess we’ll never know for sure.” Grant winked.
What was he doing? Didn’t he know he was provoking Chad? He read people too well not to know.
Chad threw back the rest of his drink and stood up a little too fast, nearly knocking his chair over. “That sounds like a challenge. You wanna see me dance, Mustache?”
Yeah, he’d had too much to drink. I started pulling at Chad’s arm, looking around with a smile on my face like He’s kidding, totally kidding. Nothing to see here.
The half smile on Grant’s face along with his sly shrug pushed Chad over the edge.
“Come on then.” Chad nodded over and over again. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
I was clawing at his arm now; any second, I was going to draw blood. “Oh, I don’t think that’s—”
“No.” Chad cut me off, then shrugged out of my grip. “Mustache thinks he can shuffle better than I can.”
No. No. No. No. No. NO. This wasn’t happening. Where was Lawyer Chad, the one who made good decisions based on well-thought-out arguments and evidence? Good Chad was floating in a hot tub of whiskey, actively being drowned by drunk, jealous Macho Chad, who was suggesting some sort of dance-off.
Who does that? Even drunk, who does that?
William, Mere, Devon, Conner, and Keyondra pounded on the table, shaking the water glasses, and chanting, “Chal-lenge! Chal-lenge!”
Grant rolled up the sleeves of his white oxford, then twirled the edge of his mustache. He was enjoying this, the bastard. They were all enjoying this. They were all nuts. What was in the alcohol here?
My eyes flew to Deanna, pleading with her to do something. Grant was her brother, after all.
“If they want to look like fools, who are we to stop them?” she asked.
Iwanted to stop them. I’d wanted a distraction tonight, but this wasn’t the one.
Grant bent low as he passed my chair. “I hope you don’t mind me taking your fancy boyfriend down a peg.” Then he winked at me, grabbed Conner’s bowler hat off his head, and turned away before I could beg him to stop.
Elaine covered her eyes. “I can’t look.” But she was smiling.
“If you’re worried about Grant, don’t be,” Keyondra said. “He got this.”
I scooted a little lower in my chair, a lot lower. A new song came on, and Conner popped up. “I’ll judge!” he said and then ran out to join Chad and Grant.
The crowd parted for the three men. A slow thumping beat with a thin line of brass accompaniment overtook the room as Grant stood to the side and threw his hand out toward Chad, giving him the honors of going first.
Chad’s chest expanded; his grin took on a devilish slant. And then he started moving, a frantic heel-to-toe tapping, arms swinging like a machine fueled by too much liquor and pride. But he was doing it, and he didn’t look too bad doing it. His turn ended with a stationary running man followed by a scissor kick. Sweaty and breathing heavily, he motioned to Grant, who was already clapping and nodding in appreciation.
Grant tilted his hat on his head and moved slowly, snapping in time with the music. His arms shot out, then his feet swept him to the side with a long hum of the trumpet, like he’d heard the song before and knew exactly when to move to make each note work to his advantage. His arm moved up and down, a casual snap in the air, as his body rocked from side to side, and then he spun and grabbed his hat and let it roll down his arm until it reached his elbow, when he jerked, flicking the hat into the air and back onto his head.
Elaine squealed with delight.
Chad’s moves had been capable, something else I didn’t know about him. But Grant’s moves were effortless. He was lost in the rhythm, his body one with the song.
Just as he appeared to be slowing down, Conner jumped beside Grant, and the two men moved in sync. When Grant’s leg kicked left, so did Conner’s and vice versa.
“Oh, I gotta get in on this.” Keyondra vacated her chair and ran to the dance floor. And then it was the three of them, moving together in a triangular formation, with Conner at the apex, arms and legs moving in tandem like well-practiced, synchronous pendulums.
“They’re good,” William said.
“They’re really good.” Deanna, elbows on table, was mesmerized like everyone else.
“How come we’ve never seen them do this?” Mere slapped Deanna’s arm, and Deanna shook her head and shrugged.
The song ended, and the four dancers returned to the table, but not before Chad had bowed to the other three.
“The victors,” Chad admitted as they returned to the table. “But I didn’t have backup dancers, so it wasn’t a fair fight.”
Conner laughed. “You held your own, man!”
Everyone was laughing, except Chad, who kept the same grin plastered on his face.
He leaned down until his clenched teeth were next to my ear. “Let’s go.”
I stood, grabbing my jacket without protest. His tone suggested he was barely holding it together, and I couldn’t take another scene.
“You guys leaving already?” Grant looked between the two of us. “Had enough, have you?”
I closed my eyes and swallowed, hoping Chad could keep that grin on his face until we made it to the door.
“Of some things.” Chad stared at Grant. “But really, I want this girl to myself. I’ve only got the weekend to convince her to come back to Minnesota with me.” He winked. “It’s been a pleasure.” He started toward the door.
“Are you thinking of moving back, Pen?” Deanna looked like she’d been slapped, which touched me.
“No. At least, I don’t think so. Can we talk about it later?”
“Yeah, of course.”
I wanted to sit back down, but Chad was already a good distance away from me.
“I’m sorry to cut the evening short. It’s been great meeting you all.”
“Girl, this is the beginning. You’re all right,” Keyondra said.
Everyone else said their goodbyes, but Grant wouldn’t make eye contact. He held on to Elaine’s hand. I tried not to let his snub bother me, or better yet, I wouldn’t acknowledge that it was a snub as Chad opened the saloon doors, and the country music swallowed us on the sidewalk of Second Avenue.