Chapter 15 I gotta dance.
I gotta dance.
Josie
I ALMOST LAUNCH myself away from the dining table when that awful, furry, blue thing appears next to me. Puppet Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t in any of the medical books, but it should be.
“Yum! That look good!” the puppeteer says in Orbit’s squeaky-yet-throaty voice. “Let’s take picture together.”
I feel my face scrunch into a grimace. “Er—”
But Sean has already dragged his chair closer to mine and is giving his signature Captain Footwork smile for the still camera.
The intrepid captain is typically very serious, having to run a ship full of dancing fools and all, but once in a while, he does this goofy Tom-from-Parks-and-Rec grin. Sean’s got it down.
Of course he does—he is Captain Footwork. Meanwhile, the risotto is swimming in my stomach, but I don’t want to call attention to my puppet phobia by running away screaming.
“You give taste?” the puppet asks me—or, more accurately, the puppeteer asks me. Frankly, I’d rather spoon-feed the hand creature from the Alien movie, but I hold my fork steady as Orbit pretends to eat.
“Here, you can cuddle him,” the puppeteer says in his normal voice, lowering Orbit into my lap before I can say Sure or No thanks or For the love of God, take that cursed thing away from me!
It’s as heavy as a baby, what with all of the animatronics.
Not at all like Chuy, who was wood and cloth and oh-so-flammable.
Orbit’s head swivels on his neck until he’s looking up at me with his oversize, oval-shaped black eyes, twin pools of shiny doom.
In a moment of sheer irrationality, I wonder if all puppets know one another, if they have a collective puppet consciousness, and how loyal they are to one another.
For example, would they all band together for a singular puppet purpose, like vengeance?
A camera snaps, immortalizing the look of horror on my face. The puppeteer lifts Orbit from my lap before he can bare his puppet teeth and go for my jugular. At the same moment, the alarm on Sean’s watch goes off, and I actually cry out.
“You okay?” Sean is looking at me, his grin gone.
I push back my chair. “I gotta go do something.”
“What?”
There’s a piano player in the other direction playing lounge music, kind of jazzy. A saucer of open floor space around him beckons.
I grab Sean’s ringed hand. “I gotta dance.”
I tug him over to the polished wood floor, which looks like parquet with a million dollars’ worth of polish, and swivel into his arms. Again, he’s the perfect height for me.
I hold him close, more like a body shield than a dance partner.
Our footwork is awkward and wrong, but it’s not our fault.
This isn’t the kind of music you dance to.
“Are we hiding from the cameras again?” Sean murmurs as the pianist reads the room and switches up his song to accommodate us. Now he’s playing “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” Sean reacts like he’s been programmed.
“No. I just hate puppets.”
“I hate puppets, too. Horrible little scene-stealers.”
We dance, and the only way I can think to describe it is with the Spanish word fluidez. There are no sharp corners to him, no jerks or starts. He moves me around him like a planet around the sun, and we are in a galaxy of our own even though there are people and cameras everywhere.
“I’ve danced with you before,” he says, as if just remembering.
“Have you?” I say with matching nonchalance.
The pianist switches it up again, to “Cotton Eye Joe.” Line dancing, really?
But, again, I guess the dude is psychic because it’s perfect.
I fall into the steps, and Sean improvises around me with some Irish dance moves, riling up the crowd.
He’s definitely in his element. This used to be my element, too, and the reminder tugs at a place just below my breastbone, like the ribbon on a gift tied too tight.
I’m breathless by the time the pianist changes to a slow song.
I hope I’m not sweating off my blue makeup as my arms find their way around Sean’s neck, and he stops showing off and just holds me close.
My body lights up, and I can’t look at his mouth because it’ll be too much, so I rest my cheek against his and just relish the sensation of being in his arms. The bergamot in his cologne makes this feel even more intimate.
I’d swear it even dims the lights a notch.
Sean’s watch alarm beeps again.
“Do you have somewhere to be?” I whisper against his sideburn, both disappointed and hopeful at the same time.
“Yes.” But he doesn’t stop dancing, doesn’t pull away from me, doesn’t break our rhythm in any way, and the man has rhythm. His jaw moves against my cheek. “You know, if I’d known it was you, I would have planned something more.”
A zing of excitement vibrates all the way to my toes. It’s stupid of me not to let the topic die right there, but somehow, here in Sean’s arms, dancing to an overachieving pianist’s version of “My Heart Will Go On,” stupid feels right. “What would you have planned?”
He hesitates, and something about the fact that he does makes this whole affair seem sweet. Innocent, even, like we’re clueless teenagers drowning in insecurity and not thirty-something adults who know what the hell we want.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “That’s why I came to find you at work. To ask you what you would like to do with me.”
And it’s at that moment that I realize how much I like Sean O’Sullivan—this Sean O’Sullivan—the man, not the persona, and I shouldn’t, for a lot of reasons.
Firstly, he’s a celebrity, and I’m not anymore.
He lives in a five-million-dollar mansion, and I live in someone else’s trailer on someone else’s property.
Most importantly, he thrives in the spotlight while my entire world relies on me staying in the shadows.
This moment isn’t fair, isn’t real, shouldn’t even be happening.
It’s a weird little anomaly in the mind-blowingly huge expanse of space and time—a tiny bone tossed to me by a careless universe, so minuscule, so improbable, so negligible that it might as well not be happening at all.
But I don’t want to let it go.
Sean’s pulled back and is watching me, waiting for me to tell him what I’d like to do with him.
I grasp for something to say. All the words in both the languages I have mastered seem to have fled.
But I need to say something. It’s time to end this…
whatever this is. This dangerous game. These dangerous feelings.
God, I need to stop looking at his mouth. I also need to stop looking at his eyes, green as emeralds with the thinnest ring of golden brown around the pupils. When he finally gives up and tears his gaze away, I swear it takes a piece of me with it.
“I’ve got to go,” he says.
“Where?”
“Ojai.”
“What are you doing in Ojai?”
He hesitates. “I have to pick up a package.”
“Is it a bomb?”
“No.”
“A bioweapon?”
“No.”
“A once-extinct creature from the Mesozoic Era?”
“Okay, now I’m starting to think you’re messing with me.”
He’s already disengaging, leading me back to our table, pulling my chair out so I can sit but not sitting down himself.
I’ve blown it. Been too weird. Turned him off. He’s going to say goodbye now. Walk away and leave me here alone. I guess that’s good. I mean, that was the plan, right?
But he freezes. “Would you… like to come with?”
He did not just say that. Even after the dinosaur comment? “Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
I do want to come with. I want to get the hell out of this amazing restaurant even though we haven’t had dessert yet. I want to slide into the passenger seat of his car, probably something low and leather, and watch his hand with all those rings work the gear shift like a king with a scepter.
But that’s the impulsive part of me talking. The Josie who doesn’t think things through, who reacts based on emotion and makes everyone around her suffer the consequences.
I don’t even know why he’s asking me to do this.
I have an alien head, for crying out loud!
He could throw a rock and hit three other women who would love to go with him—prettier women, happier women, easier women.
Well, maybe not easier that way. I mean women who are easier to get along with.
Easier to have a conversation with because they don’t just keep making crap up to hide the truth.
He’s standing at the edge of the table, looking at me.
Our dancing has disheveled him in a good way.
The shock of blond hair is awry on his forehead.
Blue makeup mars his cheek and his white collar.
There’s a shiny layer of sweat on his neck, and everything else is a sinewy reminder of how this man can move.
Fluidez. Fluidity? Fluidness? Maybe the word is simply smooth.
“I really do have to leave, so if you want to come…”
It’s the second time he’s invited me to go with him. If I don’t control my mouth, it will automatically say, Of course, Sean, anything you want, and the rest of me will follow him somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, but that’s what got me into this mess in the first place.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry.” You have no idea how sorry.
“O-kay.” He draws the word out. His bottom lip protrudes in a forced frown, hands digging into his pockets. He waits a beat, giving me time to change my mind. When I don’t, he says, “I guess I’ll see you at work then. Goodbye, Josie,” and spins on one expensive heel.
It’s too abrupt, this ending. Awkward, strange, tragic, a crying shame. I start to say, You, too or Thanks for dinner or something equally lame to try and salvage it, but he’s already headed for the door.
He doesn’t look back.