Chapter 13 #2
Jack finds us a spot near the wall, standing room with a decent view of the stage.
Mia is already moving, hips shifting, feet finding the beat without any conscious thought.
Within thirty seconds she's left us entirely and waded into the crowd, arms up, dancing by herself with the ease of someone who has never once worried about how she looks doing anything.
A guy near her starts matching her energy and she grins at him like they're old friends and they're moving together, laughing, and I watch with a mix of admiration and something close to envy because I have never in my life been able to walk onto a floor and just let go like that.
I can command a kitchen full of line cooks. I can break down a whole fish in under three minutes. I can plate forty covers in an hour without breaking a sweat. But ask me to dance in front of strangers and suddenly I'm as graceful as a giraffe on roller skates.
Jack holds his hand out to Lark. "Come on, beautiful. Let's show these people how it's done.”
"I thought you'd never ask," she says, and they push into the crowd.
Jack pulls her in and spins her and she laughs and stumbles into him and he catches her, and then they're just moving together.
They look annoyingly good, both of them moving with a natural rhythm.
He dips her low and she tips her head back laughing and his face when he looks at her is so openly adoring that I have to glance away because some part of me is wishing it was Alex and me out there.
Which leaves me standing against the wall. Alone. Holding a spot nobody asked me to hold, watching everyone I came with have the kind of fun I don't know how to have anymore.
The band is playing fast and the whole room is moving except for me, because I cannot for the life of me remember how to stop being a spectator in my own life.
There's a very obnoxious part of my brain that would like to point out that this is a metaphor for literally everything. Always watching, never participating. Always in control, never spontaneous. Always the chef, never the person who gets to just enjoy the meal.
Thankfully, before I can spiral much further into this bout of self-pity, Alex appears with two drinks. He hands me the sbagliato, the Prosecco still fizzing, and takes a sip of his drink, which looks like bourbon, neat.
"Cheers," he says, raising his glass.
"Cheers," I say, and we tap glasses. The sbagliato is good, bitter and bright and exactly what I needed.
He leans against the wall next to me, looking comfortable and relaxed, and for a minute we just watch the floor, the band driving hard, the fiddle player absolutely shredding, the crowd eating it up.
"Not a dancer?" he asks, glancing over at me with that permanent half-smile.
"I'm terrible at it," I say, which is a generous assessment of my abilities. "How is everyone so good? Mia I'll give a pass since she's literally a professional, but Jack and Lark look like they've been doing this for years."
"Jack's always been like that," Alex says. "Irritating natural coordination. Same thing that makes him a good driver. Everything physical just comes easy to him. The rest of us mere mortals have to actually practice."
The beat picks up, faster, more percussive, and the room surges in response. I can feel the floor vibrating through my shoes.
Alex takes a long sip of his drink and sets it down on the ledge behind him. "Come on. Let's give it a shot."
I stare at him. "I just told you I'm terrible at this. And I don't know if that's a great idea because..."
Because I'm starting to like you. Because I really want to.
He laughs. "Relax, princess. I'm not hitting on you. But I'm pretty sure you want to be out there and you're standing here talking yourself out of it. Am I wrong?"
He's leaning against the brick wall, looking at me sideways, and he is absolutely not wrong. I do want to. My feet are practically moving on their own, tapping along to the beat without my permission.
He holds out his hand, palm up, waiting. "Come on. One song. If it's terrible we blame it on the drinks and never speak of it again. I'll even let you tell people I'm a terrible dancer and you were just trying to help me."
There's a part of me, the part that's been getting louder all week, that wants to say yes to everything he's offering and several things he hasn't.
That part is currently jumping up and down and waving both arms and yelling PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST DANCE WITH THE MAN.
That part has terrible judgment and should not be trusted with major life decisions, but she makes a compelling argument.
And then he smiles. That full, warm, crooked smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes him look even more ridiculously attractive than he already is, and my resolve, which has been weakening all night, takes another significant hit.
"Okay," I say. "But if I fall and break something, I'm blaming you."
"I'll yell 'chef down,'" he says, completely serious.
I laugh and swat his arm before taking his hand. His palm is warm and the second our hands connect I know this was a terrible idea. He pulls me off the wall and into the crowd and the noise and heat and energy swallow us whole.
The band is driving hard, fiddle and drums and electric guitar and the crowd clapping along, stomping their feet, and Alex doesn't waste time with gentle introductions or easing me into it.
His other hand finds my waist immediately, firm and sure and warm even through my shirt, and before I can overthink it, before I can catalog all the ways this is a monumentally bad idea, he's moving.
And he's good. Annoyingly, unexpectedly good.
The kind of lead who makes you feel like you know what you're doing.
He guides me through the first beats with a confidence that has nothing to do with formal training and everything to do with the way Alex seems to approach everything—like he's certain it'll work out and he's probably right.
"How are you good at this?" I have to yell over the music. It genuinely makes no sense. He runs a restaurant in a small town in Washington. Where did he learn to lead?
"I'm not!" he yells back, grinning. "I think my footwork is probably atrocious. But dancing at a non-professional level is ninety percent attitude and ten percent not stepping on your partner's feet, and I've got the attitude part covered."
"And the feet part?"
"We'll find out!" He spins me.
I spin out and come back and he catches me and we're moving together now, the music carrying us forward. The song speeds up and he matches it, pulling me through turns that get increasingly ambitious. I stop trying to do it right and just trust his hands and his timing.
It works. I'm dancing. Not well, but I'm doing it.
He sends me into a spin that's faster than anything we've tried yet and I come out of it laughing so hard I nearly double over, grabbing his arms to stay upright.
"Okay, that one was ambitious," he says, steadying me.
"That one almost killed me," I manage.
"But you survived," he points out. "Which means we're ready for the next level."
"There are levels?"
"There are always levels." He's got a dangerous glint in his eye now. "Trust me."
"Alex, don't you dare—"
He spins me hard and then pulls me back and dips me in the middle of a packed dance floor with a fiddle screaming overhead and I shriek, my hand flying to his shoulder, my back arched over his arm, the ceiling spinning above me. He grins down at me looking extremely pleased with himself.
He pulls me back up and I crash into his chest and we're both laughing so hard we can barely stand, my forehead against his shoulder, his arm solid around my back.
My cheeks hurt. My ribs ache. I'm sweating in a way that would horrify professional-kitchen Isabelle and I have never cared less about anything in my entire life.
We dance through the next song too, and the one after that.
Somewhere in the third one I stop being a person who's self-conscious about dancing and just become a person who's having fun.
The band is driving and the crowd is stomping and Alex keeps finding new ways to spin me and I keep almost falling and we keep laughing and I think, this is what I've been missing. This is the thing I forgot existed.
The band finishes their set and the room erupts. Alex puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles, sharp and loud, and I do the same. We smile at each other, flushed and breathless and buzzing with endorphins.
The headliner's crew starts setting up and we drift back to the wall. Lark and Jack switch to mocktails, mentioning their early flight to LA tomorrow for work. Mia is exchanging numbers with the strangers she apparently adopted on the dance floor.
And I'm standing next to Alex with six inches of space between us that feel like the most important six inches in the room.
My body keeps drifting toward him without my permission. Every time I notice it happening, I straighten up and take a careful sip of my drink and look very intently at the stage. And then thirty seconds later I'm drifting again, pulled by some gravitational force I don't know how to fight.
It's like there are two versions of me having an argument in my head. Rational Isabelle, who has spreadsheets and contingency plans and a five-year timeline, and Wild Isabelle, who apparently emerged sometime around the second sbagliato and has decided that consequences are a problem for tomorrow.
My father could destroy him and there’s not a chance I could stop it. Two weeks ago I wouldn't have cared what my father did to some guy from Washington. Now the thought of it makes me feel physically sick.
And Napa will end and I’ll go to New York and he’ll go to Seattle, and this—whatever this is brewing between us—all of it has an expiration date stamped on it in bright red letters. The countdown is already ticking.