Twenty-Three
I’M UNSURE HOW, EXACTLY, I END UP ON TOP OF A questionably steady table, a bottle of mystery liquor in one hand, and Imani’s in the other – I just know that it happens.
I know that, any minute now, I’m likely to tumble to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs and broken furniture, but if anything good has come of this night, it’s my handy new ability to not fucking care.
A timely new ability, because imagine if I did care right now; imagine if I was dancing on a table, surrounded by strangers who are doing their best to see up my skirt, still a little buzzy from all those not right orgasms, and I cared.
‘Daniela Williams,’ Imani screams in my ear, her hip bumping mine in rhythm to the music, an emphatic member of the table-dancing, not-caring committee; party of three, including the headbanging redhead on my other side. ‘I am so glad Heath finally grew some balls.’
I cackle. I have no idea what that means. I don’t want to. I have been doing a spectacular job of not thinking about Heath at all.
If spectacular was a synonym for piss-poor.
Semantics.
What’s important is I’ve successfully avoided him for the better part of .
. . well, however long it took to get me this drunk.
I haven’t checked the time in a while. I lost my phone, I think.
And I have no idea where my keys are, but, again, not important.
Not at all. I don’t know where Heath is either, and that right there is important.
That’s worth another swig of . . . tequila. I think. I can’t tell; my tastebuds are as plastered as the rest of me.
A little bit misses my mouth and dribbles down my neck.
I’m wiping it away when something grazes my leg.
I tighten my grip on the neck of the bottle, ready to wield it like a weapon in case some drunk frat dipshit is trying to get handsy.
Or worse, if it’s Ben tugging on the hem of my skirt. Or even worse-er, if it’s Heath.
Scowling, I drop my gaze.
My relieved sigh is almost loud enough to be heard over the ungodly techno racket.
I don’t know the man smirking up at me. Or maybe I do – he’s looking at me like he knows me. And he looks mildly offended when I drop to my haunches and slur, ‘Do I know you?’
That slick expression momentarily falters, but the maybe-stranger recovers quickly. ‘It’s Ryan.’
I stare at him blankly. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘I’m on Heath’s team.’
At the sound of his name, I wince. I take another swig of alcohol, and I don’t wince at all as it burns a path down my throat because, actually, it doesn’t really burn all that much anymore. A sign that I’ve had enough, surely, if I was coherent enough to notice it. ‘Right.’
I remember now. He was there that day, the first day, the first practice Heath and I attended together, hand-in-hand. He introduced him, and he stared at me the way he’s staring at me now. With that glimmer, that sheen of interest. The one that Heath always—
No.
Bad Dani.
Palms planted on the table, Ryan leans in to shout in my ear. ‘You look good up there.’
I laugh. Funny how I can do so much of that with such a great big ache in my chest. Chuckling like I don’t have a care in the world, I reach out a clumsy hand, swaying precariously for a moment before finding a warm, hard shoulder to steady myself on. ‘Thanks, Ron.’
‘Ryan.’
‘Right.’ I sling back another drink. ‘Can I help you with something?’
‘Wanna come down here and dance with me?’
‘No,’ I answer so easily, too easily, and it makes me pause. Maybe I should. Maybe that’s exactly what I need; a man that isn’t my ex-boyfriend or my fake boyfriend or even a friend at all, just a boy. Mindless, unimportant dancing with someone who doesn’t have the capacity to break my heart.
That thought sobers me. Briefly, and only enough for the tiniest shred of common sense to wriggle through my cushy little drunken protective layer, and remind me a man is never what I need.
Dancing with the girls is way more fun, and I start to get back to that, start to straighten up only for all of that alcohol to suddenly catch up with me.
A headrush has me wobbling. As my hand slips off Ryan’s shoulder, the rest of me slips off the table with a shriek. Luckily, I’m caught before my face gets intimately familiar with the floor.
Unluckily, my face gets intimately familiar with something else instead. With someone else’s. With brown eyes. Not blue or green or any combination of the two either.
My eyes close for a moment as I breathe deep, and my face scrunches when an unfamiliar scent fills my lungs.
They open again and I realize just how close my little fumble has brought me to Ryan, and I reel backwards.
I register how firmly hands clutch the bare skin above my waistband, and I knock them away, shivering as this utterly nonsensical feeling of wrong washes over me.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I find myself snapping, which is ridiculous. He just saved me from finding out exactly what is making the floor beneath my unsteady feet quite so sticky. He was helping me, not fondling me.
So why am I so itchy?
‘Sorry.’ Ryan holds his hands up, completely innocent, he didn’t do a damn thing wrong, but I feel like I did. He holds one hand out, an invitation and, shit, that feels wrong too.
Against my will, my brain imagines the metaphorical tables turning. Heath too drunk, too touchy with someone else, too close, dancing.
My stomach roils.
Face crinkled with concern, Ryan steps forward. ‘Are you alright?’
I step back, almost tripping over my own feet. ‘Drink,’ I oh-so-eloquently mumble, holding the bottle I clutch aloft and giving it a shake, wincing when a whole lot of liquid sloshes around inside, lying, ‘Need a new one.’
‘I’ll get you one.’
‘No,’ another voice drawls. ‘I don’t think you will.’
Slowly, I turn around. Crank my neck back. Find the dark gaze of a deeply unimpressed man glowering at the one behind me.
I gulp. ‘I wasn’t doing anything.’
Jaw cocked, Heath grunts. ‘Time to go.’
Later, tomorrow, when I’ve returned to my body and remember this incident, I’m sure I’ll burst into flames at the memory of sticking my tongue out like a misbehaving child.
‘It’s late, Dani. You’ve got practice tomorrow. You’ve gotta sleep this off.’
God help me. I do it again. My middle finger makes an appearance too.
‘You’re gonna regret it in the morning.’
I cackle and lift my drink in a mocking cheers before tipping it to my lips, muttering around the rim, ‘Then I guess we’ll be a matching pair, huh?’
‘Okay.’ A hand snatches the bottle away before it makes contact. ‘Enough. I’m taking you home.’
With a whine, I spin away from Heath – and then I spin some more, a dizzy spell making me stumble, but at least my stumbling brings me into the kitchen, away from most of the crowd and toward a decent replacement for my stolen maybe-tequila.
Except the very second my fingers close around a can of beer, it’s snatched away from me.
‘Jesus,’ I huff, throwing my fucking stalker a squinty scowl. ‘Back off. What are you,’ I snicker, ‘my boyfriend?’
If I was sober, I’d notice Heath’s entire face falling. I’d see a single second of despair before he hastily covers it up with gritted teeth and a snarled mouth and a sighed ‘Daniela.’
His exasperation is deafening. Provoking. It pokes me in all the wrong places, reminds me of all the wrong things, makes me think of a different man needling me about the same things, in that same fucking tone. ‘Do you know I once swam a meet with an infected wisdom tooth?’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘My dad said dentists were for winners.’
Full lips part. I stare at that freckle on his lip as it stretches and pulls, as his mouth contorts into ugly shock, as he repeats a breathy ‘Daniela.’
I crack a smile. ‘Kidding.’
‘Are you?’
No, but it doesn’t matter. I won. I got my tooth pulled the next day, and as soon as I was coherent enough to get back in the water, I did.
I didn’t mean to tell him that, though. I don’t mean to tell him anything at all, but my damn mouth won’t stop moving.
‘When I was thirteen, I got strep and couldn’t go to practice, but my dad made me swim laps in the pool in our backyard anyway.
I think it was the year after that – before that?
I can’t remember. Anyway. Our pool broke so we did drills in the ocean and—’ The memory isn’t even remotely a funny one, yet I find myself chuckling anyway.
‘I genuinely thought I was gonna drown. But I didn’t.
And then, when I was sixteen, I won the state championships the day after my dad’s funeral, so I think I can handle a hangover. ’
His face falls again. A third quiet utterance of my name makes me sway on my feet, makes my chest fucking hurt, but I push past it. ‘I’ll go home when I’m ready to go home, okay, Heath? So back,’ I press a palm to his chest and shove, ‘off.’
He doesn’t move a muscle. He’s like a brick wall, and the thing about brick walls is when you go smashing into one, you’re the one who gets hurt.
I’m the one who ends up careening backwards.
I essentially shove myself. I trip over my own damn feet, and as I go down, I cackle at the utter ridiculousness of it all.
I’m still cackling when my shoulder catches against the edge of the counter hard enough for a spark of pain to actually penetrate the thick layer of alcohol clouding my senses, and when the tiles bruise my ass – I stop abruptly when I try to get up, and putting any weight on my left side sends pain so intense radiating out from deep within my shoulder that it’s almost sobering.
Almost.
‘Jesus, Dani.’ Before I can protest, Heath hauls me to my feet. ‘Are you okay?’
Swaying listlessly, I shake myself out and ignore how very wrong something feels – I shake him off, but that doesn’t feel all that right either. ‘What did I just say, Heath?’
He doesn’t make me repeat myself. Hands up, he backs away. He leaves me be.
I don’t linger long enough for him to change his mind.
My left knee is bleeding, and I’m not sure how it happened.