Chapter Thirteen
THERE'S A LIVE ORCHESTRA, a ballroom full of people who use summer as a verb, and me, in a borrowed gown I could never have afforded on my own, discovering in real time that I don't know how to dance.
"I can't dance," I hiss up at him.
"You said you could."
"I said I could act like I could dance. Different skill. Transferable only in theory."
The music shifts into something slow with strings in it, and couples drift onto the floor, and I plot a graceful retreat toward the safety of the shrimp table, which is the one move tonight a smart girl can actually pull off.
A hand closes over mine.
"Then act," Maximo says, and pulls me in.
I try to run. I get exactly nowhere because his other hand has already found the small of my back, and he sets it there like he's laying claim to territory, and every argument I own leaves my head at once, and my borrowed heart takes off like it's been waiting all night for the excuse.
"Left foot back," he tells me, low, for me alone. "Follow me. Don't look at your feet."
"That's where the feet are—"
"Look at me."
So I look at him.
Bad idea. Catastrophic idea. Because up close he's not a man you look at so much as a man you fall into, and the ballroom starts turning, and I honestly can't tell anymore whether that's the dancing or just what happens to a girl who forgets to breathe.
He moves like the floor was built to his specifications.
He moves us. Left, and back, and around, and I stop counting steps because his hand at my spine is doing the counting for both of us, steering me by the smallest pressure, and somewhere in there my free hand ends up pressed to his chest and I feel it, under the wool and the starch, the fast heavy beat of his heart going quicker than a man who feels nothing has any business going.
"Your heart's racing," I whisper.
"It's the room."
I totally disagree, but why bother arguing when the air between us already speaks volumes? It's practically vibrating with tension, and it's making my borrowed heart forget it's supposed to take things easy.
As the orchestra plays a long dying note, his eyes drop, once, to my mouth and back up, and I think, this is it, this is the part, this is finally the part—
The song ends.
The room applauds for something that has nothing to do with us, and he steps back, and sets me at arm's length, and clears his throat like a man surfacing from underwater.
"You can dance," he informs me, perfectly composed, already turning for the doors.
Sure. Fine. I can dance.
I just can't feel my legs, and neither, I'd bet the borrowed gown, can he.