8 - Jess
Jess
The bass at Disclosure resonated through the soles of my feet, traveling up my shins and settling into a pendulous drumming in my chest. The interior of the lounge existed in a permanent state of expensive twilight.
Smoked glass, charcoal velvet, and low-slung amber lighting that made everyone look like a polished version of themselves.
"Stop tugging at the hem," David shouted over a remix of an old disco track. His hand caught mine before I could adjust the silk slip dress one more time. "The lines are clean. You’re a woman of mystery, not a nervous ninny. Act like it."
He’d spent forty minutes in my closet. A man on a mission. The result was a silhouette of fluid motion and strategic accessories. My hair, usually a containment zone of pins and clips, flowed over my shoulders in loose waves that felt foreign against the bare skin of my neck.
"I feel like a fraud.”
David did a little two-step glide, dragging me along. “Even frauds cut loose from time to time. So you have no excuse.”
He moved with a celebratory arrogance, snapping his fingers and executing a half-turn that ended with his back against the mahogany bar top.
“I’d live a thousand years and never get close to being as cool as you,” I said, only half-joking.
“All you have to worry about is being as cool as you, Seymour.” And the sincerity that crept into his tone seemed so out of place after a night of teasing and messing around, that I just stared at him for a second. “Don’t look at me like that. People might think we’re together.”
“You really are my friend, aren’t you?” I pulled him into a hug.
“Ugh, Jess, I mean it.”
I was still laughing when the bartender came over. David fixed his shirt, and flipped the switch back to dashing and down for whatever.
"Two Botanist tonics,” he said, pointing to a bottle of small-batch gin. “Heavy on the lime, light on the ego." Then he turned to me, the irritation from a second ago now completely gone. “So? Having fun yet?”
“Well, it beats the dank, demoralizing humidity of the thirteenth century.”
He slid my drink across the bar. “I’d call that progress.”
We clinked our glasses, and knocked it back. The gin hit the back of my throat with a botanical sting, layering the heat of the club with a crisp edge.
“And one for the road,” David announced, calling the bartender back over.
We began our synchronized weave toward a velvet booth in the corner after getting our drinks, David’s hips swinging in time with the music.
I tried to match it. Tried to show anyone looking that I was as chill about being out on a school night as he was.
That I was chill, period. We reached the table just as the track transitioned into a deep, melodic house beat that seemed to pull the amber lights even lower.
“David?” The woman materialized out of nowhere. A vision of architectural precision, from her sleek silver dress to her cropped, platinum-blonde pixie cut. “I thought I smelled you. Glad to know I was right.”
We hadn’t been seated for a minute, and already he was getting attention.
"Sloane." He pulled her into a brief embrace that felt too intimate for outside eyes. "You look like you just stepped off a yacht in the Mediterranean. Jess, this is Sloane. She’s the only reason the D.C. arts scene hasn't collapsed in on itself."
Sloane turned her gaze on me, her eyes a cool, intelligent gray. "The roommate, I presume. The one who works with the dead."
"They’re champion listeners.” The gin was already taking effect, and I relaxed into the velvet of the booth. “I’d say it’s more therapy than work.”
Sloane gave a rich laugh and slid into the vacant spot beside me. “I have a therapeutic outlet of my own, if you’re interested.” She met David’s gaze, and so much passed in that one second. So much I wasn’t privy to. “His name’s Antoine, and he’s finally made it out of the embassy."
Her revelation summoned a man from the crowd. Antoine. David’s eyebrows shot up, his eyes gleaming with intrigue. And I could see why. The guy possessed a dense, athletic gravity, wearing a linen shirt unbuttoned just enough to hint at the solid mass of his chest.
"Antoine," Sloane said, resting a hand on his forearm. "Meet David, and Jess."
The air between the three of them suddenly pulled tight with a static charge. A triangular pull of attraction that made me feel like a hapless spectator.
"I like your vibe," Antoine said, his voice carrying a French-inflected lilt. He reached out to take David’s drink, his fingers grazing the sensitive inside of his wrist.
The contact was brief, but the reaction in David’s eyes was an unmistakable flare of interest.
And when Antoine went on to take a sip of the drink that wasn’t his… I don’t think I’d ever seen my roommate this visibly turned on. It should’ve grossed me out. I wanted to be grossed out. But God, help me, I couldn’t look away.
"I’ve been told I'm a natural resource," David quipped, though his usual sarcasm lacked its bite. He settled into the space between Sloane and Antoine, a central point in a very specific, very heated map.
Sloane whispered something into his ear that made him flush a deep, appreciative red. Then a silent communication passed between her and Antoine. A nod, a tilt of the head.
"We're going to dance." Sloane slid out of the booth at the same time as David, and hooked her arm into his. "Get to know each other a little better."
David and I shared a look. Mine was a question, and his only answer was a shit-eating grin.
I didn’t know what to do with that. Antoine was more direct, with his hand on the small of David’s back.
The last I saw of my roommate was an elated glance back over his shoulder as they were swallowed by the pulsing mass of bodies.
The gin cooled in my hand as I watched the three of them merge to the dirty bassline of a song I hadn’t heard before. David had one hand on Sloane’s waist, the other on Antoine’s shoulder. No, wait, Antoine’s neck.
This wasn’t a dance. It was a proposition.
Six minutes later, David returned to the booth alone, out of breath, his tie askew. He collapsed onto the velvet, staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had just seen the face of a god with a very specific penchant for the erotic.
"Thanks for ditching me."
"I’m sorry," David panted, grabbing my glass and emptying it of the melted ice. I’d been too busy stewing to get a refill. “But it was totally worth it.”
"I guess it’s kinda cool when the woman you’ve been seeing on and off doesn’t mind you openly flirting with someone else right in front of her.”
"Jess, you sweet, linear-thinking creature.” A flash of mischief sparked in his eyes. “We were all flirting. With each other.”
The back of my neck grew hot. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… They’re cruising for a third tonight,” he replied with a shrug. “And it’s just my luck they bumped into me.”
The logistical nightmare prioritized itself in my head. “That sounds like a lot of work. Double the texting. Double the ego-stroking.”
“It’s basic chemistry,” he argued. “A balanced equation.”
I tracked Sloane, still on the dance floor being felt up by Antoine. The image of David added to the mix crashed into my brain uninvited. She was sandwiched between them, basking in their joint attention.
“Rather you than me,” I said, shaking my head to free myself of the imaginary emotional load. “The mechanics of it just… It’s confusing.”
David let out a husky laugh. He seemed drunk, but it wasn't alcohol. “Two words: sexual symmetry. Also, Antoine isn’t wearing any underwear and I got a preview of his—”
“Okay.” I rocketed out of the booth so fast it sent our empty glasses skittering along the table. “I gotta go. Get another drink. Or something else that doesn’t involve witnessing your direct path to an expensive therapist.”
“I brought you here to loosen up, remember?”
I balked at him. “Are you telling me they’re looking for a fourth? Because if you thought—”
“Relax,” his laughter bubbled over the drone of voices that now lifted in the quiet of a track-change. “Two’s my limit when it comes to sharing what’s on the menu. I was just trying to get you to understand. It’s pleasure multiplied, not labor.”
It was messy, is what it was. Totally outside the bounds of my neat and tidy and ordered life.
"You're actually going to do it," I said, the realization settling in.
"More than that. I'm gonna enjoy it. Now go get that drink and come find me on the dance floor. I’ll be your wing man.”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Looks like you have your hands full.”
A heavy, driving house beat surged, pulling David back out of the booth and onto the floor. He was a blur of motion between Sloane and Antoine, his jacket discarded somewhere in the velvet depths of our booth. It looked so easy. Letting go. Just giving it all up to the music and the heat.
“Fuck the drink,” I muttered to the matronly prude in my head. It was high time she took a back seat.
I drifted into the center of their triad, the pulsing heat of the crowded floor pressing in from all sides. For a few minutes, the museum and the mounting dread of Amberleigh’s wedding vanished. I was just a body moving with other bodies in the erratic glow of a strobe light.
Antoine grabbed me by the waist and gave me a taste of what David had alluded to back at the table. The man was hung. No Dickhead Dane, but good enough.
Hands came to my shoulders. Soft skin, but firm grip. I spun round and came face-to-face with the flawless Sloane. She pressed up close and my breath got caught somewhere between what the actual fuck and how is this my Tuesday night?
“David never mentioned you were such a good dancer.”
“Because I’m not.” I gave a nervous laugh, searching the immediate surroundings for David. “This is just the effects of good lighting and lots of alcohol.”
Where the hell was he? He promised there’d be no fourth. And yet.
Across the expanse of the sunken dance floor, perched at a high-top table in the VIP tier, was a face I instantly recognized.
Dane. But not the rigid, ice-cold fixer I’d encountered at the gym.
He wore an expensive suit and an easy smile, a glass of whiskey loosely gripped in one hand.
A guy at his table said something, and Dane laughed, his head thrown back and eyes crinkled.
Schmoozing, probably. Because I refused to believe he was capable of any setting that wasn’t full-on asshole mode.
I faltered, my rhythm breaking.
“You’re not flatlining on me, are you?”
I pushed out of Sloane’s arms and held onto David. “Where the hell were you?”
“Having a moment.”
Over his shoulder, Antoine swiped a thumb across his lower lip before going to dance with Sloane again.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, forcing my feet to move again. This wasn’t the gym, and Dane wasn’t part of my night.
He was a pustule on the face of D.C. society. Which had nothing to do with me.
"I need a break," I said, and gestured toward the bar. "And more gin. I'll bankroll the next round."
"You're a saint!" David blew me a kiss before being pulled back into Antoine’s orbit.
The walk to the bar felt like traversing a battlefield.
It took me forever to wedge through the throng of people, my focus fixed on the chipped mahogany counter.
The place was packed, but I was determined to squeeze myself in there to get served.
I finally found a sliver of space at the far end of the rail, waving a hand to catch the bartender's eye.
"Three Botanist tonics and a vodka soda," I said, feeling confident in my read of Sloane. She seemed like the type.
"And a double Macallan. Neat."
The voice was a low-frequency vibration in my ear. I stiffened, and the air grew ten degrees colder.
"You’re not stalking me, are you?" His gaze was fixed on the rows of glowing bottles behind the bar. He’d lost the tie, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms.
"I could ask you the same thing.” My grip tightened on the edge of the bar. "Though I suppose a fixer needs to stay close to the source of the rot. Is there a senator in the bathroom you need to bribe?"
Dane finally turned his head, his dark eyes raking over my outfit. The slow, dismissive tour of his gaze was an intrusion. "Do you ever get tired of trying too hard?"
“Excuse me?” I spluttered, my ears growing hot.
“The dress is nice, but it’s clearly not you,” he said, as if anything about my face suggested I wanted to be walked through his insult. “You’re out of your element, and it shows.”
"Eat a dick.”
He chuckled under his breath. “I knew I wasn’t wrong about you. I’m never wrong.”
The bartender slid my drinks across the bar, and as I reached into my clutch, Dane’s card was already there.
"I've got it," he said to the bartender. “And the Macallan.”
"I don't want your money.” I tried snatching back the card, but it was too late. “Why did you do that? I don’t need you to—”
"Take the drinks," he said, his voice devoid of the laughter I'd seen earlier. He didn't look at me as he took his scotch, his expression returning to that unreadable, aristocratic mask. "Consider it a fee for looking down the front of your dress for the past five minutes."
Before I could hurl a retort—or the gin—at his head, he turned and walked away.