13. Chapter Twelve London
Chapter Twelve: London
A few weeks after horseback riding, my muscles have recovered.
Gloria and I still tease each other at work, have mock trials with Giorgio as our fake judge, and carpool home from McMann and Ma together.
Gloria’s been busy with her cases, so preoccupied by the promotion that we’ve barely hung out outside of work, which I completely understand.
I miss her. But I’m terrified I’ll say the wrong thing and ruin our friendship. Or ruin any chance of us becoming something more. Especially after the selfie we took together, when she leaned so close to me that I could feel her warmth and smell her creatively-braided hair.
Work keeps me so preoccupied that I forget I’m a groomsman for my sister’s wedding… until she texts me on a Saturday morning.
Savannah
I need you to do me a favour.
Can you learn how to dance before my wedding? I don’t want you to embarrass me.
I roll my eyes. That’s Savvy for you. Bossy despite being the middle child—or maybe because she’s the middle child—and cudgelling everyone around her into doing things for her .
Still, she’s my sister, and I love her. Even if she is making me learn to dance.
The only class I skipped in freshman year was gym, when we had our dance unit.
I hadn’t hit my growth spurt yet and all the girls were half a head taller than me, plus I had glasses and braces.
I’ve since petitioned my mother countless times to remove my high school pictures from the walls, but she refuses to.
So, I text her back.
London
Fine. Do I have to choreograph a dance with one of your bridesmaids?
Savannah
No. Thank God.
I swear, sometimes my sister still treats me like we’re in high school and I’m her embarrassing younger brother.
Sighing, I try to figure out who can teach me to dance. Maybe I can watch a YouTube tutorial and waltz around my apartment with a bag of golf clubs.
Wait, what am I thinking?
Gloria knows how to dance.
I’ve seen her dance at an office party, and she was good. Surely, it couldn’t be that hard for her to teach me?
I text her.
London
Can you teach me how to dance for my sister’s wedding in October?
Gloria
I think your skills might require more time than that.
London
Hey! What skills?
Gloria
Exactly. But yes, I’ll help you.
In exchange for a favour…
London
What favour? Do I have to sell my nonexistent firstborn?
Gloria
I don’t want your first pet cat.
How about you show up at my next bad date instead?
My chest tightens at the thought. I don’t want to rescue her from her bad dates. I want to be the only one who takes her on dates from now on. But I can’t say that.
London
Are you already planning an escape from axe throwing? I can’t beat up your date if he has an axe and I don’t.
How about I show up at your apartment instead? I can be there in an hour.
Gloria
Deal, but you have to bring bubble tea.
London
Taro milk tea with lychee popping pearls and grass jelly?
Gloria
I knew there was a reason I kept you around.
London
Are you sure it’s not for my lumberjack muscles?
Shoot. I sent the message before I could overthink it. I chew on my lip, waiting for her response.
Gloria
Nah. It’s for access to your Christmas tree farm.
She follows it up with a winking emoji.
I chuckle and grab my keys as I make my way out the door. An hour and twenty minutes later—what can I say? L.A. traffic stops for nobody—I have two bubble teas and I’m standing in the lobby of Gloria’s apartment building. The doorman waves me in.
“No bubble tea for me, too?” he jokes.
“Next time, I promise.” I enter the elevator with Gloria’s bubble tea and my Thai milk tea, needing a jolt of caffeine to get me through this day.
I also bought egg waffles in matcha, original, and black sesame flavours.
“You brought snacks!” Gloria says after I knock on her door. “I love you.”
Her enthusiasm jolts my heart, making me picture a life where I come home from work and she greets me with the same warmth and a kiss.
“I know you’re talking to the egg waffles and bubble tea,” I say with a laugh as I hand her the drink and snacks.
“I am,” she says. “How did you know?”
“Because we’re friends?” I ask with an arch of my brow, repeating the words we said to Eli.
“Exactly.” Gloria rips off a chunk of her matcha waffle and pops it in her mouth. “Now, let’s get you ready for Dancing With the Stars . ”
“Uh, I don’t know what Savannah’s wedding is like, but it won’t be televised.” I kick off my boots and enter the small kitchen, sitting next to her as we eat our egg waffles and drink our bubble teas. “Even if there are celebrities there.”
“And here I thought you were asking me to teach you how to dance because you’re so certain I’ll lose our bet and go with you to her wedding,” Gloria says.
“I’m sure any woman I bring to the wedding would be embarrassed by my bad dancing,” I say, sipping my bubble tea.
“Oh, there’s no doubt about that.” A sly grin curves her lips upwards.
Halfway through eating our snacks, Gloria declares that if we keep sitting there, she’ll never summon the willpower to get up and actually do things.
So, she gestures me toward the living room, and orders me to “put my Christmas-tree-farm-lumberjack muscles to good use” by moving the furniture to create a makeshift dance floor.
That relieves a knot of tension in my throat. If we dance in the kitchen, it might feel too… homey. Domestic. Like we’re a couple.
“Okay, so do you know what kind of dancing there will be at the wedding?” Gloria asks. “Is Savannah having a flash mob? Breakdancing? Ballet?”
“No to all of those. I hope.” I break into metaphorical hives at the thought of doing a pirouette. “I think she just wants us to do… ballroom dancing?”
I reread her texts. She’s sent me a new one that in fact confirms she wants me to ballroom dance, not dance to the YMCA or the Macarena.
“Ballroom dancing.” Gloria gestures for me to come closer. “Luckily for you, I took lessons.”
“You did?” A surge of jealousy bolts through me at the thought of her dancing with some other guy .
“Yeah, Paulo and I used to do it together growing up. It was our mom’s idea of entertainment to have us dance around the living room at family parties.” She quirks a grin, clearly missing her brother and her family.
I wish I had happy family memories with my siblings to reminisce about like she does.
“That’s sweet.” I step toward her.
“Put your hand on my waist.”
“Which one?”
She looks exasperated with me already, which is a bad sign. “Your right hand. Your left hand is holding my right.”
I follow her instructions, trying to ignore how soft her skin is in the gap between her tank top and her cutoff shorts.
“My hand goes here.” She rests her hand on my shoulder, and I’m struck by how much smaller she is than me. Not fragile—but precious, beautiful, something I want to cherish and protect. Then Gloria twines our fingers together. “Oh, shoot!”
“What?” I wonder if she feels the same jolt of electricity that I do when our hands touch.
“I forgot the music.” She drops my hand and grabs her phone. Moments later, a waltz diffuses through the apartment. “Much better.”
We resume our dancing position.
“Now, you’re going to take two steps back and one step forward," she instructs.
I frown. “Won’t we run into the furniture?”
“You’re not a Roomba.” Gloria gives me another look that reminds me of how I felt when we had to wrangle the twins at the end of our horseback riding lesson.
“I promise I’m more capable of dancing than a robot. ”
We settle into a slow rhythm that devolves into swaying back and forth.
After we’ve swayed long enough that Gloria is satisfied with my progress, we move on to twirls.
I extend my arm to let her spin away from me, her hair flying as she does so.
A picture of her wearing a fancy dress that swirls around as she dances forms in my mind.
The dress’s colour shifts from the black dress she wore on her date with Lindon to…
White .
What she would wear at our wedding.
I need to get a handle on my feelings before I do something reckless. But I can’t just stand by and watch her date other guys.
I want to be the one who checks off her boyfriend list. Heck, I want to be the one who checks off her husband list.
We move on from spins to dips. I place my hand on the small of her back and my other hand cups the back of her head, my fingers twining into her hair as I lower her halfway to the ground before bringing her back up.
She rights herself with more momentum than I expected, so close to me that we’re face to face.
At this angle, I could kiss her.
At this angle, I’d die if I did anything but kiss her.
Her brown eyes are wide and soft, her lips full and parted in an ‘o’ of surprise as she wraps her arms around my neck.
All I want is to hold her against me and never let go.
To breathe in her perfume for the rest of my life.
To feel her softness and warmth flush against my body, like she was made for me.
To cleave to her and never be separated.
The song comes to an abrupt end, and a Spotify ad starts playing, effectively killing the moment.
I blink. She untangles herself from me and brushes invisible lint from her jean shorts. “We never finished our bubble tea.”
“Right.” My hands feel cold and empty now that they’re no longer touching her.
Having felt the texture of her hair, the heat of her skin, the weight of her in my arms—it was addicting.
The urge to hold her is no longer a casual whim, but a craving too strong to control. “Bubble tea. And the egg waffles.”
But neither of us moves from the living room. We stay there, only a few feet apart, staring at one another as the Spotify ad plays.
“Thanks for teaching me how to dance,” I say. It doesn’t feel like enough. I want to thank her for everything. I want to tell her that she’s everything to me.
A ringtone chirps on her phone just as I’m about to give in to the urge. She grabs it and shuns my eye contact like a pilgrim would the scarlet letter.
“Hey, what’s up?” she says. “Oh, right! I totally forgot that was today… Thanks for confirming… I can be ready in forty-five minutes… See you there. Sorry!”
“Who was that?” I ask her, even though the sinking feeling in my stomach tells me I already know the answer.
“My date tonight. I totally forgot I was seeing him.” She puts her phone down and grabs a hairbrush from the island. “How do I look?”
Perfect.
Beautiful.
Like you belong in my arms and no one else’s.
“Great,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound as strangled as my heart feels. “Good luck with your date. I’ll get out of your hair.”
“This was fun,” she says, but it’s with the halfhearted pity of someone trying to make an awkward encounter less strained. “I’ll, um, see you at work.”
“Of course.” I grab my drink and egg waffle. “See you.”