Chapter Ten
HUNTER FELT LIKE THE biggest fool in the world—and not just because he was currently back-stepping and shimmying his way around the community center.
“Back wall,” Denise prompted them.
He executed the quick quarter turn to the beat, and even as he told himself not to, he chanced a glance over at Emma.
Just like when they’d gone hiking the other day, she was glowing, but it wasn’t the clear mountain air this time.
It was exertion and pride, and yeah—he felt a little bit of both of those, too.
In addition to being utterly mortified, of course.
But as they finished the last few measures of the routine they’d been working on all night, the embarrassment almost started to slip away.
Almost.
“Whoo-hoo! Nice job, everybody!” Patrick cheered as the song came to a close. “Give yourself a round of applause.”
Hunter clapped on command, along with everybody else. Lucas, Daniel, and the other guys weren’t even being ironic about it, and one corner of Hunter’s mouth rose, despite his intention to stay stoic about the whole thing.
Denise gave them a little pep talk about practicing what they’d learned, and then Mayor Thompson was taking the mic from her.
“I hope everybody had a great time tonight, and that you’ll think about coming back for another class next month.
” He waited for everyone to finish applauding that announcement, then added, “We’ve got the room until ten, and a few members of our high school AV department have kindly offered to keep the music going, so feel free to stay for a bit and enjoy. ”
Sure enough, a couple of teenagers in hipster beanies and oversized jeans had plugged a phone into the sound system in the corner. The lights in the room dimmed, and a booming hip-hop dance song started playing, and wow.
Lucas blinked in horror before jerking his thumb toward the door. “Uh, I gotta go.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Daniel had his phone out and was waggling it in the air. “Liddy broke one of the taps at the bar, and I told her I’d come back as soon as this was over to fix it.”
The rest of the guys had handy excuses, too, and Hunter figured that was about it. But he turned, and Emma was standing there, looking incredibly awkward as Hattie threw her hands in the air to the beat. Abby was a bit more demure about it, but she was dancing, too.
Raising her brows, Emma made intense eye contact with him. “Wanna go see if there are any pumpkin bars left at the snack table?”
The chances of there still being any fresh baked goods stood somewhere between slim and none. But there wasn’t any harm in checking, right?
“Later.” He waved at the guys as they beat a hasty retreat. Then he followed Emma out into the hallway. The relative brightness was a bit bracing, but the quiet was priceless.
“Oh.” She caught on a little late that his buddies were hightailing it out of there. “If you have to go…”
He probably should. He had an early shift tomorrow—the weather was supposed to be beautiful, and they’d probably have a lot of visitors out on the trails.
He shook his head. “I’m not in any rush.”
The smile she gave him in return made him feel like he had all the time in the world.
As expected, the pumpkin bars were all gone, but there were still a few store-bought sandwich cookies. Treats in hand, they found a place to stand near the entrance to the event room so they could watch the weird after-party situation that seemed to be unfolding.
Chuckling, Emma shook her head. “Am I the only one getting serious middle school dance vibes right now?”
“I was thinking the same thing, earlier.”
“Fingers crossed they don’t haul out the Electric Slide.” She shuddered, as if it pained her just to be thinking about it.
He raised a brow. “You realize we are at a line dancing class, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s fun, adult, country-western line dancing, and then there’s adolescent trauma.” She said it in a breezy tone, but it was hard to reconcile casually evoking the word trauma like that.
“So I take it you weren’t exactly a social butterfly back in middle school?”
“Let’s just say that I was a late bloomer.” She cracked a cookie in half and took a nibble. “Or maybe I’m still working on blooming.”
He couldn’t stop himself from blurting out, “I don’t know about that.”
She was already a knockout. She came any further into bloom, and he didn’t know how he’d survive. Or resist.
She shrugged. “I mean, I wasn’t a total pariah or anything, but I was too much of a book nerd to be popular popular. Plus, my parents were kind of strict, and I didn’t get to go out very much.”
“Except to traumatic middle school dances.”
A ghost of a smile flickered on her lips. “Official school functions got more of a pass than hanging out in some kid’s garage did.”
He supposed that made sense.
They were quiet for a minute as she gazed at folks dancing and chatting in the darkened event room, and he took advantage of the chance to gaze at her.
She’d been having fun all night; honestly, so far, he’d never seen her not having fun.
Her positive energy was part of what kept drawing him in.
But there was a melancholy to her eyes right now that intrigued him in a whole different way.
He wanted to hear more about those strict parents, and about how it had been growing up a “book nerd”; he had a sneaking suspicion it had been lonelier than she was letting on.
Before he could figure out how to ask, she exhaled and stood up straighter. When she turned to look at him again, there was a real smile back on her face, her eyes clear.
“What about you?” she asked. “I bet you were a cool guy in middle school.”
He laughed out loud. “Hardly. I had my buddies, and I played a couple of sports, so I guess I wasn’t completely uncool.
But I didn’t have time for all the bullshit popularity contest stuff, you know?
You think everybody’s up in your business now”—he gestured around—“imagine what it was like when we were teenagers.”
“Okay, yeah, I can see that.” She considered for a second before looking up at him from under her lashes. “Did you have anybody to dance with at things like this?”
He’d dated in high school, but never anything serious. Though…
“I did take a girl to junior prom. Mostly because Lucas and Abby were going.”
“Wait.” She held out a hand. “Lucas and Abby?”
Oh, she didn’t know?
“Yeah, they have a whole history.” A complicated, messy one, and it didn’t have a happy ending, for all that they seemed to be able to more or less ignore each other now.
“Interesting.” She fiddled with what was left of her cookie. “But tell me more about your hot date.”
“I wouldn’t call it a hot date.” He cast his gaze off into the distance. “Her name was Lisa Solkowski. She played field hockey. Pretty sure she went to college in Virginia and never came back.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nah.” He looked at Emma again. “We were just friends. But I remember she wore this wild blue dress with sparkles all over the top, and my mom made me rent a tux.”
His voice caught. How the hell had that slipped out? He almost never talked about his mom, and never, ever so casually.
Fortunately, Emma missed his slip, still laser-focused on the mental image he’d just painted of him and his date in their ridiculous getups. “Please tell me there are pictures of this.”
“Yeah, probably, somewhere in my old man’s house.” Along with all the other junk, moldering in the attic. No one had ever had the heart to clean it out. “But don’t get your expectations up. You may have been a late bloomer, but I was covered in acne, and I weighed about ten pounds soaking wet.”
“You?” She made a big show of looking up at him, and yeah, he was tall, but he wasn’t Big Bird or anything.
“I grew up before I grew out,” he said defensively.
“I have seriously got to see this.”
Weirdly, he wouldn’t mind showing her, and if anything should set off alarm bells in his head about how attached he was getting, it would be that.
“Did you and Lisa Solkowski have a nice time, in any case?”
“Yeah, it was all right.” He smiled, but then his mouth flattened out.
He really, truly never talked about his mother, and instinct told him to just shut up already and leave it there.
But for some reason, he found himself admitting, “I only went because my mom wanted me to. I thought it was some big chore, but it was good. Rite of passage and all. And it took my mind off…”
She gave him space to choose his words, standing there quietly, without expectation, inviting him to speak.
He cleared his throat. “My mom was already sick by then. We didn’t know it would…” Would kill her. His voice stuck, but he plowed on. “We didn’t know we’d lose her yet, but I would do anything to make her smile.”
And he waited for the pain. His chest contracted, ready for the ache that came whenever he let himself think about his mom passing, and the aftermath with his dad, but it just… didn’t come.
“You’re a good son,” Emma said quietly.
He let out a dark echo of a laugh. “I don’t know about that.” God knew he’d probably failed his dad as much as his dad had ended up failing him. “But I did my best for her.”
He didn’t expect the warm brush of her fingertips against his, but they were so welcome. He’d never really been able to bear anybody’s sympathy, or worse, their pity, but this didn’t feel like that. It felt like comfort, and like not being alone with it all for once, and he…
He looked down at her, his mouth dry as he swallowed.
She stared up at him with those big, guileless eyes that seemed to see right into the heart of him, and there was this heat in his chest where he’d always expected the pain to be.
Tingles shivered along his spine, and he took her small, soft hand in his.
Just for a moment. It didn’t have to mean anything, and even if it did…
His defenses were falling, minute by minute, and he didn’t have the wherewithal to care.
“Emma,” he started.