Chapter 17 #2
“We’ll meet you out there,” Liv replied, and they watched the three of them walk away. It wasn’t a large dance floor, but it was crowded enough that they quickly faded from view. Liv turned back to Quinn. “Do you want to dance?”
“It’s getting late,” Quinn replied, although she knew that wasn’t an answer.
Liv simply waited, attempting to project patience, and Quinn eventually stood.
She didn’t have the energy to fight her any longer, didn’t want to fight it, so she led Liv away.
Liv followed closely behind her, and it was Quinn who reached back to interlace their fingers.
The music was loud. Too loud, Quinn thought, because really , they were in their thirties.
What were they doing there… Though, they’d never had the chance to do this before.
Dancing op enly would have been too much, too out, or too close to dating, whatever they would have told themselves except the truth: that it was too good.
It felt too good when Liv pressed into Quinn on the dance floor, when they moved their bodies together.
It was too much fun and far too sexy, the way that Liv moved against her.
They danced for several songs, and they were close, and the lights were low, and Liv just looked so good. They were dancing flush against each other, Liv’s back to Quinn’s front. Quinn could feel herself fall, fall, falling.
Still, Quinn tried to control her hands, as if that was somehow going to negate the closeness of their bodies.
And Liv understood her, knew exactly what she was thinking. She spun around, leaning close to Quinn’s ear and asked, “Are you afraid to touch me?”
“No,” Quinn answered stubbornly.
“You are,” Liv maintained, again biting her teeth into her plump lower lip in a way that did not at all pull Quinn’s attention, it didn’t.
“I’m not afraid,” Quinn said, trying to focus on the people dancing around them.
“You just don’t want to remember how good it feels?
” Her eyes were glinting, even in the low light, and in that moment, Quinn knew that Liv understood the effect she still had on her.
She felt as Liv ran her fingertips up her bicep, feeling the definition in her toned muscles.
“How are you even stronger than you were in college?”
“I don’t know about that, but I still swim almost every day.”
“I have dreamt about you holding me in these arms,” Liv whispered, pulling her somehow even closer in.
And… fuck .
It was a nice sentiment, but Quinn didn’t want to hear it.
She didn’t want some drunken confession from Liv that she’d thought of her.
She had flashes of their time together before: of tangled bedsheets and so much laughter, of the steamiest nights she’d ever had, of tears and of silence, of a friendship ending.
She caught herself just before their lips touched, going ramrod straight before practically leaping away. Liv blinked up at her, shock and embarrassment splashed across her face, the most sober she’d been all evening.
“I have to go,” Quinn said. She wanted to run, to leave the bar and walk back to the hotel without thinking of the others. But she obviously couldn’t just leave. Quinn told Liv to stay right there while she found their group, and she nodded, dazed, but at least she seemed to listen.
She found Mel dancing with Rhea and Audrey in a corner of the dance floor. When Mel saw her expression, before Quinn even spoke, Mel was telling them it was time to go. And for that, at least, she could be grateful to her friend.
The group looped back around to find Liv just where they’d been dancing, and the five of them walked out of the bar together.
The walk to the hotel was mostly quiet—Mel and Quinn leading the way, Rhea close behind them, and Audrey and Liv, arms linked, whispering to each other, bringing up the rear. Quinn was trying as best she could not to let anyone see how affected she was by what had happened in the bar.
As soon as they got into the hotel, they called for an elevator, and they stepped in in continued silence.
Rhea got off on her floor first, hugging Liv and Audrey and waving to Quinn and Mel.
Quinn couldn’t believe that she’d spent the evening with Rhea Freaking Stewart and this was how it was ending.
The next stop was Quinn and Mel’s floor. As they went to exit, Quinn briefly turned to Liv, whispering a quiet goodnight. In the mirrored wall, she saw Mel behind her, shrugging at Audrey.
“Are you okay?” Mel said as soon as the elevator doors closed .
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Quinn replied, rushing toward her hotel room.
“Hey, I thought inviting her out tonight was the right thing,” Mel told her. “Seriously, dude, I think you two need to bang it out.”
“Not everything can be fixed with fucking,” Quinn spat back. That had never been their problem. They’d always been great at that.
Quinn needed to stop thinking about it.
Mel rolled her eyes. “You know I don’t think that. But in this case…”
“I’m going to bed,” Quinn replied.
“Okay,” Mel responded, nodding. “I really am sorry if I upset you. We’ll talk in the morning?”
“Sure,” Quinn grunted before scanning her key and entering her hotel room, flipping the lock behind her.
And fuck. She was upset. She was absolutely fucking livid.
But not at Mel. At least not entirely at Mel.
No, this kind of anger was the special kind, the one she reserved for herself.
Because she’d let herself forget. Let herself bask in the joy of spending time in Liv’s presence. She’d let herself think, for a split second, that it could actually be that good.
But that wasn’t real. It wasn’t real in college, and it wasn’t real that night.
Liv didn’t want her. She’d made it clear time and time again, and a drunken hook up wasn’t going to make Quinn feel like what they had was right, like Liv would ever actually pick her, like they hadn’t broken each other so thoroughly, so recklessly.
It had felt so good in that moment, though, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind.
The image of Liv, pressed up against her in the club, flooded her thoughts.
The problem was the same as it always had been: they fit together, like pieces of one whole, until Quinn remembered how different they truly were.
She didn’t know how she’d make it through the rest of the week. She’d come so close to doing something she couldn’t take back, and it wasn’t going to be a trivial mistake. She wasn’t drunk, and she wasn’t a teenager thinking she knew what she could handle.
Because she knew now how much Liv could break her. And, if she was being honest with herself, she’d wanted to kiss her anyway.
She’d wanted to bring her back to this very room and completely take her apart, and for Quinn, the wanting was the hardest part of all.