“Yeah. I’m sure he meant it for the same reason. Lucky you.” He gave Brando a tight smile. “It was good seeing you both.” He retrieved his red cup from the truck bed. He pointed it toward a group loitering around, chatting. “I better get back.” He turned to me and gave a warm smile. “I look forward to seeing you at your family’s Christmas party. Or will you be traveling?”
“No.” I rested my head against Brando’s chest. “I’ll be here.”
* * *
Travis stalked off toward his circle of friends, leaving us in our own space of silence.
“Would you like to go?” I blurted, shattering it. “With me? To the Christmas party?”
Brando’s attention was elsewhere, and when I spoke, it took him a moment to focus on me.
“It’s uptight and full of snobs,” I rallied, “but I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You’ll go with me.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “I see. You were already invited?”
“Yeah, I get an invite every year. I just don’t go.”
“In that case. Yes. Yes, I’d love to go with you.”
He looked pointedly in the direction Travis now stood. “Travis the frat boy likes you.”
“Travis?” I scoffed. “I don’t think so. He’s always been friendly. He once asked me if I wanted to play chess with him.”
“He’s playing chess, all right, but with a different set of rules.”
“Sometimes playing chess is just that, Brando. A game between two people.”
“Yeah, sometimes. When the two people are old and need something to do while complaining about the weather.”
He turned my face in the same direction he had been looking in. Travis caught my eye and turned back to talk to another friend. He had been staring at us.
“You,” he said. “He can’t stop staring.”
“He’s in shock. About us.”
Brando grabbed my hand and led me closer to the fire where a few people were dancing. A soft, slow song drifted in the night. He muttered something underneath his breath—naïve being the operative word.
I made a flippant comment about not appreciating his insinuation that I was being naïve about Travis.
He ignored me, pulling me closer to his body, and I responded by wrapping my arms around his neck. “Dance with me, Ballerina Girl.” He slid his fingertips up one of my arms, entwining our fingers together, before setting our connected hands between us.
I looked up into his eyes and the breath that I had been holding came out in awhoosh. My heart sped up. The flutters floated aimlessly, carrying gravity with them.
How long would he be able to elicit this reaction from me?Oh God, let it be forever.
I loved the way his arm wrapped around my lower back, how I could hear his heart beating against my ear, how we could hold each other’s stare without an ounce of awkwardness falling between us, and how we swayed back and forth, completely in rhythm with each other. But most of all I loved how the world melted, and all that was left was him and I, in our own space and time, in our own world.
Perhaps this was why when the first whistle sounded, I didn’t hear it. And when the first blood-curdling scream pierced the peace, it faded into the atmosphere like a whispered prayer.
“Mitch! Stop it!”
“Come on, Dude! That’s not fucking funny.”
