He shifts both our beer bottles to one hand and takes my arm with his other hand. He leads me toward the very back of the room, to two empty couches behind the tiny dance floor.
Dylan sits down and pats the couch next to him. I’m nervous to sit so close to him in this dusky and intimate of an atmosphere. But when I see Marcus and Lilla heading toward us laughing and flirting, I change my mind. I sit down quickly, and Dylan immediately puts his arm around me and offers me my beer.
“Oh, my God!” Lilla shrieks as she and Marcus collapse on the couch adjacent to us.
I feel like I’m going to scream if she doesn’t stop with the shrieking and the squealing tonight. Normally, I find Lilla entertaining and fun. Right now though, my nerves are so frayed that her boisterousness is throwing me off.
“Dylan, that woman was crazy!” she says.
Dylan nods. “Yeah, that happens.”
“I mean it’ll wash off anyway,” I say. “Why would you want an autograph on your skin?”
Dylan laughs and takes a sip of his beer.
“They get it tattooed,” Lilla explains to me.
“Are you serious?” I say to her.
“Absolutely,” she says. “People do it all the time. They ask celebrities to sign their skin, and then they make the signature permanent.”
“People are crazy,” Marcus agrees. “But you gotta love ‘em. They’re our fans after all.”
Since they’re not my fans, I don’t have to love them. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll never love fans like that.
Lilla starts in on a rant about fans and how great it must feel to have people infatuated with you.
“They’re not infatuated with you,” Dylan says to her. “They’re infatuated with the person in the football helmet they watch once a week for half the year. They don’t really know you at all.”
I glance at him and see that shadow again behind his eyes. Before I can think of what to say, the dark disappears from his face and he replaces it with a neutral expression.
Lilla’s eyes widen in alarm at the idea that Dylan may not agree with her on this hot topic. “But you’re on Hollywood Now!” she says. “And in those magazines! It must be so awesome to see yourself like that. I would love to be on the cover of a magazine.”
Oh, God.
Dylan squeezes my shoulder lightly as Marcus and Lilla laugh together over the lime in the top of Marcus’s beer bottle.
“I could suck that lime like they do with tequila shots,” Lilla offers.
“Oh, yeah?”
Marcus hands it to her, and Lilla sucks on it while I groan out loud.
When Dylan leans into my hair, I shiver from the sensation of his breath on my skin. “Still glad you agreed to this get-together?”
“I’m pretty much getting what I deserve.” I turn to face him, trying to ignore how close his mouth is to mine right now.
Marcus chuckles at Lilla’s expression as she reacts to the sourness of the lime. He doesn’t seem to be very interested in talking. I can’t tell how much he and Lilla have in common, but getting to know her as a person does not seem to be one of Marcus’s dominant goals. He’s also more aggressive than Dylan. He’s already leaned in to kiss Lilla. She throws her arms around his neck, and they start making out. His hands are everywhere, too. No thought to us sitting here across from them at all. I can’t look at Dylan for fear he’ll take it as a sign that I want the same thing happening on this couch.
He doesn’t seem to think that, though. In fact, he asks me if I’d like to leave.
“Leave for where?”
“Outside. Okay?” He holds out his hand.
Persistent. This time I take it, and we walk out of the bar.
His hand is callused and strong, but he holds onto me gently. He threads his fingers through mine as he stops and leans back against the outside of the building.
