I told myself it was just the music.
Just the alcohol.
We swayed together for a few beats, closer than we should have been, her body fitting against mine in a way that felt far too familiar. My breath caught, sharp and unwelcome, and that was what finally snapped me out of it.
I stepped back. The space between us felt louder than the music.
She didn’t say anything, but the look on her face told me she’d felt it too.
“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “For the dance,” she clarified, as if she could have been thanking me for a million things.
“It’s no big?—”
“You’re a better dancer than Trevor,” she blurted.
“Jess…”
“You’re better than him in a lot of ways.”
“Jess, I don’t think?—”
“That I should marry him?” She finished my thought for me in the most unexpected way.
I mean,no,I didn’t think she should marry him, but I wasn’t about to say that on the very night she was out celebrating the fact.
Aware that we were still standing in the middle of the dance floor where anyone could see us, I grabbed her hand again. “Come with me.”
She didn’t hesitate as I pulled her through the crowd to the back hallway of the bar. The bathrooms were at the farend, and although it was better than the dance floor, it wasn’t the most private location. That was probably for the best. More and more, it was getting harder for me to keep my feelings for Jess professional, or at the bare minimum, just as friends.
It was insane that the feelings I had as a child could still be even a little bit alive after so much time, but I couldn’t deny that there was something going on.
Something that was getting really damn hard to fight.
“You don’t think I should marry him, do you?” she asked outright when we stopped moving. She pressed her back against the wall and looked up to the ceiling as if it held the answers. “I won’t hold it against you if you do. I mean, I don’t even?—”
“I’m going to stop you before you say something you might regret.”
She lowered her head and met my eyes. For a moment, I thought she might insist that she wouldn’t regret anything.
Instead, she said, “Do you ever wonder if it could have been different?”
The change in topic spun my head, but I did my best to keep up. “If what could be different?”
“Do you think we would have been friends or maybe even dated one day if I hadn’t thrown the flowers in the dirt?”
The oxygen was sucked from my lungs. She remembered. I didn’t think she remembered that moment. Or even cared. Not then. And especially not so many years later.
“You remember that?”
“Don’t you?”
Her eyes were shiny and unfocused, but her words were clear.
I nodded. “I remember.”
She matched my nod and blew out a breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that.” As soon as the wordsleft her mouth, she shook her head and tried again. “No, Idoknow. I was stupid and scared.”
“Jess, it was a million years ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
