“It’s okay! I’m okay. Still have ten toes. You’re learning, hiccups are expected. Now, let’s try again.”
Avery repeats her instructions, stepping with me as we begin again. Her hips press forward in an exaggerated motion to show me exactly how we should be moving together. “Follow my lead. Eventually, you’ll be the one leading, but until then, just leave it to me.”
Silently, I try to mirror her, stepping when she does, which leads to a couple of ungraceful toe-smashing moments. Eventually, I kind of get the hang of it. We go on like that, neither of us speaking, for a few morecounts—as she calls them—before she has another challenge for me.
“Okay, Ty! I see you! You are honestly… You’re not bad!” Her eyes drag up to mine, bright, shining, expectant. And then she says. “Okay, you won’t be doing this with your mom, but you might be with your wedding date.”
“Don’t plan on having a date.”
“Don’t deprive some girl of a night out just because you aren’t confident with your dancing,” she says sweetly.
“That’s not why. I?—”
“I want to see you add some hips! Just so I know full-well what you’re capable of.”
“Hips?”
She nods, staring up into my face with those eager hazel eyes.
I clear my throat and glance off toward the kitchen. My gaze falls on a bottle of bourbon sitting on the counter. Why didn’t I crack that open before she turned her speaker on?
“I’ll lead again,” she says, lowering her voice.
In an instant, her hips are pressing into me, moving from side to side. I try to empty my mind, to remind myself that this is a lesson, nothing more, but my body won’t listen. It wants Avery.Iwant Avery.
She breaks my spiraling thoughts. “Good, Ty. You’re doing really well.”
Avery steps back, still peering up at me. I scan her face from her full lips to her upturned nose, the cute little apples of her cheeks that rise up so cheerfully and nearly block her vision half the time. She’s precious, like something small and delicate that I want to coil up in my hands and protect. She’s all things good in a world where there’s so much bad. She’s sunshine embodied. In a place where there’s so much darkness, Avery is a light. And that’s whatshe deserves. That’s not something she’d ever find with me.
She smiles at me, and I have to walk away.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Thought a nightcap might be in order since—” I direct my attention to the microwave over the oven. “Since it’s getting late and we both have our first days of the season tomorrow.”
She grits her teeth, her dark brows knitting. It’s impossibly cute. “And just when I was forgetting, you had to go and remind me.”
She trudges to the kitchen, and I follow her, keeping my eyes locked on the bourbon bottle ahead and not on the spandex she insisted on wearing for our lessons.
I pull two rocks glasses down from a cabinet beside the sink. Then I open the fridge and grab the jar of maraschino cherries, dropping a cherry into each glass before covering them with a few fingers of bourbon. Handing her a glass, I raise the other one. “To new friends.”
“And new skills,” she adds.
“To a fresh season,” I say before knocking back the whole glass.
She arches a brow, sipping from her own cup before lifting the cherry out of the cocktail.
“I take it this isn’t really your drink of choice.” I watch as she plucks the fruit from its stem with her teeth.
“I don’t drink much, but if I do, I usually grab for some kind of wine. A red blend or Moscato.”
“So juice?”
She shakes her head. “No.Wine.”
“Those are hardly wines.”
“So if it’s not straight bourbon, it’s juice?”
