The rest of us remained staring at them for a good long moment.
Suddenly the music and the sound of chatter behind us disappeared. The words echoed in my mind that was otherwise empty, and I tried to cling to their meaning with all my strength, but it didn’t work.
A blink, and I looked around the table to find others were completely dumbfounded, too. Staring at their glasses, at their hands. At one another.
“Did he just…” Erith started, head twisted back as she tried to see the Clubs who’d just walked away, but the floor was packed, the people all standing, most dancing with their drinks in hand still.
“…remember?” Mimi finished for her.
Another second ticked by.
“Maybe he was just drunk,” Cook offered. “Maybe…maybe…”
His eyes were wide, and he looked panicked just now. As panicked as I’d been when we first flew up here.
“Maybe he was just teasing us, yes,” Erith muttered. “Maybe it’s just a test.”
I looked at March sitting sideways on the chair, a hand on the back of it and his eyes on the crowd, searching as he slowly sipped his wine. Must have been his third but he didn’t look drunk that I could tell.
“Keep your ears open, everyone,” Mimi said and stood up, raised her hand at Cook. “Let’s go dance.”
He looked like he would rather jump off the edge right now, but he took Mimi’s hand anyway, and they both moved away from the table.
March’s eyes locked on mine. I heard the words echoing in my head.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he told me.
Heat on my cheeks. “The answer’s stillno.I’m not going to dance.”
“But I didn’t ask you.”
Bastard.“Well, then. There you go.” I turned my head the other way, trying not to let him get to me because hewasabout to ask me to dance. I knew it…didn’t I?
And now that I thought about dancing with March…
A hand on my thigh. My entire body locked down tightly.
“Dance with me.”
Aha!
I turned to him, finger pointed at his chest. “I thought you said youdidn’t ask.”
He grinned so widely the sun paled in comparison, and my heart did strange things inside my chest as it squeezed. “I’m still not asking.”
My glass ended up on the table, and my hand ended up in his. I was too stunned by what he was saying to realize what he wasdoing,which was to pull me up to my feet and toward the middle of the floor, toward the crowd—thedancingcrowd.
I felt lightheaded. I felt dizzy. The view swam in front of me, and I was going toscreammy guts out at him to tell him to let me sit, and…
Then he grabbed my hands and put them over his shoulders, and closed his own around my waist gently, anchoring me in place. I was standing, Time knew how many miles from the ground, on tiles that were being held up by a steel pillar, according to Russ, and I hadn’t run out of breath yet.
March was still there.
“Focus on me,” he told me, and he was close, but not close enough.
“I-I…I can’t,” I said, my mind on where his fingers dug into my waist. He pulled me to the side slightly and continued to move us against the backs of the people already there.
