“Get your skinny white ass over here,” Sunny hollers across the yard. I do as she says, laughing when she adds, “With swagger, honey child.”
Any concerns over my mom dissolve the moment Nash’s arms are around me.
“Kinda feels like magic out here tonight, doesn’t it?” he asks, dopey smile on his face.
It’s full-blown pandemonium around us. Reese shouts into her phone between long sips of her drink, Remy has a distant look on her face as she dances with Sunny, and the kids are feral.
I have no idea where Danimal went.
“Hm.” I lean into Nash. “Maybe that’s the sangria.” I tilt my chin so our eyes meet. “This dance isn’t bad, though.”
His chest rumbles with an amused sound. “You know dancing has been part of every good moment of history, right?”
I fight my smile. “I think I’ve heard that before.”
Perfectly timed, Bennie grabs our hands.
“Twirl me,” she begs.
And we do.
Over and over until in a fluid transition, she and Nash are hand in hand and I’m with my dad, miserably doing half-assed steps to the Shag.
“Fun party, eh, kiddo?”
“Fun party,Dad.”
He rock steps then twirls me. “Wish I would’ve had more of these.”
Come back to Fontain and you will, but it’s not the time or place. Worrying about what comes next will steal this day faster than I can enjoy it. “Then we better make this one good.”
He laughs through a cough and moves with a littlemore. “Okay, kiddo.”
We don’t say anything else; we don’t need to.
“Gimme back my partner,” Sunny demands with a snap and pop of her hips. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout, Cappy baby.”
Reese pulls me into a huddle with her, Remy, and Mom; we aren’t even remotely on beat.
“Look at us Conway bitches tearing up the tatted-up teacher’s yard,” Reese says.
“More shocking is you without a phone glued to your face,” I tell her.
“I threw it in the pool,” she retorts. “Fuck ’em.”
“Reese Conway,” Mom scolds. “Don’t talk like that.”
“You did not,” I argue, ignoring Mom. “That thing’s a damn appendage. Is your job just to yell at people?”
“Actually,” she says in a snide tone, “I find bastard antique dealers who don’t know diddly-squat about running a business and turn them into cash cows.”
“If you weren’t such a bitch, I’d have questions.” We trade looks of sisterly contempt as we sway. “You ca?—”
Remy blurts “I’m moving back to Fontain” and stops us cold.
Reese, Mom, and I say at once, “You’rewhat?”
“Darren has asked for space,” she says with a too-calm, too-big smile as she brushes her long blond hair out of her face. “And I thought the best way to do that would be to give him enough of it he’d be able to think clearly.”
