She doesn’t saycome. She lets Mara pull her into the living room, and she trusts that I am going to follow her, and that trust is going to be misplaced, because that is where I stop. The kitchen is the line. I don’t dance.
I stand at the island. Benson passes me a beer, and I drink.
She’s wrong about me. I won’t follow her, and she can have fun with her friends while I wear these stupid fucking angel wings and a halo. I can feel the damn thing bouncing on my head.
I stand there for a full minute. Percy walks next to me. We watch the living room together.
Mara is shaking her ass. Penelope is laughing in a way I haven’t ever seen Penelope laugh. Gianna is yelling along to the lyrics. Lucy is twirling Benson by the hand, and Benson is letting himself be twirled, and Melly —
Melly is in the middle of them in my jersey, with the hat backward, dancing the way a girl dances when she’s drunk. Then her eyes gaze up, catching mine watching her. My heart drops through my body.
She smiles, pointing at me. “You promised,” she says, reaching for my hand.
I stay where I am. She’s too small to force me.
“Blue,” she scoffs. “You said.”
“I said I don’t dance.”
She takes the beer from my hand and puts it on the countertop. She pulls both my hands with both of hers. “Come on, Blue. We’re friends now, right?”
I look at her.I don’t know, are we?
I let her pull me into the middle of my crowded living room. She starts jumping to the beat, singing the lyrics at me. I stare at her for a beat. Benson’s dancing to my right. I catch Stanley bouncing his knees across the room with a few of guys from the team –– Walker, Trent, and Drew. They’re all talking, laughing, and swaying to the beat.
I look back at Melly. She’s swaying her hips now, and I can see the pleading in her eyes. I let her start dancing with me, and I slowly start to dance with her — badly, terribly, the way a hockey player dances, all stiff shoulders and locked knees and feet that don’t understand what to do with themselves outside a skate.
Melly is delighted once I start moving. Her face fucking lights up like the fourth of July. She laughs and twirls under my arm and comes back and bumps her shoulder against mine and grabs my hands and waves them at me likeuse these, Golding, you have hands, use them, and I’m trying to move my body in away that doesn’t embarrass either of us. I’m failing, and she’s laughing harder.
Mara appears next to us with the worst dance move I have ever seen a human do. Benson is doing some kind of dad-shuffle behind Lucy. Gianna is screaming the lyrics directly into Stanley’s face from six inches away. Stanley is screaming them back now. Mila has her hands in the air.
The song ends. A new one starts. Melly doesn’t let go of my hand. We keep dancing.
Two songs later, I can’t keep up.
I’m a whole new type of exhausted.
I lean down to Melly’s ear. “Water.”
She nods. She doesn’t let go of my hand for a second. Then she does. She turns back to Mara.
I head for the kitchen. Benson is already there. He has poured a glass of water and is holding it out to me as I walk in. “Knew you’d need one.”
I take it and drink the whole thing in one go.
Benson is leaning against the counter with his own water. Lucy is at the island talking to Penelope about something, gesturing with both hands.
Benson says, “I like this version of you.”
I don’t say anything, but I’d rather him not.
“I’m serious,” he says.
I look at the floor.
“I’ve never seen you dance at a party. Not once.”
I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say. He’s right. I don’t fucking dance. I’ve stood in corners and held beers and gone to bed early and I haven’t, even one time, let a girl hand me a shot and pull me onto the dance floor while wearing a stupid costume in front of my whole team.
