Page 13 of Saving Graces
“You stayed.” Kinsey’s dark eyes sparkled, when she returned to Rosalie’s table, sweat glistening on her skin after her set. She still wore her stage outfit, her long sleeved shirt shed in favor of a small black spaghetti strap tank top above her snugly fitted black jeans. Muscle sculpted her narrow shoulders, sleek biceps flexing as she rested her hands on her lovely hips. Rosalie couldn’t seem to stop making dubious choices.
“I did,” she admitted, both of them knowing she was admitting much more than just wanting to finish her glass of wine. Kinsey looked beyond pleased with herself as she took the seat opposite her. The table was small, and their knees touched as she got into place. Rosalie moved hers out of the way.
“You’re good,” Rosalie said, meaning the stage performance.
“I am,” Kinsey agreed, her eyes still smug at successfully keeping Rosalie pinned to her chair and Rosalie’s breath escaped in a small laugh.
“You’re extremely confident.” Rosalie gave up and let herself stare at the lovely face across from her.
Kinsey smiled.“You’re extremely attractive,” she said.
“And you’re too young.”
“And yet, here you are.” She had Rosalie there. Rosalie opened her mouth, then closed it again. She took a sip of her wine and Kinsey looked victorious. “I think you’ll find I’m very much an adult woman,” she said, her tone low, and Rosalie felt a tingle in her spine. She failed to have an argument to that.
Kinsey hadn’t even tried to flag down a waiter and yet one appeared anyway. Before long they both were sipping wine, their eyes meeting.
“So music is your thing?” Rosalie asked. It was the only thing she knew about Kinsey, aside from a friendship with Lane and she absolutely did not want to go there.
“It is,” Kinsey agreed. She told Rosalie about graduating Julliard, about the various instruments she played, that she played for a variety of bands but there was only one she was really invested in.
“How long have you been at the center?” Kinsey asked, shifting the conversation off herself.
“Thirteen years,” Rosalie said, trying not to add since around the time you started high school, though part of her definitely thought that as the words came out.
“That’s a long time in non-profit land,” said Kinsey. At Rosalie’s confused frown, she smiled. “I had a lot of jobs in college and just after,” she clarified. “I had big ideas about changing the world, but it was mostly just soul-destroying.”
Rosalie nodded and took a long sip of wine. “It can be. The center’s kind of different though. I created it, along with my best friend who bankrolls it, so it works the way we think it should work.”
“God,” said Kinsey. “You’re so sexy.” Rosalie snorted out a laugh of surprise, very unsexily, but Kinsey just smiled. “I’m serious. You built your own successful non-profit, and it’s for queer kids. Socially conscious, a boss and a business woman. And,” she ran her eyes boldly down Rosalie’s body, “you look like that.”
Rosalie felt slightly sweaty all of a sudden. She liked a little too much the version of herself that Kinsey was clearly seeing.
“You,” she rebutted, “are a little too charming.”
“Who’s Rachel?”
Rosalie went still.
“I’m sorry?”
“The Rachel Carlson Centre,” Kinsey clarified.
“She was my sister,” Rosalie said. She looked up at Kinsey, knowing there would be more questions and deciding she definitely didn’t want there to be. “Do you want to dance?”
Kinsey tilted her head, considering her. The next band on the stage had begun their set and they were good. Really good. Rosalie had had all of one and a half glasses of wine, a very hot person was flirting with her, and for the first time in a long time, she really wanted to disappear into a sweaty crowd and lose herself there.
“Do I want to dance with you?” Kinsey looked like someone had just handed her a winning lottery ticket. “Yeah, I really do.”
Her hand came down on Rosalie’s spine again as she pressed into the crowd, and somewhere in the middle of the dance floor, as more people flooded in - to stand and nod, or jump up and down or fling their bodies in time to the music - Rosalie closed her eyes and let the music flow through her, dragging her away from her old memories, to this moment, right here. She began to move.
Kinsey moved too. Where she didn’t move, was away. The crowd was dense, but not so packed that Kinsey necessarily had to be pressed up against her and yet, there she was. Rosalie let go. She stopped thinking about Republicans, about work on Monday, about letting her friends down. She stopped thinking about age gaps, or what she should or shouldn’t do. She let herself feel the music and the heat of Kinsey’s stupidly attractive body and the even hotter heat of her gaze and just danced.
It had been a long damn time. Rosalie didn’t do this kind of thing, not anymore. She was perpetually single, perpetually busy, even sex had fallen off her radar far too long ago. This kind of behavior wasn’t her, and yet somehow, tonight, she just couldn’t quite make herself pull away.
The crowd kept packing in, rowdy now, an occasional sway through the audience tipping everyone into each other. The second time it happened, Kinsey was pushed behind her. All of a sudden her arms came down, around Rosalie’s waist, wrapping tight and holding her against the ripple of the crowd. When the pushing stopped, she didn’t let go. This definitely was the moment Rosalie should use that no word and stop encouraging Kinsey, but it just felt so good, the heat of her, the protective stance, the press of her front against Rosalie’s back, the slight whisper of her exhalation just above her left ear.
She didn’t say no. Then, very deliberately, right there in the crowd, Kinsey tugged Rosalie’s shirt slightly loose and used the gap she’d created to slip her fingers inside, gently tracing over bare skin. When Rosalie still, somehow, could not make herself say no, Kinsey’s fingers slipped deliberately higher, lightly stroking along the curve of her waist, trailing along soft sensitive skin. Every single part of Rosalie turned hot and hazy.
