Page 41 of Dance for Me
Thisis Harper.
Maskless and breathtaking. My Sunshine.
Fuck the cotton candy. I reach for her, as a giant burly hand comes between us, swatting my hand down and holding me back with a giant paw to the chest.
“Who is the pretty boy, Harper? He follow you in?” he hollers over his shoulder, eyes never shifting away from me.
He blocks my path to Harper, a dangerous place to be right now. I’m prepared to tell him I follow wherever she leads, only to realize a friend has joined his side. Fine, whatever I can take them both.I workout. Then another slithers to his other side, standing a beat behind.Hmm, three might be a little harder.Two more join the blockade.Well fuck.My ego is flattered, but my patience is fraying.
“He’s with me Gus, he’s fine I promise, now get back over here. The drinks don’t pour themselves,” Harper calls over from behind the bodies and immediately the sea of bodies parts. Gus, apparently, gives me a last once over before he removes his hand from my chest and he stalks back to his post as barman, allowing me passage to join Harper at the stools.
I slide into the seat next to hers at the bar, the metal groaning as I sit on the worn, and slightly torn leather. “Did you hear that, Gus thinks I’m pretty.” I whisper into Harper’s ear as I sit down, wagging my brows at her. Clearly, we are somewhere she knows well and trusts, but I’ll use the excuse of protection as I lean down, gripping the bottom lip of her seat, and pull her a few inches closer.
She tracks the movement and smiles, “Stop flirting with Gus, you’re spoken for.”
“Is that why you brought me here, to use Gus as bait to test my loyalty? I get it, Gus is a catch,” I wink at Gus and he grumbles, taking this as his cue to walk away and prepare drinks we hadn’t yet ordered.
What started out as harmless banter had caused a ripple of tension in the air. Is that why we are here, is this some kind of test? I suppose murder is still an option, Gus seems like he would be happy to take the opening shot.
Gus returns a minute later, dropping two glasses with an amber liquid sitting amongst a single ice cube. I don’t get achance to ask him what the drink is before he looks at Harper, nods once and leaves to the other end of the bar. I look around then and realize that there is no one lingering near our end, the few tables behind us have cleared out and the bar stools that bracket our seats have been abandoned.
Harper takes a big swig of her drink, seeing a small tremor in her hand as the glass clunks back to the bar top and she turns to face me, sliding her legs between my own.
“Harper, are you—” I start to ask the same time she starts speaking.
“My dad used to work here,” she says it quickly, the words tumbling out as a single syllable. “Sadie and I practically grew up here. Sitting at the table in the corner coloring and then doing homework when we got older,” she nods towards a table to our left, its seats worn and top slanting a little to the left. “Well, Sadie did homework, I preferred to play pool and hustle the idiots who stumbled in lookingpretty,” Harper smiles at that, her hand gently squeezing my thigh at the little barb. I smile with her, just enjoying that she’s so relaxed here, with me.
“My dad was a good dad, he really was. He tried so hard to give us everything. Our mom took off when Sadie was five and I was seven, we barely remembered her, but I guess we never really knew her,” she straightens up a little as she speaks. “We didn’t need her, we had my dad, and he was everything. Sam, that’s him, in the picture with Gus behind the bar.” She tips her head towards the bar.
I look up behind the bottles of Gin and Vodka to see the array of photos pinned up. I don’t need her to tell me which picture is her dad, I can see him clearly, a perfect blend of Harper and Sadie, the darker hair of Harper, but the rounder cheeks of Sadie.Two little dark-haired girls sitting at the bar and making faces for the camera, a man carrying both girls, one on each shoulder with ice cream cones dripping from theirhands to land on his shirt and in his hair. Amongst the pictures is a napkin with a crude drawing I recognize.
“Is that - ” I point to the napkin hanging down and Harper smiles, a little blush rising to her cheeks.
“It was the first time I drew the logo forCirque, sitting at the bar, doodling on napkins. Gus said it would be worth something one day and pinned it up there like a declaration of success,” she scoffs at the end, “He said dad would have wanted it up there, the beginning of his little girl’s big hustle.”
“Your dad wasn’t around anymore to put it up himself, to see whatCirquebecame?” I ask her, already knowing the answer just from the way she speaks about him. Not that heisa good dad, that hewasa good dad.
“No, he passed away when Sadie was almost done high school. He died in a drug deal gone bad, a casualty of some turf war.” She takes a deep breath, pausing to gear up for a defense. She doesn’t need to, not with me. “He never did anything bad, you know?He tried so hard. We didn’t realize what was happening until we were older, and he couldn’t hide it like he could when we didn’t know better. Gus would come by often to check on him and check on us, try to get him into a program or go to meetings, but he never did. It’s ironic, you know, he would tell us over and over how bad drugs were and would make us promise him we would never follow,” her voice gets softer, like she’s relaying the memory of this vow. “Always lead, never follow. Now I think about those words, and I don’t think he ever worried about us giving in to peer pressure or trying to be like the cool kids or idols. The normal kid stuff, you know? He meant him, he didn’t want us to follow in his footsteps, a legacy that would die with him.”
I want to tell her I’m here, that I’m with her, that I’m not going anywhere, but I don’t want to interrupt. I don’t want her to stop, not when she needs to tell this story as badly as I need to hear it. I lean over and take one of her hands in mine, tryingto provide comfort without being an intruder to her memories. She shakes herself, lifting her other hand to swipe at the single tear that escaped, leaving her other hand entwined with my own.
“I was over at the community college, so I took some time off to help get Sadie through the end of high school and worked to make sure she would be able to cover some of the expenses for whatever fancy university begged for her. And I was right, she got in everywhere she applied, smart thing,” she laughs. “She left for Cal Tech after high school and I stayed here, working and doodling. She was doing so well. Sheseemedlike she was doing so well.”
21
HARPER
Gus saunters back over to where Colton and I sit, replacing my empty glass with a fresh bourbon and glaring at where Colton’s untouched glass sits, as if he let the drink get watered down on purpose.
Colton realizes where Gus is staring and quickly takes a large gulp, not wanting to insult him further. Gus grunts at him and turns his back. I think I hear Colton mumble something about wishing Wade was here, but I don’t let myself get lost in the distraction.
I can’t stop the tale now that I’ve started, worried that any moment my nerve might win out and I’ll end up barreling towards the exit.
I’ve only felt afraid a few times in my life, when my dad passed away and when I felt Sadie slipping through my fingers.
Even with everything happening at the club right now, my fear should not be from having to tell someone I care for about my life. But I’m not just scared, I’m fucking terrified. Terrified that if I keep sharing my life with him, I will see judgement and pity looking back at me. Afraid that if I choose to stop, to keepmy secrets my own and not lay my heart out, that I will lose him.
“When Sadie left for college, I met someone here at the bar and things got serious pretty quickly.” I feel him stiffen slightly, grasping my hand a little tighter, just in case the ex-boyfriend springs up and decides to whisk me away. “Sadie and I talked every day when she first started school, she stayed there over the summers to take extra classes and to work on projects with professors, but we made sure to either text or call throughout the week. By her junior year though, I was hearing from her less and less, and every time I called and asked how school was going, she was distant, distracted and almost put out by my interest in her life. Eventually the only thing I got was the occasional text telling me she was busy, or that she would call later, which she never did. I talked to Harris, my boyfriend at the time, about going out there to see her, to make sure everything was ok, but he talked me out of it, saying I was being overbearing and that Sadie needed to live her life without me butting in.”
