Page 57 of Fight For Me

“Well, I’m gonna need to see this dance,” Bodhi says, pushing on Fox to slide out of the booth.

Alex shakes her head. “No. Absolutely not.”

River smirks. “But you still remember it.”

“Of course I remember it. That dance was awesome,” she says haughtily.

Everly follows Bodhi and Fox out of the booth and starts to tug on Alex’s hand. “Come on. You have to do the dance. For old time’s sake!”

Her face is definitely flushed now, and she shoots me a quick glance. “Any chance you can forget you ever heard any of this?”

I know I should say yes. That I should tell her to go dance while I stay here and work on sobering up. I should definitely not tease her or flirt with her or go down to the dance floor with her and watch her dance. Under no circumstances should I dance with her.

“Stop stalling,” I tell her instead. “I want to see this.”

Her eyes widen. “No way. There’s no way I’m doing the fucking dance with you watching.”

“That sounds an awful lot like you’re scared, Alexandria.”

Her eyes narrow and I can practically see the cogs of her brain turning as she thinks about it. “Fine. You can come and watch my dance. Because it’s totally awesome and I am not at all embarrassed.”

“Yay!” Everly hoots, throwing her arms up. “Let’s do this!”

I give myself one last feeble instruction to stay the fuck in the booth but my body doesn’t seem to want to listen, since I’m already climbing to my feet and following the others over to the dance floor. I’m just tipsy enough that I barely register the camera following us.

We form a loose circle around Alex who sighs once, looks heavenward, and then starts to dance. It’s…horrible. Like the some of the worst dancing I’ve ever seen. It looks like she watched a bunch of YouTube videos of different dances and tried to shove every single one into her routine. There’s the robot move and the cabbage patch and what I’m pretty sure is the nae nae, and it takes less than half a minute for me to be laughing so hard my sides hurt.

“It’s even better now that you’re an adult,” River wheezes.

“This is amazing.” Bodhi has actual tears of laughter in his eyes. “You’re not even on the beat. Teach me. I want to do it too.”

Bodhi and Everly both try to copy her but Everly is laughing too hard to do much but stand there bent at the waist. I can tell Alex is trying hard to keep the cool-girl look on her face, and that just makes it funnier. She catches my eye and shrugs. “You can laugh all you want,” she shouts over the music. “But you know I’m the coolest person here.”

God, sheisthe coolest person here. Not because her dance is good, but because she’s doing it anyhow. She seems to not give a single flying fuck that she’s in the middle of a very crowded, very exclusive club. Or that her friends are in hysterics. Or even that the camera crew is only a few feet away. She merely continues to do her thing, and to hell with what anyone else might think.

When the song finally ends, I don’t pretend to tell myself I’m going back to sit down. I stay there dancing with them, with her, unable to take my eyes off her face. She’s jumping around and laughing and happy and I want to stay right here next to her, soaking up as much of her bright light as I can.

The music eventually shifts again, to something slower this time. Alex turns to me, still smiling that huge smile, and I don’t even think about it. I pull her into my arms and we dance.

More people crowd around us, pushing our bodies closer together. I can no longer see Everly or the others in the throng and it makes it feel like we’re in a little bubble together, just the two of us, her arms around my neck, my hands resting on her hips. The scent of her hair is even stronger close together like this, and I can’t help but lean down to press my nose against the top of her head. She sighs in my arms, her hands flexing, the tips of her fingers reaching up to tangle in the hair at my nape, and I know I’d be happy to stand like this with her forever.

But then I look up and see that one of the cameras is trained right on us. A sick feeling floods my gut, and I pull back, breaking the connection. She blinks up at me, confused. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” But my eyes dart back to the camera and she follows my gaze. Her body tenses and I’m relieved that she gets why I had to push her away. The last thing I want to do is hurt her feelings or—

“You’re an asshole, Wyatt, you know that?” she snaps.

I gape at her, sure I must have misheard over the noise of the crowd and the music. “What?”

“You.” She jabs her finger into my chest. “Are an asshole.”

“Alex—”

But she’s storming off, practically running through the crowd to get away from me. She’s a few yards ahead, nearly swallowed by the throng of dancers, when I see her stumble on her heels, breaking me out of my frozen stupor.

I don’t catch up with her until she’s off the dance floor and back to the VIP section. She bypasses our table and heads straight toward the hallway to the bathrooms. It’s quieter here, away from the speakers, and practically empty, since Scott and the crew got the club to mostly clear out the VIP section for us.

“Hey.” I grab her arm and she spins to face me. One look at her expression tells me that she’s pissed. “Why are you mad? You saw the cameras—”