Put Me Back Together (10 page)

Suddenly, he got to his feet and pulled me up with him. I gazed around dizzily.

“Come with me,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

We descended the same stairs we’d taken to come up and found ourselves on the second floor dance floor. There weren’t nearly as many people dancing as there had been earlier and I hardly had any trouble getting across the floor. I was nearly to the second staircase when Lucas tugged on my hand, pulling me back. When I saw that he wanted me to join him in the middle of the dance floor, I shook my head firmly. Was this what he had in mind? Dancing? If so, his mind was about to change very quickly, because I had no intention of going out there again. Ever.

I let go of his hand and folded my arms around my middle. He came to join me by the wall.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Aggressive guys? Grabby hands? I work here, you know. I know what some guys are like on the dance floor.”

“It wasn’t just that,” I protested, though I was surprised at how much he had guessed. “I just don’t like being on display, like… I’m not really a good dancer. I’m just not comfortable and it’s so… I’m not… I just…”

I clamped my mouth shut, sick of listening to my own stuttering.

“You want to lose yourself?” he said and my eyes snapped to his face. “I do it all the time, right out there.” He pointed at the people dancing in front of us. “It’s easy. I can show you how if you’ll let me.”

Straight ahead of me a girl in a strapless sparkly top threw her head back, shaking her hair, a luminous smile on her face. I wanted to be like that, to be free. But I didn’t want to feel that panic creeping in again, not tonight. I looked up at Lucas. When he was around, I never felt afraid, probably because he was always so at ease—well, except during the glass-dropping intro to the night. A little dancing with Lucas couldn’t hurt, could it?

“If you embarrass me I’ll punch you in the junk,” I said as I put my hand in his.

He gave me an affirmative nod. “Got it, Hero,” he said.

Taking both my hands in his, he towed me into the middle of the fray. The song that was playing was one I knew and liked with an added house beat and synthesizer. Standing still in the middle of the dancing crowd I immediately felt self-conscious and my eyes kept darting to the people around us, watching to see if they were watching me. Lucas put his hands on my shoulders, drawing my eyes to his face.

“Don’t worry about them,” he said. “They don’t care what you’re doing. All they care about is looking hot.”

I smirked and his smile joined mine.

“Just look at me. Keep your eyes on mine,” he said. “Don’t look away.”

I nodded yes, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do it. I was terrible at keeping eye contact. Even when I was having a conversation with someone I would find myself staring at the wall behind their head. I didn’t like the feeling of being looked at, examined. It always made me feel as though the person looking was trying to figure me out. Then again, I didn’t seem to mind when Lucas looked at me. And looking at Lucas, well, that wasn’t what I would call hard. Actually, it was pretty damn easy.

As I stared into those big golden eyes of his, I felt Lucas place his hands on my waist. Instinctively, I felt my body tense and I was surprised that he didn’t say anything about it. He just left his hands there and kept his eyes on mine until I slowly felt my muscles relax.

“Now, I want you to move like I move,” he said. “Put your hands here.”

He placed my hands on his hips so we were mirroring each other. I nearly laughed. This felt very much like an elementary school dance. Then he started to move his hips and I felt his fingers digging into mine, encouraging me to do the same, and suddenly all thoughts of elementary school were gone.

I could feel the taut muscles of his stomach through his shirt. I wanted so much to look down at his body, to touch his chest, but that would mean breaking eye contact. My hips began to mimic his movements, moving much slower than the music, and he smiled at me, showing off his dimples, as our rhythm fell into sync. He ran one hand up my back and then back down again, sending a shiver down my spine, and then I felt the gentle pressure of his palm, pushing me forward until we were hip to hip. I forgot about keeping eye contact at that point—I sort of forgot about everything—and pressed my cheek into his shoulder, looping my arms around his neck.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered into my ear.

And I did.

The music throbbed around us, keeping our hips in motion and wiping out almost everything else except the feeling of his chest against mine and his hands holding me. I didn’t have a thought in my head. I certainly didn’t know and didn’t care if anyone was watching us. I didn’t know anything except that I loved this feeling of oblivion, of disappearing into the music, of being here with him. I felt one of his hands cupping the back of my head, his fingers moving through my hair. I clung to him and danced.

We were both sweaty when we finally pulled apart. His hand was still in my hair.

“How’d you do that?” I said to him. He was staring down at me so intently I wasn’t sure he would answer.

“Do what?” he finally said.

“Make the world disappear.”

He grinned, letting his hand slip out of my locks and down to my back. “And just think, you can do it any time you want. The wonderful land of the dance floor is always here for you.”

“Not just any time,” I said, and he gave me a questioning look, his eyes returning to my face. “I only feel like this when I’m with you.”

What did I just say?

I was still tangled in his arms and he looked like he had every intention of keeping me there, his eyes riveted to mine as though we were still dancing, but I pulled free and this time I was the one to guide him down the stairs, holding his hand, leading the way. This was good. Moving was good. Talking on the other hand, clearly not so good.

Back on the first floor I was swarmed by Emily and her friends. I caught Lucas’s eye and saw him wink and wave at me, then disappear into the dark leading toward the bar.

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Anita said, then took a sip of her drinks, one in each hand.

“Sally’s in the bathroom throwing up,” Melissa announced.

“We didn’t abandon her there,” Emily explained, as though worried I would disapprove. “She always insists on throwing up alone. She’s psychotic about it. She bit me. Are you okay?”

This last question she directed right into my ear, then looked at me worriedly as Anita and Melissa danced a circle around us. Em couldn’t always read my moods, but she sure as hell knew I didn’t like facing a nightclub alone, especially when she’d been the one to drag me there.

“Where
were
you?” I asked with more venom that I’d meant to, only now realizing how angry I still was at the way she’d left me alone. I watched her take a step away from me and lower her eyes to the floor.

Right away I regretted my outburst. How could I blame Em for not babysitting me the entire night? She was entitled to have her own fun. But before I could tell her this, Anita interrupted us.

“Did I see you holding hands with Lucas?” Apparently Anita’s reaction time was on a drunken five-minute delay.

“Oh my God!” Melissa cried. “Did he rescue you?”

“Did he dance with you?”

“Did you guys make out? Tell me you made out. You totally did. You made out, right?”

I didn’t answer any of their questions. I could still feel his fingers in my hair.

We left about an hour later. Sally was so drunk both Melissa and Anita had to help her to the car, her arms around their shoulders as she shouted obscenities at the beefy guy and his whole group of friends. None of the other girls seemed to know what had gone down between them, and I, for one, didn’t want to know. It seemed that Sally was a fun drunk right up until she got really loaded. Then she became a scratch-your-eyes-out-for-no-reason drunk.

“I’m gonna rip your head off and feed it to my snake!” she yelled as Melissa stuffed her into the passenger’s seat.

The beefy guy made a rude gesture back.

“Does she even have a snake?” I asked as Anita leaned on the car door to close it. We were all reluctant to get into the car with Sally.

“You think she has the ability to take care of a snake?” Anita asked.

“Don’t be mean,” Emily said. “Just because she goes a little nuts when she’s drunk doesn’t make her an idiot. She’s planning on going to law school after she’s done—”

At this moment Sally rolled down the window and threw up onto the street right beside my sister’s shoes.

“Puking,” Em finished.

We all piled into the car and Melissa eased us out into the non-existent traffic. I was impressed to find out she’d volunteered to be the designated driver and had stopped drinking two hours ago. Point one to Melissa. Sally was currently at point negative forty-two.

Emily put her head on my shoulder. She was always the most affectionate when she knew I was pissed at her. “So what really happened with Lucas?” she asked.

“Um,” I said, hoping Sally would scream out something else and I wouldn’t have to answer.

I couldn’t tell her the truth, of course. How could I when I hardly knew what the truth was? He’d rescued me from a panic attack and taught me to dance? I thought of his honey-coloured eyes. I’d stared at them for so long now I could picture perfectly how they were rimmed with dark gold and the exact way they’d stared into mine when I’d told him I could only feel that way with him.

My secret made me smile so wide I had to turn my face toward the window.

Melissa stopped the car at a light and that’s when I saw Lucas sitting on a bench by the curb with a girl. They weren’t touching, but they were sitting very close together. She had long blonde hair that stuck out of the hood of her winter coat. They were turned toward each other and she was talking animatedly with her hands. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but as the moments passed I could tell she’d started yelling. Lucas looked distraught. He covered his face with his hands. And then he looked up at her and reached a hand out to touch her face, brushing his thumb across her cheek. He seemed to be about to speak when the light turned green and we drove on.

Emily repeated her question.

“Nothing,” I said, turning away from the window. “Lucas and I are nothing to each other, and we’ll never be anything more. End of story.”

She stopped asking after that.

Just then my phone buzzed in my pocket with a text message. I dug into my jeans to pull it loose, hoping against hope it would be Lucas and that somehow he’d intuited that I’d seen what I had and he’d explain it and everything would be fine.

But it wasn’t Lucas, and nothing was fine.

There were three messages from an unknown number.

Unknown: You’ll never get away with it.

Unknown: You’re about to get what you deserve.

Unknown: I’m coming for you.

7

If there was one thing I was good at, it was pretending. Actually, that’s not true. If there was one thing I was good at, it was complete avoidance and denial—which counted as one thing in my mind because I never did one without the other—but pretending definitely came in a close second. For the next few days I put all my years of practice at pretending to very good use. As I walked to class I pretended that it didn’t matter that Brandon had tracked down my cell phone number, which was unlisted, and that he was somehow sending me texts when I was fairly certain he didn’t have access to a cell phone. I pretended it didn’t bother me that his texts had gone from subtle to aggressive threats. I pretended I wasn’t concerned by all the evidence that someone out in the world was helping him harass me, and that I wasn’t at all worried that this someone might come after me for real. By the time it occurred to me to change my number—the pretending was really slowing down my brain—I’d already received enough threatening texts to last a lifetime. Though Emily accepted my “lost phone” story without question, I was pretty sure the message I’d left on my parents machine would elicit a string of questions all leading back to Brandon.

Not that it bothered me.

The girl with the blonde hair was another thing that wasn’t bothering me. Nope, not in the slightest. I certainly wasn’t thinking of her as I sat through class on Monday, avoiding looking in Lucas’s direction—which wasn’t exactly easy, seeing as he was sitting directly next to me. And I certainly wasn’t thinking about how close together they were sitting on that bench or the emotions her words had brought out in him, or the intimate way he’d touched her face. Nuh-uh, I wasn’t thinking about that at all, just like I wasn’t thinking about how, an hour before, that same hand had been caught up in my hair.