Page 22 of Resonance
Ignoring it, I swigged my beer and picked up my phone, scrolling through Spotify until I found what I was looking for. I set the can aside as the music came on and did a few dance steps on the island of brown carpet between the end of the bed and the dresser.
To my surprise, Dan chuckled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Electric slide. Maybe the Macarena if you’re lucky.” I extended my hand in his direction as my hips swayed to the beat. “C’mon, you know you wanna.”
He tried to ward me off by lifting his hands. “Electric slide? Hell no. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.”
“Macarena?”
“Same answer.”
Dan shifted in the chair, stretching his legs out, then nudged his boots free, peeled off his socks, and wiggled his toes.
It was still too hot in the room and smelled a little bit like mold and a lot like lemony disinfectant, but there was a feeling in the air, too. I’d noticed it before, like around Christmastime. It was a cold-season feeling, a kind of coziness, but deeper. Not harmony exactly, but… good. Like everything was all right. It was the same feeling I got sometimes when watching old black-and-white movies. Maybe I was a weirdo, but I didn’t mind being trapped in bumfuck Arkansas in a small motel room doing the electric slide as Dan wiggled his bare toes and stretched his arms over his head. I’d never been on a real vacation before, and even though this technically wasn’t one, it still kinda felt like what I imagined a real one would feel like.
“How about something else, then?”
“Like bed?”
I pretended he hadn’t spoken. Like the wordbeddidn’t exist. “Okay, give me any dance you can think of—bet I can do it.”
Dan narrowed one eye at me. “Can you jitterbug?”
Grinning, I shifted from electric slide to jitterbug. Not the most graceful transition, but to me the jitterbug had always seemed to be mostly about hopping around energetically with a little fancy footwork thrown in on occasion.
“I’ll be damned.” Dan cracked a smile. “West Coast Swing?”
“Like a champ. Sorta. Be my partner.”
He shook his head through his laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“Ru told me something about you a while back.”
I slowed to a stop to catch my breath and cocked a brow. “Yeah, what’s that?”
“That you get dance-y when you get drunk. Wasn’t sure I believed him.”
“I’m not wasted.”
He shrugged. “I’m not saying jack if you are.”
I held out my hand again. “C’mon, you overgrown fun hater.”
Dan did that one-eyed squint at me again, and for a second I thought he’d just leave me hanging, but then he put his hand in mine and heaved himself from the chair. “If you use this against me in the future, I’ll make you regret it.”
“Secret’s safe with me. You’re in the trust tree now, Dan. I’m so glad. I’ve been waiting months for this moment.” I said it with mock solemnity, suppressing a grin as he tried to give me a scathing look and failed.
I found a new playlist and clicked the speaker volume up full blast on my phone, then turned back to Dan. We shuffled around a little trying to figure out our arrangement. Once we sort of organically determined that he’d lead, I was whirling and twisting in no time, bumping into the dresser and the end of the bed until I was dizzy and laughing and taking full advantage of the way his big hands felt on me, how the pressure of his palm on my shoulder guided me this way and that.
We made it through two songs that way, our steps and turns becoming more exaggerated and extravagant, Dan swinging me out wide, then whipping me in close to his body again.
As the third song ended, I bumped clumsily into the dresser and sank against it, panting. Dan’s hand smacked with a hard thud on the surface beside me, and he leaned heavily against the drawers. “Shit I’m out of breath. Out of shape, I guess.”
“You don’t look it.”
He eyed me for a moment and then raked a hand through his hair.