“You guys dance?” he asked me.
“We went at it for a while,” I said, looking at Julia.
“She’s being modest. I had to swipe them away,” she told him.
“I believe it. Any interest in going back out there?” he asked me.
I looked at Julia.
“I’m fine just watching. Have to digest my food,” she said.
Was this a little brother-sister conspiracy? Did I care?
When you were with someone, there was that moment when you knew that if you said yes to something, a whole series of events would follow, cascading down through you to take a hold on your future.
You could certainly regret it.
Would I?
“Okay,” I said, and got up to dance with Liam Dolan.
13
Being so close to him, our bodies moving slowly in synchronization, I felt whatever resistance I had mounted since the first time we had met begin to defrost and melt away. He was a very good dancer, and unlike most of the other young men around us, who seemed so incapable of controlling their female partners that they looked as if they were dancing alone, Liam slipped his arm around my waist and kept us close, turning me and then moving around me, holding my eyes on his and keeping us so tightly connected that I felt we had instantly become two halves of the same newly created dancing body.
Whenever he could, he brought his face to mine, brushing his lips against my hair, my cheeks, and my forehead. My imagination exploded. I saw us naked together in a shower, embracing, drinking the water from each other’s face, caressing and kissing until it became impossible to keep standing. Soaked, we retreated to a bed and began making the most passionate love, lovemaking that resembled our dancing, slow at first and then building and building until we buried each other’s scream of deep sexual satisfaction in a long kiss that threatened to draw the breath from our bodies.
When I looked back at Julia in our booth, I saw her gazing at us with a smile of delight. She looked more like an older sister taking pride in her younger brother. It was as if he was finally doing something right. I’m only dancing, I told myself. It doesn’t mean anything. But one look at Liam’s face, a face that was reflecting the way I was looking at him, told me I was lying to myself.
Finally, we both had enough and, holding hands, fled the music and the lights. Julia clapped for us when we joined her.
“If they were giving prizes tonight, you’d be the winning couple. You must have done quite a bit of dancing in California,” she told me.
“Some,” I said. “Mostly in my bedroom,” I added, and they both laughed.
“Another drink?” Liam asked.
“I already had another while you two were out there, but maybe one more.”
He ordered one for me, too, pretending that it was for himself. “Don’t tell my father I’m corrupting a minor,” he quipped.
“Minor,” Julia said. “She’s more mature than every legal drinker here. Anyway, why this Lone Ranger act tonight?” She looked as if her first three Volcanoes were already overflowing in her blood and her brain. Her smile was a little twisted, and her eyes were glassy.
Liam shrugged. “I want to take my time.” He glanced at me. “Too many impulsive, wrong decisions.”
Julia laughed. “Take your time?”
“I’m serious,” he said.
The new drinks arrived.
“And to what do we owe this new sense of responsibility and caution?” she asked, throwing me a conspiratorial grin.
“See that?” Liam said. “They complain and complain about me at home, and as soon as I turn a new leaf, they ridicule it. How can I win with my family?”
How can I win with mine? I thought.
“You can’t blame anyone but yourself. You’re like some of the smokers we get in the ER. The doctors tell them they have to quit, and they say sure, they’ve done it many times.” She laughed and drank more of her Volcano.