“Seriously, Harlow?” I ask. “You can say that with a straight face?”
Lola’s eyes are similarly wide in disbelief as she turns to me. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, I’m definitely impossible to please,” Harlow admits. “I just love watching men try. But Mia takes about two weeks before she converses without a thick sheet of awkward.”
“Not tonight, she doesn’t,” Lola mumbles.
I shove my lip gloss back in my clutch and give Harlow a look. “Maybe I like going slow and getting past that weird need people have for nonstop conversation. You’re the one who likes to bang off the bat, and that’s fine. I don’t judge.”
“Well,” Harlow continues as if I haven’t spoken. “Ansel is adorable and I’m pretty sure from the way he stares at you, he won’t need you to do much talking.”
Lorelei sighs. “He seems really sweet and they’re obviously both into each other, and what’s going to happen?” She shoves everything back in her clutch and turns to lean against the bay of sinks and face us. “He lives in France, she’s moving to Boston, which is only marginally closer to France than San Diego. If you have sex with Ansel,” she says to me, “it will be solid missionary with tons of talking and soft-focus eye contact. That’s not one-night-stand sex.”
“You guys are freaking me out right now,” I tell them.
“Then she can just insist on doggy, what’s the problem?” Harlow asks, bewildered.
Since I’m clearly not needed for this conversation, I push my way out of the bathroom and back to the bar, leaving them to decide the rest of my night, without me.
AT FIRST, IT’S as if our friends metaphorically evaporate into the background as they, too, grow more comfortable (or drunk) together and their laughter tells me they’re no longer listening to everything we’re saying. Eventually they head to the blackjack tables just outside the bar, leaving us alone together only after delivering their meaningful be careful stares to me and don’t be pushy stares to Ansel.
He finishes his drink and puts the empty glass down on the bar. “What did you love most about dancing?”
I’m feeling brave, whether from the gin or Ansel, I don’t care. I take his hand and pull him to his feet. He steps away from the bar and walks beside me.
“Getting lost in it,” I say, leaning into him. “Being someone else.” That way I could pretend to be anyone, I think, in their body, doing things maybe I wouldn’t do with mine if I thought about it too much. Like leading Ansel down a dark hallway—which, though I might have needed to take a deep breath and count to ten first, I do.
When we round the corner and stop, he hums, and I press my lips together, loving how the sound makes my lungs constrict. It shouldn’t be possible for my legs and lungs and brain to all quit working at the same time.
“You could pretend this is a stage,” he says quietly, leaning his hand against the wall beside my head. “You could pretend to be someone else. You could pretend to be the girl who pulled me down here because she wanted to kiss me.”
I swallow, forming the words carefully in my head. “Then who will you be tonight?”
“The guy who gets the girl he wants and doesn’t have any fires to put out back home.”
He doesn’t look away, so I feel like I can’t, either, even though my knees want to buckle. He could kiss me right this second and it wouldn’t be soon enough.
“Why did you get me over here? Away from everyone?” he asks, smile slowly fading.
I look past him, over his shoulder into the club, where it’s only slightly lighter than where we’re standing.
When I don’t answer, he bends to catch my eyes. “Am I asking too many questions?”
“It always takes me a while to put words together,” I tell him. “It’s not you.”
“No, no. Lie to me,” he says, moving closer, his heart-stopping smile returning. “Let me pretend when we’re alone like this I render you speechless.”
And still, he waits for me to find the words I want to say in reply. But the truth is, even with a bowl full of words to choose from, I’m not sure it would make sense if I told him why I wanted him down here, away from the safety of my friends, who are always able to translate my expressions into sentences, or at the very least change the subject for me.
I’m not nervous or intimidated. I simply don’t know how to slip into the role I want to play: flirty, open, brave. What is it about another person’s chemistry that makes you feel more or less drawn to them? With Ansel, I feel like my heartbeat is chasing his. I want to leave my fingerprints all over his neck and his lips. I want to suck on his skin, to see if it’s as warm as it looks, and decide if I like what he was drinking by tasting it on his tongue. I want to have an entire conversation with him where I don’t second-guess or struggle with a single word, and then I want to take him back to the room with me and not use any words at all.
“Ask me again,” I say.
His brows pull together for a beat before he understands. “Why did you bring me down here?”
This time I don’t even think before I speak: “I want to have a different life tonight.”
His lips push out a little as he thinks and I can’t help but blink down to them. “With me, Cerise?”
I nod. “I know what that means, you know. It means ‘cherry.’ Pervert.”