For the second time that night, the exchange went something like this:
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
I really didn’t. Sloane had had a way of making sure she occupied my thoughts 99 percent of the time, front and center, for the past three years. Tonight was about allowing that 1 percent to sit back, relax, and enjoy the break. Like a death row inmate ordering up his last meal, I was going to savor every morsel.
“I Will Survive” appropriately came onto the jukebox, predictably followed by “Shout,” always a favorite at bars and football games. Laney and I hung by the bar, leaning into each other and making up life stories about the people on the dance floor. “See that guy?” I pointed to a heavyset businessman who was boogying on the sidelines near the flight attendants, hoping to be waved in. “Lives at home with Mom. Collects My Little Pony memorabilia.”
Laney was emphatic. “No way that guy is a Brony!”
I practically did a spit-take with my Jack and Coke. “There’s a name for that?” I turned to her, incredulous.
She laughed and nodded. “Oh, you have so much to learn, dear boy.”
“How about the flight attendants? Think they’re bi?”
“You wish.” She rolled her eyes at me and gave me a little bump with her elbow. “No, that one is curious, though. See her body language? The other one is having an affair with the pilot playing darts over there.”
“I thought you wanted to play. Shall we challenge them to a game?” I asked her.
“Nah. Making up stories is more fun. What do you think people would say about us?”
“Well,” I drawled, leaning in to be heard over the thump-thump of Foster the People, “now that you aren’t carrying around that ridiculous dress bag—”
“Yeah?” she prompted. “And now that you’re not hardwired to that freakin’ computer . . .”
Our own body language was changing. Whether made bolder by the alcohol or feeling safer under cover of the dusky bar lighting, we orbited into each other’s personal space. The typical nightclub cacophony of music, laughter, and glasses clinking was the perfect excuse to lean in closer to be heard. Bumping shoulders as we joked, nudging each other with our knuckles, our hands hanging on to our drinks all the while to keep them occupied and away from what was off-limits. It was a heady and torturous game.
“You could be heiress to the breakfast cereal kingdom, and I could be your bodyguard.” My upper lip hit her earlobe very time I enunciated a B, and I literally felt her body sigh closer.
“General Mills, or Kellogg’s?” she asked.
“Both,” I made sure to say.
“Or maybe”—she turned toward me and I could feel the whisper of her breath on my collarbone—“we’re Amish kids and we’re off to explore the real world. On Fahrvergnügen, or whatever they call it.”
“I think you mean Rumschpringe.”
Her laugh rang out. “You’re the one in the suit.” She set down her drink and fastened the very top button of my open shirt. “You would know.”
The gesture was somehow both innocent and intimate. And indicated the joking was over. She went for the next one in the row, nimbly buttoning that one, too. The glass in my shaking hand met the smooth finish of the bar top and I slid it away from me.
Laney’s fingers were still playing with my buttons. “Sometimes,” she started, keeping her eyes level with them. “Sometimes I have to ask myself ‘What Would Dani Do?’ ’cuz she’s not only my best friend, she’s also the smartest, and wildest, girl I know.”
A new song came on, a party anthem whose volume seemed double that of its earlier competitors. The flight attendants were already swaying their hands in the air as the music began to build. Laney rolled the next button in the row between her thumb and forefinger and stole a glance at me. Desire boiled low in my core and threatened to volcano up. I had never met Dani, this devilish voice of reason that perched on Laney’s delectable shoulders. Would I be thanking her, or resenting her?
“She would,” Laney said, slowly breaking away from me, “totally get up and dance to Steve Aoki and Laidback Luke right about now.”
Her smile was much too wicked for the girly giggle that accompanied it, as she shimmied in my sneakers onto the dance floor.
Good God. The guys could brag and moan about the blatant debauchery of Vegas as the ultimate in seduction until they were blue in the face, and in the balls. But I’d bet they had never experienced the sheer, erotic torture of being stripteased in reverse by a beautiful woman. Talk about your agony and your ecstasy.
“Turbulence!” the flight attendants yelled in greeting to her. “Are you ready? Are you strapped in?”
Laney whooped, pumping her hands as the bass-thrashing, electro-frenzied beat picked up. From my spot near the bar, I just grinned and shook my head, watching her. She was crazy. The flight attendants sang along, obviously versed in the song, all about initiating emergency procedures at thirty thousand feet.
With one hand, I worked the tight top button of my shirt open once again. I watched the trio on the dance floor and strained to eavesdrop on the girl who was blowing out Laney’s eardrum.
“Why isn’t your guy up here with us?” she shouted over the music.
“He hates flying!” I could read Laney’s lovely lips.
Your guy.
Five hours before, Laney would’ve denied even knowing me. Now she was using a crooked, come-hither finger and a sexy squint to beckon me. I just crossed my arms, aiming for cool, but couldn’t control the smile spreading across my face.
The women shook their heads, threw them back in laughter, and raised their arms higher and higher as the song began to build. Laney hopped and headbanged. Her dancing wasn’t overly provocative to the casual observer, but it threw my mind into overdrive as she flung that curtain of hair over one shoulder, eyes closed, lost in the music. I noticed her tattooed wings were on full display as she swung her body uninhibitedly to the beat. There had to be a story behind them, and I intended to find out, whether it was drawn in her sketchbook or not.
“Come on, Noah!” She had bopped over to me and was grabbing at my hand. “Let’s go make a clown bitch out of your aviophobia.”
“Big word,” I said, echoing her earlier tease, as I let her drag me out to the dance floor. “For a girl.”
“Loosen up,” she coaxed.
My legs were moving, but my arms stayed stiff and unnatural at my sides. I must’ve looked like the typical, self-conscious white boy.
“Not exactly my comfort zone,” I said apologetically. Or my kind of music. The beat was frenetic yet seemed to be reaching toward a crescendo.
“Come on, like a roller coaster!”
She laced her fingers through mine and lifted our arms up, up, up as the bass thundered around us. My nervous chuckle gave way to genuine laughter, freeing up the space in my lungs and throat as we bopped to the pounding club mix. Laney’s smile flashed at me brighter than the lights on the dance floor, skyrocketing my pulse rate until it was in synch with the crazy strobe light overhead. The flight attendants were clapping and stripper-shimmying around us.
AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” hit the speakers next, a classic yet respectable song to rock out to on the dance floor. Certainly worth the dollar I had spent on it, along with two other tunes on the TouchTunes jukebox, before seeking out Laney at the bar. I became Angus Young, duckwalking in circles with an air guitar as Laney mouthed every lyric. The rousing song got everyone in the bar up on the dance floor, shouting the chorus. It was liberating, especially after being trapped on a plane, at the airport, and then in a hotel for the last eighteen hours.
“I love this song!” Laney exclaimed next, over the rattling drums of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime,” and danced around me. We sang along to the preposterous proclamations and asked ourselves those burn
ing questions in unison. I slicked back my hair with my hands and played the perfect part of frontman David Byrne in my half suit, doing the funny big-stepped dance and herky-jerky marionette moves from the old eighties video. I knew all the old rock classics; I think my parents used to put me in front of the television and let MTV babysit me.
“So much fun,” Laney gasped, fanning her hands in front of her face as the song dwindled down. We wound our way off the floor, back to our watery drinks and to Laney’s sketchbook waiting on the bar. We gulped gratefully and settled back into contemplative silence.
“So . . . here we are,” I said, for lack of anything better, just as Laney started with “Where were we?” and the jukebox began to play that old seventies folk rock tune, “Stuck in the Middle with You.”
“You picked this song, didn’t you?” Laney accused.
“And if I did?” I asked, shaking my ice innocently.
“It’s pretty damn perfect.” She grinned.
“Thanks.”
She cocked her head at me. “For what?”
“For saying that. For noticing. I don’t get ‘perfect’ right very often these days.”
I didn’t have to say Sloane’s name again, but it still lingered, stale and irritating, over our heads.
Laney made a face like she smelled something rotten. “She sounds like a perfect bitch.” Clapping her hand over her mouth, she added, “That was rude of me. I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “I’m thinking we could make a new drinking game out of ‘I’m sorry.’ We’d both be plastered in no time.”
“Oooh, me first, me first!” Laney said. And with each confession, starting at our first encounter on the plane, we began to clear the air.
“Last but not least, I’m sorry for spraying you with champagne and hitting on you.” She laughed and took a final swig of her Crown and ginger.
“Let’s not get carried away here,” I said with a smile. “But seriously, if I put you in an uncomfortable position by not fessing up sooner . . .” I tapped her glass with mine and took a drink. “Well, then, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you should’ve been holding up a sign in the airport like one of those valets. One that read, ‘I’m Engaged,’” she teased.
It was true. I was engaged.
To Sloane.
But I was also allured, bewitched, captivated, enchanted, and utterly fascinated.
By Laney.
And I didn’t need a thesaurus app to come up with those.
The Dress Dictatorship
Talk about your roller coasters. The entire day had been more of a thrill ride than I had experienced in the past two years.
Each conversation with Noah was like hitching slowly up that steep hill; each flirtation throwing me into that heart-hammering, belly-dropping descent and making me want to yell, “Again! Again!”
The moments I spent thinking about the past, lost in my sketches, were the contemplative darkened tunnels needed for regaining equilibrium. Fleeting moments of memory chased away by the bright, dizzying light and pace of the present. Noah was gripping the guard bar in front of us, right along next to me for the ride, yet on his own personal journey.
But, like all good things, we kept coming to a screeching halt.
Reality.
Jerking us forward and back in a cruel game of inertia.
He’s getting married. Soon.
And your mother’s waiting, Laney Jane. For you to show up.
To grow up. Get your act together. You’re late. As usual.
“Ready to head up? Or do you need more air down here?” Noah asked.
Up or down. The ride had to go one way or the other. But at the very top, time suspended and the air was still. I savored that teetering moment with closed eyes, but only for a second.
“Race you!”
We hightailed it back to the elevator, pushing each other out of the way to press the button. Noah whistled the “Once in a Lifetime” chorus and I leaned nonchalantly against the wall as we glided slowly up, up, up. But the moment the doors slid open, we were racing back down the hallway, laughing. He won, but only because I overshot the room, forgetting which number was ours.
Noah threw his key card down on the bed next to my blinking phone. “Looks like your people on the line are messaging you,” he observed.
I checked my texts. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What is it?”
“My mother took it upon herself to schedule a wake-up call for me through the front desk. ‘Just in case, Laney.’” I tossed my phone down and reached for the hotel’s corded one, punching the call button angrily. “Can you please cancel the wake-up call for tomorrow morning? Yes, I’m sure . . . I’ve got at least four clocks with alarms in the room, I have no doubt one of them will succeed in waking me up. Thank you.” I plopped myself down on the bed and reached for the drink I had left on the nightstand. “Just in case, my ass.”
“Your mom doesn’t trust you?”
“Never has, never will. I’m sure she gave me this task just to prove I’ll mess it up. I bet there isn’t even a dress in that bag. It’s probably wadded-up newspaper. Or live snakes or something.”
Noah’s laugh washed over me like the alcohol did, making me feel fuzzy inside. “So no wedding waiting in Hawaii, then?” he said, teasing me. “Just a bunch of judges holding scorecards?”
“I wish! No, it’s going to be the wedding from hell, I’m sure. Let me tell you, if I ever get married, I’m doing it quick in Vegas, with no one in attendance. No, better yet, with a roomful of Elvis impersonators . . . no one I know who can tell me I’m doing it all wrong.”
“Come on, what have you done that’s so wrong in life?”
He sat himself right down next to me and waited expectantly. What could I say? In my mother’s eyes, I had quit a sensible job, I had gotten myself pregnant—and dumped—by a deviant loser, and yet I kept going back for more. And where had it gotten me?
In her opinion, I was completely incompetent, right down to my cervix.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Laney.” Noah flipped up an invisible collar, raised a lip, and actually made a passable Elvis impression. “A-don’t be cruel . . .”
Now it was my turn to laugh. Which just encouraged him to keep up the act.
“Now, when I was your age, little lady—”
“You had tons of hit songs and millions of bucks?” I quipped.
Noah Elvis—Noavis?—ignored me. “I had invented an app that made me a good hunka money to burn, yes indeed. I bought the fancy house, the nice car. Took the big promotion in the Manhattan high-rise. And I thought the next logical step was finding a pretty young thing and settling down . . .”
“So you’re marrying Priscilla?”
Sloane. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I swallowed her name and practically gagged on the bitter aftertaste. My overactive imagination put her on a pedestal and pelted her with rotten fruit. Gorgeous, entitled, and covered in pulpy goo. How do you like them lemons now, Sloane?
The lip curled higher. “Fools rush in, darlin’. I thought she was the peanut butter for my hot banana sandwich.”
He shook his head, and a rogue curl fell to the middle of his forehead. “So just goes to show . . . even when you think you’re doing the right thing, you might still end up singing the blues.”
“Sucks to be us, here at the Heartbreak Hotel, huh?” I said softly.
He bumped my shoulder with his and didn’t miss a beat. “That’s all right, mama.”
I reached up and twisted his lone curl. “You make a good Elvis.”
For God’s sake, Laney. Get your hands out of the man’s hair. And get off the bed!
I knew it was all kinds of wrong, yet all I could picture was climbing into Noah’s lap and kissing him. Talk about a hot peanut butter and banana san
dwich. I wanted to press up against him and—
“And you . . .” he said huskily, no trace of Elvis to be found, “make a good mixed drink.”
Great. You want to make out with him. He wants you to make him a drink. Way to read those cues again.
Or maybe he’s just being a gentleman, Laney Jane.
Engaged, remember?
“A toast, then.” I mixed one last batch of drinks.
“What are we drinking to?” Noah bit his lower lip and fixed his gaze on me. I felt a buzz that had less to do with the whiskey than I dared to admit.
“To . . .” Get yourself back on neutral territory, Laney. “To Tokyo?”
“Tokyo.” He clinked my class. “And to asparagus.”
I giggled. “Definitely asparagus. And hot towels.”
“And don’t forget bichons frises.”
“Oh, shit, the dress!” I had moved the garment bag to the edge of the bed earlier so I wouldn’t get Dorito crumbs on it. Sometime between Godzilla and the champagne shower, it must have slipped between the bed and the wall, where it lay in a crumpled heap. “I’d better hang it up.”
Noah watched, amused, as I attempted to shove the monstrosity into the closet. The space was wider than the one on the plane, but the bar was too low. Half the dress would be wrinkled from pooling on the floor all night. Hmm, maybe the back of the bathroom door would be better.
Hurling the bottom half of the garment bag over my shoulder like a fireman’s carry, I lugged it across the room.
“I thought for sure you were some dress-obsessed diva,” he called after me. “Why didn’t you just check the darn thing?”
“You don’t know my mother.” I gave the hook a test tug and set the hanger down firmly before continuing. “This is the woman who used to control the marshmallow ratio in my breakfast cereal.”
“You’re putting it on.”
“I’m totally not putting you on. She would literally count out my Lucky Charms every morning.”
“No, I mean, the dress. Put it on.” His voice was closer now, serious and sexy as hell, from the other side of the door. “You need to face your fears, Laney. Walk a mile in that dress’s shoes.”
Dictatorship of the Dress (9780698168305) Page 14
