Mai Tai for Two

by Delphine Dryden

  “We should probably go,” Alan finally suggested, though his feet stayed put. Amanda was starting to gesture, her hands flying wider, Jeremy leaning away in an automatic retreat. It was like reality TV with the sound down.

  “It’s a train wreck.” Julie echoed his thoughts. “I don’t even want to watch, but it’s like I can’t drag my eyes away.”

  “I know. We have to, but...I know. What were you planning to do tonight, anyway? After this, I mean?”

  “Um...what? Oh. I thought I’d go back to the dancing over there and see if I can pull anything interesting out of the crowd.” She turned and gestured toward the party, eyeing it with not-that-eager speculation. Watching Amanda and Jeremy’s tense reunion had sucked the fun out of the evening for both of them, apparently.

  “No, seriously.”

  “I am serious. To the extent I had a plan, that was it.”

  Pull someone interesting, she meant. He got that, but his brain pushed the idea out forcefully. No. He started toward the lights and noise, pulling her along. “Better the dance floor than the train wreck.”

  “But what are you gonna do?”

  He looked at her, puzzled. “The Hokey-Pokey? The Electric Slide? I don’t know, whatever sort of dancing is going on.”

  “Yeah, but—” She looked like she was choosing between bad options for what to say. Finally, she settled on, “But you can’t dance.”

  “I can totally dance!”

  “I have never seen you dance. Not once in... How many years have we known each other?”

  “Four? Maybe?” He had no idea, because it felt like he’d always known her. Not so much the first few months after she started working for the company, but definitely the first time they worked a project together. And after she moved to his floor of the office, he’d recognized a kindred spirit. “I’m sure you’ve seen me dance, Jules. I can absolutely dance. And more to the point, there’s no way I’m gonna let you wander off alone into a torch-lit crowd of drunken strangers. You were planning to do this with Amanda, so you can do it with me instead. Dance, I mean. Not... Jesus. You know what I mean.”

  “Let me? You’re not going to let me? What is this, Victorian England all of a sudden?”

  She didn’t seem all that insulted, probably because she thought he’d meant it in a “friends don’t let friends pick up drunk strangers” way, not a patriarchal bullshit way. But he didn’t want to take the chance that she might actually think that of him. Especially since he absolutely meant he didn’t want to allow her to go off with somebody else. “No! I didn’t mean you couldn’t do—I just didn’t want to go off if you needed—you know. You’re twenty-seven. You can do whatever—”

  “Alan.”

  “I just thought we could dance together, I didn’t—”

  “Alan! It’s okay. I was just giving you a hard time.”

  “Oh. Oh, good.” Lies, all lies. But she seemed to have bought it. He wasn’t sure if he was right on track, or utterly screwed. “Okay. So...are we going to dance, then?”

  * * *

  Bye-bye, unknown holiday lover. We could have had something magical. I know it in my heart.

  Julie told herself she was relieved. She had never been the type to pick up strangers, and the prospect had been more daunting than thrilling. Really. Better she should take the first evening to size up the situation before doing anything rash. “Yes. Of course we’re going to dance. Dork.”

  Alan totally couldn’t dance. He made up for it with infectious enthusiasm, however. His version of fail-dancing was highly entertaining, prompting a few eye rolls but more grins from the gyrating crowd around them. Somehow his flailing always managed to pull short of smacking anybody, and after watching for a while Julie realized he was actually in brilliant control of the whole thing. He could dance. Every so often a moment or two of perfect coordination and rhythm sneaked through. Beats where his hips moved in a way that suggested he really knew how to...move his hips.

  “You’re a big liar,” she finally shouted over the cacophony of music and noisy revelers.

  He didn’t even look fazed. Julie was pretty sure he knew exactly what she meant.

  “How so?”

  “You can dance.”

  “I told you I could dance!” He raised his arms over his head and executed a brilliant twirl maneuver that involved his body undulating in a miraculous way. It left her speechless, her body responding in a manner that completely overruled her higher brain functions. The dork-face he made over it spoiled the effect, though. Sort of. “My mother made me take ballroom dance for years with my sister Theresa, so she wouldn’t have to dance with strangers. Because God forbid. Yeah...we ended up winning some competitions and shit like that. I lived in fear that some friend would find the sequins all over my closet floor. It was crazy.”

  He stepped in and pulled her close, the sudden proximity startling the breath out of her. When he dipped her, smooth and swift as a lover in a fantasy tango, her world spun for a moment. She felt only slightly less disoriented when he swung her back up to standing and fail-danced away in some horrific combination of twerking and moonwalking. Her body was trying to recover from a surge of knee-wobbling hormones, and wanted to fling itself at Alan’s supple torso, while her brain was appalled at the dance-desecration visual it was receiving.

  Julie suddenly thought of the conversation they’d once had about college financial aid, how she’d been griping about repaying her loans, and he’d said that he’d “gotten some help” for which he was grateful. She later learned he’d been a National Merit Scholar with a full ride from his school of choice. So when he said he and his sister had won “some competitions,” she could only imagine what he meant by that. State championships? The Olympics? Did they have those for ballroom dancing?

  “Humble-bragger.”

  He laughed. “Hey, I’m heading to the bar. You want anything to drink?”

  “No thanks, I’m good.” If she got any better she’d be a danger to herself and others on the dance floor. Her lips were tingling as it was, her judgment quite possibly impaired.

  Which might have explained her reaction when she noticed the guy checking her out from across that crowded dance floor. Beer goggles. The problem with beer goggles was you never realized you were wearing them at the time. Only once it was too late. In fact, that kind of defined how beer goggles worked.

  Surfer-blond hair, messy in a deliberate way. A tan, obviously, because practically everybody here had one. And when he grinned at Julie from around his drink straw, he had whiter-than-white teeth, contrasting beautifully with the warm tone of his skin. He was firelit, but still seemed to give off an angelic glow rather than a hellish gleam. All in all, he was her every vacation fantasy come to life, wrapped in a pleasantly fitted T-shirt and sporting some ridiculously fit calves underneath his long board shorts.

  Ding ding ding!

  Alan was lost in the crowd by the bar, and she was all alone out on the floor. Julie felt stupid, bobbing along to the music with no partner, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. The surfer dude didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

  He sauntered closer, nodding. “Hey.”

  “Hey there.”

  “I’m Todd.”

  “Julie.”

  “Nice to meet you, Julie.” He extended a hand and she shook it, ignoring the mild clamminess transferred from the cold drink he was holding. There was a sign posted, forbidding glass on the beach, but apparently Todd hadn’t seen it or hadn’t cared enough to relinquish whatever he was nursing along. “I haven’t seen you before. Did you just get here?”

  “Earlier today,” she confirmed, starting to move to the music again. “I won the trip as a door prize at work.”

  “Wow, awesome! This is my work, pretty much.”

  Drinking and dancing? Then she realized what he meant. He worked for the resort, obviously. “Nice. What do you do here?”

  She was expecting “surfing instructor,” possibly “tennis pro,” but h
e came back with, “I lead glass-bottomed-kayak tours.”

  He wasn’t dancing, exactly, just moving in time with the music, a subtle shift of his weight and hips back and forth. Cool. Smooth. A faint voice in her head said it wasn’t a good thing that he seemed practiced at what he was doing here. Tropical-flavored liquor gently drowned the voice out, as soft and warm as the nearby surf. The guy was exactly what she’d been looking for. No strings. No clutter. She could do this.

  “Kayak tours? That’s so cool.”

  Things were definitely getting back on track.

  Chapter Four

  Who the fuck...?

  Alan stopped dead at the edge of the dance floor, a beer in one hand and a cup of ice water in the other. He’d thought Julie might want it. Instead, she seemed to have found something else she wanted.

  Or someone.

  He noticed the drinks were shaking before he realized his own hands were the problem. They wanted to be pulling Julie away from the overgrown surfer dude in the skintight T-shirt. They wanted to be shoving the dude away from Julie. And then doing things, other things. To Julie.

  A splash of water chilled his hand, and he took a breath, steadying himself. He was being ridiculous. She’d told him her plan to go on the prowl, and he knew she hated making a plan, then not following through with it. Any plan. Setting and achieving goals was kind of Julie’s thing, a trait Alan usually admired in her. So no, she probably didn’t mean to go off and sleep with a stranger tonight. But she’d definitely wanted to flirt and dance and maybe share some promising moments with someone.

  But he was damned if it was going to be this guy she was talking to now. This asshole definitely did not deserve to be eyeing Julie’s boobs, or the way her waist curved perfectly into her hips, or thinking about what her amazing hair would feel like if she let it down, then leaned over to kiss him, or...other things.

  He made his approach at a saunter, trying desperately to act casual even though he knew that desperation and casual canceled each other out. Cool, he was going to be cool.

  “Hey, Jules.” She didn’t hear him over the music, and he had to edge closer and repeat himself. “Julie! Hey!”

  “Oh, hi, Alan! This is Todd.” She kept almost-dancing, bobbing to the music, in sync with the surfer dude.

  “Great! I brought you some water.”

  “What?”

  “Water!” He held it out to her, proud that he didn’t spill any of it before she grabbed it. Steady as a rock.

  She leaned in to avoid having to yell, but Alan noticed the way she aligned herself. On the other guy’s side, like she was with him, but pausing to chat with a third party. “Todd leads kayak tours. I was thinking of going on one tomorrow.”

  “Sounds great,” he said, lying through his teeth. “Cool job, bro.”

  Todd grinned too wide, edging a little closer to Julie. “Yeah, uh, you probably won’t actually see me there if you go. I don’t necessarily lead the tours myself. I own the company. We’re pretty much part of the resort, though, so if you need anything I can hook you up.”

  He was talking to Alan, but the whole thing was clearly aimed at Julie. Yuck. Alan had looked up the kayaking deal before the trip, and was already booked for a tour in the morning. He was pretty sure the guy was full of shit. The company was independent from the resort. And it was owned by a local family, none of whose pictures on the website had remotely resembled this jackass. “Owner. Right.”

  “So are you two here together, or...?”

  Alan said yes, half expecting one of those classic comedy moments where Julie said no at the same time. She didn’t, and a moment of maximum awkwardness descended while the dude processed Alan’s response, and Alan tried not to look surprised. She met his eyes, then rolled hers toward the jackass, obviously on to him.

  After a few seconds, Todd shrugged and waved his glass toward the bar. “Well, I was about to go for a refill. Nice to meet you, Judy.”

  “Julie,” she corrected him, with a tight smile.

  “Sorry. See you around.”

  They watched the guy disappear into the crush. Alan was suddenly full of adrenaline, the same rush that followed a near-miss scare on the freeway. Something was happening, some vital piece of data working its way to the surface of his brain, and he didn’t even notice at first when Julie started talking to him.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Earth to Alan. I said that was definitely a bullet dodged. Wow, how much have you had to drink, anyway?”

  His mental code finished compiling, and the result ran before he could stop it. “I like you.”

  “Um. Okay. I like you, too. And you’re definitely cut off.”

  He turned to her, shaking his head. “No, this isn’t alcohol talking. I mean it. I like you, Jules. I...I like like you.”

  He watched her face, loving how expressive her big features were, the way her eyebrows and the curve of her mouth telegraphed her thoughts before she even seemed to know them herself. Whatever she was thinking, he could tell it wasn’t the painfully careful blow-off he’d feared.

  “You like like me? Really? Are we in middle school all of a sudden? I’m capable of handling jerks on my own, Alan. If this is about Todd, I figured out he was an asshole all on my own.” Her eyes looked everywhere but into his. She was doing some processing of her own.

  “This isn’t about him, and you know it. This is about you and me.” He put a finger under her chin, tipping it up to bring her gaze to his. The only other time he’d done that, they’d kissed. This time, Julie caught his wrist and pulled his hand away, keeping her eyes trained where she damn well pleased, which was somewhere around his shoulder. But she didn’t let go of him. Her fingers curved around his wrist, exploring the skin there as if they had minds of their own. “And this is definitely not middle school.”

  “Isn’t it? You see some guy hitting on me at the dance, and suddenly you’re all interested? Pretty sure I’ve seen this scenario on every made-for-preteen TV show ever produced. I thought we agreed after that one time. Not explicitly, but it seemed like we were on the same page about the idea. It wasn’t smart, it could wreck our careers, not to mention our friendship. We want different things out of life, anyway—”

  “We do?” That part wasn’t something they’d ever discussed. Julie had come up with that one on her own. Almost as though she’d spent some time convincing herself. “I don’t remember agreeing about that. I don’t remember even talking about that. Why won’t you look at me?”

  She flicked a glance his way, a fleeting reconnaissance of his expression, then looked away again. “We’re both tired from the trip, and we’ve probably had too much to drink. Which means this isn’t middle school. It’s freshman year of college, the official time for making terrible decisions under the influence.” But her hand stayed on his skin, tracking up the inside of his forearm. And though her eyes looked elsewhere, she had leaned in toward him, her body expressing everything her words didn’t. Her posture gave him hope, made him bold.

  “It isn’t middle school or high school or college. Because if it were, I wouldn’t have the balls to do this.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, pulled her in and kissed her.

  * * *

  Sand, moonlight, warm air, common sense. All of it faded away against the sensation of warm lips and hot tongue against hers, and the sweet sliding tug of pure lust. Damn, the boy can kiss. She’d forgotten that, pushed the memory deep, along with the way it felt so much like something they ought to be doing. Felt so absolutely right.

  He made love to her mouth with his, and it made her long for the real thing. But she wasn’t tipsy enough to avoid reality forever. This was Alan she was kissing. Alan whose hands were cupping her waist to press her tighter against his body. His really very nice, surprisingly muscular body. Familiar from hugs, from casual touches, but almost completely new in this context. The kiss went on, far longer than their single previous encounter had lasted. Long enough to cement the reality of it in Julie’s
mind. Too long—and far too good—to brush off, to pretend away or excuse with mistletoe.

  She’d spent so much time convincing herself it was a fluke, her response to him that night. The product of excitement, novelty, and the lure of the forbidden. Those elements still applied, but by the time they came up for air, Julie could no longer tell herself that those were the only reasons she felt the way she did. She knew what that sick jolt had been, when she realized Amanda was going to try hooking up with Alan. Jealousy, plain and simple. It was one thing to send her friends off on a few dates she secretly didn’t think would go anywhere, another thing entirely to watch it play out in front of her as they worked their way up to a sexual encounter. Her first instinct had been to snatch Alan away from Amanda, get between the two of them somehow, and she was a fool to think that had anything to do with wanting what was best for her friends. She’d been acting like a dog with a bone it wanted to guard, but telling herself she had no interest in chewing on that bone. Ridiculous. Of course she wanted to chew on the bone. The dog always did.

  But she wasn’t a dog, she was a human, and humans rationalized. They tried to make bargains with themselves, to find ways to believe that what they wanted was the same as what they ought to have. “We could try it. I guess. It would be safer, right? Better than picking up strangers to hang out with.”

  Alan laughed, his chest brushing against hers, shoulder muscles jumping under her hands. Which were up around his neck. When had that happened? “Yeah. Safe as houses. Three years of pent-up curiosity, suddenly let out of its cage. Totally risk-free.”

  He made it sound like they were wild animals. The notion shivered through her, making her aware of how little she had on, how exposed she already was. How ready. Her arousal felt as obvious as a blinking neon sign, a bullhorn splitting the air on a quiet day. “You have three years of pent-up stuff? This is news to me. I thought you weren’t that into it the first time. You never said anything. You started your little thing with Mallory like two weeks later.”