Romance: Dance with Me (California Belly Dance Romance Book 2)

by Cameron, DeAnna

  “Actually, they made mine,” he said. “It’s been an epically bad day so far.”

  “Girl trouble?” Melanie asked with a smirk. It was supposed to be a joke because—c’mon, this was Taz the Romancer. Everyone knew the only trouble he had with girls was fitting them all into his limited schedule.

  So it took her by surprise when he said, “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Seriously?”

  Abby slanted her a hard look that screamed, “Shut up.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Abby said, using her sweetest, most sympathetic voice. “I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, brushing it back over his shoulder. “I’m not. It’s my sister.”

  Melanie choked. Not a small, polite hiccup, but something loud and nearly obscene. Abby just stared.

  “That came out wrong,” Taz said, almost laughing. “I’m not seeing anyone, but my sister thinks I am. Now she’s coming out to meet her.”

  “To meet the girlfriend who doesn’t exist?” Melanie asked.

  He nodded. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but she’s been on my case about everything lately, including settling down. She misunderstood something I said. It just seemed easier to let her believe I had met someone. Until she said she was coming out to meet the mystery girl. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “You could try telling her the truth,” Abby offered.

  “I know. I should,” he said. “And I will. I’m just not in a big hurry. She’s difficult under the best of circumstances. This is going to—”

  “I don’t see the big deal,” Melanie interrupted.

  Two pairs of eyes shot her direction.

  “What? Like you couldn’t find someone in a heartbeat who was willing—eager even—to pretend she was your girlfriend?”

  His expression twisted. “Yeah, maybe too eager. I wouldn’t want to give someone the wrong idea, even if she was doing me a favor. Besides, she’d have to be convincing. My sister’s pretty sharp. She’s got the brains in the family.”

  That wasn’t a surprise.

  “But,” Abby said, “what if this mystery girl were getting something in return?” She turned to Melanie.

  Instinctively, Melanie shook her head. She didn’t know what was brewing beneath that black ponytail, but she knew that devious look. She knew that tone.

  Abby continued. “If she were getting something in return, she’d be motivated to make it convincing.”

  Taz looked curious or confused—it was hard to say which. “Something like what?”

  Crap. Melanie’s heart raced, and her palms burned. She would have made a run for it if there wasn’t an obstacle course of boxes between her and the door.

  “I was just thinking that Melanie here…”

  “Oh no,” Melanie groaned aloud. “You are not going to do this. Not now.” She stared at her friend, hard and with what she hoped was threatening malice.

  Abby ignored the protest. “Melanie,” she repeated emphatically, “is planning to audition for the Divas in a couple weeks. And I’m sure it would be a big help to have someone who knows the ropes offer a little coaching beforehand. Would you consider that a fair trade?”

  Melanie glanced around at the cash register, the scarves, the jewelry display, looking for something to hurl at her friend to end this embarrassment. Instead, she hurled her words. “Honestly, you can’t expect him… or me… or—”

  “Hold on.” Taz cocked his head to the side and stared at Melanie. “If you’re serious, you’d be kind of perfect. My sister would hate you.”

  “Hey,” Melanie cried, “you don’t have to be mean.”

  He threw his hands up in defense. “I’m not. I mean it in the best possible way. It’s just your tattoos. She can’t stand them, especially on women. If I know her, she’ll back off the minute she sees you. I think it might work.”

  “What about the coaching?” Abby piped up.

  “I can’t promise you a spot or anything,” he said, “but I’ve seen what Garrett and his choreographers tend to like and not like.”

  Abby’s face could hardly contain her grin. “What do you think, Melanie? You’ll do it, right?”

  Was she serious? They both seemed to think this stupid scheme could work.

  Taz turned to her with a big, goofy grin. “C’mon, Melanie,” he cooed. “Wanna be my pretend girlfriend?”

  Why was her heart jumping inside her chest? Why did she feel like she was going to throw up? This was stupid. She shouldn’t even care.

  Abby sidled up to her like a car salesman on the make. “You’re single now and you’re going to be spending your time preparing for the audition anyway, right? Just say you’ll do it. What do you have to lose?”

  My integrity? My sanity?

  She was not going to be Taz Roman’s pretend anything. Every ounce of her screamed against this ridiculous, terrible, awful idea. “No way,” she blurted. “Absolutely not.” She glanced at the wall clock and slammed down the scarf she was holding in a death grip. “I’ve got to go.”

  She snatched up her purse and stormed out of the boutique, kicking aside the empty boxes in her way.

  | 4

  Once Melanie was cruising up Harbor Boulevard in her ’68 Squareback with the window down, her elbow propped on the ledge, and rockabilly music blaring through the speakers, she felt better. Not great, but better.

  She could breathe. She could think. Even with this hot wind pressing on her, smashing the barrel curl of her bangs against her forehead. She hardly noticed the swelter of the heat wave or the temperatures rising with every passing mile, taking her farther from the cooler ocean breeze and closer to the hot cauldron that was the center of Orange County.

  It was still an improvement from the studio and Abby’s ambush. She focused on that as she pulled into the Bella Garden Mobile Home Park, a raggedy corner of a place wedged between the 22 and 55 freeways. She rolled through the gravel lane till she saw her mother’s 1970s powder-blue single-wide with the bent window screen and the sun-bleached awning hanging limp and crooked over the porch.

  She crunched along the gravel until she reached the screen door and pulled it back. She paused. Should she knock? Barge in? She’d been back a week, and she still wasn’t sure.

  “Well, come in if you’re gonna come in,” a nicotine-soaked voice bellowed from inside.

  She sighed. Glad to see you, too, Mom. She smoothed her hair and turned the knob.

  Ginger Drake was in her usual place—the old brown recliner, with an ashtray and a can of cola at her elbow and that black box of a television perched on the shelves in front of her.

  Melanie went to the living room curtain that had once been a cheerful lime green but was now bleached into a sickly pastel shade. She pulled it open, letting in a hard stream of late-morning sun.

  “Don’t do that.” Her mother winced like a creature from a horror film. “It puts a glare on the TV. Close it up.”

  “You shouldn’t sit around in the dark all day, Ma. You could grow mushrooms in this place. It’s not healthy. It’s a nice day outside.”

  “No, it’s not. Too damn hot.”

  Melanie couldn’t argue with that. It was cooler in here. That ugly window-box air conditioner rumbled like a lawn mower, but at least it worked. If only it could do something about the smell of cigarettes and disdain. She pulled the curtain halfway back over the window and settled into a chair at the dinette table that filled the tiny space dividing what her mother considered the living room and the kitchen.

  She glanced at the ice pack strapped on her mother’s right foot with a bandage. “Did you make a doctor’s appointment yet, like I asked?”

  “Oh, get off your high horse. I don’t need you telling me what to do. I’m still your mother.” Her eyes never veered from the flickering screen. “I’m not goin’ to a doctor. They just want your money. Cut you up or put you on pills, or both. Usually both. No, thank you. I can live with bunions.�
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  Even from this distance, Melanie could see the swelling was worse. “You have to do something, Ma. You can’t just sit here.”

  “I get around just fine. What about you? You went to bed early then snuck out before dawn. No goodbye, no note to say where you were going or when you’d be back. This isn’t a hotel, you know.”

  Melanie glanced around. If it were a hotel, she’d be having a word with the manager about the maid service. “I had things to do.”

  “Always things to do. Always too busy to spend time with your mother.”

  Of course. Her usual complaint. “I’m here now.” She rose and went to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and leaned in, welcoming the cold blast. She needed to put at least a few more feet between herself and her mother. She plunged her hand into the bucket beneath the ice maker and let the chill seep into her bones.

  “Get me a soda while you’re in there.”

  “Sure.” She wiped her hand on a threadbare kitchen towel hanging from the oven handle and, with her cold and stiff hand, she grabbed two of the dozens of cans crammed onto the fridge’s top shelf. Melanie walked them over to her mother and set one on the crocheted doily. She kept the other for herself.

  Her mother looked up at her, the corner of her eyes pulled down. “So what was so important that you had to sneak out at the break of dawn?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking out, but I did want to help Abby with the studio.”

  Her mom grabbed the black brick of a remote and aimed it at the television screen. The channels flipped, and Melanie settled back onto the dinette chair’s vinyl cushion. The television paused on something that sounded like a shopping channel, then moved on to a cooking show, and finally stopped on a home-decorating show.

  “Aren’t you getting too old for that stuff?” Ginger sneered. “It’s a waste of time, you know. All that wiggling around for strangers. It’s disgusting. Is that why your boyfriend threw you out? Your father would never have tolerated that kind of thing.”

  Melanie’s soda can popped as she squeezed a dent into its side. “I’m not ‘wiggling around,’” she said through clenched teeth. “Belly dance requires skill, just like ballet or jazz. Chet and I, we just didn’t work out. I told you that.”

  “Right,” her mom sneered. “Didn’t work out, mmm-hmm. Did you even try? I doubt it. Well, I have a news flash for you, honey: you aren’t getting any younger.”

  “Twenty-three is not exactly ancient.”

  “Maybe not, but you’ll get there soon enough. The way you carry on with that dancing, and dressing up like you think you’re some kind of ’50s pin-up girl. You act like you’re Bettie God-damn Page. You know, she died broke and alone. All those seam stockings and tight skirts didn’t do her a bit of good in the end. Do you think they’re going to do any better for you?”

  “They’re just clothes.” Melanie stared at the condensation collecting on her glass. Like a hundred tiny tears fighting the urge to fall. “It’s just a dance.” She pulled her phone from her purse and checked the time. Had it only been ten minutes? It felt like an hour. If her mother opened her mouth one more time… She jumped up from the table. “I’m sweaty from the drive. I’m gonna take a shower.”

  “Do what you want,” her mother said, never taking her eyes off the screen. “You always do anyway.”

  Melanie turned on the water the instant she entered the cramped bathroom, with its pink porcelain sink and matching toilet. Her mom thought the silver foil wallpaper with fuzzy pink flowers “opened up the room.” Melanie had thought it looked sad and desperate when her mother put it up ten years ago, when they’d moved into the place after Dad left. And it looked even worse now, with its peeling and ripped edges and the water stain in the corner. She stared into the mirror as the steam accumulated around her.

  Why had she come back here? When Abby offered up her couch, she should have taken it. She shouldn’t have let her pride get in the way. A little shame seemed like a small price to pay compared to this churning, aching feeling in her gut. All the guilt, regret, and pain she felt every time she stood under this roof.

  She tried to shake the feeling by peeling off her black yoga pants and the black shredded tee-shirt over the cherry red tank. Other people’s parents softened as they got older. Not Ginger. Every year she just got crankier and more withdrawn.

  When every thread of clothing sat in a pile on the floor and the air dripped with moist, heavy heat, she stepped into the narrow, pink stall. She flinched when the spray hit her like a thousand burning needles. Slowly, oh so slowly, she relaxed into the sensation. The pain seared everything else away: every thought, every worry, every regret. When the water was hot enough, it numbed her to everything else.

  She let it wash away the perspiration from the drive, and let it rinse away her exhaustion even as it turned her skin an angry shade of pink.

  She stayed there, wrapped in the water’s hot embrace, until the heat became part of her, until her flesh burned red, until even the hottest setting no longer had any effect. She turned off the water, wrapped a frayed towel around her, and tried to find her way back to the ordinary world.

  She wiped the fog from the mirror and hardly recognized the face in front of her. No mascara, no eyeliner, no lipstick. Not to mention all the kink and frizz in her hair. All the work from her morning date with her curling iron and the flat iron completely down the drain. She pulled the damp mass back into a ponytail and tried to brush it into a curl. She gave up. It wasn’t like her mother would tear herself away from the television long enough to notice anyway.

  She was wrong.

  “You look like a drowned rat,” Ginger said when she returned to the front room after grabbing herself another soda.

  When Melanie didn’t answer, Ginger poked again. “If you paraded around like that at Chet’s place, it’s no wonder he kicked you out.”

  Melanie closed her eyes. She wished she was someplace else.

  Her mother smirked. “If you knew how to treat a man, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Melanie’s hands balled into fists. She knew she should keep quiet. Anything she said would only egg her mother on. The words came flying out anyway. “What mess exactly? My life is just fine, thank you. If you want to know the truth, I left Chet. I dumped him, Ma. No one ever dumps me.”

  Her mother’s eyes snapped in her direction. Her lip curled with disgust. “I suppose you’re proud of yourself then. You’re too good to be dumped, is that it? Not like your mother. She’s just worthless, right? A doormat a man can wipe his feet on before walking away.”

  “Don’t,” Melanie said, the word clawing through her. “We don’t have to fight about this. Chet and I didn’t work out. End of story.”

  Her mother folded her arms over her house dress. “So you think I’m going to say, ‘Oh, it’s all right.’ Well, guess what, Peaches. It isn’t going to be all right. When are you going to grow up and realize you’re damn lucky if a man is willing to put up with your shit? But, no, you’re much better at pushing men away, aren’t you? You pushed your father away and you’ve been pushing away any man who looks at you twice ever since.”

  Melanie shot up from her chair, tipping the half-filled can and spilling fizzy soda across the linoleum floor. She looked at it, but she didn’t move to clean it up. She grabbed her clutch and her keys instead. “It’s been great spending time with you, Ma. I gotta go.”

  Her mother sat up straight. “Don’t walk out when I’m talking to you, Melanie Jean. You get back in here.”

  But Melanie was already out the door and down the steps. Her hand was on the hot chrome door handle when she heard it. Her mother’s usual parting comment: “You’re worthless, you know. Absolutely worthless.”

  Melanie dropped into the seat behind the steering wheel, cranked the ignition, and drove.

  She drove down Harbor and down Newport Boulevard. Halfway between Newport Beach and Laguna on Coast Highway, she pulled into the cliff-side Shake Shack with her mother’s
words still rattling in her head. Ginger was bitter. She was vengeful. At this point, she might even be psychotic.

  But she also had a point.

  What did Melanie have that was worth anything? A clerical job she tolerated. A crappy car. A string of ex-boyfriends.

  Dancing. That was all she really had. The only thing she cared about, anyway. Feeling herself in the music, feeling part of it, feeling it move through her. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t afford college and certainly never had the grades to get a scholarship. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have family connections to land a great job after squeaking through high school. What she had was dance, and somehow that was going to be her ticket to something better. She’d always known it. She talked about it. She expected it.

  It was no wonder Abby assumed she was going to try out for the Belly Dance Divas. Everyone assumed it. It wasn’t that she’d decided against it. She just hadn’t gotten around to the paperwork yet. There was still plenty of time for that. Plenty of time to put these nagging doubts to rest.

  But then Abby had tried to force her into that arrangement with Taz.

  She made it sound so simple. So easy. Like it was a sure thing. She’d never understand that if Melanie lost this dream, she’d have nothing.

  She couldn’t bear that.

  But now it hardly mattered. She’d made a mess of everything. A mediocre job, a mediocre car, and let’s face it, a worse than mediocre life. Without even trying, she was sinking into the same abyss that had claimed her mother. In twenty years, she would be her mother, hating the world and everyone in it because she’d never had a chance for something better.

  Only, she did have a chance. Taz Roman was offering to help her get into the Divas. How could she turn that down?

  She couldn’t. Even if she was scared. Even if it all came to nothing. She had to try.

  She grabbed her phone before she lost her nerve and dialed.

  “Abby, it’s me. Do you have Taz’s number?”

  There was stunned silence for a fat second, then, “I can do better than that. He’s right here.”