Last Dance Read online

  I didn’t care if it was the last dance—I was so doing this guy.

  The music wove us together, bodies in sync, the hook drawing us in. His lips brushed mine, a whisper of a question. Oh yeah. I sank in, letting the kiss from a stranger brew through my blood, dreamier than any drink on the planet. He kissed like he danced, with slow, confident care. Offering a rhythm and running with it once he knew I’d followed. He tasted of peppermint—a candy he’d sucked on to cover the hint of whiskey, which still wound beneath, a waft of wood smoke on a crisp autumn day.

  I melted. Gave myself over to the satiating crash of the music and the sweep of sensual delight that was this man’s mouth. His shoulder muscles strong beneath his silky shirt, his fingers caressing my spine and his clever tongue tracing the inside of my upper lip.

  Magic.

  The lights flared bright as the final chords faded. A protest went up from the dance floor as we all cringed, vampires caught by the light of dawn, nightclub makeup too harsh on pale faces. The lovely dream of music and casual desire abruptly crashed.

  ~ 2 ~

  “Night’s over—everybody out!” The big bouncer boomed the order cheerfully enough, herding people to the door. “Let’s move it along, people.”

  A drunk girl crashed into me, protesting that it couldn’t be that late. In her righteous though misguided conviction, she rocked me back on my heels. Worse, she dragged her date along as she pursued her case with the bouncer, wedging between me and Mr. Mystery. It shouldn’t have been possible, tall as he was, but he disappeared into the crowd. A steady current carried me to the doors, though I fought it valiantly.

  So, I’m not the one who does the chasing typically. Okay, really ever at all because I have my pride. But a girl does not let a five-pointer get away.

  “Wrong way, honey,” another bouncer barred my way. “Doors are behind you. Let’s go.”

  “I have to find my date!” God, I sounded as bad as Drunk Girl.

  “Find him outside.” He made an implacable wall of his body.

  “Charley.” Ice grabbed my arm and tugged at me. “There you are! Let’s go already. Pancakes!”

  My lips still tingled from the amazing Mr. Mystery, but he’d vanished. Kill me now if I’d lost him. “I need to find someone.”

  “Who—the guy you liplocked?” Amy joined us, Julie and Marcia behind her. “Who was he anyway?”

  “I don’t know.” Dammit. “I didn’t get his name.”

  “Well he sure got your number, judging by the way you were all over him.” Julie waggled her eyebrows.

  “Ladies!” The big bouncer glared at us and pointed. “Out already.”

  “Let’s go. We have your stuff.” Marcia took my other arm and they hustled me to the doors, not letting me drag my feet.

  “We’ll spot him outside,” Amy reassured me, craning her neck and helping me search like the good friend she was.

  “How can you kiss a guy without knowing his name?” Julie asked.

  “Did he at least get yours?” Ice threw a glare at Julie as we emerged into the night air of Chicago’s Loop.

  “No. We only had the one dance.” I turned in a slow circle, scanning the crowd streaming away in all directions, coming back around to meet four stern faces.

  “Only one dance—and the last one at that?” Julie shook her head. “You can’t go home with him anyway. You know better than that.”

  “And you kissed him!” Amy, no longer such a great friend, said it like I’d admitted to killing puppies.

  “This is fate intervening,” Ice agreed. “You were in danger. Total backslide, Charley.”

  “You guys—he was a five pointer!”

  “Immaterial.” Julie offered her verdict and the others nodded in agreement. “Any guy can be a five-pointer for one dance. And you know the last dance is particularly perilous for you. You have to pay a penalty for intimate contact before the third dance.”

  “This doesn’t count.” I wanted to stomp my foot, which does not work in stilettos. “This is guy is an exception.”

  “That’s what you said with Jan—remember him? He’s why we have the Charley amendment.”

  “That’s for math,” I fumed. Also why I didn’t do smaller increments than a point-five, because I got confused somewhere around the point-threes. And because martinis.

  “Really all of the amendments are Charley amendments,” Julie said.

  “Penalty time.” Amy folded her arms. “I vote dishes all week.”

  “Oh my god—you people are unreal.”

  “It’s a reasonable penalty. You’d say the same to any of us.” Ice looped her arm through mine. “Now I want pancakes.”

  “You thought up the Rules in the first place,” Marcia added. “No changing them because you feel the pain.” She looked entirely too pleased with herself.

  The crowd had dispersed with no sign of Mr. Mystery. I wanted to weep. How could the universe do this to me? “I don’t want to take him home.” Necessarily. “We got pulled apart by some drunk chick and that’s why he didn’t get a chance to ask for my number.” Because he would have. Except why had he vanished like that?

  “Cheer up, Cinderella.” Ice steered me down the street to our favorite all-night breakfast place. “Maybe Prince Charming left a shoe on the stairs.”

  * * *

  Not only did he not leave a shoe—the guy left no trace of himself. Anywhere.

  Though I talked Julie into going back to the club with me the next night, there was no sign of him. The following Friday heralded the end of my dish-washing sentence, but did not bring Mr. Mystery to back to the dance floor. Though I danced with a few guys, nobody scored above a 1.5—my worst record ever—and I ended up spending a lot of the time at the table with Marcia.

  Much more of that and I’d become a virgin again myself.

  Too much sitting, moping, and not-dancing conspired to give me a vicious hangover the following morning. Which sucked, as I had an audition that afternoon for a new musical that I really wanted to be a part of. Julie, taking pity on me, made me her special Bloody Mary cure—just enough vodka to be anesthetic, lots of spice to clear the brain. A bonus for her that I’d gotten stuck with dishes all week because it had let her indulge in cooking that much more. I might have my flaws, but I cleaned like a demon. No smudges on my dishes.

  “I don’t understand how he just disappeared like that.” I adjusted the pillows so I could drink my Bloody Mary and give Julie room on the couch. “I mean, he grabbed me for the dance. He went in for the kiss. How could he be that direct and then just walk away, never to be seen again?

  “Maybe you scared him,” Marcia suggested, coming down the stairs of the house we shared, wandering through the living room on her way to the kitchen. “Did you call him ‘slick’?”

  “I call all of them slick.” I’d developed the habit on purpose. Made me feel kind of like Greta Garbo. And it reminded me not to take any of them too seriously. Not that I mixed up names—all that often—but, you know, throes of passion and all that.

  “Marcia could have a point,” Julie reflected.

  “She doesn’t because I barely had any time to scare him.”

  Marcia snorted, returning with her herbal tea. “You’re just miffed because he got away.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “She’s got a point, Charley. If you’d banged him, you’d probably already be over him and on the lookout for a new guy.”

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “You’re not? When was the last time you dated a guy longer than a week?”

  “It’s not always me. They move on, too.” Though everyone knew being the dumper ruled over being the dumpee. That isn’t hard to figure out.

  “I’ll give you that.” Marcia sat down and swiped on her tablet. “That it’s not always you. But you’ve already pined over this Prince Charming ditching you at the ball longer than you date most guys. You have to admit something is going on with that.”

  “He was a
fucking five-pointer!”

  “Who you didn’t fuck,” Julie added.

  “Yes!” I pointed at her. “If I’d been able to fuck him as God intended, then I wouldn’t be all torn up about this. Now I’ll never know and the curiosity and suspense are going to kill me.”

  Marcia handed me her tablet.

  I stared at it stupidly. “Why am I looking at Craigslist? Is there a psycho sex killer I’ve missed dating?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Don’t you ever read the Missed Connections ads?”

  Julie laid her head on my shoulder to look with me. “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither.” I picked one at random. “Amanda – m4w (Chicago) I know online dating is weird, but I’m not an ax murderer, I swear. I’d still like to ride bikes.” I peered at Marcia. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s for when people don’t know how to contact someone. So, the m4w means this guy is looking for this girl named Amanda, but he doesn’t have her number. He’s hoping she’ll see the ad and get in touch. Give him another chance.”

  “It’s stalker-y.”

  Against my shoulder, Julie nodded. “Look at this one,” she said. “Guy cutting grass on 91 south of bluemound – m4m. We talked as you cut your grass….you had a blue shirt on……we found out we had a common connection. This is a long shot ….you are smokin hot…….if you have any interest in safe play email me back. I am similar in body type to you, let me know if we can get together some time…….tell me your name so I know you are real, starts with M, also your line of work.”

  “Don’t say ‘m4m,’” Marcia corrected her. “Man for man.”

  “Or ‘creepy stalker dude looking for hapless neighbor guy for kinky sex.’ Scary.”

  “It’s romantic.” Marcia snatched the tablet back. “I read them all the time. So many stories there. Plus—it’s not against the Rules. It’s less than a dance. Like round zero. Pre-scoring.”

  We considered the import of that in silence. A door thumped upstairs and Julie rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Ice is awake. She brought one home last night.”

  “What score?” I asked, angling to see the stairs better.

  “Dunno. Didn’t get a look at them. Just overheard.” Julie shared a wall with Ice, who brought men home more than the rest of us. Her family expected her to marry “within the community,” as they put it. Short of arranged marriage, but not necessarily true love. Which she didn’t believe in more than any of us—except Marcia—but she combatted her dread of the future by doing as many men as humanly possible, like she could bank it all up for a lifetime of marital woe and abstinence.

  I’d constructed the initial Rules especially for Ice when we were freshman year roomies at Northwestern, to at least keep her from scraping the bottom of the barrel. Then she’d gotten all science-y with me and added scores because of an unfortunate sliding-scale incident of mine at a fraternity party.

  Of such incidents history is made.

  He clattered down the stairs, still buttoning his jeans, shirt open to show a considerable dough-boy belly, and halted in consternation to find himself the focus of three assessing gazes. Ice, glam in her sequined emerald robe, followed behind him barefoot, rolled her eyes, and shook her head.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said with a half-hearted wave. and we all waved back. He grabbed his cowboy hat—seriously?—and scooted out the door, giving Ice a kiss, which she dodged by turning her cheek. That bad then.

  “A fat cowboy. Seriously?” Julie drawled, echoing my thoughts and making me giggle. We high fived and Marcia shook her head at us.

  “Hey, don’t fat-shame,” she said, pulling her sweatshirt down and scowling at her hips, which were seriously not fat at all. Not that she believed us when we said so.

  “We’re not fat-shaming,” I said somberly. “We’re hat-shaming.”

  Ice picked up Julie’s feet, sat, and draped them over her lap. “Okay, okay. My turn to do dishes. He was only a two and I did him anyway.” She glared at me. “It’s Charley’s fault for dragging us to the damn Lizard Club again, searching for The One That Got Away. That place is played out.”

  “Oh yeah, blame me for your restless hoo-haw.”

  “Besides,” Marcia inserted, ever the peacemaker, “we’re trying something else to find Mr. Mystery. We’re trying a Missed Connections ad.”

  “Oh!” Dark eyes glittering, Ice clapped her hands. “I’m totally addicted to those.”

  “How have you even heard of them?” I demanded.

  “Some of us read more than Playbill.”

  “Have you ever placed one?” Julie asked.

  “No. But I’ve thought about it and I figure it’s not against the Rules. Who knows? Maybe someday one will be for me.”

  “To My Future American Bride.” I assumed an over-the-top Indian accent, undaunted by the mean look Ice slanted my way. “I saw your passport photo. I am a virgin but I have many cows. Come home and bear my hordes of ungrateful children so you can be my barefoot kitchen slave for life. Tell me which number wife you’ll be, so I know it’s you.”

  “Ha ha, Charley. You’d be sorry if I roofied you and shipped you there in my place.”

  “Hmm. I’m not sure I want my abducted-into-a-harem fantasy to be that real.”

  “Besides, you know it’s not like that. My family just has… strong preferences for my choice of husband.”

  Marcia swiped at the tablet. “No fighting or I send you two to your rooms. Let’s compose Charley’s. Woman for Man. Lizard Club, a week ago Friday.”

  “We’re not doing this.” I shrugged Julie off my shoulder and stood, draining my Bloody Mary. “Only sad and desperate people do that.”

  Marcia narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you calling me sad and desperate?”

  “No,” Ice said glumly. “That would be me.”

  Julie and I exchanged glances and Marcia huffed out an exasperated sigh. “None of us are. But you, Ms. Charley, could have any guy you wanted.”

  “Pretty much has.” Ice ducked the pillow I threw at her.

  “It’s true,” Marcia agreed, typing. “You’re like the fairy princess of good fortune. So if anyone is going to come out well from a Missed Connection ad, it’s you.”

  “No ad,” I decided. “It’s too much like chasing the guy.”

  “Stalking the Lizard Club isn’t?” Ice demanded.

  “That’s different.” It really was. I groped for a good reason that it was. “That’s just, like, putting myself in the way of serendipity.”

  The front door opened and Amy, blonde hair in a ponytail, face bright from her morning run, bounced in. “Hey guys! Whose fat cowboy?”

  I made a grab for the tablet. “Don’t do it, Marcia.”

  “What isn’t Marcia doing?” Amy wanted to know.

  Marcia ducked me, turned the tablet off and smiled smugly. “Already done. I’ll watch the replies for you. You’re welcome.”

  “How did you even know what to say? You need the little code in there—like the other ones. You’ll know it’s me if.”

  “Missed Connections?” Amy nodded. “Great idea. Maybe Charley’s Mr. Mystery will see. And not against the Rules, right?”

  “Do you all spend your time thinking up ways around the Rules? Give me that tablet, Marcia.”

  Amy grinned cheerfully. “Pretty much.”

  Marcia slid the tablet under the couch cushion and sat on it, looking stubborn.

  “Dammit.” I grabbed my phone and plugged in the URL, found the new posting. “To the mystery man who kissed me at the Lizard Club – w4m. A week ago Friday, last dance. We knocked on heaven’s door, exchanged a passionate kiss, the clock struck the witching hour and you disappeared. No glass slipper to be found. Give me another clue? Tell me what I was wearing and I’ll meet you. –Cherry Bomb. Oh my God—I can’t believe you gave me that name.”

  “Wow.” Julie whistled. “That’s really good. I want to answer it.”

  “Thanks.” Marcia beamed. “Li
ke I said, I’ve mentally composed thousands.”

  “Cherry Bomb? No.”

  “Oh yes,” Ice agreed.

  “Besides, how do you know so much about what happened?” I frowned at Marcia. Cherry Bomb.

  “I saw it all go down.”

  “We all did.” Amy swigged her fruit juice. “It was exceptionally romantic. Sexy, in that smeared lens way.”

  “It’s true,” Ice said. “He watched you for a while—for several dances—and then made his move. I think he planned to kiss you all along.”

  That kind of stopped me. “Really? Why did he wait so long though?”

  Marcia looked into space, playing it back in her head, a memory reel I wished I could see. “I don’t know. He was maybe making up his mind.”

  Ice frowned. “He came in and stood by the side of the dance floor, watching you, like he’d expected you to be there. I thought maybe you knew him from the theater or something.”

  “No, I’d never seen him before.”

  “But you locked lips anyway.” Julie rolled her eyes.

  “I didn’t plan to. I just sort of… got swept up.”

  “That’s how he looked.” Marcia curled a lock of her hair around her finger, eyes dreamy. “Completely swept up. Mesmerized. And then the way he just kind of wooshed you into the dance, seducing you into that kiss.”

  “Like I said,” Amy pulled out her ponytail tie and shook out her blonde hair. “Very sexy-romantic.”

  “Did he say anything at all?” Julie asked.

  I had to shake off the spell Marcia had created. Seducing you into that kiss. Oh yeah, that was how it had felt all right. “He told me not to go, and to dance with him, so I did.”

  “Of course you did.” Now Ice rolled her eyes.

  “Hey—dance with anyone once. It’s in the Rules. Bringing home a less than two-points cowboy is not.”

  “Ohh, he was yours?” Amy turned wide brown eyes on Ice. “Did he redeem?”

  Ice only snorted. “I’m doing dishes, okay. Leave me alone.”