by A. E. Rought
Voices and laughter, thick and thin and jumbled, wash over us once we turn into the main hall. The normal lunch line has turned into a costume parade: slutty angels and trampy faeries, fantasy and horror characters, sports heroes and more. Ally Rhodes shows most of her skin in a Playboy Bunny outfit complete with tail and ears. She turns a catty bitch glare on me, way too predatory for her bunny outfit.
Flutters come to life, battering my insides. I’ve made myself practically invisible since Daniel died. Now here I am, dressed as a princess with most of my cleavage standing out, without my jeans and sweatshirts to hide in. Probably not the best idea with all the gossip flying around since the Dune Eco trip.
The rest of Bree’s friends cluster at the end of the hall. They are a welcome buffer of familiarity, even if the Thespians look like refugees from the Ren Faire. The guys are in tights and puffy pants, with pompous-looking jackets and feathered hats. The girls wear long skirts and corsets, similar to mine and Brees’s, but no one’s costume beats ours in elegance.
“Wow, Bree!” says Amber Miller, a curly-haired girl with a freckles. “You two rock the princess look.”
“Totally rock it,” agrees her brother Michael, who is not surprisingly dressed like a court jester.
As one big group, we join the queue, a knot in the line edging and bumping along toward the open double doors.
Inside, the walls are lined in paper cut-outs of tombstones and crypts, skeletons and ghosts. Crepe streamers drape from the ceiling, white crinkles catching and diffusing the few lights that shine. A sad attempt at a graveyard under moonlight, but it makes me yearn for the fence of Memorial Gardens for a moment. I’m not an artist, but I could’ve done a better cemetery landscape on familiarity alone.
People cluster in the same crowds, the Ins and the Sports, the Outs, and the Thespians. A wolf whistle rises above the mid-tempo music. Bree and I turn in a cloud of silky skirts toward the shrill. Prince Charming the Carrot-Top slouches casually by the entrance to the food service bay. He’s a cheap knock-off of Bree’s designer brilliance: pleather knee high boots, a limp cape, a gold chain over his chest. The drama club is as shocked as I am at his attempt at coordinating clothing.
Then he staggers toward us, swaying like a pirate on the high seas.
Bree’s tight grip shows off her chunk of costume jewelry on her finger, and keeps me from slinking into the shadows. Instead, I try to match her stance, head high, back straight. A tangy, sickly sweet smell ghosts in front of him. Worse than spilled whiskey, more like whiskey and beer mixed together. Add the stagger to the booze stink and there’s only one conclusion. Josh Mason is drunk.
“Emma.” He nearly trips over his feet. “‘Bout damn time you showed some skin!”
He stops a couple of feet from us, his gaze snags on my hips before jerking to my chest and the curves thrust up by the corset. I want to rip his tongue out when he licks his lips. Bobbing in place, Josh squints into the line trickling in the doors. His eyes widen ridiculously huge, then he shoves a hand through his hair.
“Shit,” Josh mutters. “Of course. Of course he’d be here.”
Slinging a dark, greedy look at me, he lurches back the way he came and disappears into the food room. Hopefully he’s finding something to eat that will soak up the alcohol.
An air of ‘what the hell?’ hangs over our drama club. As one, the Thespian clique turns toward the door and the source of Josh’s ire. A couple shrugs and a “harrumph” and someone mutters “There’s no competition for the Best Costume Contest.” Most break away toward the dance floor, or the snacks, leaving me and Bree.
I can’t move.
I see the real source of Josh’s anger. Gravity holds me tight, sourcing from the tall, black-clad villain at the ticket table. He turns toward me, locking me in his mismatched gaze, shadowing the rest of the world, filling the air around me. Even Bree melts from existence.
Alex Franks’s black clothes fit like they were tailored for him—given his father’s money, I’m sure they were. His knee-high boots look dashing not ridiculous; his gloves go up to his elbows over billowed sleeves. A black bandana covers his hair, tied back by the mask around his eyes, but leaves the silly drawn-on mustache and his full lips completely visible. A smile crooks his mouth, washes under the mask and touches his eyes.
“O-o-okay then,” Bree says from a thousand miles away, “I think that’s my cue to leave.”
I might nod…I’m not sure. All I see is Alex. All I hear clearly is my heart beat filling up the emptiness.
He comes toward me, any hint of him being sick is gone. There’s a spring, a purpose to his stride. The dim lighting seems repelled by him, like Alex is a light source of vital, renewed life. When he draws close the energy of a couple days ago has returned, crackling in the space between us. The awe and wonder have returned to his eyes, too—I’m something so much more than common to him.
Alex’s gaze trails slow and easy from the hem of my gown, over the corset ties. It strays on my lips, before brushing my freckles and settling on my eyes.
“Milady,” he says, bowing at the waist.
“Good sir.” My voice is wispy and foreign. I drop a tight curtsy, wishing I had left my clunky brace at home.
The DJ, Jason’s cousin, Adam, leans toward his mic, the beak of his giant Raven mascot costume dangerously close to whacking the microphone when he says, “And now we’re going to slow things down. Couples, this set is for you.”
Guys and girls pair off, blurry in my Alex-focused vision. Devils and angels in short skirts, sports stars and cheerleaders. Alex slides closer, the scent of leather and cologne wafting in my breaths. Inside, I’m alive and tingly, excited to see him again. On another level, though, blooms a strange familiarity. How can this guy I barely know feel like a boyfriend already? On some intimate, emotional level, he feels so much like Daniel.
“Want to dance?” he says, extending a gloved hand.
I can’t resist teasing him. “With you?”
“I don’t see anyone else here.”
“Then I guess you’ll do.”
His laugh is rich, and pulls a bigger smile from me. I take his hand, expecting an electric shock. Disappointment sparks in my chest, replacing the charge I’d hoped our connection would ignite—intangible but so real, and part of what makes Alex who he is. A buzz hums beneath his leather glove, almost a tease in comparison to his raw electricity.
Thoughts jumble with feelings, clogging in my chest. Tendrils of hair tickle on my neck as I follow him, weaving deep into the heart of the dancers. I should be more hesitant. Ally Rhodes is out here, Josh, too, and both of them glaring daggers.
The shyness fights to come free of where I stuffed it. It’s just impossible to feel bad around Alex.
He lights me up like a current through a light bulb.
“Great costume,” Alex says, voice husky as he draws me close. One gloved hand rests on the back of my hip. I surrender and brace my immobilizer on his shoulder. “Really, Emma. You are beautiful.”
“Yeah?” My cheeks flame and I tuck one against his shoulder where he won’t see. “Except the stupid brace.”
“It does fracture the illusion.” His velvet tenor sends chills racing over my skin.
“What illusion?”
Alex’s grip tightens, hugging me to him, squeezing the air from between us. When I look up, I see his eyes smoldering behind his mask. He leans closer, the ties of his shirt brushing my bare skin when he whispers, “That you’re a dream come to life.”
I giggle. What else can I do after a compliment like that?
Then the truth of his words sinks in. Warmth seeps through me, filling me, rushing into the gulf left behind after Daniel’s death. Alex is admitting to what I’ve wondered from the moment we met. The marvel, the disbelief in his expression every morning… He really thinks I’m fantasy become real. Like when he pulled off his shirt for me and exposed so much more than the scars lining his flesh. He’s baring his soul, despite the easy way
he tore himself open.
A heavy sigh escapes me, and if he wasn’t holding me so close, I might melt and pour from this dress.
Alex clings to me like I may honestly be a fairytale princess and when he lets go, I’m going to disappear. He pulls off one glove, tingles following his bare hand as it glides over the curve of my back, up my neck to tangle in my curls. He guides my head to his chest. Thunder rumbles in his heartbeat, and his electric surge slicks over my skin like warm oil.
Neither of us speak. Words have less meaning than time in his arms.
“There’s so much I want to say,” he whispers in my ear. I press my fingers to his lips. My heart jolts when Alex kisses them. Then he curls them in his gloved hand and holds my hand pressed above his heart. “Feel that? It doesn’t beat for me, Emma.”
Then the lighting changes and the reality of the Halloween Ball crashes back in. Spangles of strobe lights stab the comfortable shadows. An upbeat rap song blasts through the speakers after the last slow song dies. Faces appear and multiply, too many and unwanted right now, driving a knife in our embrace to pry Alex and I apart. He ignores Shelley High, looking only at me. Those hazel eyes pull me in, pull me under, the black freckle in the left iris identical to Daniel’s.
It doesn’t beat for me, Emma. What did he mean?
“Can I get you some punch?” he asks, derailing my thoughts by trailing his bare hand down my arm, cupping my right hand and the brace in a gentle touch.
“I’d love some.”
And I need some room, some air to breathe, some time to think.
It doesn’t beat for me.
Alex compounds the emotions surging in me. He lifts my right hand to his villainous lips and kisses my fingers where they peep from the brace. Each kiss gives a tiny shock, and by the time he reaches my pinky, my hand is tingly alive and numb at the same time.
I follow him, mute and blinking, to the edge of the dance floor.
Jason Weller chooses the worst time to reprise his role of protector of princessly virtue. He strides up, chant as fast as his paces, and bats at Alex, shooing him away with, “Be gone, and cease your wooing deviltry!”
Playing along, Alex throws up his hands, takes a step back, the picture of black-clad innocence for a moment. Then, with a rakish grin and sweep of cape, he turns toward the food service galley.
“Thanks a lot!” I tell Jason at the same time Bree appears and says, “What the hell?”
Shaking his head, he thrusts his Bible at me, claims we wayward women need to study it more before he hikes his robes and wades through people toward the restroom.
“So-o-o…?” Bree says, eyebrows arched over her know-it-all grin when she thumbs in Alex’s direction.
“So what?”
“You two were all like…” she twines her fingers and then twists her wrists until her hands turn sideways, “wrapped up in each other.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Do you like him? Because he so-o-o likes you.”
“You keep saying that.” I fan my face and neck with Jason’s Bible. Sacrilegious, maybe, but it’s convenient and I’m a little flushed. “I don’t know Alex enough to say I like him. I definitely have strong feelings for him, but not sure what they are.”
“You said ‘feelings!’” She teases, then elbows me.
Alex’s black bandana and mask appear near the edge of the crowd, two cups of punch in his hands. Josh Mason, true to his hit-and-run tendencies cuts across his path and sticks a foot out. Without spilling a drop, Alex boots his foot away. Foul glares drift after him, and if Josh isn’t muttering a cuss word, he’s saying something out loud and I can’t hear it. Whatever it is, it isn’t nice.
“Ladies,” Alex says and lifts the cups, holy chalices filled with precious wine by the way he offers them to me and my princess twin.
Bree puts on her best flirty smile, and arches her back to squeeze a little more boob out of her dress, then takes the cup. He shifts his masked gaze to me and winks with his left eye when I take the second cup. The majority of the drama club members sift from the churn on the dance floor. Alex discusses the upcoming production with them, at ease, although a wall surrounds him—the one created to both draw people in and keep them at a distance. By the third fast song, he’s standing beside me, brushing my hand with his gloved one.
The fourth song is a popular one, bluesy and still danceable. Half of our number splits off for the sea of strobe lights. Alex’s foot taps as he stands next to me.
“Why don’t you and Emma go dance?” Bree asks.
“I don’t dance.” His answer is immediate, with a ring of practice to it.
“Uh, riiight. You were dancing with Emma.”
He takes a step to the side, slides an arm around my shoulders and guides me until I’m in front of him. My pulse quickens—we’re curve and plane, breath and skin. He slips his arms around my shoulders, hands resting beneath my collar bones. It feels so familiar and right, I ease back against him.
“That’s different,” he says, words as evasive as his outfit is dark.
“So you only slow dance?” she prods.
“Something like that.”
Alex Franks, owner of a proudly cloudy reputation stands behind me, using me like a shield through the last of the fast dance set. When Adam Weller announces another slow dance coming, I’m sure Alex is going to wash my world away again. Instead, he releases me, smiles a caught-in-the-cookie-jar grin and says, “Lady Bree, may I have this dance?”
She gasps, then tosses an apologetic look at me. I roll my eyes, knowing inside she’s dying because she wants to dance with him.
“Gotta make friends with the friends,” he says, and extends his gloved hand to Bree.
“Go on,” I say. He’s not my boyfriend, I think.
Jealousy digs in claws, regardless. How could I not be disappointed when Alex succeeded in making me feel like there was no other person on the planet but us? And the way he was acting a few minutes before… Assumptions are bad, but I made one anyway. I assumed he’d dance with me again. Only me. Watching Bree and Alex, though, I see plenty of space between them, furtive glances my way from both, and Bree almost gloating when she looks my way.
Does she feel the same tingle I do? I wonder.
A thorny, dragging weight pulls at me, someone behind me and wanting attention.
Josh, I think, and then cringe. The beery waft of air confirms it.
“Keepin’ his options open,” he slurs.
“His choice,” I say, trying for unaffected and failing. Seeing another girl with Alex rattles nerves that it shouldn’t. “I didn’t see you slow dance with anyone.”
“’Cause you’re the only girl I wanna dance with.” My skin crawls when he thumps an arm over my shoulders.
“Josh…” I start and try to shrug off his arm. He interrupts with, “Now you’re gonna give me a chance, ‘cause Prince Charming always gets his girl.”
He’s so far from charming right now I have the urge to punch him. Josh squeezes my shoulder to the point of pain, and herds me toward the dancing couples. He reeks of booze, and clenches harder when I try to turn away.
“Let me go!”
“You’re gonna gimme a chance,” he insists.
“Dammit, Josh.” Gut instinct says this is going to go very bad. This isn’t the teasing, insult-game Josh. This is a drunk, grabby, jealous Josh. Fear suddenly rushes my veins. I struggle more, feel his hand continue to tighten, a vice digging into my bones. “You’re hurting me!” I yell. “Let me go!”
Heads pop up and swivel in our direction. Bree’s face is painted in thick swipes of horror. Shockingly, it looks like sympathy on Ally’s face. Alex turns Bree enough to see past her up-swept hair. His jaw clenches, eyes tighten. He whispers to Bree and she shoves him toward us.
Josh paws at me with his free hand, misses my other shoulder and grabs a handful of my hair. Using my bun, he forces me deeper onto the dance floor. Hurt flashes across my scalp, throbs in my shoulder.
Tears burn my eyes, and a panicky tightness grasps my chest. I do the one thing instinct goads me to. I cry, “ALEX!”
Then Alex is there, a solid wall blocking my body from moving further.
“Let her go, man.”
“Screw you,” Josh says, and releases my hair in favor of trying to shove Alex away.
Alex edges closer, putting himself between me and the drunk crushing my shoulder. Stymied, Josh releases my shoulder and helps gravity along by pushing me toward the floor. Alex catches my elbow before the linoleum rushes up at my face. With a dizzying spin, he uses my elbow to steer me behind him.
“Don’t touch me.” Warning thickens Alex’s voice to a threat. Tension riddles his body, everything in his stance promising pain. “And don’t ever touch Emma again.”
Josh bangs his chest and shouts, “I’ll touch who I want!” With a grunt, he slams both hands on Alex’s chest and pushes him into me.
After a little stumble, Alex regains his footing, raises his fists and remains between me and Josh. The strain tightens in him, piano-wire tight.
“Oh, yeah?” The red head’s eyes narrow to a glassy stare. “You wanna go?”
Alex says, “No,” but every inch of him screams, “Yes.”
Not satisfied and acting half-crazed like he did the night Daniel fell and we stayed behind on the balcony, Josh antagonizes Alex, pushing him hard. The tension snaps in Alex, his mask can’t disguise the anger flashing across his face, then he shoves back. Josh topples to his butt in a flail of limbs and flutter of cape. Alex’s fists are up when he says, “Enough. Go home and sleep it off.”
Ugly spots of red blot Josh’s cheeks. Saliva peppers his chin as he sputters that no one tells him what to do, then scrambles to his feet. The drunk bully drops his hands, pretends he’s going to walk away. I watch Alex’s shoulders sink, and his hands follow, then Josh spins and sucker punches him. Alex’s answer is swift, wrapped in leather and slung like a pro-fighter. Curls spring when Josh’s head rocks back.
Blood comes away on Josh’s glove when he wipes at the lip Alex punched. He throws a looping punch, one Alex easily bats away. My protector circles to Josh’s right, forcing him to back away from me.