Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(60)

“Iris and Miranda still don’t approve?” he asked.

“It’s complicated. I think they get it on the surface. I mean, the way I feel is the way I feel, right? It’s just hard to rewire your brain after seven years of . . .” I trailed off. It didn’t sound quite appropriate to say hating you and your brothers’ guts like it was a hobby or wishing you’d all come down with rare, incurable diseases.

Rich squinted at me. “It’s funny to think, all this time I imagined you would’ve purged me from your mind. Instead, it sounds like you were the leader of my own personal hate cult.”

“Hey. Don’t flatter yourself. We hated your brothers too. And I was hardly the leader. More like a cocaptain.”

“Well, well, well,” said Iris.

“Jesus!” I said, jumping and turning to face her. I hadn’t even seen her coming.

Miranda was beside Iris, and the two of them wore looks that said I had been exactly right about how this was going to go.

“Holding hands?” Iris asked. She wasn’t wearing her uniform, but for some reason, she was actually carrying her nightstick. She lifted it and prodded our hands. “Interesting. Isn’t it, Miranda?”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said to Rich and me. “Iris found the craft beer section and got a little too involved in tasting the best of Norway. She was also hiding the nightstick inside her shirt or I would’ve made her leave it at home. I tried to take it away, and she gave me this.” Miranda held up her arm to show a decent-size red mark on her wrist.

Iris shrugged. “You tried to assault an officer of the law. You faced the consequences. In my book, that’s justice.”

Miranda looked at me like she wished I could save her. I grinned. I had missed my friends. Thankfully, one thing we’d had a lot of years to practice was getting in big, knock-down drag-out fights and then making up. If anything, we always seemed to come out feeling closer in the end.

“It’s okay,” Rich said. “I should warn you. My brothers are here too. I know the two of you—”

Miranda held up her hand and nodded. “Enough said.” She tugged on Iris’s sleeve. “Come on, Officer. We’ve got to get out of here. Bedtime is early tonight.”

“Bedtime?” Iris asked. “I am the law, Miranda. Nobody tells me when to go to bed.”

I could still hear Iris pleading her case as Miranda dragged her back up the street. Apparently, Iris had drunk enough that her nightstick skills were failing her, because when she tried to beat her way out of captivity, Miranda easily caught her wrist and took the nightstick from her.

Rich stuck his hand out toward me and wiggled his eyebrows once Miranda and Iris were gone.

I stared down at his hand in confusion for a few seconds, then realized he wanted a low five for some reason. I slapped my hand down on his.

He laughed. “Thanks, but no. I was asking you to dance.” He nodded toward the shop front where a few local guys were doing a cover of some eighties band I recognized vaguely but couldn’t name.

“Oh no. I shouldn’t.”

“Kira. Come on. Everybody knows already. You said it yourself. We should have fun while we still can.”

“No, I mean for the sake of everybody with eyes, I really shouldn’t dance. I might scar someone for life. You know how they wanted you to think people were killing themselves in Bird Box because of demons? It was actually just images of me dancing everywhere.”

“Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous. It can’t be that bad. Come on,” he said.

I could see that he wasn’t going to give up easily, and the music was catchy. Besides, it had been years since I’d even tried to dance. Maybe I’d grown out of my awkwardness. I summoned up the courage to take his hand and let him drag me into the group of a dozen or so people who were dancing. Most of the people sitting around with their food were watching the dancers, which ratcheted up my nerves a few levels.

The music was relatively fast, and Rich fell straight into what looked like the perfect moves for the song. Nothing flashy, but he clearly had a natural sort of rhythm and grace. I smiled awkwardly and tried to do a more girly version of what he was doing.

I tried a kind of hip-swaying, finger-snapping movement. It seemed like I wasn’t moving my feet quite as much as everyone else, so I tried mixing in a few little kicks to the side. I let my head get into it, too, tilting it to the right or left as I snapped. I had a sneaking suspicion that the end result was something between Carlton’s dance from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Elaine’s from Seinfeld. I laughed anyway. It felt good to dance for once and not care what people thought.

But within seconds, Rich looked like he wasn’t feeling well. He muttered an apology and walked away from where everyone was dancing. I followed after him. I tried to remember if he’d eaten something already and could’ve possibly developed some sort of food poisoning.

“Your face is all red. Are you okay?” I asked.

Rich sank down to sit on the front steps of a store and covered his face. For a split second, I thought he was crying, but then I realized he was laughing hysterically.

At first, I felt outraged. I balled up my fists and glared, but my anger lasted only a second before I found myself laughing with him. I replayed my dance as well as I could in my mind, trying to imagine how it would’ve looked from his perspective.