Erasing Faith(14)
“Good?” I screamed in her ear.
She nodded, a smile curving her mouth.
I snapped my clutch purse closed, saving the remaining two bottles for later consumption, and grabbed Margot’s hand once more. Tugging her toward the center of the undulating mob of dancers, I felt my hair grow damp around the temples and wished for a hair elastic to pull it up. I was definitely working up a sparkle in the intense heat created by hundreds of moving bodies.
We reached a point when the wall of people became so thick, there was no way to get any closer to the DJ booth, which was elevated on a high, circular platform. On the lofted stage beside the speakers and sound equipment, four female dancers in skimpy green lingerie and shimmering makeup shook their bodies to the pulsing beat, much to the delight of the male patrons below. Similarly-clad performers were scattered on platforms along the club walls, putting on a nonstop show under the dizzying, multicolored light beams that throbbed in harmony with the song’s tempo.
Every few minutes, confetti would blast from the ceiling in an explosion of color, raining down on the dance floor below, and everyone in the club would raise their arms into the air and scream. The thin, colorful pieces landed on sweaty limbs and stuck like paper-mache — after a few confetti explosions, the entire crowd was awash in rainbow hues, a sea of club-goers covered in scales like some strange species of vibrant, deviant fish. We were an ocean of immoral mermaids and mermen, our bodies pressed flush together, gliding so languorously, it wasn’t hard to imagine the air flowing around us was water.
Iguana was definitely an experience.
Margot and I danced for what felt like hours, pausing only once to finish off our supply of whiskey. When a set of arms wrapped around me and a hard, male body pressed into me from behind, I glanced up at Margot and widened my eyes in question.
“So hot,” she mouthed, flashing me a quick thumbs-up sign before turning to face the attractive man who’d just approached her.
Somewhat giddily, I grinned and gave myself over to the music. All too soon, however, I found my happiness wavering as my partner’s unskilled hands guided me into a inept, inconsistent gyration that stirred horrible flashbacks to junior prom night and called to mind an image of Otto, my childhood dog, humping his bed pillow with unchecked vigor.
Unfortunately, I seemed to be the pillow in this situation.
Either my partner was severely rhythmically challenged, or seriously intoxicated. Judging by the smell of cheap gin emanating from his pores, it wasn’t too hard to guess which.
After five minutes of suffering, I was about to extricate myself from his grasp when, to my surprise, his hold on me suddenly vanished. Above the din of the music, I heard what sounded almost like a low grunt, and then his hands were simply gone from my waist. I managed to spin around in the crush of bodies, but there was no one behind me — as though he’d never been there at all.
Puzzled, I started to turn back to Margot, but halted when my eyes caught on something that sent my heart stuttering. I felt a thrilled jolt of electricity shoot through my system as I stared across the expanse of dancers, straight into a pair of darkly familiar eyes. Eyes I’d been longing to see again, if only to prove myself right — that fate really did have a hand in whatever was happening between me and the handsome stranger. That we would find each other again.
Startled by his presence, I blinked rapidly to clear my whiskey-blurred vision and to reassure myself that he was actually there, rather than a figment of hopeful imagination.
When I opened my eyes not even a second later, he was gone.
There were no signs of him in the crowd. In the place I thought I’d spotted him, two blonde girls in plastered-on dresses were entwined in an intimate embrace. Behind them, a pair of drunken tourists were having a competition to see who could stick their tongue the furthest down the other’s throat. My stranger was nowhere to be found.
It only took a few seconds to convince myself that I’d been imagining things.
Seeing him in the crowd because I so desperately wanted to.
Disappointed, I turned back to Margot and, for the millionth time since I’d walked away from that café without getting so much as his name, I regretted my own stubbornness. If I never saw him again, I only had myself to blame.
Chapter Eight: WESTON
A GODDAMN DISTRACTION
I hated places like this.
Full of trendy music, migraine-inducing light shows, and stupid, superficial patrons.
Clubs like Iguana were all glitz and glamour on the surface level, with their lingerie-clad performers and velvet-draped wall panels, but if you peeled back that thin veneer of glitter, you’d find a black, rotten core. The dark ambiance and sexually-charged atmosphere created a haven for the worst kind of people.
Predators. Pickpockets. Robbers. Rapists.
They were drawn in like poisonous moths to an irresistible flame.
I wasn’t talking about the mobs filling the dance floor, here to have a good time with friends. Not the tourists and exchange students, happy to have a night out on the town, or even the locals who got a kick out of foreign girls-gone-wild.
I meant the ones who lingered in the shadows, who huddled by the far walls. The ones out of the spotlight. They didn’t crave attention; didn’t want to be seen. Their clothes weren’t flashy or form-fitting. They spent their nights watching. Waiting. Preying on the party-goers, who made such easy targets.