How to Fail at Flirting(17)
“Thank you.” My voice came out softer than normal.
“No problem.” His smile faltered, and his eyes sparkled with an emotion I couldn’t place.
Did he feel that, too?
We stayed like that for a few moments, the rush of the water below us mixed with the sounds of laughter and people moving behind us. Over the normal noises of the pier, a Latin beat floated around us. There was a concert and a gathering crowd not far from us.
Jake craned his neck. “It looks like people are dancing over there. Want to try?”
I never danced in public. My dad teased me that whatever musical skills I should have gained from being of both African and Mexican descent seemed to have been obliterated by my rural Iowa upbringing—I had no rhythm. I shook my head slowly. “I have a hard rule about dancing in front of people.”
He raised an eyebrow. “C’mon, I’m sure if they’re public lessons, it’s just the basics.”
I bit my lip again, looking over his shoulder at the gathering crowd. A tinge of worry skittered through me, unsure about interrupting this odd sensation of confidence I felt standing and talking with him. I was getting used to our back-and-forth, gaining certainty he was into me. “I am a terrible dancer. It will be embarrassing.”
His grin was easy, and he wasn’t what I’d expected when we met—I’d been so sure his polo shirt and developed muscles were cues he’d be cocky and demanding. Jake was a nerd—a hot nerd—and seemed completely comfortable with himself. “Are you worried that knowing you’re a bad dancer will make me like you less? Give me some ammunition to use later?”
I winced and willed my body to not recoil. Ammunition is exactly what I’m worried about. “I don’t know,” I said, glancing at the growing crowds, then back to my date.
“What if I told you something I’m bad at? Then we’d be even, right?”
“Maybe . . .”
“Imagine the shortest, least-coordinated person you knew in high school, the one who wore suspenders to gym class and corrected everyone’s grammar. The grown version of that guy gets picked for basketball teams before me,” he said with a straight face. “I am horrible. People think because I’m tall, I might have skills, but I can’t make a free throw to save my life.”
“No one ever taught you?”
“No,” he hedged, squinting one eye and twisting his face. “I was taught. Repeatedly. My dad’s a high school basketball coach, and my twin sister played in college. I just never could get the hang of it. My buddy Eric asked me to consider just keeping stats for our rec league instead of actually playing.”
My lips turned up at his story, and I had to hide my amusement. Something about the image of my tall, broad companion missing shot after shot from the free-throw line eased my mind. More than the image making me smile, his ability to admit it, to just put his shortcomings out into the world to make me feel better . . . that was unexpected.
“Did I convince you to dance with me?”
I raised my arms over my head, positioning my hands the way my dad had taught me in my childhood driveway, and mimicked shooting a basket. “Nothing but net.”
Do something embarrassing. Here goes nothing.
He reached for my hand, lacing his fingers with mine, and we walked together toward the crowd, where the music blared from large speakers, the percussion and horns building a palpable energy around us. Jake gripped my hand tighter as we ducked through the throng of bodies.
Onstage, a man with a microphone instructed the crowd. Near us, a middle-aged couple in matching blue T-shirts and jean shorts held each other, and two women in their seventies juggling brightly colored cocktails and pretzels ignored the instructions and made up their own steps.
The voice boomed from the stage. “Okay! Let’s get going, now that we’ve learned the basic steps.”
“We missed the beginning already,” I said into Jake’s ear.
He shrugged. “We’ll catch up.”
“Jake!” I hissed again, a touch of panic rising in me, not knowing what would come next. I looked at the couples near us to see their movements, trying to memorize how they moved to the loud beat.
“We’ll be fine,” Jake encouraged as he slid his arm around me, his palm resting against a shoulder blade. “Follow my lead. I’ll step forward and you step back, and then the other way.” His lips grazed the top of my ear, and I willed him to trail down to my neck again to that spot that had made me shudder in anticipation the night before.
From the stage, the voice boomed through the microphone. “And one, two, three.” Around us, the crowd undulated like a wave.
Jake pushed toward me gently, stepping forward with one foot, but I was focused on what the woman next to me was doing and I didn’t move in time, so his body collided with mine. He chuckled and spread his fingers across my back, which felt amazing, and I got distracted and stepped with the wrong foot the next time, bumping into his chest again. My gracelessness knew no bounds.
How does everyone else already know how to do this?
I growled at myself, huffing out a heavy breath and pausing my movements to catch back up to the beat. All I had to do was step forward and back, right? I have a flippin’ PhD. I can figure this out.
“You’re doing great,” he encouraged, squeezing my hand.