Page 31 of The Break-Up Pact

It doesn’t work. I resolve right then and there that I will not be drinking a single drop tonight.

“C’mon, Indiana Jones,” I tell him. “We’ve got a DJ to scout.”

An hour later we are both so ridiculously, laughably out of our depth that I feel like I’m hugging the wall at my first school dance all over again. It’s not that we’ve aged out of the club scene—it’s just that we quite possibly never aged into it. Everyone around us has clearly pregamed and is so at ease dancing out on the floor with reckless abandon that I feel like I’m somehow drunk by osmosis. Like if we actually hit that floor and start dancing, something is going to let loose inside me in a way I’m certainly not prepared for on my own, let alone in front of Levi.

“Well,” I shout into Levi’s ear, “at least we know the DJ can get people dancing.”

“What?”

“The DJ can get people dancing,” I shout.

Levi shakes his head. “Sorry, what?”

“You have no right looking that hot in a leather jacket,” I say, letting the crowd swallow it up with the rest of my words.

Levi shrugs again, shooting me an apologetic look. I save my old man jokes for later, seeing as he won’t be able to hear them now. He wraps a hand around my wrist, gentle but firm, pulling me out of the pulsing nucleus of the club and over to the quieter bar.

“It seems like the DJ can really get people dancing,” he tells me.

I let out a laugh so loud and sharp that Levi catches it like a cold, laughing himself without understanding why.

“Yeah,” I agree. “So far, so good.”

“I have a theory about DJs, though,” says Levi, leaning in close.

I lean in, too, pretending it’s to hear him better when really I just want to inhale more of that woodsy leather jacket again. “Do share.”

“The first key is amping up the crowd. But the second one comes down to a perfect science. You have to recognize when the crowd has reached the most potential energy—has enough momentum for a full liftoff, if you will—and that’s when any good wedding DJ will play ‘Uptown Funk.’”

I feel a grin spread on my face like butter on a warm scone. “‘Uptown Funk’?” I repeat.

Levi works his face into a playful kind of solemnity. “It’s the most universally contagious song there is. But it has to be used wisely.”

“How the hell do you know this?” I ask.

“I work in finance,” he reminds me. “I’ve been dragged to so many weddings and second weddings and third weddings for all the partners at my firm in the last few years that I can basically make a set list myself.”

“Then what are we doing here?” I ask him. “You should be the DJ.”

Levi shakes his head. “I have the knowledge, not the gift. You’ll see. If this guy pulls it off tonight, you’ll see.”

“Excuse the two of you, but am I going to get a single good shot tonight? Go dance out on the floor like regular humans.”

We both startle at the appearance of Sana, who is a staggeringly beautiful sight with her thick hair pulled into a high ponytail, her lips painted a deep burgundy, and her body draped in a slinky, backless silver dress that sparkles like she’s full of constellations.

“Wait. What are you doing here?” I ask. “This isn’t one of our Revenge Ex dates.”

“I’m here for two reasons,” she says, pulling up freshly painted black fingernails. “One, to go home with the hottest guy here. And two, to get pictures of the two of you I can use to continue blowing up your spot for our mutual gain.”

I balk, trying to absorb both the hotness and the audacity of her at the same time. “How did you even know we’d be here?”

Her brow furrows. “You asked to borrow my pumps. There’s literally only one place in Benson Beach worth wearing pumps to,” she says, the duh implied.

“Haven’t we done enough damage to the internet this week?” I ask.

“You forget how fleeting the attention spans of our digitally raised audience are.” She puts one hand on Levi’s shoulder and the other on mine and bodily shoves us both toward the dance floor. “Go out there and do something with one modicum of sexiness. I beg. And then I will leave you alone to stand awkwardly at the bar like the faculty chaperones you’re both destined to become.”

In the DJ’s defense, he has nothing to do with the crimes against dancing that Levi and I commit after that. Because after Sana shoves us onto the floor, we both meet each other’s eyes with an unspoken resolve, and start busting out the dorkiest moves two human beings can possibly bust. I’ve got peace signs drifting along my forehead while Levi starts doing a shuffle like a boomer dad on vacation. I pivot into a scuba diver while Levi starts alternately framing both of our faces with his hands. At one point we both start doing the Macarena, Levi clearly not remembering any of the moves but attempting to follow my lead just the same.

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