Page 87 of Once Smitten, Twice Shy

“What?” she leans in. “I couldn’t hear you!”

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

From the edge of my vision, I catch hands waving from the dance floor and glance up. Toni and Hamza, Kate and Christopher, Bea and Jamie, gesturing to join them.

Juliet grimaces and steps so close, we’re nearly chest to chest. “It’s so loud in here!”

She’s not stating the obvious. She’s acknowledging it for me, saying without saying it that she understands this might not be a great fit for me. Because she knows how draining I find these kinds of environments. In the past, when even an implication of my sensitivities and limitations would come up, prideful defensiveness would rear its ugly head. But not anymore. Not with her. With Juliet, I don’t feel self-conscious—I feel seen.

And when her hand gently wraps around mine, squeezing tight, I’d swear she had my heart in her grip, because it squeezes, too. Not just because I feel a rush of comfort from her touch, but because we’re standing here, where her sisters and friends can see us, and Juliet doesn’t seem to care at all.

I hope it means she doesn’t want to hide our closeness anymore, whether that closeness is practiced or real. Because the truth is, I don’t want to hide it anymore. I don’t know ifIcan hide it, either.

I clasp her hand and thread our fingers together. I watch her gaze drift down to my mouth, then back up. The music’s beating around us, everyone from the group who’s out on the dance floor hollering at us to join them.

I bend a little and say, close to her ear, “They’re telling us to come dance.” I hope, in the same way she showed me she knows this party could be hard but left me room to tell her what I can manage, that I’m showing her I see how this could be hard for her, too, that I’m putting the ball in her court, to tell me what she feels up for.

I’ve noticed the cane she’s holding, and unless it’s purely decorative for her costume, it probably means her knee’s giving herproblems. I hope she’s not hurting. But if she is, I trust her to tell me the truth.

Juliet smiles up at me, and that sparkle in her eyes says she heard what I didn’t say, that I made her feel not self-conscious but seen, too. “I could go dance for a bit…How about you?”

I nod. No, I’m not going to be able to take this chaos for long. But until I hit my limit, I’m going to dance my ass off with Juliet, drench myself in the pleasure of being close to her, watching her shine, happy and carefree with the people she loves.

She wraps her hand around my biceps and turns us toward the dance floor. “I know this is probably very inappropriate,” she yells over the noise, “but I’ve got to ask: are you wearing anything under that kilt?”

I wiggle my eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

—

The third time Juliet’s knee gives out, she’s got her hands around my neck, her cane hanging from the crook of my arm, and I’m glad, because I can tell she was about to go down hard.

I’m braced for the embarrassment she seemed to feel when it happened on our first practice date, but it never comes. She just clutches my neck tighter and says, “I’ve hit my wall here.”

I nod. I have, too.

Over the past two hours, we’ve been out on the dance floor, then packed in with the group at the booth, gulping water, conversations stacked one over the other, then back out to the dance floor. My brain’s buzzing from it. I’ve had the best time, but I’ve just about hit my limit.

She leans in a little and says, “Want to get out of here?”

I frown, confused. My gaze drifts to her sisters and all her friends, scattered on the dance floor. She’s not worried they’ll see us leave together?

“You sure?” I ask.

Her mouth quirks with a smile. “I’m sure. One sec!”

She plucks her cane from my elbow, then slips off toward her sisters, head bent as she talks to them. They both glance my way and smile. I have no idea what she’s telling them, but I’m relieved that, whatever it is, they seem okay with it.

Juliet circles back to me and wraps her hand around my arm. “How do you feel,” she yells over the music, “about getting a little surprise of your own?”

—

I don’t usually like surprises, but I trust Juliet. She asks if I want to take her straight home—I do, not because I’m tired and ready to head back to my place, but because I want to take her back to her apartment and tear off her clothes and make her come until she begs me to stop, until she can’t take one more ounce of pleasure.

Obviously, I can’t tell her that, so I tell heratruth, if not the whole truth: that I’m not tired, that I’m up for something else, so long as it’s not real loud.

And with that criterion, we set off, following not the instruction of my Australian Siri but of Juliet, who holds her phone close to her chest and tells me what turns to make and when, determined for me not to peek at the map on her screen.

I’ve been following her directions dutifully, and as I make our last turn, veering left, I still don’t know what to expect of our destination, which is allegedly right around the corner. When I see what it is, I lurch on the brakes.

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