Page 67 of If This is Love

Jax began thumping his tail wildly on the rug, and there was nothing like a good old fashioned dance party to perk anybody up, so I started clapping and stomping my foot in time to the beat in front of my excited dog.

“Come here, Jax. Dance with me,” I said, leaning down to clap in front of his face. He obediently stood and placed one paw in my hand, and I swayed my shoulders from side to side. “There you go. You’re a good dancer, baby boy!”

Gabe glanced over his shoulder at me, and I gave him a big smile as I set down Jax’s paw, snapping my fingers with the beat and shimmying as I turned a slow circle.

“Put down that laundry, Gabe!” I chirped, feeling a little silly, but he was either going to have fun or laugh at me, so either way, he wouldn’t be feeling down anymore. Totally worth it. “You can’t just fold laundry during this song. You have to dance.”

“Ha.” He scoffed. “I don’t dance.”

“That is totalbull.” I snorted. “A man who loves The Supremes and has vintage Motown records is a man who dances.” I wagged my hand at him. “Come here.”

He rolled his eyes so hard they nearly fell out of his head, but he tossed the shirt back in the basket and took my hand. I led myself through a turn, gripping his fingers as I pushed his arm high enough for me to duck under it, and then picked up his other hand and made him shimmy his shoulders along with mine.

It took about thirty seconds of forced shimmying for him to crack a real live, bigger-than-ever smile, and then… helaughed.

It was joy-filled, beautiful, deep laughter. I’d never heard laughter like this before, but it felt sacred somehow. Like very few people were allowed to hear him laugh like this, and that same pang kept rattling my heart. The one that ached and throbbed in a good way because he was so endeared to me. I had to laugh to keep from choking up, and I spun again and drew myself close to him.

My arm draped across his shoulders, and his hand held mine at the level of his chest, and Gabe proved that,yes, he did actually dance. Pretty well, in fact. We spun and swayed right there in the middle of his small living room while the timeless music filled all the remaining space between us, little as there was. One of his hands was firmly planted on the small of my back, and his fingers softly tapped the beat against my spine.

We spun again, a little faster this time, and I reflexively braced closer to him just to keep my balance. But once I was there, I stayed there. My cheek only a breath from his. So close that his thick, dark stubble was tickling my skin. He was warm and solid, and he had such an effortless command of his body and movements that my mind went straight to the gutter.

Midway through the song, Gabe started to slow down to about half the tempo but kept his firm hold on me. He led me through another turn and drew my cheek to rest against his.

“Ruth.”

“Yeah, friend?”

“I think I blinked out for a second,” he said, speaking quieter like he was telling me a shameful secret.

“I could tell,” I said gently, smoothing my hand between his shoulder blades. “It’s okay, Gabe.”

“I can’t remember what we said, but I know what we were talking about,” he continued, still murmuring, still holding my whole body flush against his, still acting like he’d done something horrible and needed to confess. “We were talking about something that set me off. Thinking about being set off sets me off. And sometimes I just blink out. I’m sorry, Ruth.”

I leaned into him, relaxing into his hold on me and following his slow, steady rhythm and thinking it felt so nice I wouldn’t mind doing it for the rest of my life. “I thought we weren’t apologizing, Gabe.”

His chest reverberated with a low, quick chuckle. “No, ma’am. Only appreciation.”

I patted his shoulders as we slowly turned again, and he tightened his hold on my waist. “That’s right.”

“And I appreciate that you’re the opposite of eggshells.”

I pulled my face away just enough to look at him. “What do you mean?”

He gestured with a lift of his dark brows. “Just now in the kitchen. If I pulled that shit with my ex-wife, there’d be eggshells all over this place. You’re the opposite of that.”

A sad smile pulled at my lips. “You know, you can tell a lot about a person by what they appreciate about other people.”

He gave me a salty smirk. “Oh yeah? What does that tell you about me?”

“It tells me you were married to someone who had no idea how to love you. Because someone like you should never be in a situation where you feel like there’s eggshells all over the place, least of all your own home. If she knew how to love you, you wouldn’t even be thinking about eggshells.”

“If she knew how to love me, we’d still be married,” he countered.

“I believe it.” We were swaying so slowly now that it wasn’t even close to the music. “That’s the other salt in the wound. You upheld your end of the bargain, but you didn’t get any of the things promised to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” I echoed, nodding, my chin lifting, “I get that. That’s kinda what it’s like being… y’know… what I am.”

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