salt off my hand, I knock back the tequila and wedge the lemon between my teeth. I definitely need to drink.
“So what do you think he looks like?” Kiki asks as she places her shot glass back on the counter and picks up her cocktail. “Tall? Handsome? Or do you think he’s the guy wearing the Wookie costume?”
I follow her line of sight. There’s a Wookie at eighties night? Who knew? But he isn’t holding a box of cereal above his head like it’s a boom-box. “I don’t think that’s him.”
“What about that guy?” She points out a guy in a black leotard, black leather, and a black curly wig. He has a full face of white makeup. Except for a black star over his eye.
He spots us staring at him and sticks his tongue out.
“No cereal.” I choke on my drink.
“Yeah, but what a tongue.” Kiki sighs and I feel like I’m missing the joke.
“Okay so we need to find a guy with a red cereal box? That’s what’s going to differentiate him from what everyone else is wearing?” She raises an eyebrow.
“So it wasn’t the best idea.” Though we both thought it was hilarious when we were making plans. I check my phone. No message. And he’s late. Or we just haven’t spotted each other yet. I mean that probably is it. I send him a message telling him I’ll be near the dance floor. “Maybe we should forget it.”
“Uh-uh.” She grabs my hand. “You’re not wimping out of here until we’ve at least danced to one of these bangers.”
“Bangers? Really?” I hurry to keep up with her as we fight the flow of traffic going in the opposite direction to get to the dance floor. Still no cereal box carrying guys, pirate or otherwise.
“Yes. Eighties music is awesome.” She pulls me onto the dance floor.
“You learned that from Trix, didn’t you?” It’s just another one of those weird slang type things that most of us don’t understand.
She shrugs and starts bopping to the music. “I like it.”
One song finishes and another starts.
“Oh my Lord,” Kiki mouths, her eyes growing to saucers at whatever is going on behind me. Or whoever.
Maybe my perverted pirate friend finally showed up. And he’s either drop dead gorgeous, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is sneaking up behind me.
A hand glides around my upper arm in a firm grip and turns me around.
“Vale?” What is he doing here? He’s supposed to be in Chicago.
He’s wearing a floral button down shirt like the one that Tom Cruise wore in Cocktail. It’s truly hideous, but it matches his eyes. How can he still be so damned sexy?
Furious blue eyes stare down at me. His lips brush my ear and a shiver wiggles its way down my spine. He smells so good, the way he always does. His voice is steel, quiet and furious, “What did you do to your hair?”
I touch the loose fiery strands of my ponytail where they graze the side of my neck. I momentarily forgot that I went all out on this Cindy Lauper costume. It’s a temporary color I sponged on this evening and will come out with the first wash. Well, maybe two washes. “Do you like it?”
“No.” His breath is a hot blast against my pulse point. His hands grip my hips and drag me closer. “I hate it.”
I blink. It’s because it’s me, right? If it was any other girl this hair would make me exactly his type. My hands land on his chest. We’re dancing. Together. It’s strange. It shouldn’t be, but now everything is weird between us. “Well, don’t worry, I didn’t wear it like this for you.”
“I know that,” he says. “You had no clue I was here since you refuse to answer your phone or respond to my text messages.”
“What are you doing here?” My breath catches, because somewhere in my wildest fantasies I swear we’ve been here before. Only he wasn’t angry in my imagination. He was tearing my clothes off.
“I’m here for you,” he says.
My insides clench, because oh boy, that is exactly what he’d say if this was my fantasy. “What does that mean?”
“You’re not talking to me and I really can’t handle that. I needed to fix it. So I volunteered to come work out here for a few weeks. So we could deal with this little issue between us. I went to see you, but you weren’t home. “And now I’ve found you—”
“You just expect us to