him all night. There has yet to be a song where Ran hasn’t had one—or two—girls pressed up to him like they’re an article of his clothing rather than a separate human being. It would be nauseating to watch even if it wasn’t Ran they were pushed up against. I’ve been working hard at choking down the bile that’s crept up my throat all night, so the constant flow of drinks from Trav has been a welcome, and necessary, gesture.
My phone buzzes across the tabletop.
Cora: Stop sitting there.
Me: How do you know I’m sitting?
Cora: Because you’re wallowing, and when you wallow, you sit. How many wallowers do you know that dance their ass off?
Me: I’m dancing right now.
Cora: Bull. You can’t even walk and chew gum at the same time. Texting and dancing would be like solving the rubix cube while climbing Mount Everest for you.
Me: Sorry. Currently dancing, no time to chat.
Cora: You’re a sucky liar. Seriously, get your pretty little ass out there and all up on him. What is the point in wearing that skirt if you don’t?
Me: I was just asking myself the same question—why am I wearing this ridiculous skirt?
Cora: The only thing that is ridiculous is you. Don’t text me until you’ve danced with him. I mean it.
Me: Whatever.
“Hey Maggie.” I lift several inches off my seat, startled by the sound, and drop my phone onto the table. I fumble to pick it up quickly, but it slips between my sweaty fingers. I swallow my heart back into my chest where it belongs. Ran crosses his arms and rests his elbows on the table’s edge. He hovers his upper body forward, leaning toward me. “You gonna come out on the floor or sit here and text your boyfriend all night?”
I give him a puzzled look. “I’m not texting my boyfriend.”
“So you’re texting someone that’s not your boyfriend. Don’t you think he’ll have a problem with that?”
The techno beat that rattles the frames on the walls surrounding the secluded booth morphs into a slower pulse, and everyone in the club shifts their swaying movement to account for it. I look up at Ran and just shake my head, trying to find words, but forming them feels like I’m relearning the entire English language. I can’t make sense of anything when I’m with him. This is such a weird conversation.
Ran rubs his hands over one another. “Alright,” he huffs, sifting his fingers through his dark hair. “If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’ve tried two different ways now to ask if you have a boyfriend, Maggie.”
My eyes shoot up at him. “What—?”
“I’m asking if you have a boyfriend.” He cocks his head slightly and draws closer. “So, do you?” Damn. I can smell that clean scent of his like they are pheromones and it disorients my senses.
“No,” I stammer. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
Ran looks pleased with my answer and nods his head slowly. “Good. Because we already went over the whole you not liking your boyfriends dancing with other girls thing, so I figured it would go the other way too—your boyfriend not liking you dancing with other guys and all. That was, if you had one.”
I drop my eyes back to the cherry stem. I can’t look at him. I can’t listen to him talk about boyfriends, girlfriends…relationships. I can’t do this. I twist the stem ferociously between my fingers, trying to knot it, trying to occupy my brain and my energy elsewhere. Anywhere else.
“Here.” Ran slips his hand across the table and steals the stem out of my grasp. The brief contact of skin-on-skin jolts my entire body, even though just the tips of our fingers touch.
Ran pops the stem into his mouth. His lips move sideways, pursing and twisting across each other, and I can tell that his tongue is working hard on something behind them. My stomach clenches and I hold in all my breath, because if I continue breathing right now it would be humiliatingly shaky and unsteady. After about ten seconds, Ran draws the stem out and waves it in front of my face, teasing me with its perfectly knotted center.
“Is this what you were trying to do?” he smirks and tosses it at me. It sticks to my shirt and I peel it off quickly. I run it between my fingers unintentionally, and when I realize it’s been in his mouth and how unreasonably faint that makes me, I wrap it up in a cocktail napkin