it and then taped it all up so it was secure and wouldn’t bleed on anything else.
“So, do you need to like wash that dress now or something?” he asked.
“No, washing it won’t do any good. I’m going to have to remake that portion of the dress.”
“So it won’t matter if the dress sits there for tonight then?” he asked.
I looked at him in confusion.
“Come out with me tonight,” he said. “You clearly could use a break.”
“I can’t,” I said with a smile at the invitation. “I have way too much work to do now to meet this new deadline.”
“Come on,” Cai persuaded. “Your hand is injured, and you can’t tell me that it doesn’t hurt. It’s late; you’re upset; you’re not going to be very productive tonight anyway, and you know it. Come out for a little bit and have some fun for a change. You need to give yourself a minute to relax.”
“I’m not sure,” I said as I mulled it over. “I’m not really a club-type person. I don’t even know what I would do there.”
Cai smiled. I think he knew that he had already got me to agree to it. “You’ll hang out with me there, that’s what you’ll do,” he said.
I was already so mad at Arlo and so upset about tonight that I decided to accept Cai’s invitation. He was right; I did deserve a night to myself. I’d been working round the clock and doing jobs that weren’t even supposed to be mine to do. And now all the dates and rules seemed to have changed. Tomorrow I would go back to working feverishly on everything, but tonight, my injured hand and I would go out and have some fun.
“Okay,” I said. As soon as the word came out of my mouth, Cai grabbed my good hand and his wallet, and we headed out.
When we got to the nightclub, it was packed. Cai put his arm around my shoulders as we walked in, and a ton of the people there seemed to know who he was.
“Do you come here often?” I asked him above the noise of the loud music and crowds of people.
“It’s one of the places I come to regularly,” he said. “Come on, let’s dance.”
“I don’t really know how to—”
Too late. Cai pulled me out onto the dance floor in the middle of the gyrating crowd before I could protest. Just as I thought that I would need a drink in order to be able to even attempt dancing, a cocktail waitress showed up with a tray full of rainbow-colored shots. Cai pulled a blue one off her tray and tossed it back and then a violet one, followed by an orange one.
“They say you’re supposed to go in order of the colors of the rainbow, but I like being different,” he said as he lifted his head up and laughed. “Go on, have a few.”
“When do you pay for them?” I asked the waitress.
“No, darling,” she said. “These are on the house. Drink up.”
I took a red one from her tray and drank it in one big gulp. It was actually delicious.
“Can’t just have one,” the waitress said.
I saw Cai working his way through the colors.
“What the hell,” I said as I grabbed a yellow one and opened my mouth.
By the time I had taken each color, I was heavily buzzed, and the deliciously sweet taste of flavored shots lined my lips. Cai grabbed me by my waist and pulled me into him as he danced against me. At first, I was a little worried that he was trying to molest me on the dance floor, but then I remembered that it was Cai, and Cai was just overly sexual. I didn’t even think he could help himself. Besides, it felt kind of good.
The entire club was like one big, wild party. We danced, we drank, we chatted about ridiculous and crazy things with friends of his. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed so hard. It was so much fun that I all but forgot about how miserable I had been earlier on in the evening. The alcohol was doing a great job of numbing my hand. When Cai and I got tired of dancing and our sweating bodies needed a break, we went to sit down on one of the comfortable loveseats in the corner of the bar area.
“This is so much fun,” I grinned at him as he plopped down next to me on