places her fingers in mine. I breathe out without meaning to. It’s been too long since I’ve experienced her touch.
I lead Haley to the dance floor, and the sensation of her in my arms again is a heady one. Her scent sweet, her skin soft, her body warm. I wonder if she thinks of those nights where we’d spend hours in bed kissing, laughing, and talking, because I do. Almost every day. “Hello, Haley.”
“Hello, West,” she says with a soft smile, but one that edges toward polite.
“Run into the path of any cars lately?”
She laughs, and this time the smile is real. “That was all you, Young.”
It was, yet I fake insult and disappointment. “All these years and you’re still trying to blame me for your poor crossing-the-street choices. I’m shocked. Heads up, I’m spinning you now.”
I turn Haley with the music, then half enact a dip that brings on applause from the peanut gallery of our friends near the mosh pit of toddlers.
The spark in Haley’s eyes appears, and I wish I could go back and throat punch the stupid guy who was more concerned with being free in his twenties than loving this beautiful creature who is currently in my arms.
“I hear you’re a high school guidance counselor,” she says.
“Yeah, I woke up one morning and thought, ‘how can I roll around in the big bucks?’ You should see the bonus I get for coaching girls’ lacrosse. Five hundred dollars. I’m thinking I have enough to retire next year and live in the Caiman Islands.”
Even though she’s aware I have a trust fund that could feed a small country for the next fifty years, my words have the effect I’m looking for—she laughs. I haven’t touched my trust fund, and don’t have plans to in the near future. I want to make it on my own, even on a guidance counselor’s pay.
“Abby said you were a guidance counselor in Japan for a few years.”
I taught English there as well. “I couldn’t resist the perks— free flight to another country.”
Haley doesn’t laugh this time, but instead scans my face. “The boy I knew all those years ago was so determined to be a fighter.”
Being a fighter didn’t bother Haley. It was my attitude that pushed her away. The boy she knew all those years ago was determined to never settle down. “I changed.”
“Why?”
Because I woke up and realized the worst mistake I ever made was letting her walk away. “I figured the best person to help a kid making all the wrong choices is an adult who made all the wrong choices when he was a kid. I think my Masters courses called this empathy.”
I spin us, and there are a few more claps.
“I forgot how good a dancer you are,” she says.
“Did you?”
I expect her to tease me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she says in a soft way as if recalling a good dream, “I remember.”
I meet her eyes, and I try to say everything I should have said to her years ago, “So do I.”
A flash of hurt in her eyes, and instinct causes me to pull her closer. Haley doesn’t resist; in fact, she places both of her arms around my shoulders like we’re eighteen and at prom all over again.
“I was wrong,” I whisper in her ear. “All those years ago, I was wrong.”
Haley grips me tighter, and I’d give anything if she would never let go. The two of us rock back and forth, and when she places her head on my shoulder, I silently wish that the song would never end, but it does. We stop moving, and we stand on the dance floor just holding one another. Haley eventually pulls back. “Thank you for the dance.”
“Does it have to end?” I ask.
The music has switched to a faster song, so she knows I’m not referring to the dance. I want another chance at fixing us. She glances around, and I follow her gaze. We have an entire group of friends watching our every movement. Won’t lie, most of them with smiles on their faces.
That’s not helping.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “I can pull some strings and find us some of those crab cakes from earlier, as I happen to know the people putting on this gig.”
Haley smiles again, and when I offer my hand for the second time tonight, she accepts once more.
Chapter 34
Abby
My godson is the most amazing child in the world, and the world’s best dancer. Seth’s dress shoes are