“Shit, this is a good song,” she told Cat, grabbing the woman to bring her out onto the dancefloor.
“And old as hell. Dang, Gia…” Cat started, laughing when her boss turned onto the middle of the floor, arms up in the air, ass popping and moving like she was eighteen again. And she was, for just a little while, a half second that confused Gia, blinded her.
Luka stood behind her, his hand on her stomach, his mouth against her ear and that deep, rich voice rattling her insides as he spoke. “This is a paradigm happy accident.”
He’d taken her in the storage closet. Anyone could have caught them. They would have been seen. Everyone would have known.
On that dancefloor, Gia closed her eyes, hands lifting her thick hair off her neck as she danced, drunk, oblivious. It was easier this way to pretend Luka was behind her again. That he hadn’t disappeared from…everything.
He’d been so tall. So solid. His arms thick, his mouth full and wide. His skin smooth and brown, hair coarse.
“Hey! Oh, God, Jimmy!” Gia heard, half blinking to spot Cat jumping into the arms of some big guy she didn’t know. “This is my friend Gia.” He was handsome, darker than Cat, his eyes were hazel with flecks of green. He his sleeves rolled up to his elbow and sported an Omega Psi Phi frat tattoo, telling Gia he was no punk off the street. She glanced over this Jimmy, grinning her approval at his handsome face, high cheekbones and short cut fade.
“Dance with me, boo,” she heard him tell Cat, nodding to one of his friends who walked toward Gia.
She knew the game. Distract the friend. Get the girl. She wasn’t interested, and when the shorter man approached—a kid that looked like a pledge Jimmy was letting tagalong with him, not really one of his friends, Gia shook her head, turning her back and taking a few steps away, catching Cat’s gaze to make sure she was okay before she danced to Jay Z and Ja Rule telling her to bounce with them.
The kid stood in front of her, his crooked front teeth biting over his thin bottom lip like he had to chew on it to keep from taking a nibble out of Gia and he moved toward her, reaching for her.
“No,” she told him, preferring to dance alone, to be back in the fantasy where that shadow of Luka held her. But the kid was persistent, eager, and when Gia stepped away from him, he followed, taking hold of her arm. “What did I say?” she asked. She was drunk, high out of her head, but still aware enough that she knew she didn’t want this asshole’s attention.
“It’s just a dance, babe.”
“Fuck off,” she told him, her head swimming a little when the music shifted and the lights changed, the overhead trapeze artists swooping in with the switch of music and the stream of beaming colors, dusting the crowd with a spray of green, gold, and purple Mardi Gras confetti. Now she could only make out shapes, see flashes and bodies and hear low mutters of sounds.
“Gia?” she heard Cat say, spotting her across the dance floor, pushing away from Jimmy then pointing in Gia’s direction.
“You know you wanna dance with me,” the kid continued, but the muddle of sensation and the confusion of where her friend was and what she was doing distracted Gia, had her giving him a half-hearted shove. She thought she made out a few of the players on the dancefloor talking to Cat, then standing between her and Jimmy. “Come on, babe, get over here.”
“Will you leave me alone, asshole?”
Gia gave up trying to catch Cat’s attention, pulling out of the kid’s touch and walked off, stopping short when she felt his biting grip on her arm. “Don’t fucking walk away… what the …”
And then Gia stumbled back and landed against the solid, safe weight of a massive chest. “I got you,” the man said, holding her arms. “He ran off like a punk.”
His voice sounded so familiar, warm but for the life of her, she couldn’t place it. The light was horrible in this section of the club, the mass of people and the shifting of colors made everyone look like shadows and then, another songs started, a song that made Gia’s inside hum with memory, with heat and she curled her arms around the form in front of her, whoever he was.