“Yeah. Well, no. I mean just… Just to go together. As friends.”
“You don’t dance,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me suspiciously.
No. No, I do not.
“But you do,” I point out. Then I shrug. “So, I thought you might want to go. If not, it’s no problem.”
“No, I’ll go.”
I blink. “You will?”
“Yeah,” she says, prompting a little flutter of warm hope in my gut. “But not with you.”
Aaand the hope dies a cold little death. Suddenly, Lizzie is smiling.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it quite like that.” She shifts the box in her arms again. “I meant that I’m already going with someone. She and I are hanging out beforehand and then I’m going with her and her sister to the dance.”
“Oh.”
Duh, Walker. She has more people in her life than just your sorry ass.“That’s alright…”
“But you can save me a dance. If you want.”
There’s something in Lizzie’s face—an intelligence to her eyes or maybe the lilt of her mouth—that tells me we’re on the same page. She knows exactly why I’m asking her to do something so out of character for me. She knows this is an apology, of sorts.
And the smile on her face tells me that, despite her turning me down, it’s well-received. Her tone is suddenly warmer and her eyes brighter. Her shoulders are less stiff.
Dance with me on Friday and we’ll call it even, she’s saying. I nod. One dance doesn’t sound too bad.
“Alright.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
We both hover awkwardly.
Lizzie shifts her weight and eventually breaks the silence as she calls out across the shop. “Hey, Jace! Get your ass back here. This is your crap!”
I take the opportunity to clear my throat and shake some life back into my legs.
Like a meerkat, Jace’s head pops up from behind the Ford. The asshole hadn’t disappeared at all. He’d been less than three yards away!
“It’s mine?”
“Piece of your beloved by the feel of it.” It’s a well-known fact to most in the Forge that Jace is building a rare, vintage muscle car from scrap pieces he’s found across the country.
“Are you shitting me? That’s not supposed to be here until next week.” Forgetting his role as spy and eavesdropper, Jace jumps out from behind the car and hurries forward waggling his fingers at the box. “Come to Daddy!”
Well, if anything was going to break this tension it might as well be an man obsessing over his automobile.