He swung me under his arm just as the music began to cross fade into a new song. A song I knew very well. It jolted through me the same moment that I realized exactly how drunk I was.

“I love this song!” I shouted over the music.

“Me too!”

It was one of those classic, pure pop songs, a song that made you sing along while leaping into the air, hands waving wildly. There was no way to avoid it. The music became part of you. It became you. When a song like that came on, you were nothing more than a vessel for its splendor.

I was drunk enough and daring enough that as I shook my hips, I swiveled in the direction of the VIP area. Of Gabe. He was still sitting there, his long fingers stroking the velvet back of the couch, as if to tell me that there was still a place for me there. That if I came back and sat down next to him, that hand could be on my arm. Along my neck. Against my jaw.

Instead, I gave my shoulders a little shimmy and stretched my hands out toward him. Beckoning him.

“He never dances,” Ollie said, wrapping his arms around me, the two of us forming a two-headed, four-armed creature, both of us reaching out to Gabe. “He won’t come.”

“His loss,” I said, and turned around in Ollie’s arms. “We’re having a great time.”

I focused my attention on dancing, but Ollie was distracted.

“Bloody. Hell,” he said.

I turned and there he was. Gabe. On the dance floor. In front of me.

“Hey,” he said.

At least, that’s what I thought he said. It was so loud that I couldn’t be sure, but he’d said something, his lips curved in a smile after mouthing something that probably wasn’t any more complicated than “hey.”

But it felt like he’d said a lot more. Just in standing there. In being on the dance floor with me and Ollie.

Ollie who was practically losing his shit over Gabe being there.

“You did it,” he said, hands on my shoulders, giving me a shake. “You saucy Jewish siren—you got him on his feet.”

Gabe rolled his eyes at Ollie and then gave me a look. One that said that he’d maybe prefer being on his knees. In front of me.

No. I was being ridiculous. Even though I was drunk, and he was drunk, I was still somewhat tethered to reality. Gabe was a flirt. It wasn’t personal. It was an instinct. A reflex.

Still, my own knees went weak, and the combination of the intense sexual tension suddenly crackling between us and the shots, which had made me brave enough to summon him, had me jerking forward in a way that was neither sexy nor seductive.

It did make Gabe reach for me.