I stand up. “Not if I can help it. Not anymore.” I hold out my hand. “Dance with me.”

He takes my hand and jumps to his feet, like he’s been waiting for me to ask. “All right, let’s do this, doll.”

I stifle a smile. “You’re so weird.”

“You know it.” He catches his bottom lip in his teeth and does what could be interpreted as a disco move. “Now this is a first I can handle.”

I follow him onto the dance floor. The guy’s singing about a full moon rising, and dancing in the light, but there’s only a white sliver of moon in the sky above us. Nick spins me and then pulls me close to him, his feet moving steadily from one spot on the floor to another and back again. He isn’t a great dancer. But he tries. That counts for a lot.

I wind my arms around his neck. I am too tall to lay my head on his chest, like Afton did the other night with Michael, but I kind of lean my head against Nick’s. Not cheek to cheek, exactly, but close enough. I close my eyes and feel the tension slowly drain from my shoulders.

“It’s been a good night, hasn’t it?” Nick says. “Even if it had a bumpy start.”

“I’m sor—” I stop myself from apologizing. Sigh. “I think we managed to salvage it.”

“And we always have next year, right?”

“Right,” I say softly, but I don’t believe that, deep down, because I can’t imagine that what was wrong this year is somehow going to be right, next year. But I don’t want to think about that now. I want to dance. Breathe. Be myself. “Crashing the wedding was a good idea,” I admit.

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty smart,” he says.

“Humble, too.”

“Of course. And you forgot to mention that I am smoking hot.”

“How could I forget that? I can’t even think straight, right now, because you’re so blindingly attractive.”

We both laugh. Then silence falls between us.

“I want you to know, it wasn’t about you not being sexy,” I say after a long moment.

He doesn’t answer, but his Adam’s apple jerks in his neck.

“I did think you were sexy. I mean, I still do. It wasn’t about that.”

“Okay.”

“It just didn’t feel right. That’s all.”

“I know. I really didn’t know what I was doing.”

“No, the thing is, I just found out that—” The words catch in my throat. The secret is stuck there, and suddenly I want nothing more than to get it out. So I make myself say it: “My mom’s having an affair.”