Page 21 of Guarding the Star

“I didn't ask if it was necessary. I asked if you'd dance with me.”

Paula looks at me. Calculates. Weighs it. Decides.

We walk to the floor. I put my hand on her shoulder. I expect her to put hers on my waist with that stiff professionalism she's built from. I'm expecting something mechanical, a functional sway, movements that check a box, and nothing more.

But Paula Delgado can dance.

She leads with the slightest pressure on my hip, a shift in her fingers, a weight change that my body follows without thinking. It's salsa folded into a slow dance. Rhythm hidden underneath a woman who's too serious.

“Where'd you learn to dance?” I ask.

“My grandma.”

“You're leading me,” I whisper near her ear.

“Does that bother you?”

“No. It surprises me. Nobody leads me. Not in dancing, not in anything.”

“That's because you don't let them.”

“Or because nobody knows how,” I shoot back.

“I think we should stop right now,” she says out of nowhere.

“What?”

“I need to get my head straight, or I'm going to do something unprofessional. I'm sorry,” she insists, and walks off the dance floor while I stand there staring.

The car is waiting at the hotel entrance. When we get in, Seattle's lights slide past the window, rain-soaked, blurred, like watercolors somebody left unfinished.

We don't talk. But I feel a pull low in my stomach that I can't ignore.

Paula looks out her window. I look out mine. There's three feet of seat between us, and it feels like a mile.

“Paula.”

“Yeah?”

“This is killing me,” I say, and I raise the partition so the driver can't hear.

She turns. Slow.

“What's killing you?”

“You.”

The word comes out on its own. No thought behind it. One syllable. I hear it and I want to grab it back, but it's already out. I already said it.

The silence stretches forever. Just the rain on the roof of the car.

“The dance. Your hand. The last few weeks I don't know what's real and what's fake anymore,” I say, since she's not talking.

She just looks at me, poker face, and I want to strangle her.

“Forget it, okay? I didn't say anything. I'm an idiot,” I mutter through my teeth, rolling my eyes and shaking my head.

“I can't,” she says at last, so quiet it could pass for engine noise.