The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [42]
And Andrew noticed.
But then, as he noticed, her table and seat were at once vacant, and she appeared suddenly before him, and asked him to dance.
No one had ever asked Andrew to dance.
Ever.
Needless to say, William Behn and Ralston-girlfriend Jessica were cheering him on.
So he stood up, clasped her hand, and went into the throng of dance-floor bop-meisters.
***
More than anything, even more than awful, Ralston’s music was loud. His band, Squid Friction, a group comprised of a drummer, a keyboardist, lead and rhythm guitars, was a typical house band ensemble and so much so, it was cliché.
And there stood Ralston, front and center and caressing a mike stand, having just before emerged from the side stage entrance enthusiastically and leaping in mad theatrics to where he stood now. The songs he sung were for the greater part original and expressly for himself and Squid Friction, with the exception of a few old rock favorites and a Doors classic.
It didn’t mix well, a band clearly of first-rate studio musicians and a lead singer who could barely carry a tune. And the lyrics Ralston often forgot made matters worse all the more.
Though few fans seemed to care.
And neither did this woman who danced before him, as Andrew tried to follow,.
Andrew could never seem to find within himself the courage to walk up to a woman and ask her to dance, particularly in places like this. Knowing this, it was of course inconceivable for a woman, any woman, to walk up and ask him to. Let alone a luscious dreamscape like this woman.
They danced to some hypertensive number apparently entitled Chocolate Chimp Nipples. They didn’t talk while they were dancing; they simply danced as the others danced around them, around and about within the confined space of the dance floor, Andrew striving to contain the bothersome if not painfully evident tendency to pore over the remarkable vision before him. He could not escape the lure of her beauty nor the reality of her pervading presence there, the sexual heat of the way she moved and swayed and rode the air with her hips, the way he found himself craving to touch her and to follow the range of black print swirls down across her autumn dress and over her breasts and down to the hem of her skirt, to bury those hands beneath the material and around the elastic of imagined black nylon straps.
Within an instant he found himself all too aware of the embarrassing bulge behind the fly of his trousers, and a burst of eruption in turn drew his attentions to the suggestive cheers of William Behn at the table a few dancers beyond. He caught a glance of the empty seat where Jessica had been, and his eyes darted momentarily away from the dark-skinned stranger to scan the dance floor for Jessica’s face. His fear of attention made him unsuccessfully avoid the gazes of table-dwellers and festive on-lookers, but as his stance shifted he could not avoid their spectative vista.
This was a welcomed distraction; it diverted his nervousness and tamed his hard-on. For the time being.
He wondered if he should speak, should say something to her. He wondered if she would say anything to him. He worried over how long the newness and excitement would last, if it would extend past the dance, if it would die as would the music of the song which drew this woman to him.
It occurred to Andrew that perhaps his situation was nothing more or less than a lucky gesture from a woman whose lack of a companion for the evening wasn’t about to confound her prepossessing urges to dance. If this was the case, there was no denying the delightful compliment in the lady’s choosing Andrew and by venturing halfway across the room in order to do so.
Yet there was something about her, about her choosing him, about the way she looked at him, how she drew herself closer to him and even closer still. Andrew looked upwards, casting his gaze towards the stage and upon the spotlight-bathed celebrity showcase of Ralston, and discovered the mock singer/writer staring in attentive amusement