I cast a sideways glance in the mirror to see if any of the groomsmen had noticed, but they were all ignoring me as they slapped each other’s backs and laughed.
When the door banged shut behind them, Rusty drew a slow breath and let it out, his eyes closing like he was centering himself.
“Sorry about them,” I felt compelled to say. Rusty didn’t deserve to deal with those guys. Nobody did.
He seemed surprised. “Oh, the groomsmen? Don’t worry,” he said, his voice light and warm.
Rusty’s laugh tinkled like a chime, and I tried not to fall for him on the spot. Just because he’s pretty and he kissed your cheek doesn’t mean you get to flirt with him, I thought. He looked in his mid-twenties, maybe late twenties. Probably about fifteen years younger than me.
God, he couldn’t be that much older than Beth. What would she think of me for flirting with him? Damnit, no. I couldn’t use that excuse. Beth, Chrissy, and even Kenneth would all be happy for me. They were always telling me to loosen up and let myself have fun.
Easier said than done when you were a forty-something IT nerd whose most interesting pastime was collecting paperclips at work.
“I get their type all the time. Dragged in by their girlfriends, usually. The trick is to make it seem like they already know what you’re teaching them.”
Rusty leaned an arm on my shoulder, casually familiar with me like it had never been any other way, and looked at me in the mirror. “So, you want to learn a daddy-daughter dance. I’ve already taught Beth her part, so you’ve got some catching up to do.”
He winked at me, and I had no choice but to notice how red my cheeks grew in response. I swallowed hard, trying to look less terrified. “Sure,” I answered. “Where do we start?”
Rusty grinned at me. “That’s the spirit.” He finally pulled away from me and I found myself wishing he hadn’t. I wanted his touch to linger against my body, to feel the weight of him wrapped around me once more.
My desire for him came as instinctively as breathing. Expressing it? No way.
“Do you dance?” Rusty asked as he led me through a series of warmup stretches. I had to stare at him to try to get my body parts in the right place, making it hard to ignore the way my heart felt all funny.
Oh, man. The last thing I needed this week was an inappropriate crush on a guy at least fifteen years my junior. I tried to shove the feelings away with all the force of my lifetime of self-imposed isolation.
“Only under the influence,” I told him, secretly delighted when my answer made him laugh. A sudden moment of boldness swept away my shy moment and I added, “In a corner where nobody can see me.”
It might be self-deprecating humor, but it was true. However hard I tried to put myself out there and actually go to a gay bar, I didn’t last more than an hour before I fled the scene of the crime-against-dancing.
“That’s a shame.” Rusty’s voice might be light, but his words were genuine. “Everyone deserves to be seen.” And as if he hadn’t just said the most profound thing I’d ever heard, he clapped his hands together once. “Okay, we’ll start easy today.”
Still reeling from his sincerity, I nodded dumbly. “Where do you want me?”
Rusty beamed at me, waiting just a moment too long to answer that. My cheeks flushed at the unintended innuendo. Was that—is he…? I thought.
“Over here,” Rusty said then, pointing in front of himself. “I’m going to play Beth, and you be yourself.”
“Easier said than done,” I joked as I stepped up to him. I swiped my palms across my thighs so he wouldn’t know how damp with nervousness they were.
“Bend your knees,” Rusty murmured, and I gulped hard. Okay, despite the double entendres, I was going to need to get my libido under control and stop acting like a young, dumb eighteen-year-old. We were about to be pressed up close while he played the role of my daughter, for crying out loud.
But my body knew perfectly well that he was a handsome young man. There was no fooling the surge of excitement that passed through me.
“This doesn’t have to be complicated,” Rusty said as he faced me, only about a foot away. He was nearly my height, and as I stared straight into his beautiful brown eyes, I swear my heart flip-flopped right there in my rib cage.
Oh, no. No, I shouldn’t even think this. But I stepped close to him and put my palm firmly on his shoulder, lacing my other fingers with his outstretched hand.
I wanted to lead him—or maybe to be led by him.
“Nobody expects a miraculous Fred-and-Ginger routine,” Rusty assured me with a smile, bouncing on his toes and shaking his arms out, including our interlaced hand. “Come on.”
I felt like a robot at a rave, but I tried to copy him. Bounce, bounce, oh boy that wasn’t helping my growing arousal, bounce…
“Shake it out,” Rusty added, weaving the hand that clutched mine until my wrist was loose. Every time he looked straight at me, my brain froze up and listening to him presented a challenge.
I could just stare at him up close for hours. Trace the freckles on his cheeks with one fingertip; bask in the glow of his sweat-shiny skin.
Fuck. I wanted to giggle like I was drunk on Rusty. His arm brushed mine, his leg catching against my thigh for a moment as he bounced in front of me. The smell of him, the feel of his body pressed close, hit home in a way that nobody had before.
For a moment, I let myself imagine he was enjoying this, too. And then I remembered that I was so stiff and awkward that he was almost making me do jumping jacks. He was just my teacher, that was all.
He was young and outgoing. No way would he be interested in a dusty older geek like me.
He was from that generation that had grown up with answers for questions they’d never had to ask. Who hadn’t had to search through card catalogs in the library for answers, slipping books out of the library in their jackets so as to avoid putting their names in them. Not that that had been much help.
The internet had been my salvation, but it had been so hard to find information. No wonder I’d ended up going into IT, fascinated by its potential to make sense of the unfathomable confusion I’d felt. All it needed was better organization, and I could do that.
But Rusty? No, he was a digital native. Apps and YouTube videos and all. I wasn’t going to be the next creepy old guy hitting on him.
I glanced around, desperate for a distraction. All the tension I’d shaken out flooded right back into my body.
“Okay,” Rusty said with a smile. “So we’ll start with two steps left, then two steps right, to a count of four and eight. Just keep your knees bent—”
I gulped and dipped again. When had they locked up? Oh, yeah. Probably when I realized how out of my league he was.
One hot, graceful, sweet, confident, talented young man put his hands on me and I suddenly felt like a monk in a strip joint. Pull it together, Tom, I urged myself.
“You lead,” Rusty told me, his palm flat against my chest. It was hard to focus when my skin tingled at every touch, but I did my best. “Just relax and let yourself be.”
Oh, if only it were that easy. Being in touch with myself was the one thing I’d avoided for the first two decades of Beth’s life. Long after Chrissy and I had said what we knew to be true out loud, and agreed to live as best friends until Beth had graduated… I hadn’t let myself acknowledge what that meant.