story one

She is dancing in the middle of the room to a song I have never heard before, wearing a shirt that can fit three of her. Slowly bouncing on the balls of her feet while her hips make subtle movements, making it a terrible challenge for my eyes to look somewhere else. Her head is bowed low and swaying side to side, with her auburn-dyed hair following the movement of her head. This masterpiece in motion makes me smile as I down half the contents of the ill-tasting beer in my hand. Her seemingly half-asleep eyes catches me with my toothless grin and smiles back. Without letting the smile fall from her lips as she mouths the words to the new song playing, she starts dancing her way to the corner of the room where I am sitting, one pointed foot after the other as the lights swirled around, along the length of her arms and on her face, where they cast a dim glow on her absent cheekbones. When the distance between us has been reduced to about merely two feet, she reaches out her palms out to me and hastily mouths "Come, stand up". I put down the half-empty bottle, take her hands, and let her pull me up to my feet. She lets go and raises her arms up to the ceiling, fingers snapping, a celebration of some sort, of the music perhaps. In a heartbeat, I begin to mirror her body, with far less grace though; shoulders hunched, head gently bobbing and slightly slanted to the left, one arm up and fingers snapping, eyes shut. Quite unexpectedly, she holds me by the wrists and the heat radiating from her fingers is more than enough to catch my attention. Her deep brown eyes bore into mine; I swallow. With our arms still up in the air, our wrists connect, the lines on my palms find their match on hers, the spaces between my fingers make room for hers and let them stay there, and I let my fingers bend until they are touching her knuckles. Like the hands of the clock, ours move in unison from the 12 o'clock and separate to meet at the 6 o'clock and back again. Then ever so delicately, she pulls her hands from mine and rests them on my shoulder, and as though on instinct, my arms find their way around her body and let my hands lightly sit on the small of her back. I lean closer and the smell of her sweat and shampoo mixing altogether is intoxicating to my senses, and shamelessly, I inhale through my nose rather loudly which makes her chuckle. She leans closer until her forehead is touching the base of my chin, until I can feel her breaths on my chest. Our bodies are still swaying side to side, a little slowly now but the music long has stopped playing. The anticipation for another to song to begin lingers in the air even though we both know there is not going to be one. But we do not stop dancing.