Grease Monkey Jive (21 page)

Both women laughed.

“I’m meat again,” he said, dropping his head, laughing with them.

“You’re a very choice cut,” said Gwen, still appraising him. She turned to Alex, “Is he wagyu?” leaving Dan wondering if that was the real question she’d wanted to ask, or some kind of code because it made Alex laugh and Gwen’s eyes flash with amusement.

“I’ll make tea,” Gwen said, and she and Alex left the room so he could change.

When he joined them in the kitchen, Gwen got to him once more. “Are you gay, Dan?” she said, as she poured his tea.

“Gran!” Alex nearly choked on her shortbread.

From his seat at the kitchen table, Dan grinned up at her. “I can be pretty damn happy.”

“Cheeky bugger,” Gwen said, and flushed. She turned back to the sink to tap out the tea leaves from the strainer to hide it.

“Do you think I can leave you two a moment without things getting out of hand?” Alex looked pointedly at Gwen’s back. She needed to get changed to get to Phil’s.

“I don’t think we need a chaperone,” said Gwen. She looked at Dan and the quick jump of his shoulder and his widening grin. “You’d better be quick though.”

Alex left the room to their laughter. Now she’d have Gran in her ear about what a nice boy Dan was.

She was imagining how that conversation would go. The problem was he wasn’t what-you-see-is-what-you-get. You saw Dan’s determination, his warm heart, and humour. You saw his devoted friends, easy manner, and generous nature. You saw his intelligence and his focus, but they were all his player’s tricks, the mask he fronted the world with.

If they weren’t tricks, then Alex was in a lot of trouble. That realisation was a shock. It made her snappy when she answered Phil’s call and his query about how long he’d have to wait for her. It made her choose to wear the dress she’d worn to Lucio’s, the one Phil didn’t like.

In the hallway outside the kitchen, she heard Dan say, “That must have been difficult,” and she knew Gran was telling stories.

“Are you giving away all our secrets, Gran?” she said from the doorway. She heard, “Of course not!” and saw Dan’s eyes snap wide and his brows lift. “What?”

“It’s a Vogue pattern,” said Gwen, in sync with Dan’s expression.

Dan turned back to Gwen. “You did a great job.”

“Oh very smooth, Dan.” Alex was annoyed. He really had been out here bonding with Gran and, embarrassed, she didn’t want him commenting on her looks. She didn’t want him looking at her that way, as though liking the dress was just a preliminary.

“I never did get to ask you my question,” said Dan to Gwen, standing, because he’d got the message loud and clear that Alex wanted him gone.

“What was that, dear?”

He leaned forward and whispered in Gwen’s ear, making a smile curve her lined lips, making her look younger and full of naughty thoughts and Alex nearly forgave him the thing about the dress just for that.

“I see your problem, but be patient. I’m sure she’ll come around.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Dan. “I’ll see you at the comp.”

Back in the hallway Alex said, “What was that about?” She figured Dan would invent some cutesy thing to say, and she’d have to ask Gran later what he’d really said and hope she didn’t say some cutesy thing in conspiracy with him.

“I asked her what I could do to stop annoying you.”

“Oh!” That sounded real and Alex could tell Dan meant it. “You don’t annoy me.”

“I don’t believe you. You still think I’m some inarticulate, drop-out, caveman, surfer dude with a weird fetish to samba, a craving for punishment, and a talent for tripping you over.”

Alex laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think that and you don’t annoy me.”

“Ok,” he said, but Alex could see in the narrowing of his eyes that he still didn’t believe her. He said, “I won’t bite, you know.”

She smiled. She reckoned he had plenty of bite behind the disarming smile and the self-deprecating humour. He was too smart for anyone to think he was an inarticulate drop-out, even if he didn’t appear to want much from life.

“I meant what I said about the song being a tribute. You’re doing an incredible thing. You’ve worked so hard, under so much pressure. We’re amazed at what you’ve learned and we can’t thank you enough.”

“It could all go horribly wrong, you know. What if I just forget it all?”

Alex saw the doubt and fear in him. She reached for his hand and folded her fingers through his. “You won’t,” she said with more confidence than she felt. He might forget. He could ride the biggest, scariest waves the sea threw up, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t freak out entirely when he saw the venue and all the other couples. Even experienced dancers sometimes did.

Dan squeezed her hand, gave her a watery half smile. He obviously wasn’t buying her assurance on any front. She knew she had to work on that. That last thing they needed was for him to be going in to this nervous and uncertain. There was enough time for that on the day.

She stepped into his body, wrapped an arm around his back, and hugged him. He reacted instantly, wrapping both his arms tightly around her.

“What’s this for?” he said, with a mixture of surprise and suspicion.

“To tell you once and for all you don’t annoy me. I trust you not to bite me and we’re going to do ok.”

“Does this mean I can make a confession too?”

“A confession?”

He lowered his head till his lips were close to her ear, till his hair brushed her temple and she could smell the sweat and salt in his skin. Suddenly her comfort hug felt less comfortable, less platonic, and more dangerously playful.

“You look shit hot in that dress.”

Scott watched it go down, like a scene from a movie, a
Wall Street
-
Dirty Dancing
mash-up.

“You must be Dan?” Phil extended his hand. “I’m Phil.”

Dan took Phil’s hand. “Alex is m–” Phil faltered as he took in the full force of Dan, obviously not what he’d expected, “Mine,” he finished, saying it like a full stop, an indisputable scientific fact.

Dan bristled and didn’t bother to hide it. Scott could see he’d disliked hearing Phil label Alex like a possession, but his words were disarming.

“You’re a lucky fella. She’s a great girl.”

Phil was still sizing Dan up for threat potential, as though this was just part of everyday office politics. Scott thought that was wise. He also thought Phil might underestimate Dan, mistake his muscles for meagre intelligence, his physique for a lack of finesse.

He reckoned this moment between the caveman and the corporate man was round two. Round one had been fought off screen and gone to the Neanderthal because corporate man had never come to watch a competition or a rehearsal before and yet here he was, settling in on the bench seats in his tailored blue suit and his pale yellow tie. Scott wondered if he would make Alex nervous. He couldn’t afford for Alex to be nervous; that was Dan’s prerogative.

“Ding, ding,” he said and Dan shot him a surprised look, tucked his head down and laughed. Phil was typing a message on his phone and appeared oblivious. Scott grinned, he liked that Dan got it and that Phil might get a run for his money if he wasn’t careful with Alex’s heart.

Alex was troubled. There was tension between Phil and Dan and she was annoyed with herself. Why hadn’t she been able to persuade Phil not to come? She’d used his own arguments about Dan being someone she could never be interested in. She’d called him the grease monkey and the caveman, but still Phil insisted on coming to watch. He never did that. He wasn’t here to watch her; he was here to watch Dan. What did that mean? That he was jealous? That he didn’t trust her? It was insulting, but when she’d told him that he’d laughed at her.

And tonight she had to be on her game, not worried about what Phil was thinking when she touched Dan, looked into his eyes, and pressed her body against his. If Phil saw that she liked it, he’d be right. She did like it, liked everything about dancing with Dan, even the bruises from his misplaced feet or too tight hold on her.

She liked the way Dan laughed off his stumbles and the way he frowned in concentration and focused absolutely on getting things right. She liked his unruly hair and firm muscles, the shadow of stubble on his face and the way he always checked with her to see that she had the car or a lift home after rehearsals.

So if Dan made her laugh tonight, she wasn’t checking it for Phil’s sake. If he made her feel a thrill when they nailed a particular piece of choreography that had given him trouble, she was going to let that show too. Maybe it was good that just the idea of Dan had made Phil feel less secure. Maybe it was better the real Dan brought the message home.

“Let’s go,” said Scott with a hand clap.

Alex took her place, looking across at Dan. He had his head down, studying his shoes, but when she called his name he looked up and smiled. “Wait,” she said to Scott, and went to Dan. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” he said.

“Is he putting you off?” She jerked her thumb back towards Phil, eyes down on his phone.

Now Dan laughed. “Hell yeah! I’m about to put my hands all over you and your boyfriend is sitting there watching.”

“I tried to get him to stay away.”

Dan pushed his hair back. “How do we do this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“That’s a bit conceited, isn’t it? You think Phil and I are so insecure that my dancing with you will cause trouble?”

“Ah, when you put it like that, yeah, sorry.”

“Let’s just rehearse then,” Alex said more sharply than Dan deserved.

Dan nodded and went to his starting place. He completely missed his music queue, only Scott shouting, “Get your head in the game!” brought him back to the room, to re-queued music, to an impatient Alex, and to Phil’s smirk. He wanted to wipe that sneer off Phil’s face and erase that word ‘mine’ from his vocabulary.

Once they started moving, they had Phil’s full attention. Alex could feel his eyes boring into her back and she was the first to falter. “Sorry,” she said, as she picked it up and they continued.

When she next came in close to Dan, he said, “Got us both rattled,” and then he surprised her by brushing his knuckles gently, tenderly across her cheek. It wasn’t a choreographed move, but Phil wouldn’t know that. It made Alex suck in a quick breath. As she turned from Dan instead of simply stepping back, she put her hand to his chest as if to hold him away. It was the briefest of touches, playful but provocative. In the next beat, as she went to dance away, Dan grabbed her hand and stopped her spin short as though he was preventing her from running from him.

Scott was shouting, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” He’d have been jumping too, but for the boot. Alex and Dan were different, even Dan could feel it. He’d stopped thinking, counting, anticipating, worrying; he was letting the music lead and he was focused on Alex. He was freer, moved more confidently, more assertively and under his attention Alex bloomed. She let go of her more restrained approach to dancing with someone less experienced and she fell into the beat and the story of the song.

They stopped being two dancers and started to be the lovers Eminem and Rihanna sang about, fighting and coming together again, bound but breaking apart. They were ready. If they could dance like this, they were ready.

When the track ended, Scott said, “Very nice. Keep the extra touches. Take five.” He could see they were both coming down, decompressing after the shock of what they’d just done, the barrier broken through, and he didn’t want Phil to know anything special had happened.

It helped that Phil had taken a call. He wasn’t looking at Alex to see the flush on her face, to note her unsteady breath and the way she looked at Dan, like he was some kind of favourite food she was scared of having too much of.

Scott stomped across to Dan. “That was exceptionally good. You stopped thinking, you started dancing.”

“I have no idea what I just did, but it feels amazing. I’m glad you’re pleased, but I’m not sure Alex is.”

“Why?”

“She, ah, told me to cool it.”

“Oh.” Scott looked across at Alex, sitting at Phil’s side. He was still on the phone. “She’s probably self-conscious in front of Phil. He’s never come to watch before.”

“Never?”

Scott shook his head. “About time he paid some attention to what she does here.”

Dan repeated, “Never?” to Scott’s back as he lumbered towards the stereo. He looked at Phil in his impressive threads, conducting his business while Alex sat ignored at his side. For someone so possessive he was very casual with his chattel, like they would wait patiently for his attention and be grateful when it came.

When Phil quit his call and put his arm around Alex, Dan had to turn away. He didn’t like the way she smiled up at him. The douche didn’t deserve the love in the look she’d given him. It was a look he wanted for himself, soft, caressing, glittering, and firmly fixed like a bright star in a dark night.

“That was fun,” Phil said, snuggling Alex to his side.

“That was hard work, getting it to that point.” What they’d just done hadn’t been fun, it’d been glorious, an out-of-body experience, like that first time Scott made her and Dan dance together, but this time Dan was fully involved and they were in perfect partnership.

“He’s not as bad as you made him out to be,” said Phil.

“Tonight he was good. That was a first. He’s usually much more nervous and wooden.”

“I must have gotten his competitive juices flowing.”

“You?”

“Yeah, being here to watch.”

“You think Dan danced well because you were here to watch?”

“It’s a guy thing, Alexandra.”

“It’s a stupid thing. He knows we’re a couple. There’s nothing personal between us. Why would he react differently when you’re here?” What was with these men? Alex felt trapped in the middle, Phil defending the fences on one side and Dan pushing the boundaries on the other.

“Trust me, Alex, it was me he was trying to impress, not you.”

Alex pulled away from Phil. She’d thought Dan’s focus and the way he’d touched her tonight was about them, as competitors, as two people trying to do their best for each other. But maybe the way Phil saw it was more accurate. Dan had been showing off for him and she was really just a post that two dogs wanted to piss on.