One (Bar Dance) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Terra and Rand

I am so glad to be at Stogies. The only thing that has gone right this whole month is that I turned twenty five. Nearly everything seemed wrong or just on the edge of wrong. I lost two patients the first week of the month. Then just today one of my favorite kids came back in. I’m fairly positive that he only has days left. I’m a nurse in the cancer wing. It could be hard job. I’m in the children’s cancer wing. Any child being sick is bad enough. Add cancer as the reason that they are sick? That’s just wrong. Cancer isn’t something that anyone should have to go through. Especially children.

I also wouldn’t trade my job for anything. I love when I make a difference. I just hate it when I can’t. Such as today.

Two years ago a fourteen year old boy was out playing catch with his buds in his parent’s backyard. He caught the ball, rolled, tried to stand then went down. Broken leg. Tests showed he had bone cancer. Nearly stage three. No lead up. No symptoms. Nothing to go by other than he was leading a healthy, active life of a fourteen year old boy. Then, BAM. The kid is in serious as shit chemo treatments. The cancer was getting worse even with chemo and radiation. He never got much better no matter what treatments he got.

I was beginning to wonder if it was th
e cure or the cancer that was killing the poor kid. I think the doctors were wondering the same thing when they stopped all treatments. It took months but Dakota fought and he fought hard. He went home finally. Not back to school. He was way too fragile for that. Then three months ago he came back in. Advanced stage four. Basically the cancer was in every part of his body that it could be in. He was sent home again for hospice. None of the treatments had done anything for him except for weaken his immune system.

Hospice. Usually a good word for not taking up bed space in a hospital until you die
. Unfortunately it was the best that we could do for him at that point.

But this kids mind was trying to override his body’s commands. He was lucid and still had a sense of humor when he wasn’t throwing up.
Which is why hospice brought him back in. They couldn’t control the vomiting and short of putting him in a coma, which they couldn’t do. He needed to be in the hospital with IV’s to keep him hydrated.

I sat with him most of the day. Reading to him if you could believe that. Sports Illustrated was not my choice of magazine
s to read. Sports in general was not my thing. But I read two from cover to cover including a number of the advertisements. I now knew that Axe Chocolate was his favorite. Not only the deodorant but the cologne as well.

My dad has a seventeen year old son from his third marriage. I’m not close to
Austin but I knew that was his favorite as well. It gave me fodder to ramble at Dakoda through the day. Sometimes you have to take what you can get when it comes to conversation with a teenage kid.

I’m not one of those people who need
s to talk all the time. I am one who needs to move. I didn’t move most of the day and my body was aching from it. I needed this tonight. I needed to dance to stretch my sore muscles. I needed to let my mind take on the beat of the music and rule my body. To not be constantly thinking of the poor kid who would die soon.

One of the better parts of tonight was I was the one who got to give Sam her corset. She hated the thing. I loved that she hat
ed it. Of all of us she was the second most endowed. All of us were a B or C cup. She was closer to a D. For a dancer that was huge. For a dancer that meant bounce and bouncing boobs hurt. I could sympathize, kind of. I was a small C. I just liked watching her squirm mostly.

I set her boots and
corset on the bar. She swore. A number of really cute men were kind of hovering near the bar. One with a really ugly shirt was talking to her. I wasn’t paying much attention. My mind was still back at the hospital.

Sam disappeared with ugly shirt and one that kind of looked like him followed. The other one was older than ugly shirt. There was one that was younger that reminded me of the cop that came when the Toad put me in the hospital. Sam was the only other person that really knew what happened that night and she was gone. It wasn’t like I could ask her if she recognized him. Besides I knew that she had ‘shit’ going on at the bar.
Not good shit either. Harassment type shit.

After she had rescued me
from my great day of broken ribs, she stayed with me in the hospital. Then put me up in her condo basically free of charge. She wanted me well away from Toad as she called the guy. She was moving in over the bar so she could be closer to her baby. Her condo was paid for. All I had to do was pay utilities for five years. I had been living there for just over three years now. I was going to ask to buy it from her in one more year. Maybe less if things worked out. I didn’t know what things but it sounded good. At least in my mind it sounded like a good idea.

We were done with our first set and the one that reminded me of the cop that came to rescue me the last time that I had a man touching me
was right in front of me. He touched me. I didn’t flinch. That was also a first. It felt safe. It felt comfortable. It felt right.

He said, “I’m Rand. Rand Frasier and that has to be the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.” He leaned forward and put his lips to mine. Closed mouthed and quick. He searched my face and did it again. He leaned back a touch and licked his lips. “I just told my brother that you looked like cotton candy. You taste like it too.” He then smiled at me.

I smiled back.

“Can I kiss you? Really kiss you?” He asked.

That meant a lot to me. I had kissed three guys in high school. Had sex with one. That was a disappointment to say the least. The next guy to touch me was Toad. That went way beyond a disappointment. A dozen kisses from him. Sex once and a visit to the hospital. In the three years since then I had not let a man touch me. I touched patients because that was my job. I danced with my friends and touched them. That was also a kind of my job. One that I loved but they were also female. That wasn’t sexually orientated. This was. At least I hoped it was. Just looking at him made my heart flutter with excitement.

I relaxed my shoulders, elbows and even my wrists a
s I moved towards this stranger, putting my hands against his chest and answered. “Please.”

He leaned forward and started the kiss. Then he took over the kiss. Then I melted against him
. His hands finally moved from just a light touch against my hips to pulling me against him.

When he pulled away I realized that I had one hand in his hair pulling him closer. The other hand was digging against his shoulder. I was panting against his lips. Desperate for his touch.

“I have to slow down.” He whispered to my lips. The music was so loud I wasn’t sure that I heard him correctly.

I moved my mouth against his ear so that he could hear me and I could hear him.

I said as softly as I dared so that he could still hear me. “What?” I asked cautiously.

“I have to slow down honey. I feel that you need tenderness and care. I want to give that to you.”

I started backwards at his statement. “What? Why…” I didn’t get a chance to finish my question when I heard Sam holler at me.

“Terra
, go get Keiley. Five.”

The moment was shattered and I owed so much to Sam that I pulled away.

Rand pulled me back close. “She is with my brother down that hallway. His name’s Adam.”

I nodded
. Rand kissed me lightly again. Then I sprinted away. This man scared the bejesus out of me. Not in a bad way. In a good way. He was the first one to touch me in years. My first kiss in years. The first man, ever, that I wanted to throw myself at. Literally.

I was having
totally inappropriate visions of caramel sauce, being me, drizzling all over ice cream, being him. I knew that my face was flushed. My heart was racing as I rushed out of the room. This wasn’t like me. I was totally out of my comfort zone.

Then, good lord, I walked in on Keiley. She had her legs up around the other brother. Adam, Rand said his name was. I blurted as best as I could
while trying to divert my eyes from what I was seeing. “Sam wants us on the bar in five. I can sub,” Good lord, did I really say that?

“I’ll be there.” Keiley said around his arm
with her feet back on the ground.

“Good
, you’re better with Sam than I am.” What I meant was if Sam touched me I would feel Rand’s hands against me. I would be a puddle on the bar and they would have to mop me up or put me in the dumpster. I knew that I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. Keiley had to dance with Sam and let me fade in to the background. I was just too stimulated. Just too much for one day. One night. One week. Hell. One year. Let’s face it. A lifetime of want had just seemed to infuse my brain with the very first touch of his lips.

That was how much his kiss was. Too much. Yet I wanted more. A lot more.

I felt my face go from flushed to the color of the ends of my hair as I raced back down the hallway. Keiley had mentioned hot monkey sex and that was it. I didn’t see Keiley and whatever his name was having hot monkey sex in the hallway outside of Sam’s office. I saw me and Rand. Against a wall. On the bar. In a bed. I was deciding how I was going to kill her when she sauntered out and she got lifted up on the bar. His hands on her body with her looking more than comfortable with it.

Then I saw something
pass between them. Something indescribable. In just minutes they had formed a bond. No that wasn’t it. They had
found
their bond. They were
it
for each other. They were meant to be. They fit each other.

I watched Keiley toss her iPod to Sam and tell her to turn it on. S
am did, begrudgingly but she did it.

When the music started playing I loved it. I knew what Keiley was saying. It was what I wanted to say to Rand and had no words for. I wanted what Keiley and his brother already had. I wanted it times a thousand. No
. A million.

Even that wasn’t enough so I poured my heart and soul in the dance
. I tried to show him what I felt when he touched me.

When we were done all six of us jumped off to the business side
of the bar. Rand was simply just there, touching me again. His eyes searched my face and he said to me, “You are the most magnificent thing that I have ever seen. When you move,” He shook his head and took a breath, “It moves something inside of me that I didn’t know that I had.”

For the first time in my life I knew that I had done something right. I finally understood what
my dance teachers, Sam and Keiley had tried to explain to me ten thousand times. Also for the first time in my life I took a chance. A huge chance for me. I reached up and put my hands on Rand’s face. I pulled him towards me, then I kissed him. I willingly, wantonly kissed a man. He let me lead for a few seconds before he pulled me close and took over. He broke away from me breathing heavily.

Keiley came close. “I’m leaving. I don’t need a ride.” She smiled at me. I knew that she was okay. I knew it. So was I. I let her leave knowing both of those things.

I looked at Rand. “I’m not ready for you to come to my home.”

He grinned. “How about we find some food and just talk.”

I smirked at him. “I’m not exactly dressed for going out. That and I stink.”

He lifted my arm and threw it around his neck
. He bent his head down and sniffed. He lifted his face and scrunched up his nose. At my horrified expression he laughed. “If you think that is smelly you have never smelled a teenage boys feet. Or better yet, a room that have two guys sharing it. That ain’t nothin’.”

I smiled at him before I started giggling.

“I just rented a condo,” He kept talking, “Hidden Pines. Ten, fifteen minute drive from here. You know where that is?”

Since I lived in the same complex I had a vague idea where it was. There were probably eighty units in the complex. They started small and got larger as did the numbers. “What unit?” I asked.

He blushed. Actually blushed. “Twelve C.”

One through thirty were postage sized. One bedroom. One bathroom. Galley kitchen. One uncovered parking spot. Most of them were facing the roadway. Not private. Not luxury. Just a place to put your stuff and exist. They didn’t start to get nice until you were in the fifties. Sam’s was seventy three B
. It was more a town home than a condo. I didn’t mention that. I just nodded.

“I know where that is. I’ll follow you.”

Rand pulled my hand to his then started leading me away. I got to Sam and stopped. “I’m gone. I also have a kid in a bad way, I don’t…” That was as far as I got.

Sam stopped scowling at the brother
standing next to her. She turned towards me. She put one hand against my shoulder and leaned forward. “I knew.
Knew
you had talent. Until tonight you had never let it out.” She shook my shoulder then she continued. “If I had a wand and could make anything happen that should, I would wave it at you. You would,” She quit talking and one tear pooled in her left eye. “You showed that before and you would have brought audiences to their knees. You could have people paying thousands of dollars a ticket just to watch you.” She brushed my hair with her hand tucking it behind my ear.