“Would you like to dance?”

            Her friends were already on the dance floor.  She had tucked herself up onto the red Naugahyde booth and was wiping ice sweat off her half-empty glass.  She looked up to say no thank you, but his fingers were already curling around her palm, and before she she could speak, she was on the scuffed linoleum and had taken two steps in time to the beat, turning slowly clockwise with him, pausing, moving again.

            There was a respectable space between their belt buckles, her elbows tensed, his back straight.  Alison was singing a decent cover of Hearts In Armor, like she meant it for someone she’d once loved.

            He paused again and moved to lead her in the opposite direction, but she stumbled, stiff, and they lost the rhythm.

            “Sorry,” she said as she looked down at her rebellious foot.

            “It’s okay,” he smiled, squeezing her fingers and guiding her into a tight circle that drew her against his chest, flattening her breasts against his shirt pockets, his knee between hers.  They fit together like two halves of a locket.

            She bit her lip and felt his jaw tighten.

            He swallowed and said, “I always thought you were  …”

            “Shhhh,” she said, "it’ll be all right.”

            They danced, his fingertips on her ribs and hers in his hair, the music playing in their blood.