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I would bake him a thousand cookies, sit on any rooftop, lay on a lake dock for days with this man.
I love him. I really love him, and tonight, I want a do-over. I want to be brave, even if it’s just this once.
“We could do both,” I suggest, keeping my eyes on the mini Eiffel Tower.
“What?”
I shrug. “Let’s go to the dance.”
“Uh…”
Tucking my hands beneath my thighs, I turn to him. “You don’t want to?”
He opens his mouth and hesitates again, his forehead wrinkling. “Uh, yeah, no we could… We’ll have to steal a couple of costumes. They’re like… What was it called…?” He searches his mind for several moments. “Furries? It’s a furry convention.”
When I cover my mouth with a laugh, Alik lifts a brow. “What?”
He doesn’t know what a furry is.
I laugh harder while he just stares at me, and when I come down from it, I climb off the ledge. “Come on,” I say, hopping onto solid ground. “Show me that resourcefulness.”
Alik
I’m usedto wearing masks. It isn’t a problem for me.
But as Olive and I flash our stolen badges to the blonde woman with the clipboard, I shift the wolf head I’m wearing, itching to take it off. It’s hot and smells, and frankly, it’s fucking ridiculous. I’m burning alive in this coat of fur I’m wearing, and I can barely see Olive’s bunny suit leading the way through the open set of doors into a party.
But I don’t say anything. I can’t believe she’s leading me, that she’s walking into the crowd of people dressed as all kinds of animals while pop music plays, muted beneath the mask.
I follow her to a table off to the side of the room and let out a sigh of relief when I can take the wolf head off.
Olive laughs, shaking out her hair after she takes her own mask off and sets it on the table. “I think you should leave your mask on,” she teases. “You are onesexywolf.”
I smile to be playful, but when I look around at the grinding animals, my lips fall. Olive takes my fur-covered hand and drags me toward the dance floor. “Come on!”
I stumble after her, tripping in the suit and feeling ridiculous every step of the way, but when we reach a spot she deems sufficient, and she turns, a smile lighting her perfect face, thesuit leaves my consciousness. Everything in the world aside from her radiant smile melts away.
A pop song plays, and I stand still for a moment to see what Olive will do. She wraps her arms around my neck, planting a kiss to my lips while my hands naturally find her hips.
I’m not surprised when she sways gently at a pace completely off beat with the music, and I’m not surprised when I lean into her, matching her rhythm.
The music fades, as do the people. When the scent of sweat registers, I press my face into Olive’s hair and inhale, letting her mask it.
The whole world stops turning when she’s around. Nothing matters. Nothing except her.
I tried to deny the pull she had on me for too long, but now I lean into her to compensate, feeling my shoulders cave around her body.
The song ends and another begins, but we aren’t dancing to either. Maybe it’s a song in her head we’re dancing to, I don’t know. But I’m here for it.
Olive kisses my cheek before laying her head on my shoulder, and it pops my mother’s image into my mind. I don’t know whose wedding we were at. I can hardly remember a thing.
I just see her smiling, laughing, holding my little hand while she twirls in a circle. My dreadful, horrible mother. The woman who disappeared when I was fourteen, when I didn’t know any different.
She was never there.
But there were moments. Small, infrequent moments when she smiled at me. When she loved me.
When I was lovable.
