Page 15 of Dance This Song With Me?

"My favorite customer!" Annie beamed. Her eyes landed on Lucas. "Two tonight?" Her raised eyebrows pointedly asked a question. As the heat crept up my neck, there was only one thing to do.

Winking very obviously at her, I laughed it off, "You know me. Always sociable."

"Where would you like to sit?"

Annie slid two laminated menus off a pile near the register and gestured to the half-empty restaurant. The lack of customers wasn't a fair representation of the quality of the food - I knew most diners came here straight from work, and by 9pm on a mid-week night, the place was emptying out.

"Is the balcony free?"

"Yes, it is," she handed me the menus and waved a hand towards a narrow staircase lurking in the shadows against the wall. "You know where it is. I'll be up in a minute to take your order."

"Can we order our drinks now?" I asked. "We've been dancing. I'm parched."

"Of course. Your usual?"

I nodded.

"And your... friend?" The slight hesitation before adding the word had my skin heating, something which was becoming a habit around Lucas. For the second time in a few minutes, I felt terribly exposed. Lucas didn't know it, of course, but I never went out with my students, and I never brought any of my one night stands here. He didn't know it. But she did. Not for the first time, I wondered what the fuck I was doing.

"I'll start with a water," Lucas said, "And then maybe I'll try a cocktail if that's okay?"

"Of course. You boys get yourselves settled and I'll be right up with the cocktail list and your place settings."

I led the way, the old wooden stairs creaking beneath my weight, but not so loudly that I didn't hear Annie murmur something softly to Lucas, although I couldn't make out what she said. When I looked down, it was straight into Lucas' blue-grey eyes watching me with an expression I couldn't quite place.

He turned back to Annie and she nodded her head solemnly.

"What did she say to you?" I asked when we'd both reached the upper level. The upstairs room had fewer tables than downstairs, with the staircase taking up half the width of the room. Only one of the tables was occupied, and the couple sitting there had their attention focused on each other.

"Just that you bring a new man here every night," he said dead-pan.

"She did not!" I protested. "I never... I don't, I mean, did she?"

Lucas laughed. "Kidding!"

"Fuck you," I said, mock punching him in the shoulder.

Lucas' smile dawned slow and speculative. He opened his mouth to say something, then slammed it shut. He kept up that little smirk until I opened the glass door and led him out onto the tiny balcony.

"Oh, my God, it's beautiful," he gasped, forgetting about teasing me and moving straight to the railing which overlooked the street with all its colored lights. "Look at that!"

The Japanese restaurant across the road had a koi pond that you couldn't see from ground level. At night the lights in the pond created a fluorescent glow against which the dark shapes of some rather large fish were silhouetted as they moved through the water. Fairy lights strung in the maple bushes in the garden surrounding the fishpond added a fairytale quality to the scene. I had seen it a dozen times but it never got old.

Further down the road, a Colombian cafe had red, blue and yellow lights strung along its awning, and customers sat at tables on the sidewalk, their conversations barely audible - except for occasional riotous laughter - over the blaring latin music, which somehow blended with the music from the Indian restaurant several buildings down without being discordant.

"I love it up here. That's why I wanted to show it to you. There's nothing quite like it in the street. It's like a private room of our own."

Lucas looked around the balcony and his eyebrows rose as he seemed to finally notice there was only one small table out here. I suddenly realized how much this must be starting to look like a date. For a minute, neither of us spoke, and then a burst of laughter from down in the street startled me out of my frozen state.

"I often come up here," I told him hoping to defuse any pressure that my choice of venue had caused. The wooden chair scraped noisily across the floorboards as I pulled it out, and creaked as I lowered my weight into it. Lucas grimaced. "It's alright. I haven't broken one yet."

Lucas relaxed, grinned, and pulled his own seat out more gently. It didn't make any protest at all as he slid into it.

"Show off!" I said, unable to stop a smile from teasing at the corners of my lips.

The creaking of the balcony door signaled Annie's arrival with our drinks. Placing a tall glass of water in front of Lucas and a beer on the table for me, she handed Lucas the cocktail list.

"Do you know what you want to eat?" she asked us. "Or shall I come back?"