Trihn let the freedom of the dance take over. It was practically hypnotic, the way the mixture of the alcohol, music, and movements could relax her like nothing else—except for sex. And since it was pretty clear she wasn’t going to be having any of that…
“I love this version!” Stacia cried.
Bryna shrugged. “Chloe is…okay.”
Trihn knew that Bryna had some issue with Chloe, who had been in a movie with Bryna’s ex-boyfriend Gates Hartman, but she really didn’t know what it was. Bryna was a buzzkill for Chloe’s music though.
“This version should be on the radio,” Stacia said.
Trihn realized where she had heard this before. Her eyes traveled up to the DJ booth. This was the mix that Damon had said he created when she went to see him in the booth last weekend.
Damon was here.
She was one hundred percent sure of that now.
Trihn spent the next hour wondering if and when Damon was going to come down from the DJ booth to see her. She was sure Maya had lied and said that he wasn’t there to keep her from obsessing about it.
She had just gotten another drink from Maya when she saw a circle forming on the other side of the club. Stacia was occupied with Marshall, who seemed to be giving into her antics. She guessed it was an off-again time for Stacia and Pace. Bryna was glued to Eric against the bar, making a sickeningly cute display for everyone to see.
Trihn pushed her shoulders back and decided to go figure it out for herself. She was pretty sure she knew what she was going to find.
It wasn’t Damon.
But it was his two friends from the other club they had gone to before school had started. The African American guy was warming up his break moves while the other guy kept glancing around the circle, as if waiting for something. Or someone, Trihn reasoned.
He caught her eye across the circle and started weaving around the crowd to her. “Hey, I’m Jimmy,” he said with a head nod.
“Trihn.”
“Yeah, I know who you are.”
Trihn raised her eyebrows for an explanation, but he didn’t give her one. He was about eye-level with her and kept his head tilted back, an imitation of Damon. She wondered if they were friends or if Jimmy just idolized him.
“You know Damon?”
“Grew up together.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t jerk him around, you know? He’s a great guy, and he doesn’t deserve that, even from someone as hot as you.”
Trihn shook her head with a sigh. Jimmy was just being a good friend. She would do the same thing for any of her friends if it were needed. But she wasn’t jerking Damon around. She thought she had been clear that she didn’t want a relationship, and if the flowers were any indication, he thought he’d made his point clear, too.
“Got it,” she said.
“Good. You seem nice. I’m just looking out for him.”
Trihn looked directly into his little puppy-dog eyes. “You really don’t know anything about me. Maybe I’m not nice.”
“Damon likes you, and he has good taste. He sees the good in people, even when they don’t see it in themselves.” Jimmy sounded like he had been on the other end of that speech before.
Also, she was pretty sure idolization was higher on the list than friendship.
A hand clamped down on Jimmy’s shoulder, and Trihn’s gaze moved upward to find Damon staring at her.
“What’s going on here?” he asked Jimmy.
“Uh…nothing,” Jimmy squeaked.
“Yeah. It’d better be nothing,” Damon growled.
He actually seemed irritated with his friend. Or is that fear clouding his eyes? Is he worried about what Jimmy had said to me?
“Go do that move I taught you last week. Xavier probably needs a break.”
Jimmy saluted him with two fingers and then glided into the center of the circle to the cheers of the onlookers.
Trihn and Damon stood there together with a sexual tension that she couldn’t deny. His eyes drank her in, as if he’d been dying of thirst during the week apart. She could feel need rolling off of him, and she wanted to lean into him. It made her want to forget all the rules she had constructed for herself about the one-night stand and rethink those walls she had just rebuilt around her heart. But she needed those for protection. A hot guy with a few charming words was more destructive than a nuclear bomb to the heart.
“Maya said you weren’t here,” Trihn said when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
“I thought it would be easier for you if you didn’t know that I was here.”
“And then you played that Chloe song.”
He grinned. “It was requested.”
“It was a dead giveaway.”
“Maybe I couldn’t stand up there in obscurity any longer while the one thing I wanted tempted me from afar.”
“Damon,” she said, turning away from him.
Her cheeks heated at his words. He made something so minor sound so meaningful that it was hard to ignore him.
“Did you get the flowers?”
“Yes.”
“And the Kiss?”
She turned to face him with a sigh. “Yes.”
“You know why I sent it, right?”
“As a joke?” she guessed.
“Because I plan to earn back the right to your kisses. In the meantime, I’ll just send you chocolate ones to remind you of me.”
Damon held out his hand and passed her a Hershey’s Kiss.