The Light Between Us (2 page)

Chapter 2

Czar's was already crowded by the time Ruth got there.  She slipped through the crowd of dancers grooving to the live band, searching for her friends.  Spying them in a quieter corner, she made her way over.

“
Hey, girl!” Cecilia squealed, jumping up to give Ruth a hug, the blonde's golden hair spilling around them both.  “I'm so glad you're here!”

“
Yeah, we were taking bets on if you'd show or not,” Maddie said, a scowl pinching at her pixie face and somehow managing to darken her already goth look.  “Guess I'll be buying drinks for the next couple of rounds.”

Ruth rolled her eyes.  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Maddie.”

Padme gave Maddie a playful shove.  “Well, you know her, Ruth.  A veritable blossom of optimism, this one.”

Cecilia nudged the empty chair at the table before sliding back into her own, crossing her legs smoothly.  “We're just glad you made, hon.”

Ruth took the empty chair, and Padme pushed a rum and coke across the table toward her.  “Look, I even ordered you a first round.  How's that for a vote of confidence?” 

Ruth took a sip.  “Mmm. Thanks.”  She sighed and settled in, taking in the bar scene, letting the drink and her friends' banter soothe her.  This wasn't so bad.  Maybe Padme was right – she did need this, to be out, having fun. 

And really, she was glad to be here, out with her friends.  Ruth knew how terrible she was at keeping up with them, so she was glad that they kept up with her.  They seemed to understand how exhausted teaching made her, even though she rarely mentioned it.  It was a source of shame for her, because Padme seemed to be so enlivened by teaching her third graders.  She'd said it was her passion, and Cecilia and Maddie were also both doing work that they loved.  Ruth was a little jealous that her friends' passions got to be their jobs, while her own took the back burner ninety nine percent of the time.  She sighed and gulped the rest of her rum and coke straight down.

“
Hey!” said Maddie, nudging Padme.  “Looks like Ruthie's going to let loose tonight.  It's about damn time you brought your game.” 

“
Shut up and get me another then, Maddie, and we'll see who's got game,” Ruth shot back. 

Her three friends crowed at that, drawing the gaze of the people at the nearby tables.  Ruth shook her curly hair back from her face, the warmth the alcohol brought to her cheeks feeling like something close to courage.  Let them stare, she thought as Maddie pushed through the crowd to get another round.  Ruth decided that she needed some attention, and soon. 

As soon as the thought arose, her stomach clenched in – what was that?  Fear?  Lust?  Probably more like hopelessness, she decided.  The few guys she'd ever been with had been utter disappointments, every one, in spite of the fact that almost all of them had been quite promising at the outset.  But none of them ever wanted to go deep with her, even when they were interested in a long term relationship.  And more than that, every one of that them had laughed off her writing. 

“
What's wrong, lady?” Cecilia asked, leaning in close to Ruth.  “You've got a funny look on your face.

Ruth shook her head so her curls fell back down around her cheeks.  “Nothing.  I'm fine.  Where is Maddie with those drinks?”             

As if on cue, the crowd parted and Maddie appeared carrying a tray of drinks.  “The crowd is nuts.  I got a double round so I don't have to go back for another order too soon.  And this,” she paused, glaring at Padme as she set the tray on the table, “should pay off my debt.”  Padme stuck out her tongue.

“
That's what you get for betting against me,” Ruth teased, reaching for the blue margarita that had to be hers.  “You know me so well.  I mean, except for when you put down money against me.”             

Maddie wrinkled her nose.  “You make it easy by being so predictable.  First the rum and coke, then the margarita, then a beer, and then you're done.”

Ruth shrugged.  “Sometimes, I actually know what I like.”

Padme raised her glass.  “Damn straight.  I'll drink to that.”  The other three women clinked their glasses against hers, and Ruth couldn't stop a slow smile from stealing across her face.

“
What?” Maddie scowled. 

“
Nothing,” Ruth said.  “Just – you guys are awesome.”

“
Except for Maddie's bet,” Padme added, making Cecilia and Ruth laugh.

“
Yeah, except for that,” Ruth agreed. 

Maddie held up her hands in surrender, one still bearing her glass.  “Okay, okay,” she said.  “I solemnly swear I shall never vote against Ruth again, ever, cross my heart and all that shit.”

“
Hear hear,” said Ruth before taking another sip of her margarita. 

Padme slid to the edge of her seat.  “Who wants to dance?”

“
Yeah, let's,” said Cecilia, jumping to her feet.  Maddie slid out of her chair languid as a snake, taking a last swallow of her drink before setting it down on the table.   

“
I'll watch our stuff,” said Ruth.

“
You sure?” Maddie asked, the other two women already a part of the crowd, moving with the beat under the blue and purple lights that lit the dance floor.

She nodded.  “Yeah, I'll catch up in a few songs.” 

“
Okay.  Call my cell if you want me to swap out.”  Maddie moved to join the others.

Ruth breathed deep as she watched her three best friends dance.  Cecilia had been her first college roommate, a golden blonde with a perpetual natural tan who always seemed to shimmer with joy and was something of a mother hen.  It struck most people who met her as odd that she was currently attending law school at Harvard, given her bubbly nature, but she was a skilled speaker and the champion of the undergrad Harvard debate team, not to mention a bookworm like Ruth, so what Cecelia called lawyering came naturally for her.

Maddie's friendship had come as a surprise.  A dance major at Boston College, she and Ruth had met during their junior year of college.  Ruth had sat  on the T three mornings a week staring across the train's aisle at this pale-skinned elfin creature with a tangled mop of black and red streaked hair hanging down over her eyes.  Ruth had been equally mesmerized by and terrified of her, though she never would have said as much.   But then one day, while Ruth had been pretending to read an Anne Lamott book while really stealing glances at this mysterious girl, Maddie scared the shit out of Ruth by moving across the aisle to sit next to her.  “I really like that one,” she'd said, nodding to the Lamott.  “We'll be friends.”  And that had been that.  Now Maddie was teaching dance at what she called a “prissy little tutu factory,” but they all knew she loved every second of it.

Ruth nursed her neon colored drink as she watched her friends groove with the crowd of dancers.  She loved this, observing everyone in one of life's many gray areas, where they were half hyper-aware of the attention of others and half uncaring, caught in the rhythm of the music.  She never seemed to quite be able to achieve enough of the uncaring to really enjoy the dancing herself, though. 

Except, maybe for tonight.  Maybe Ruth wouldn't stop at her customary last drink, a beer.  Maybe she'd have a little more, some liquid courage, to get herself out on the dance floor and moving without too much of a care, like the sensual women in her romance novels.  She was tired of feeling so stiff, so old.  What if she didn't care so much about going deep with guys for a change and just let herself focus on some superficial, uncomplicated fun?

Ruth sighed.  She found the thought immensely depressing.

* * *

Derek had been at Czar's for hours.  It was his weekend night ritual – hit up a bar, work the room, never come home alone.  And it had always, always worked. 

Only tonight, it didn't feel like it was working.  Not that his Mediterranean features and impeccable physique hadn't received some alluring, come-hither looks from more than a few women.  It was just that he didn't really care.  The idea of bedding any of them, or all of them, or all of them at once, didn't turn him on like it ordinarily did. 

Instead, he'd just sat at this table tucked back in a corner and watched the band do their thing, the crowd moving to their musical offerings.  And he was rather enjoying himself, he'd discovered with a  surprise.  Maybe he was getting too old for the perpetual one night stands.  He sighed, running a hand through his wavy  chocolate brown hair.

But he wasn't even thirty, for crying out loud.  He pressed his hands to the table, feeling the slightly sticky surface unfurl beneath his palms.  Time for another drink, he decided. 

Derek stood and began to weave his way through the crowd.  A few of the ladies saw him coming and accidentally/on purpose bumped up against him, but this homage which would ordinarily have turned him on merely felt like an annoyance.  He wanted to brush their touch away like he would an irritating fly, like he had brushed Lucy's – no, Leanne's – fingers away from his skin earlier that day after their tryst in his car.

At the bar, he waved at the bartender, who nodded, knowing what Derek wanted – more of his usual, bourbon.  There was something about the amber liquid sloshing languid in a glass tumbler, sometimes with a little ice, that he found so alluring.  He hated the taste, but he loved the feeling it gave him – and it wasn't just the intoxication.

The bartender slid him his drink and Derek took a sip, leaning back against the bar and surveying the room, cringing a little at the familiar burning sensation that ran down his throat as he swallowed.  It had become so such a comfort, that dull and acrid alcoholic fire.  He wondered if that was a bad thing.  He wondered if he cared.

Three women were joining the dancing crowd, adding their own particular flavors to the cacophony of motion – a blonde, an Indian woman, and a dark little scrap of a thing that looked like she might knife him as well as fuck him.  They were all attractive in their own way, and yet nothing beckoned him to look closer.  He sighed – it felt like all he was doing these days was sighing – and took another swig of bourbon before heading back toward his table, populated with empty glasses whose contents had done nothing to allay his ennui. 

As he moved across the room, a woman sitting alone caught his attention.  He couldn't imagine what about her had made him notice her, because there was nothing particularly exceptional or flashy about her.  She looked as if she was hardly there, wandering through the field of her own thoughts as her eyes watched the dancers.  Derek noted that she didn't seem to have come alone, because the other chairs at her table held coats that weren't hers, and there were far more bottles and drinks on the table than he could imagine her consuming.

That old sense of going on the hunt, the one that he seemed to be so sorely missing these days, rose in his gut, making his heart beat faster.  He smiled to himself.  So his mojo wasn't entirely gone.  Not yet. 

Derek reclaimed his seat at his own table, but kept his eyes trained on the woman who had captured him.  He'd thought at first glance that she was plain, but as he gazed at her, he saw that there was an undeniable beauty about her.  She had curly brown hair that she probably hated – all the curly haired girls did – but was wild and deliciously unkempt.  And it somehow matched the expression lingering in her large, dark eyes – wistful, sad, but with a spark of something he couldn't quite name.  She had a Mediterranean complexion similar to his own, and a curvy body that he knew would feel delicious beneath his hands.  Derek had a special love for the women whose bodies rose and fell like the ocean, with swells in all the right places, and this girl certainly had that kind of body.  He felt that stirring deep in his core, the crimson electricity of attraction. 

He took a deep breath, and another swallow of bourbon.  Patience, he could tell, would be the key with this one.  And it's not like he didn't have time, when all the other women he looked at made him feel like he'd under a cold shower. 

And there was something about her, some magic that he couldn't source.  Her clothes were more about comfort than about looks – denim jeans with slip-on flats and a colorful semi-sheer tunic-style top made of a fabric that wafted gently in every draft and breeze – and she'd kept her makeup light and natural, if she was wearing any at all.  With dark, thick lashes like those, she didn't really need mascara.  Her jewelry was pretty minimal, too – beaded bangle earrings and a single ring on her right hand.  She was sexy, and looked like she didn't know it.  A smile played at Derek's lips.