Inside, it hits me all at once. The noise, the heat, the press of bodies. The ceiling is high, the room bigger than it looked from outside, all exposed pipes and old brick and a long bar running the length of the left wall.
The stage at the far end has a band mid-set—not the artist Lark came for, just an opener. But they're good, guitar-driven and loud and electric, with a fiddle threaded through the mix that gives the whole thing a stomping, Celtic-inflected energy that makes the floor vibrate under my feet.
The floor in front of the stage is a mass of people moving, not club dancing exactly, more joyful than that. People grabbing each other's hands and twirling and laughing and bumping into strangers and not caring.
"Oh, Iloveit here already!" Mia exclaims, squeezing my arm hard enough to bruise.
"He goes on at midnight or so," Lark says, checking her phone. "So we've got an hour to kill."
"Perfect," Jack says. "Drinks first, then we can stake out a spot closer to the stage."
Alex leans close to my ear, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath. "What are you drinking?"
"Negroni sbagliato," I say.
"Good choice," he says, and disappears into the crush at the bar, weaving through bodies with the ease of someone who's worked enough restaurant floors to navigate crowds in his sleep.
Jack finds us a spot near the wall, standing room with a decent view of the stage. Mia is already moving, hips shifting, feet finding the beat without any conscious thought. Within thirty seconds she's left us entirely and waded into the crowd, arms up, dancing by herself with the ease of someone who has never once worried about how she looks doing anything.
A guy near her starts matching her energy and she grins at him like they're old friends and they're moving together, laughing, and I watch with a mix of admiration and something close to envy because I have never in my life been able to walk onto a floor and just let go like that.
I can command a kitchen full of line cooks. I can break down a whole fish in under three minutes. I can plate forty covers in an hour without breaking a sweat. But ask me to dance in front of strangers and suddenly I'm as graceful as a giraffe on roller skates.
Jack holds his hand out to Lark. "Come on, beautiful. Let's show these people how it's done.”
"I thought you'd never ask," she says, and they push into the crowd.
Jack pulls her in and spins her and she laughs and stumbles into him and he catches her, and then they're just moving together. They look annoyingly good, both of them moving with a natural rhythm. He dips her low and she tips her head back laughing and his face when he looks at her is so openly adoring that I have to glance away because some part of me is wishing it was Alex and me out there.
Which leaves me standing against the wall. Alone. Holding a spot nobody asked me to hold, watching everyone I came with have the kind of fun I don't know how to have anymore.
The band is playing fast and the whole room is moving except for me, because I cannot for the life of me remember how to stop being a spectator in my own life.
There's a very obnoxious part of my brain that would like topoint out that this is a metaphor for literally everything. Always watching, never participating. Always in control, never spontaneous. Always the chef, never the person who gets to just enjoy the meal.
Thankfully, before I can spiral much further into this bout of self-pity, Alex appears with two drinks. He hands me the sbagliato, the Prosecco still fizzing, and takes a sip of his drink, which looks like bourbon, neat.
"Cheers," he says, raising his glass.
"Cheers," I say, and we tap glasses. The sbagliato is good, bitter and bright and exactly what I needed.
He leans against the wall next to me, looking comfortable and relaxed, and for a minute we just watch the floor, the band driving hard, the fiddle player absolutely shredding, the crowd eating it up.
"Not a dancer?" he asks, glancing over at me with that permanent half-smile.
"I'm terrible at it," I say, which is a generous assessment of my abilities. "How is everyone so good? Mia I'll give a pass since she's literally a professional, but Jack and Lark look like they've been doing this for years."
"Jack's always been like that," Alex says. "Irritating natural coordination. Same thing that makes him a good driver. Everything physical just comes easy to him. The rest of us mere mortals have to actually practice."
The beat picks up, faster, more percussive, and the room surges in response. I can feel the floor vibrating through my shoes.
Alex takes a long sip of his drink and sets it down on the ledge behind him. "Come on. Let's give it a shot."
I stare at him. "I just told you I'm terrible at this. And I don't know if that's a great idea because..."
Because I'm starting to like you. Because I really want to.
He laughs. "Relax, princess. I'm not hitting on you. But I'mpretty sure you want to be out there and you're standing here talking yourself out of it. Am I wrong?"