Dance Floor with Janice

The DJ knows what he is doing.

The music has been building for the last hour, each song bleeding into the next with the kind of momentum that makes it easy to stop thinking about anything outside the four walls of this room. The floor is packed, the lights low, the air carrying that particular warmth that only exists when a room full of people have collectively decided to be present for something.

Janice finds him at the edge of the floor.

She appears at his side looking exactly the way she looked when he picked her up, which is to say entirely too good for him to be casual about it. She nods toward the dance floor with a small questioning look.

Janice: dance with me?

Not a demand. Not a performance. Just her, asking him directly, which somehow lands harder than either of those things would have.

Miles: yeah. Let's go.

They find a spot where the crowd is dense enough to feel private. They started off dancing casually smiling and laughing. Slowly the distance between them reduces as they start to feel the heat of the intimacy. Janice is dancing with her back against Miles as she wraps her hand around his hair. Miles kisses her neck as he wraps his arms around her.

She turns to face him and steps in close, one hand finding his shoulder, the other in his hand. He puts his free hand on her waist and she settles into it naturally, like the position was always available and she simply waited for the right moment to occupy it.

Janice kisses Miles passionately. Their entire worlds feel to disappear in the moment as they only feel each other's lips in the moment.

Miles: you having a good night?

She looks up at him with something genuine behind her eyes.

Janie: Better than I expected.

Miles: I'm glad you said yes.

She holds his gaze for a moment, something moving behind her expression that she does not put into words. Then she steps slightly closer, closing the last of the distance between them, her hand moving from his shoulder to the back of his neck.

Janice: She says it quietly, just for him. Me too.

They stay like that through the rest of the song and into the next, her hand at the back of his neck, his arm around her waist, the floor moving around them like it belongs to someone else entirely.

Then he feels it.

Something slides into the side pocket of his tuxedo jacket, light and deliberate, there and gone in half a second. He turns instinctively but the crowd is thick and whoever did it has already dissolved back into the mass of people around him. A flash of a dress, maybe. The suggestion of movement. Nothing he could identify.

He reaches into his pocket.

A folded note. Small, neat handwriting.

Third floor. Corner restroom. Come alone.

He reads it twice. Looks up at the crowd around him. Looks at Janice, still close, eyes closed, moving with the music, completely unaware.

He folds the note back up and slides it into his pocket.

Then quietly, without a word, he lets the crowd swallow him.