Club Storyville (23 page)

“You’ve been to a place like this?” I looked to her in question, trying not to imagine all the Lisas there must have been who found Ariel just as attractive as Desmond. “Where?” I asked when she nodded.

“Chicago,” Ariel responded. “Boston. Philadelphia. D.C. Richmond.”

“There’s a place like this in Richmond?” I couldn't disguise my disbelief.

“There are places like this everywhere,” Ariel said, and, looking back to the dance floor as Ariel continued to stare out at it, I watched Buddy give Lisa an impressive spin, before relocating her hands when they landed on his backside.

“I just...” I shook my head at how the people intermingled, how they laughed without a trace of worry. “It’s like they don’t even know they’re breaking the law. They look so...” Happy, was how they looked. Free. Unburdened. Alive. “Comfortable,” I said.

“Yes, Elizabeth,” Ariel quietly uttered. “The only person uncomfortable here is you.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” I argued instantly, but we both knew it wasn't true.

Despite her declaration she was done with it from the first drink, Ariel reached for her glass with a small, humorless laugh, swirling the moonshine within as if weighing the pros and cons of imbibing, and, determined to overcome myself, I tucked my sweater back into the booth and slid from my seat.

“Do you want to dance?” I asked, and Ariel’s eyes rising slowly to me, they gave nothing away.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” she sighed, sounding frustrated I asked.

“I know,” I declared, though that too was a lie. Maybe I didn’t have anything to prove to her, but I did have something to prove to myself. I had to prove I could be strong enough to ask for what I wanted, for once, to let people see, even if they weren't typical people, that I wasn’t afraid of my own freedom. Because that was what it was, every time I listened to Mama and fell right back in line. It was fear of what would happen if I didn’t, not a deep, sincere desire to be acceptable. “Now, are you going to dance with me?” My heart thrummed in my throat, off-beat to the music, because Ariel, she was my deep, sincere desire. “Or do I have to ask someone else?”

When she just stared at me for a painful moment, I was sure Ariel was going to call my bluff, tell me to go ahead and dance with someone else, and I wondered if I could do that, find solace in a stranger when it wasn’t what I wanted. Then, deciding she couldn't drink the moonshine after all, she set the glass back on the table and slid out of the booth, and, for a moment, the world stopped as she took my hand.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I
f nothing else from the outside world made it into the darkened reality of the club beneath Café Beni, the music and dancing, at least, were the same. Dodging wildly swinging arms and legs as we made our way onto the dance floor, I realized there was one way I did fit into this new world. Though, turning to Ariel, feeling the pull in every part of me that yearned to be closer to her, it occurred to me I fit in at Club Storyville in a far more profound way than just knowing the steps of a dance.

“Hey there,” Desmond called to us as he grabbed again at Lisa’s roaming hands.

“See,” Lisa prodded him. “She did want to dance. She just didn't want to dance with you.”

Smiling at their playful teasing in an effort to convince them I was emotionally stable, the expression trembled on my face as I looked to Ariel. “Do you know this dance?” I asked her.

“Let’s see what I can do,” Ariel replied, holding her hand in the air between us, and I gave into her warm gaze as her other arm slid around my waist, pulling me as close as I had ever been to her, as close as I was afraid I was ever going to get.

Already too many limbs flying through the air around us, we kept our Charleston simple, and close, and I almost tromped her foot multiple times as I forgot the steps for the first time in forever. Laughing in Ariel’s arms for a second when she surprised me with a sudden spin, I forgot about everyone else, about all the reasons we should be finding other partners, until I was breathless and, for an instant as Ariel’s eyes held mine, truly and utterly blissful.

Nan always said dancing was good for the soul.

The music coming to a stop just as soon as we got good and started, though, I tried to catch my breath as I let Ariel slip away from me, reaching for her hand to make sure she didn’t abandon me completely. When the music started again, under the lingering applause of the dancers and spectators, Desmond extricated himself at once from Lisa, and I watched her follow him off the dance floor, certain she was trying to lure him into staying for a dance to the music that had changed tempo to something slower, meant to bring bodies closer together.

Feeling the tug as Ariel tried to go, I grasped more tightly to her hand, feeling opportunity slipping away from me. If there was anyplace I could do this, I was in it, and all I wanted was not to let her go.

“It’s all right here, right?” I questioned when she looked back at me, a trace of worry showing in the line above her brow, and when Ariel had no immediate response, I didn't wait for one. Stepping closer, I pulled her arms around my waist, resting my hands on her shoulders, feeling the tension roll through her at my touch. “Is this how you dance with everyone?” I asked when she maintained a distance that was nearly unbearable, and, while I somewhat hoped it was exactly how she danced with everyone else, when she pulled me against her, I knew it wasn’t.

Her slow breaths next to my ear, I exhaled unevenly as Ariel's body pressed to mine, my arms tightening around her to pull her even closer. Though I could feel my feet on the floor, each step felt like falling, or jumping, and I wondered if Ariel knew how much she made me feel that way, like I was standing on the edge of something terrifying, but utterly intoxicating, dangerous maybe, but maybe worth the risk.

Of course, I realized, turning my head just enough to find the other women on the dance floor wrapped up in each other's embraces, if Ariel had been places like this before, she probably knew better than I did what I was feeling.

“If you...” I lost my nerve, knowing it was the kind of question I was never supposed to ask anyone, let alone for the reasons I felt compelled to know. I wondered if the words alone would strip me of any status I had ever earned as a lady. “If you have been with a man to know it isn’t right, have you been with a woman to know it is?”

Though she'd said if I had questions to just ask them, the silence that fell when I did was so consuming, I swore I heard the people sweating beside us. The seconds drumming by in the notes of the song, I didn’t know if Ariel was bothered I asked or just had no desire to answer me. Then, I heard the soft pant as she opened her lips, and the controlled breath leak out between them.

“Yes,” she said, and, not sure how I felt about her answer, I clutched more tightly to her, grateful I had her for at least a moment.

“More than one?” I questioned, though there was no reason I needed to know that other than my burning curiosity and the flash of possessiveness that rose out of nowhere and made me want to claim her.

“Yes,” Ariel said again, and the next question of how many women there had been raging into my mind, I let it die there as it should.

The music vibrating around us, the feel of Ariel's body against me, shooting warm, indefinable sensations through those places I tried so hard not to think about, I drew memories from my own imagination. Recalling all those things I had pictured Ariel and I doing that I had only ever read or heard about, I thought of her doing with someone else.

“What was it like?” I asked, hand fisting in the sheer fabric at her back as I waited to know.

For several bars of the song, Ariel said nothing. I could hear the quickening of her breath, feel the shifts of her body as it moved against mine, and I feared my most important question was the most likely to go unanswered.

“Please, tell me,” I whispered.

“It was...” Ariel paused at the most torturous place for so long, I thought I would scream from the not knowing. “More.”

“More what?” I pushed, on the verge of comprehension, too scared to step over the edge.

“More everything,” she responded, and I understood more than I realized.

More, like it felt just lying next to her in our shared bed at night. More, like when I inadvertently brushed her arm or felt her hand at my elbow. More than what I felt when Jackson smiled at me, or when he kissed my hand, or when he asked me to wait for him.

Pulling back, I wanted to look at Ariel, but, more than that, I wanted to be seen by her, like she saw me before the garden, before she refused to look at me anymore. I wanted it to be okay, to feel what I felt when her eyes met mine in the dim, smoky ambiance of jazz and too much freedom. I wanted her to kiss me so badly I was ready to beg, to bargain, to make myself her sacrifice, but, as it turned out, it took only the slightest tilt of my head to coax Ariel’s lips to mine.

Feeling the soft press of her kiss, it felt like it had been years since the garden, and that no time had passed at all. Everything that had been there that day was still there, but a thousand-fold, and I whimpered against Ariel's mouth when I realized I never wanted anyone else to kiss me that way, to overwrite the feel of Ariel’s lips on mine.

When she pulled away for a breath, to look at me, I thought I would die of longing, of the desperate need for more, but then her breath broke over my lips and she captured them again. Firmer, more consuming, Ariel's lips seemed to finally accept they couldn’t break me, that I could endure them, that I wanted to feel them, to be changed in irreversible ways by them. By Ariel’s hands. By her body.

Fingers crawling up the strong curves of her back, they threaded through Ariel's hair, clinging too hard by accident and pulling her lips from mine with a small groan.

“Ariel,” I breathed, watching her eyes open so close I felt like I might be pulled right into them.

I knew then it wasn’t wrong. There was no way it could be wrong. What I felt for her wasn’t just those feelings that thrived in dark places like the place we were in. They had followed us in from the light. They came from a place that was pure. I wanted Ariel as I wanted her not because I was sickened with lust. I wanted her that way because I loved her. Those two things, they were hopelessly intertwined, which was why, no matter how much she made the other parts of me suffer, it was my heart that always ached for her most.

“I don’t want to be afraid,” I whispered, and I didn’t, but I was. As Desmond’s Paps and Nan had been afraid. Whatever truth there was between them, no matter how much their feelings made sense when they were alone, they didn’t make sense to the world and they knew the world would try to destroy them for it.

Ariel's hand coming up from my hip, I felt it brush against my cheek, before her fingers feathered across my lips, and, eyes closing, I wondered if we would ever make sense in the world.

It was a sudden change in music that drew my eyes back open. The forlorn sound of the trumpet didn't just alter the mood of the song, but of the room itself. Looking around, I could see the panic on people's faces before it spread to their feet, carrying them off the dance floor and toward the sides of the stage.

“Everyone out!” I heard someone yell, and, without a second’s hesitation, Ariel grabbed my hand and pulled me along in the rush of bodies.

“Desmond?” I reminded her, and I watched her get knocked forward by the stampeding crowd as she turned to look for him.

“Desmond!” Ariel yelled when she got her feet back beneath her and spotted him across the room, ushering people toward the stage.

“Go,” he waved us on. “Follow the others. Go!”

Grasping more tightly to Ariel when the pull of the crowd tried to drag her away from me, strangers packed in against us as we reached a passage behind the curtain next to the stage, which ran even longer and narrower than the hallway through which we had entered.

Feeling as if we would just be herded in, trapped inside the enclosed space, I wondered if Ariel and I would be crushed together, if this was how we would spend our last moments on Earth, before the crowd carried us up a steep staircase we couldn't even see before we reached it and a door suddenly opened before us.

Fresh air pouring in as we came out in a green courtyard, I looked up at the surrounding buildings, barely distinguishable in the night.

Turning in circles, there were too many ways to run, and Ariel didn't know who we should follow any better than I did. We tried one way first, and then another, but shadows appeared in the spaces between the buildings, blocking each way. Seeming to accept there was no way out, a few people from the club rushed at them, but the shadows raised long sticks and struck down anyone who tried to get past.

Though she had to have realized, as I had, there was no way to go, Ariel kept pulling, and when she turned me suddenly, I screamed at the sight of a hulking creature bearing down on us, before Ariel pulled me behind it, down a concrete step into the black enclave of a sunken doorway. Feeling stone against my skin as I reached out for something to hold onto, I realized the thing I’d thought a creature was nothing but a statue, and Ariel may have found the only place to hide in the entire courtyard.

Pressing me flat against the wall behind it, the front of Ariel's body formed to mine, and I wished I could feel anything but the fear that pulsed through me. Squinting hard through the crack where the statue didn’t quite meet the wall, I saw people rush past, watching as a shadow floated by to overtake a man. Just able to make out the man’s eyes, I could see them widen in the instant before the stick came down, hearing a crack I knew had to be his skull.

Breath huffing out of me in fright, I felt Ariel’s fingers on my jaw again, turning my face away from the courtyard, from the people fleeing and falling in it, from the beating that was taking place right beside us, I could tell by the sickening thuds of the stick coming down again and again and the man's desperate cries for mercy.

I knew we would be next. When the shadow was done with him, it would find us and take us. Or worse. Something crawling down my back at the notion, I couldn't tell if it was an actual spider or the psychological sensation of pure terror.