The Bill Bosom Band knows how to rock out on the patio in the middle-of-nowhere Texas. I dance with Cece until I can’t feel my anxieties anymore. Until all the impracticality of this entire night slips away from my worries and the only thing that’s left is pure, unreserved fun. For the next ten songs, Cece and I aren’t estranged cousins living under the same roof. My mom isn’t addicted to therapy and propriety. I don’t have a college future looming over me that I have no desire to fulfil. It’s just me and Cece, dancing and laughing on the dance floor.

I can’t even describe how wonderful this feels.

When a song ends and the singer leans into the mike, my heart seizes up. He announces that it’s time for a little break, promising they’ll be back on stage soon. But the moment is over now, the music silenced and replaced with the sounds of crickets and the gentle flow of the water beyond. The dance floor begins to clear out.

“I’m not ready for this to be over,” I tell Cece.

“Same,” she says, reaching out and pulling a pine needle from my hair. My hair is all a mess, frizzy from the humid air and tangled from dancing. I try combing it with my fingers as we walk across the patio. An older man with a beer gut and jeans held on by suspenders stops right in our way. He reeks of body odor and cigar smoke, but something about his graying handlebar mustache makes him look like a hillbilly Santa Claus. In other words; I don’t feel like he’s going to kidnap us or anything.

His eyes are glassy as he stares at us, bushy grey brows pulled together. “You two are sisters,” he says. “Nearly identical.”

I laugh because on a basic level, Cece is taller and has red hair compared to my dark brown locks. Her eyes are green and mine are brown. We couldn’t be more different on sight alone, and this guy is clearly blind.

Cece beams. “Close. We’re cousins.”

“Cousins,” he says with a nod. “You’re not from around here either.”

“No sir, we’re not,” she says. I’m a little weirded out by talking to a strange, most likely drunken old man, but Cece seems thrilled to have another person in the equation.

Overhead, the speakers come to life, playing the opening of an old John Michael Montgomery song that I remember from my childhood. The man puts a hand to his heart. “I love this song,” he says, extending his hand out to Cece. “Would you do me the honors of granting me one dance?”

She curtseys. Actually curtsies. “I’d love to,” she says, batting her eyelashes as she takes his hand. She throws a wink over her shoulder as he leads her back onto the dancefloor. All around us, people are pairing off and dancing to the slow song. The high I’d had a few minutes ago is definitely gone as I walk around lovebirds, making my way back to our table. Slow songs are not a way to forget about your worries.

Ezra meets me at the edge of the patio. His hands are in his pockets, hair swooped to the side, barely missing his eyes. There’s this subtle smile on his lips. “Where are our bags?” I say, glancing behind him.

“I locked them in the RV.” He taps his front jeans pocket and his keys rattle.

“Cool,” I say as a weird cotton ball sensation fills my throat. Ezra’s just an arm’s length away from me, eye level since the patio is a few inches higher than the seating area. “I guess we can go home soon.”

He nods. His Adam’s apple bobs. “You want to dance?”

“What?”

He steps onto the patio, suddenly taller than me again. “Cece’s got a partner,” he says with a sly grin. “I don’t want you to feel left out.”

Butterflies flip flop around my stomach. “I thought you didn’t dance.”

His tongue flicks across his bottom lip. “Watching you dance has inspired me.”

I drop my head into my hand. “Ugh, I’m so embarrassed. Did I look like an idiot?”

He takes my hand, inching forward until I step backward. Now we’re both technically on the dance floor, just at the very edge of it. “You looked adorable,” he says, putting a hand on my hip and tugging me toward him. Grinning as if he has this all figured out, he takes my hands and lifts them up to his chest, and I lace my fingers together behind his neck, his skin warming me to the core.

Ezra’s dark eyes glow under the clear lights overhead. He peers down at me, that coy grin permanently etched into his handsome features as our feet sway and shuffle to the slow country song.

“You’re pretty good at this,” I say, so close I can smell the Dr. Pepper on his breath.

“Well I’ve had a year’s worth of practice,” he says as his feet lead the way.

“Really?” I nearly stop in my tracks because I can’t picture Ezra taking dance lessons. I give him an evil grin. “Girlfriend make you go?”

“Nah, remember back at Rose Elementary when they taught us dancing in P.E.?”

“Ahh,” I can’t help but nervous laugh now that I’m thinking of his girlfriend. “You’ve had no formal training, just the stupid torture they forced on us in school.”

He grins. “Hey, I remember most of it, so it counts.”

“I do, too. Cece was my partner.”

“Lucky. I had Trisha Bines as my partner. She was such a bitch.”

“Can fourth graders be bitches?” I ask. My fingers twist together behind his neck as we sway to the music. “I’m pretty sure bitchiness is developed in high school.”

His grin fades. “She spent the whole time making fun of my squinty eyes.”

I frown. “Definitely a bitch.”

He laughs and takes a step back, taking my hand and spinning me around like they do in the movies. I twirl around twice, and then his strong arms pull me back against his chest. I’m laughing as I bump into him, and then all of a sudden I’m very aware—too aware—of how close we are. I shuffle back a few inches, and let my arms go back around his neck, locking my elbows to keep that safe few inches of space between us.

“How’d you manage being partners with Cece?” Ezra says. “They were making us pair off in boy-girl order.”

I shrug, glancing over at where she’s dancing with the old man. She’s smiling wide and talking about something that makes him laugh.  “Cece and I just did what we wanted,” I say, looking back at Ezra. “We chose to be partners because all the boys in our P.E. class were icky.”

“Hey, I was in that class,” Ezra says, frowning in mock offense.

I lift my eyebrows. “Precisely. All the boys were icky.”

He grins down at me, his bottom lip sliding under his teeth. The music plays on, only interrupted by the loud growl of a Harley as it peels out of the parking lot. “What is it?” I ask him, because he’s obviously thinking something.

“I hope this trip has been good for you and her.” We shuffle too close to another couple, so he slides over to the side and repositions us. Now we’re nearly in the middle of the dance floor and I don’t even remember that happening. “I can’t describe how much it hurt to realize you and Cece weren’t best friends anymore.” His eyes darken. “Thomas wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“It’s not because of Thomas.” Even as I say the words, I’m not sure how true they are. Thomas’s death ruined everyone’s lives—there’s no doubt about that. It threw our family solar system all out of orbit, made us question every single thing we held dear. But Cece and I were together on that. His death didn’t push us apart. It was her drastic changes that severed our lifelong bond.

As if sensing my thoughts, Ezra pulls a little closer to me, his hands warm on my sides. “You can’t let Cece being bipolar keep you apart.”

“I’m not trying to,” I say quietly. “It just does.”

He reaches up, tucking stray hairs behind my ear.  “She really needs you, but I think you need her, too.”

I nod, my throat hurting. “I didn’t realize how much I missed her until this stupid road trip. For the last several years she was just this annoying pain in my side, this girl I tried avoiding at all costs.”

“She told me,” he says. The pained look in his eyes tells me that I’d rather not know all the details she told him. I feel bad enough as it is.

I look down at our feet, two pairs of Converse on a dancefloor of cowboy boots. “I’m a terrible person.”

“You’re not,” he says softly. “You’re making up for it now. Maybe this road trip is what everyone needed.”

“What do you mean?”

Ezra’s hands tighten around my waist as we shuffle away from a couple getting a little too close to us in their drunken swaying. His lips press together. “I was so lost for so many years before Cece found me at work.” He exhales. “You don’t know how many times I thought about seeking y’all out and seeing if we could hang out sometime. After Thomas—and then my Mom—I had no one. And you two were hella annoying girls when we were kids—” He grins and I roll my eyes. “But if anyone knew how to help me move on with my life, I figured it would be you and Cece.”

When the song ends, another slow one begins. I’m too caught up in this conversation to even consider getting off the dance floor right now.

“Why didn’t you come visit us?” I ask, my voice dry. “Before you graduated, I saw you in the hallways sometimes.”

“Yeah, I purposely avoided you,” he says, glancing away. “Cece and I talked a little in high school, but not much.”

“Wait.” I put my hand on his chest. “You avoided me? Why?”

He gnaws on his bottom lip, avoiding my gaze. I stop dancing and drop my hands, staring at him as seriously as I can, hoping it’ll make him spill. “Why would you talk to Cece instead of me?”

He sighs, grabbing the back of his neck. Again, he looks out at the water, perhaps wanting to run away.

“Ezra?” I say. Fear of his answer has my veins pumping cold. Why would he avoid me so much after we’d been through such a great loss together?

He sighs through his nose. “It’s stupid,” he says, gazing at the patio below us. “My junior year, when you were a freshman—I saw you walk into the cafeteria on the first day of school. Actually, I saw Cece first and was going to go say hi, but then I stopped when I saw you.”

“Am I really that horrible?” I say, frustration building. I can’t believe I was just dancing with this guy.

He chews on his thumbnail, his lips twisting into a grin. “No,” he says. “You were so beautiful. I—I was so embarrassed that I’d spent my childhood giving this girl a hard time, and now she was here, all grown up and so pretty every guy in the area was staring at her—” When his eyes finally meet mine, goosebumps prickle down my arms. “I don’t know, Lilah. When I finally saw you after so long, I was too embarrassed to talk to you. Felt like I had no place being your friend when you’d grown into who you were going to be.”

I’m trying so hard not to grin like an idiot. “You’re dumb,” I say, poking him in the chest. “No one thought that about me, I promise.”

He pulls me back in front of him and resumes slow dancing. “Trust me. Everyone thought that.”

Cheeks burning, I rest my face against his chest, my arms around his back as we sway to the music. His heart beats a steady rhythm, though his muscles tighten as I lean against him. Somewhere back in Telico, there’s a girl who would be pissed that I’m dancing with her boyfriend. Guilt pours over me. Yet, I stay right here, feet shuffling in synch with Ezra.

Overhead, the strands of clear lights sparkle against a backdrop of a dark sky and towering pine trees. On the bayou, a few boats have anchored off the shore to watch the band play. All around us couples are dancing, smiling, drinking. This is a fun place to be on a Wednesday night. So much better than being stuck at home in my bedroom.

The song ends and fast-paced song from the eighties takes over the speakers while the band is still on break. I’m still pressed against Ezra as if our shirts were magnets instead of cotton. Focusing on the guilt I feel, I force myself to pull back and look up at him so I can say something like we should go home now, or let’s sit this song out. Only Ezra is peering down at me so all coherent thoughts melt into mind slush. Our lips are so close I can feel his breath on mine.

He’s going to kiss me.

“Cece,” I blurt out, stepping back and dropping my hands from his shoulders. “We should find Cece.”

“Yeah.” He exhales and looks down, shaking his head a little. I know he felt it, too. He’s probably feeling worse than I am right now. My heart pounds as I glance around, wondering if Cece saw what just happened. I almost kissed a guy with a girlfriend. What kind of girl does that make me? What kind of guy does it make Ezra?

My thoughts are a jumbled mess of desire and shame. I can’t focus on the faces in the crowd as I pace around the edge of the dancefloor, looking for my cousin. Finally, a beer gut and suspenders catch my attention, and I see the old man still on the dancefloor, shaking what his mama gave him with another woman who is closer to his age. Cece’s not there.

“Where is she?” I whisper. Most of the crowd has cleared out and headed back to their tables, leaving only a dozen people on the patio. None of them are Cece. I turn back and Ezra is there, his lips pressed together. 

“She’s not at our table,” he says, leaning up on his toes to see over the people.

Cursing, I rush from one end of the patio to the other. Then I go inside and search every table and stick my head in the bathrooms. Back on the patio, I look for her red hair, her rosy cheeks. Her white shirt. But none of these people are my cousin.

Ezra jogs up to me. “She’s not at the RV. Not in the parking lot either.”

With a ragged breath, I say the words that have been haunting me since we left the dance floor. “She’s gone.”