{For one of my very favoritest Canadians...}
*
Meg looked around the room and listened to stories of the glory days of high school and how often they'd dropped by to visit old friends, teachers they'd liked and so on. Meg had no such fond memories. Odd little geeky girls like she'd been didn't wax nostalgic for high school. They left town right after graduation and didn't look back.
The D.J. was playing Motown. She listened. "My Girl" wafted from huge speakers on either side of the gym, tangled up in the crepe paper streamers hanging from the raised basketball hoops and floated near the banner proclaiming the 25th reunion.
She grabbed a can of Diet Coke from the cooler and stood in the corner watching the people. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, dancing, drinking, and talking with each other. Just like high school, she thought, but it wasn't really. Margaret Larson never attended dances. She was never asked.
"Margaret Larson?" A masculine voice penetrated her thoughts. She looked up into the blue eyes of the man standing beside her.
"It's just Meg now. Meg Jones."
"Oh, you're married," he replied, looking over to her left hand for a wedding ring.
"I was. Years ago. I wasn't what he wanted anymore." A long pause and she continued with a smile, "I hope he's very happy in Stepford."
He looked at her puzzled and then broke out into a laugh. "There's the Margaret I remembered. You always had such a strange sense of humor."
"Thanks, Steve." She glanced at the name tag slapped on his chest. Not that she needed one. She knew who he was. Steve McCormick. The heartthrob of their high school class. Her secret, she hoped, crush. "That's just what a high school girl yearns to be known for, being strange."
"No, really. I always thought you were cute."
She laughed, but there was a bit of pain mixed with the humor. "I was geeky, scrawny with thick glasses and scraggly hair."
"No, you weren't." He looked at the yearbook picture printed on her name tag and continued, "Margaret. Meg," he corrected, "you were just as pretty as any other girl. You just didn't realize it."
Meg looked at his picture on his name tag. "Not you. You knew you were the most popular boy in school."
"Maybe so, but inside I still felt gawky and awkward, just like you. You can't always judge a person by their appearance. It took me a while to figure that out," Steve said.
"What I remember most about you was your sense of humor. I bet you would have been fun on a date. I should have asked you out."
"You never would have asked me to share a lunch table, let alone ask me for a date. I wasn't one of the cool kids."
He sighed. "Yeah, you're right. It never even crossed my mind. That's one of the worst things about high school. All the pressure to be cool. I'm glad I don't have to worry about being cool now."
The D.J. segued into a ballad popular when they were in high school. The music's steady drumbeat pulsed in the room. The guitars crooned a soft melody. The bright overhead lamps dimmed, casting the cavernous gym into a world of low lights and shadows deep in the corners. People moved from their chairs along the walls and onto the floor, slow dancing to music from their past.
"Well, Meg," Steve said softly, taking her hand and pulling her onto the edge of the floor, "how about that dance we missed?"
They danced very properly. Hands in just the right position, bodies almost an arm's length apart and still she felt awkward, as gawky as the teenager she used to be, liable at any moment to step on his toes or trip over the black lines of the key painted on the floor of the basketball court. If she concentrated on the music, just let the smooth voice of the tenor flow over her, perhaps she could relax and enjoy this dance.
"Meg..."
"Yes," she answered, not looking up at him.
"Mr. Daniels isn't chaperoning tonight. You don't have to 'leave a ruler's length between those bodies'," he said, quoting their old principal's words to her.
"Oh," she replied, easing her body closer to his. "I guess I'm just a little nervous."
"Don't be. We're just dancing. Relax."
"Here. Like this," and he guided her hands up to his neck and then rested his hands lightly on her back, his fingers touching the thin strip of smooth skin now exposed there. Her reaction to his touch was barely audible, a feeling rather than a sound.
"Ticklish?" he asked.
"No, just a little surprised. It feels good."
They danced. Bodies swaying in time to the music. Gradually edging over to the edge of the dance floor, back to a corner where the lights didn't reach and the music was soft and low. He tilted her face to his with one finger under her chin.
"I really want to kiss you," he murmured as he lowered his mouth to hers.
"Oh, yes," she whispered against his mouth. "Yes, please."
They kissed, slowly and gently at first, the kisses they missed in long ago in high school when he was the most popular boy in school and she was the shy girl who watched him and wanted, but was too reticent to do anything about it.
They kissed like the people they were now, deep, passionate kisses, her mouth opening to let him inside. His mouth opening for her. Long drawn-out kisses that left them both gasping for breath and longing for more.
He brushed his fingers back and forth, dipping a finger between her skin and the faded denim of the short skirt she wore.
"This," he whispered into her ear, "was my very favorite part of slow dancing."
"You just wanted to cop a feel," she whispered back.
"I got to be pretty good at it, too," he replied, "and if I was very lucky back then, I could touch her panties. A major coup, believe me."
"Oh?"
"Yep. Just like this." His fingers slid even farther into her skirt, but encountered nothing but skin.
"Why, Margaret Larson! You're not wearing panties!" She could hear the expression of mock astonishment in his tone as he pulled back slightly to look at her face.
