He might have had a point, though. I had no idea if Danny was looking, but it would seem strange if Shaw and I were standing there talking. Danny knew my body language, and he would know if I was bickering with Shaw, which was exactly what he seemed to bring out in me.
I sighed and began to move. I liked dancing, after all, and was really good at it. When he got too close, I put a hand between us and eased him back a few inches.
Shaw laughed. “Aw, come on, E. Am I really that bad?”
We’d gone from Elijah, to Eli, to E in the span of a few minutes. “Yes, yes you are.”
“You’re breaking my heart, ya know that?”
“Why are you flirting with me? I don’t get it. You hate me.”
His hand journeyed up my back, and not gonna lie, it felt good. I liked being touched. Who didn’t?
“First, I don’t hate you. I think you’re a little…prudish?”
“Fuck off!” I pushed him, and he laughed again.
“I’m giving you shit. We’re just different. I don’t hate you. You’re the one who hates me, and second, I’m dancing with you because you’re hot and we’ve got ourselves a mission here to get your man.”
My pulse did some strange stumble thing. The fact that he wanted to help was…sweet. And unexpected. It was one thing for Anonymous to help ILWMBF, but a totally different one for Shaw to help Elijah. “Why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. There had to be something in it for him.
“I haven’t figured it out yet. In case you didn’t know, you’re not very easy to get along with.”
This was something I would never admit out loud, but there was this tiny, hidden, secret, tiny—yes, I said that twice, but it was important—part of me that liked the way Shaw talked to me. That he never went easy on me, and that he gave me shit. No one really did that the way he did. When I was younger, people ignored me, made fun of me, or I was just there to them and didn’t matter. Danny playfully teased me, but that was after we’d become friends. He was the first person, outside of family, who went out of his way to be nice to me.
Mom was the definition of Mama Bear. You fucked with her son, you’d regret it. Dad tried, and he loved me, but I knew he wished I were different. Yeah, part of me was automatically on the defensive, because I’d had to defend myself so much.
Shaw didn’t behave like any of them, and it made me feel, well, upside down.
But I wasn’t going to show him that, so I pushed those thoughts aside. “You’re the only person who’s ever said I’m not easy to get along with, or who’s felt that way.”
He dropped his head back and laughed loudly this time, his throat working, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, I find it hard to believe anyone likes you!” I countered, then opened my mouth again, the question slipping out. “How would we go about this? Getting Danny.”
“I haven’t worked out all the details. I was dancing with Will and a really sexy guy—whom I ditched to help you, I might add—and I saw you looking at him with those puppy-dog eyes and knew I had to step in.”
I flipped him off again. “I hate you.”
“I hate you too. Only you don’t, really. We can try and make him jealous? I want it noted that I don’t support this whole score-my-best-friend thing, but I’ll admit, when I had my arm around you, he did look at me like he didn’t like me touching his favorite toy.”
My eyes snapped to his.
“Oh my God. You’re so gone for this guy. What’s so special about him?”
I decided to ignore that. I wasn’t going to talk to Shaw about Danny.
“My one stipulation is that there’s no cheating or breaking of hearts going on. Try and get your man all you want, but that other guy doesn’t deserve to get his heart played with. If they’re serious, we don’t do this. If they’re committed, we don’t do this. We hang out, we flirt, and we see what happens from there. That’s the extent of it. I’m not big on the whole games thing, so if Tight Ass and Danny are serious, this stops.”
I frowned. “Can you not call him Tight Ass? Mine is better, I’ll have you know. I looked at his, and yeah…” But his words stumbled around in my head and left a gross feeling there. “I don’t know… This feels like lying.” Even though it really wasn’t. And I would never cheat. If Danny told me he was serious about the guy, I would walk away. If they were committed, I would walk away. “Plus, it would be torture to hang out with you,” I added, because that was me and Shaw, and I couldn’t change it up now.