Read Maybe in Another Life for Free Online Page B

inside of mine. He moves back and forth and then pulls me quickly against him. He spins me. We forget about everyone else around us, and we stay like this, song after song, moving in tandem. Our faces stay close together but never touch. Every once in a while, I catch him looking at me, and I find myself blushing ever so slightly.
    By the end of the night, when the dancing is over and the bar is thinning out, I look around and realize that everyone else in the group has gone home.
    Ethan grabs my hand and leads me outside. As our feet hit the sidewalk, away from the din of the bar, I feel the effects of a night spent in a small place with loud music. The outside world feels muted compared with the bar. My eyes feel a bit dry. The balls of my feet are killing me.
    Ethan’s leading me down the street as the rest of the bar funnels out.
    “Where’s your car?” I ask him.
    “I walked. I live only a few blocks from here. This way,” he says. “I have an idea.”
    I stumble to try to keep up with him. He’s going too fast, and my feet are killing me. “Wait, wait, wait,” I say.
    I bend over and take my shoes off. The sidewalk is grimy. I can see wads of gum so old they are now black spots in the concrete. Up ahead, a tree has rooted itself so firmly into the ground that it has broken up the sidewalk, creating jagged edges and crevices. But my feet hurt too much. I pick up my shoes and follow Ethan.
    Ethan looks down at my feet and stops in place. “What are you doing?”
    “My feet hurt. I can’t walk in these. It’s fine,” I say. “Let’s go.”
    “Do you want me to carry you?”
    I start laughing.
    “What’s so funny?” he asks. “I could carry you.”
    “I’m good,” I say. “This isn’t the first time I’ve walked barefoot through a city.”
    He laughs and starts walking again. “As I was saying . . . I have a great idea.”
    “And what is that?”
    “You’ve been dancing,” he says as he pulls me forward.
    “Obviously.”
    “And you’ve been drinking.”
    “A bit.”
    “And you’ve been sweating up a storm.”
    “Uh . . . I guess so?”
    “But there is one thing you haven’t been doing.”
    “OK?”
    “Eating.”
    The second he says it, I am suddenly ravenous. “Oh, my God, where do we eat?” I say.
    He quickens his pace toward the major intersection up ahead. I start to smell something. Something smoky. I run with him, my feet hitting the gritty concrete with every step, until we make our way to the crowd forming on the sidewalk.
    I look at Ethan. He tells me what I’m smelling. “Bacon. Wrapped. Hot dogs.”
    He cuts through the crowd and walks up to the food cart. He orders two for us. The cart looks like a glorified ice cream wagon that you might see someone pushing at the park. But the woman running it is keeping up with the orders of all the tipsy people out on the street.
    Ethan comes back with our hot dogs nestled in buns. He puts one under my nose. “Smell that.”
    I do.
    “Have you ever smelled anything that good this late at night in any other city you’ve been to?”
    Right now, this second, I honestly can’t think of a time. “Nope,” I say.
    We walk around the block and find ourselves on a residential street. The sounds of the crowd and the smoke of the cart are gone. I can hear crickets. While standing in the middle of a city. I forgot that about Los Angeles. I forgot how it’s urban and suburban all at once.
    The street is lined with palm trees so tall you have to throw your neck back to see their full scope. They continue on up and down this block, up and down the blocks to the north and south. Ethan walks to one of the trees and the surrounding grass. He sits down on the thin curb that separates them from the street. He puts his feet on the road, his back up against the tree. I do the same next to him.
    The bottoms of my feet are black at this point. I can only imagine how dirty I will make Gabby’s shower tomorrow morning.
    “Dog me,” I say,