Dancing With The Devil

Chapter 5

"I spent the weekend cleaning my house." I said into the phone. Sophie was listening patiently on the other end, as always very attentive to my ramblings even though we were both very busy and had plenty of work to do. "It was hard to be back in the house, but I hired a couple women from a cleaning service to help me. They made the process go much faster than it would have by myself. I have new appliances coming tomorrow so the house will be livable again. I still need to replace a lot of smaller items though, like lamps and stuff."

"And the security system?" Sophie pushed.

I swiveled around in my chair, looking out of my floor to ceiling windows as I watched the world bustle around outside. It seemed bizarre that some many people were untouched by the strange and dangerous hands that had touched my life so recently. Here I was discussing the security system that I had spent a fortune on to keep a deadly man out of my house and they were ordering soy lattes, complaining about nothing more than the heavy and dark clouds.

"Come on, you've probably already somehow managed to hack it, it's connected to my cell so I can watch the surveillance and everything, I imagine it's pretty easy to mess with." I teased, but the system had eased my mind, as hand Sophie's capabilities.

"I didn't hack it." Sophie sighed, exasperated. "I tapped it. It wasn't that easy actually, which is good. If I had a hard time with all the tech I have access to then anyone else is going to struggle for months. But now I can monitor it as well. I've set it up to notify me if there's movement between any time that you're at work or if there's anything moving by the doors during the night. There's a couple people in the office here that I could call and they would be over at your place in a heart beat, no questions asked. And if it's really bad I can always call the police of the Tactical Team." She explained, "Anyway, how was the gala? Sorry I couldn't make it, but you know I don't do dresses. Or people. Or upscale events."

I gave out a little laugh, knowing that Sophie was more of a hermit than anyone else I had ever met, unless it came to food or strong coffee. "The gala was great. We raised well over the budget which is amazing and I was almost as shocked as the organization we were donating to when they announced the number. A lot of kids in need will be getting hearing aids." I explained, grinning to myself, the paper work behind me forgotten, "You'll never guess what happened though." There was a quiet pause, "I danced with someone." I gushed, unable to contain myself.

"My God, really?" Sophie gasped, "Wait, were you drunk?"

"I mean a little. Okay, well more than a little, but nothing too bad and certainly not sloppy." I defended, but then began laughing again, "But it doesn't matter. I wasn't drunk enough to step on his toes or fall flat on my face so I would say it was a great success."

"And how was he? I mean very few people can dance as well as you can, but could he keep up with you?"

"He definitely could." I agreed eagerly. "And we danced for more than one song."

"You let a man touch you for more than a couple minutes?" Sophie asked, her voice becoming serious.

"Yes!"

"Celeste, I don't remember the last time, if ever, since Josh." She whispered.

"I know!" I squealed excitedly. "It was amazing. Like the dancing was just good, but just being able to do that after years of being so afraid, man it was so good. So liberating. I mean, Stanley was floating around the gala and that made me feel safer, but it was still really good."

I saw the reflection of a friendly face appear at my door. I spun around in my chair to face my receptionist, Hope.

"Yes?" I whispered, covering the receiver as Sophie chatted away.