"Just watch," she says, Ava, the long, hard version of the girl I wish I was. When she says it, I see that devil in her pale eyes. When she says it, she lights up with the glow of a thousand mischiefs. But try and stop her. Once she's decided to do it, there's nothing else to say. Just watch.

He's at the other end of the dance floor, gyrating so it hurts me to watch, pretending oblivious. We are huddled over our tinkling glasses in a bloated leather booth, like two dark thieves. He knows we're watching, because he is Off Limits and there's this thing about Ava and limits. It gives me a special ache to know he's moving for us, thinking he's teasing while he's secretly on the verge of being taken down.

She makes a show of standing and finishing her drink, correcting the skimpy dress that sticks tight to her thighs in the humidity of the club and her anticipation. She takes half a turn and falls in step with awesome precision, like she was there all along. There is a thing she does that draws the boys to her, leaving their jeans and t-shirt dates in sorority clumps where they huddle and shoot daggers. Some subsonic vibration given off when she grinds her hips makes them all perk up like bunnies on the plain.

Before the song has even ended, she has two pressing into her. It's not jealousy she wants to incite. She's letting him get an objective view of how tall and grand those boys become when she favors them with a smile and the brush of her breasts.

She dances one more, going back and forth, letting both those drifting suitors try to touch her deep enough to be absorbed in her. With equal portions of sweet sorrows, she leaves them stranded when the music stops, coming back to idly steal a sip from my glass. Once he's seen her lost, she gives me a wink and circles around the other side. She's in position as the disco swells and forces him into a spin that ends with a perfect view of her smoldering contortions. She accepts his gulp as a Yes and moves up against him.

The laws of the universe dictate she can't control this part, but it's impractical advice. She only needs the smallest shy smile to hold him. He could back away, but it would be rude and he won't.

When the rhythm breaks, she flirts deftly. I see him look over his shoulder for observers, but he forgets quickly enough the things proscribed by duty. He's in the moment and the moment is hers. She gently touches his arm and his fingers make an involuntary stretch toward her ass. When they're both too sweaty to move, she whispers in his ear and they break. She rejoins captivated me and, presently, he moves toward us with a fresh round, floating an inch off the floor and draped in a drunken ecstasy.

He stiffens when he sees me and is close to retreating into some romantic notion of brotherhood, but she lets her hand brush his as she accepts the drink he's no longer offering. Watching me with suspicion, he sits. Her hand carefully positioned on his thigh dispels the last of his interest in anything not Ava.

I am a rapt prop, noting every batted eyelash and their slow revolution until they are facing each other. An unspoken rule lets her stroke his knees, thighs, forearms, shoulders, while his touch can only dance around her bare skin, as though the spark would kill them both. It's all in the eyes - she never lets his go. And in the words. Not the meaning, but the warmth and force of her breath on his cheek or his ear.

They do this about half an hour and she elects to take it all the way. He is saying nothing. She nods and she places the tips of her fingers on his, which are flat on the table. His cheeks flush as hers slide up his, pausing to make little circling strokes around his knuckles, working their way under the sides. She is holding his hand. A little too quickly to pass for cool, he twists his and he is holding hers right back. Their fingers run against each other, tracing the crevices between digits and the yielding pads of the tips. She gets her other hand involved, and the conversation becomes perfunctory. She picks up his hand, cradling it in hers like a fortune teller. Pretending she didn't think of it, she lays it on her exposed thigh.

Just like that, he is a swirling set of octopus arms, feeling everything at once. Their legs become entwined, so hers is resting against his crotch. Their lips come close, but don't touch. I hear Ava say she'll be right back. She straddles him to get out. His hands run up the backs of her legs under some deviant guise of assisting her. She struts up to the bar to pay her tab. He buttons his coat and sits like a little boy waiting for a car trip.

She crawls over him again to find her own jacket, but doesn't put it on. She's counting on the night air through her thin dress to do any convincing still necessary when they find themselves on the hushed and sober street.

They stand and a flutter hits my chest. I don't want him leaving with Ava. Ava who will chew him up and leave him cold on her stoop in the shameful light of Sunday morning. Ava who will judge him guilty of every broken heart she's had to weld back together until the thing in her chest is hard and scarred and hungry. I want him for my own.

Too bad. Too late. She's giving me a wink over the shoulder and my only chance is walking away. I should keep her on a chain. By tomorrow, what began as the sweetest crush and a lesson in seduction will be one more act of murderous revenge, him calling all the time, her bored, and me unable to look him in the eye.

I wonder, not for the first time, if seduction is overrated.