* * *
Eliot Barnes: Tom is talking about the day he pulled 21-year-old twins.
Eliot Barnes: I sort of want to die.
Emmie: It’s nice over here, although the subject derailed to balls a minute ago.
Eliot Barnes: Of course it did.
Emmie: We’re back on asparagus now, and a farmer Marie has made friends with for the deli. His name is Sven. Looks like Henry Winkler, apparently. Also, someone just mentioned conjunctivitis.
Eliot: Very civilized. We’re on to cars. Not cliché at all.
* * *
And now he looks at me, slight smile on his pink lips, two men beside him in fast, passionate conversation, all hand gestures and deep nods. He mouths to me with a hand to his ear. “Phone.”
* * *
Eliot Barnes: So, Emmie. Closed book. Flower.
Eliot: Dance with me?
* * *
I look up at him, and he’s already looking at me, smiling wider now. I shake my head.
* * *
Emmie: I don’t dance.
Emmie: I haven’t danced in almost fifteen years.
Eliot Barnes: Time to overwrite a shit memory with a new one?
* * *
Across the room we hold each other’s gaze. He knows. He remembers the last time I danced was the night of the Summer Ball. And I loved dancing. I remember the way Georgia and I danced that night, and I remember the song and the color of the light, and the way it painted her blue dress pink. I felt so free and young and excited that night. We were going into sixth form, and then it would be the next step; the next big step into the world. College. Then maybe even uni. Then: the rest of our lives. I remember the hope. I remember the excitement. Robert Morgan had found a Peter. A musician that could be my dad. Things were going to be okay—I wasn’t going to be lonely anymore. And then, in one decision, in one moment, minutes later, the hope was sapped from everything. I was lonelier than I had ever been.
* * *
Emmie: Also, I can’t dance.
Emmie: At all.
Eliot Barnes: Nobody can.
Eliot Barnes: Well, unless you’re Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys, and he isn’t here.
* * *
I look up at him, head to one side, and shake my head, but he’s getting up. He leans over, says something to the group of men he’s sitting with, tosses down his napkin, and makes his way over to me.
“It’s a slow song,” he says into my ear. “You don’t need to be able to dance, just… stand and breathe.”
I laugh. And despite myself, despite not dancing since that night, despite my washing machine stomach and cold, shaky hands, I take his and stand up.
“One song,” I say, as one slow song flows flawlessly into another. “Just this one.”
He nods, looking down at me, brown eyes fixed on mine. “Just one.”
We walk together to the dance floor, meandering in and out of dancing, swaying couples, his strong hand holding tightly on to mine. Ironically, Lucas and Marie, the bride- and groom-to-be, are at opposite ends of the dance floor, in quick, all-smiling conversations with people I don’t recognize.
I stand in front of Eliot and look up to the lilac-and-blue strobes of disco lights. I remember. How Freddie, Georgia’s date for the Summer Ball, was late, arriving two hours after everyone else, with his scruffy friends in tow, their shirts untucked, hair gelled, and he’d ignored her. When the slow song had kicked in, I’d taken her hand and said, “I’ll dance with you,” and she’d laughed and said, in a mock-posh accent, “I would be honored, Emmeline Blue.” And we did. We danced in the middle of the floor, arms around each other, spinning each other in turn, all smiles, all laughs, all taut apples of cheeks and happy eyes. That was me and Georgia. Sisters, practically. Until he ruined that. He ruined dancing and discos and even dresses, for me, for a while. And I find my hands trembling, just a little, as I put my arms around Eliot’s neck. The music. The lights. The bodies swaying around us; it’s the same.
“Okay?” Eliot asks, arms around me.
“Fine,” I say, looking up at him.
“Good. Only thing for it,” he says, “hold on and hope for the best.”
“And that’s dancing, is it?”
“Well, yeah,” Eliot says, then he leans in, and says into my ear, breath tickling my neck, “And everything else, too, Emmie Blue.”
The longer we dance, the more relaxed I become, and one song turns into two, turns into three, and my head is against his chest now. I love the way he smells. Of a deep, woody aftershave and fresh laundry, and I can hear him singing along. And he can sing. I remember that now, about Eliot. The way he’d play guitar along to the Beatles, trying to work out chords, and I’d stand on the landing outside his room as I was passing, and listen. And he could hold a note. More than a hold a note.
The music changes, and I look up at him. Somersault. Somersault. Do I like him? Is Rosie right? I do. I think I do.
“Morning,” he jokes as I straighten, the music changing into something more upbeat, slow dancers drifting back to the bar. “And look. Three dances, and you survived to tell the tale.”
“I know,” I say, “thank you.”
Eliot scrunches up his brow. “Thank you?”
“For asking me to dance. For succeeding in overwriting a shit memory with a nice one.”
Under the dim, smoky lights, I see Eliot’s handsome face soften. “Anytime,” he says.
And I don’t know exactly how it happens and who leans into who, but Eliot is taking the side of my face in his hand, and our lips slowly collide. It’s for just a second—a slow, soft press—and we pull away, inches apart, unmoving for a second, breath tickling my throat.
And I giggle. A delirious giggle that makes my cheeks burn, and I bury my face in his chest.
“I finally kissed Emmie Blue.” Eliot bends, laughing into my ear. “My inner nineteen-year-old is beside himself right now.”
When I answer the door of the guest cottage, I think Lucas is surprised to see me awake, dressed, made-up, and holding an almost empty mug of coffee.
“Who are you, and what have you done with my lazy-arse friend, Emmie,” croaks Lucas, his sandy curls a giant bouffant of a mass on top of his head. He is wearing nothing but a pair of gray jogging shorts and a pair of sunglasses. His skin is tanned. His breath, enough to get you tipsy from just a sniff. “God, I’m gonna hurl.”
“Good morning to you too,” I say as he groans past me and throws himself facedown onto the guest cottage’s soft gray sofa. “Nice night? I assume from the sunglasses in winter, the answer is yes.”
He groans again into the cushions as I close the front door.
“Is that Lucas for ‘yes, but I have thrown up into my dad’s briefcase again and I need help blow-drying the checkbooks’?”