Fiona Harper - The Chatsfield Short Romances 11-15

I turn my head away, refusing to look at him, but my act of contrariness becomes part of the dance too. Or is it a conversation our bodies are having while our mouths are closed? I really can’t tell.

‘We call it entregar ,’ he says. ‘It means to surrender. It is what a good follower in tango must do.’ His voice grows softer. ‘You almost have it, Sophie… Close your eyes.’

This time I do it. Not because I have been told to. Not in a fit of pique. But because I want to. I have seen the couples around me, even the silver-haired pair, lost in a place where the outside world doesn’t exist any more. I want that too. I want it so badly it’s like an ache deep inside me.

As we carry on I see what he means. Without my eyes I have no choice but to listen to what his body is telling mine. My whole frame becomes hungry to hear from him. He uses his weight, his legs, even the fingertips resting so, so lightly on my back. I feel the way he wants me to move and I just go with it. And he’s right—I’m not a lifeless puppet being directed. I am part of it and it makes me feel alive in a way I just can’t describe.

The feelings I’ve been stuffing down all week, those I’ve been too scared to let out come spilling out. There are moments of anger and moments of sadness. Times when I want to howl and times when I want to punch and scratch, yet the dance contains it all. Each emotion follows the next, working its way out from deep inside me, through my torso, my arms, my legs, even through my fingertips, and there they are exorcised. Set free, like doves that fly off never to return. I feel that Cristian knows me now. Knows all my secrets, for he has felt them reverberate through me and into him as we have moved as one body.

We dance on and on, from song to song. I can’t let go. I don’t want to. I feel as if I was meant to do this, to learn this dance, and that I was meant to do it with him. Something hot and warm slices through me, a wish that we’d met in a different time or a different place. It’s both surprising and terrifying.

Finally we come to a stop. I realise the music is dying away. We stand there not moving. I can tell his eyes are closed too, but I don’t know how. A strange energy pulses around us. With a reluctant sigh, he pulls away. I feel cold air rush in where his body just was and I open my eyes.

The way he’s looking at me makes me want to cry. It’s the way I always imagined Gareth would look when he turned to watch me walking down the aisle.

‘You are a quick learner,’ he tells me, and I can hear a slight tremor in his voice.

‘Thank you.’ I want to walk back into his hold again, lay my head on his cheek and just keep on dancing, but the band are packing up. Apart from a handful of people picking up their belongings from the tables at the edges, that the room is empty. Even Mel and Vikki are gone.

He’s still holding my right hand. A hum starts in the air between us. I realise that I want to kiss him. Not only that, but I think he wants to kiss me. I almost close my eyes and sway towards him. Instead, I snatch my hand from his and clasp it to my body, protecting myself.

‘I need to go,’ I mumble. I look towards the door. ‘My friends…’

‘Sophie?’

I turn my head away. I can’t stand that look in his eyes. ‘Don’t.’

He speaks anyway. ‘I would like to see you again.’

I nod. I know he does. I want it too.

I also know that it would be the stupidest thing in the world. No way am I ready to even notice another man yet, let alone date one. Inside me something starts to weep.

I weaken and look at him. All my pain and confusion must be written on my face, because his eyes grow bleak and then he tilts his head, as if he understands.

‘Dinner,’ he says, ‘is all I am asking for.’

I nod. And then I shake my head. I’m so confused.

He takes my hand, our one remaining point of contact, and raises it to his lips. They feel soft and firm as he kisses the back of my hand. He closes his eyes momentarily as he does so and it makes me want to run my fingers through his hair.

And then we are severed. He steps back.

‘I will wait for you in the lobby at eight o’clock tomorrow evening,’ he says and I feel my breath hitch. ‘It is up to you whether you choose to meet me or not.’ And then he turns and walks away, leaving me alone on the empty dance floor as a hotel employee flicks the overhead lights on one by one.

Chapter Five

‘Good luck!’ Vikki says with a giggle.

‘Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!’ Mel adds.

They both wave me goodbye as the lift doors slice closed, cutting us off from each other. I breathe out and lean against the back of the lift as it begins to descend, but then I panic. I launch myself at the old-fashioned panel of round push-buttons and press a number, any number, as long as it’s lower than the floor I’ve just come from and higher than the one for the hotel lobby.

When the doors ding open a few seconds later I spill out of the confined space, almost knocking into an elderly couple. ‘Sorry!’ I yell, as they walk into the lift, tutting.

I stumble along the corridor, feeling safer when the lift doors are out of sight. And then I stop. I look down at my smart but not too sexy shift dress, at my black suede kitten heels.

What am I doing? Am I insane?

Maybe, I think, nodding to myself.

I’m considering going on date a mere eight days after being jilted very publicly and painfully at the altar. Clearly something is not as it should be with my mental health.

Of course, Mel and Vikki think it’s wonderful. I discovered when I got back up to the suite last night that they’d deliberately left me alone down there with Cristian, and were quite disappointed when I turned up at the door a little after one, alone.

‘You should do it!’ Mel had said, grinning.

‘Do him you mean,’ Vikki chimed in.

I’d ignored them and gone to my room and got ready for bed, ignoring their schoolgirl whisperings beyond the bedroom door. That hadn’t been the end of it, though. They’d continued in the morning, and all the way through a shopping trip to Selfridges. Hence the dress and shoes. They’d wanted me to go with something more…obvious. I’d refused. But I had bought something. Everything in my suitcase reminds me of Gareth.

‘A rebound fling will be good for you,’ Mel had said in one of her calmer moments. ‘And what better revenge on Grimy Gareth than sleeping with another man on what should have been your honeymoon!’

I turn and trudge wearily back to the lifts, press the up button and lean my head against the cool brushed metal of the door surround while I wait for it to arrive. Although my two wayward bridesmaids have said they’ll make themselves scarce for the evening, they won’t have left the suite yet. I’ll just tell them I can’t do it, that we’ll do something else this evening. I’ll need to give Gareth’s credit a card a thorough workout to make them drop the subject, though.

The lift arrives. It’s empty, thankfully. I stand in the middle, not touching anything as it starts to travel upwards and I close my eyes.

I picture him in the lobby. Waiting.

I know what that’s like, to be suspended between hope and disappointment. I know how it feels to wade through seconds thick as treacle. I know the moment when the tiny flicker of brightness inside reaches its expiry date and coughs out.

I reach out and punch another button. The one marked ‘G’.

I shake my head and call myself a fool.

As stupid as this is, I can’t leave him there. Another indicator that maybe Gareth and I weren’t as compatible as I’d thought.

And while I’m not going to pin Cristian down to the dinner table and have hot steamy sex with him in front of a restaurant full of shocked customers, thinking of Gareth makes me realise that having dinner with a nice man who actually wants to spend time in my company isn’t such a horrible idea after all. Maybe it’ll be good for me.