The restaurant receded. Not literally – the tables were still there, the candles, the other couples swaying in their own private orbits – but perceptually. The edges of the room went soft, the sounds muffled, until the world contracted to the size of us. His hands on my waist. My hands on his chest. The piano threading between us like a conversation in a language I was learning.
I was aware of every point of contact. The warmth of his palms through the thin fabric of my dress. The way his thumb moved – barely, a millimeter at most – against the curve of my hip, a motion so small it might have been involuntary but felt absolutely intentional. The scent of him – clean, something woody, something warm – that filled the small space between our bodies and made the air feel richer.
I looked up. He was already looking down.
Our eyes met, and in the candlelight, his were different – not the dark, guarded eyes of the man who’d walked into my kitchen with a briefcase and an ultimatum, but something warmer, deeper, the eyes of a person who’d taken off a mask and wasn’t sure yet whether he’d put it back on. I held his gaze and felt something inside me – some last, stubborn bolt on a door I’d been reinforcing for days – slide open.
We danced.
From across the room, Lysander watched.
He’d come to check on them – a host’s prerogative, a friend’s concern – and found their table empty. The wine half-drunk. The candles burning low. The appetizer plates cleared. For one uncomfortable moment, he’d thought they’d left, and the disappointment had been immediate and sharper than expected. He’d spent an hour on that table. The vines alone had required three staff members and a stepladder.
Then he’d spotted them on the dance floor.
They were near the center, not performing, not trying to be seen – just moving together with the quiet absorption of two people who’d forgotten that other people existed. Caelum’s hands were on her waist. Her palms were on his chest. And the way they looked at each other – Lysander had known Caelum since they were kids building forts out of couch cushions and sharing the kind of secrets that only matter when you’re ten. He’d seen him fall in love with Lydia. He’d watched him bury her. He’d sat beside him on the floor of an empty apartment at three in the morning while Caelum stared at the wall and said nothing, and Lysander said nothing back, because sometimes that’s the only thing friendship can offer.
And now, here was his friend, dancing with a woman who was looking at him as though he were the most confusing, frustrating, unexpectedly wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, and Caelum was looking back with an expression Lysander hadn’t seen in two years: hope. Real hope. The dangerous kind, the kind that rebuilds from rubble and doesn’t care about the odds.
He reached for his phone.
He wasn’t proud of it – filming your best friend slow-dancing was at least mildly invasive – but some moments deserved to be caught before they escaped, and this was one of them. He held the phone low, discreet, and recorded: the way Caelum’s hand moved to the small of her back. The way Marlowe’s head tilted closer. The way the candlelight turned them both into something that looked like a still from a film about people who don’t realize yet that they’re in love.
Lysander smiled. And for the first time in a long time, he felt something he’d been too afraid to feel on Caelum’s behalf: optimism.
“Caelum,” I said, and my voice came out softer than I intended, as though the dancing had recalibrated my volume settings. “We’ve been out here for a while. Let’s rest.”
He responded by spinning me – one full rotation, unexpected, my dress flaring and the room wheeling around me in a blur of candlelight and color – and then pulling me back. I landed against his chest, slightly breathless, slightly dizzy, and entirely unwilling to admit how much I’d enjoyed it.
“Show-off,” I said.
“You loved it.”
“I tolerated it.”
“Your smile says otherwise.”
He was right. My smile was saying a lot of things my mouth was refusing to, and the traitor wouldn’t stop.
We made our way back to the table, my hand still in his because neither of us had let go and neither of us was going to be the first to acknowledge it. The table came into view – candles burned low, wine waiting, the vine curtain swaying gently – and standing next to it, with the studied nonchalance of a man pretending he hadn’t just been doing something he wasn’t supposed to, was Lysander.
He was examining his phone with the concentrated attention of someone reading a very important email and not at all reviewing footage he’d secretly recorded.
“Lysander,” Caelum said. His voice was warm, but underneath it – the faint vibration of a man who knows his friend too well. “What are you doing here?”
Lysander looked up. His face arranged itself into an expression of innocent surprise that wouldn’t have fooled a child. “Me? Just checking on you. Making sure everything was satisfactory.”
“You were filming us.”
“I absolutely was not.”
“I saw you.”
“You saw me checking my email.”
“With the camera pointing at the dance floor.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.