“We need some classics on here, stuff the older guests will recognize. Earth, Wind & Fire, Lionel Richie, Wham!”
“Wham.”
“Wham!” She said it with so much enthusiasm he could hear the exclamation mark at the end of it.
“I don’t like Wham.”
“Everybody likes Wham!, Nick,” she rolled her eyes.
“Not everybody.” This was fine. This was good. They were back to bickering, and no one was thinking about kissing anyone.
“Everybody with an ounce of good taste, then.” Her thumbs flew across the screen, and a second later “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was blaring out of his phone.
Nick gave her his coldest, stoniest stare, and she grinned back, putting one foot in a bevel and bouncing her hip, phone in one hand and coffee in the other. When he didn’t respond, she got her shoulders involved, shimmying until her ponytail shook. Nick watched her, realizing with horrified interest that if she was wearing a bra under that shirt, it wasn’t a terribly supportive one. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and when she didn’t stop dancing, he reached out and snatched the phone back, fumbling slightly as he hit pause.
“Fine, you win, you win. I’ll put this on the list.” Carly gave him a smug smile, and he looked back down at his phone. Looked anywhere but at her. “What else do we need, then?
Carly pulled out the other chair and sat down across from him. “Some newer stuff for the young people. Beyoncé, Lizzo, Taylor Swift. Obviously some songs about dancing. ABBA, Whitney Houston, Robyn, the Bee Gees. Half the guests are ballet people, which means they’re going to want music from the dance movies they love, which means that Jamiroquai song fromCenter Stageand ‘I’ve Had the Time of My Life.’ Oh, and ‘Yeah!’ by Usher.”
“What dance movie’s that one from?”
“It’s not from a movie, it’s just Heather’s favourite song.”
He looked up at her, eyebrows raised in skepticism. For a second, Carly’s smile looked vaguely evil, but then she widened her eyes innocently and took another sip of her coffee. This felt like a trap.
“Heather’s favourite song includes the lyrics ‘bend over to the front and touch your toes’?”
“Hamstring flexibility is very important, Nicholas,” she said, her innocent act so unconvincing that he couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Just trust me, she’ll love it. What about Marcus? What songs will he want to dance to?”
“Euh, it’s been a while, let me think.” When they’d been teenagers, Marcus had been into Australian rock. Powderfinger, Cold Chisel, INXS. He didn’t think those were particularly good to dance to, but—“Oh, Kylie Minogue. ‘Spinning Around.’”
Now it was Carly’s turn to look skeptical. “Really?”
“Pirouette technique is very important, Carly,” he said, imitating her wide eyes.
Impossibly, her brows rose even higher.
“Fine, maybe not the song, but definitely those gold hot pants. He had a poster of her in them stuck up in his locker at the ANB school for years.” Marcus hadn’t been the only one. Those hot pants had had the entire country in a collective wet dream for most of the year 2000. “If you want Usher on this playlist, then I get to put Kylie on it.”
“All right, fine,” Carly said. “What else?”
Nick thought about the weddings he’d attended in the last few years, a few of them in Germany but most in France. Delphine’s friends from high school or from the Paris Opera Ballet school. A few of their colleagues from POB, almost all of whom had grown up in France, since the company rarely hired people who hadn’t come up through its school.
“‘Les Sunlights des tropiques,’” he said. It played at basically every French wedding, and it always got people on the dance floor.
“Never heard of it.”
“Trust me, if you like Wham, you’ll like this song.”
“Once again, everyone likes Wham!”
Nick didn’t bother with a comeback, he just pulled up the song and hit play. It had a rapid, tropical beat and lyrics about feeling the sun on your skin on a beach at the edge of the ocean. He watched as Carly listened, lips pursed again, like she was reserving judgment.
“I don’t like it.”
Not reserving judgment for long.
“Give it a chance; listen to it for more than ten seconds.”
