‘Thank you.’ Evie leaned in towards Dan. ‘I’m not just ten yearsolder, I’m ten yearsmore experienced.’ She frowned. Had that soundedweird?
Dan smiled at her, like he was trying hard not to laugh. ‘Congratulations?’ he said.
‘Are you laughing at me?’ Evie drank some more. ‘Because it’s no laughing matter. Experience is important. I’ve learned a lot of things about life. I have a lot of wisdom I could impart.’
‘Okay, hit me with some of your wisdom.’
‘Well—’ Evie thought; she was definitely a lot wiser than she’d been at twenty. ‘I don’t even know where to start. There are so many different areas of life. For example, there’s work. There’s exercise. There’s relationships. Take exercise: when I was twenty I really believed that I’d like to play women’s rugby and that I’d like to do an army assault course. I tried women’s rugby when I was in my final year at university. Terrible. I’m not brave enough. And I volunteered for a cadet assault course at my last school. So bad. I thought I was going to die, covered in mud under a net thing. I cried in front of the Year Nines and I had to pretend it was because I had mud in my eye.’
‘So your wisdom is if you cry at work pretend you have mud in your eye? Or never play women’s rugby?’
‘Both.’
Dan nodded. ‘Okay. I’ll bear all of that in mind.’
‘Yeah, I think I have better wisdom than that.’ Evie drank some more green cocktail. ‘I’m gaining wisdom all the time. Right now, I’m learning not to drink blue things. That blue stuff was horrible.Thisis nice.’ She pushed her glass of blue away and it wobbled a lot on the edge of the table and then spilled onto the floor. ‘Well, look at that.’ She pointed. ‘That’s amazing. It’s disappeared.’
‘It’s a magic floor.’ Dan was scrutinising the swirly carpet. He tipped a bit of his own blue drink onto the floor and nodded. ‘Gone. Genuine magic.’
Evie drank some more of the green one. She tapped the side of her glass. ‘That’sreallynice. You have some. You can share my straw.’ She nodded approvingly while Dan drank. ‘Well done. We should get some more drinks.’ She looked up and then squinted down the table and round the room. ‘Where’s everyone else?’
Dan looked around. ‘I think they’re dancing. Over there, look.’
‘Oh, yes. Maybe we should join them,’ Evie said. ‘This is our big birthday trip and tomorrow I’m going to be the birthday girl and I should probably be dancing with my friends.’ She hiccupped. ‘I need to make the most of the last night of my twenties. Maybe we should have some more green cocktail before we dance. It’s very, very good. And then when we’ve had some more of it we should dance with everyone because dancing’s fun and also it’ll work off the drink.’ She poked Dan triumphantly in his chest. His solid, muscly,lovelychest. ‘And that is a wise plan. It’s wisdom I have gained in my twenties. Ten years ago I didn’t know all this wise stuff.’
Dan nodded very solemnly. ‘Sowise,’ he said.
They were halfway through their next green cocktails when ‘Dancing Queen’ started playing.
‘Oh. My. Goodness,’ Evie said, trying to put her glass down. Weird. It was like the table had moved. She tried again. ‘There. Glass down. Anyway. As I was saying. OMG. It’s like this isour song.’
‘Totally. The ABBA wedding.’
‘Exactly. We have to dance to this.’
‘We do.’ Dan pushed his chair back and it fell over. He turned round and frowned at it for a moment and then bent down to pick it up. He tried a lot of times but it didn’t work. ‘Something wrong with that chair,’ he said. He held his hand out to Evie. She took it and they began to dance-wind their way through all the tables to the dance floor.
‘Wait,’ said Evie suddenly. ‘We need to make you more Vegas.’ Dan had the top button on his shirt undone, but it wasn’t enough. She started to undo the next three. She was concentrating hard but it was really tricky doing buttons this evening. Dan tried to help her but he was rubbish at it too. Eventually she had them undone.
‘Liking your hairy chest,’ she said admiringly.
‘Well, thank you. I like your chest too.’
They both kind of scrunched their faces and looked at each other for a moment, and then started to move towards the dance floor again.
When they got to it, Evie stood on tiptoes to say over the music, ‘We should look for the others,’ in Dan’s ear. She didn’twantto look for the others.
‘Definitely,’ Dan said, spinning her round and making no attempt to move further into the centre of the dance floor.
Two songs later, Evie was very hot and her stomach was churning a bit.
‘I think I need to get some air,’ she told Dan.
‘Let’s go,’ Dan said, grabbing her hand.
‘Woah,’ said Evie as they left the building. ‘That’ssochilly. Why isn’t Las Vegas hot?’
‘It’s December.’
