“You already did.”
They grinned at each other and gazed into each other’s eyes until their expressions softened to smiles of warmth and love and wonder—and of a tenderness that was unmistakable to the onlookers. He was twirling her about the perimeter of the dance floor, she realized suddenly. They were waltzing together, perfectly in time to the music, perfectly in step with each other. And perfectly in tune—
“Why are we dancing alone?” she asked him.
“I have no idea,” he said “Arewe?”
But even as they noticed that indeed it was so, other couples were taking to the floor with them and those who were not dancing were returning to their conversations.
“You dance as if on gilded clouds,” he said. “You always did. You were born to dance.”
She was aware then with startling clarity of the whole wonderful scene in which they danced—of the rich greens and reds and golds of the Christmas decorations spinning and mingling and merging about them like a kaleidoscope, of the distinctive smell of pine, of the gorgeously clad relatives and friends and guests dancing or chattering about them. And in the very center of her vision—and of her heart and her life—Gerard, the man she had always loved and always would.
There was perhaps a twinge of bittersweet sadness in the moment—it was the last waltz of the evening.
But there was also an inner welling of joy, reflected in the eyes of the man who gazed back at her—it was the first dance of the rest of their lives.
