In no more than twenty minutes, she was clinging to the side wall of the Hangar, watching the ball commence from the sideline. The electric pull and hum of the place she’d felt from the outside only intensified once she was in the thick of it; she was drunk without having even a taste of liquor. Red, white, and blue bunting and Union Jacks hung from the ceilings, creating an intimate setting out of the cavernous space. At the front of the room, a bandstand had been constructed out of wooden wartime shipping crates, and one of those tin-can microphones had been set up for the lead singer, a handsome black man in an American serviceman’s uniform.
She wasn’t a music girl, so she couldn’t describe it with any kind of knowledge or authority, but even she could tell this band was really swinging. If she’d been deaf in both ears, the fervent dancing of the crowd would have told her everything she needed to know about the band’s quality. Her heart jitterbugged along with the happy feet of the crowd as it filled with an emotion she hadn’t genuinely felt in a long time.
Happiness.
For a moment, she didn’t think about her father. She didn’t think about her brother or the Animos Society or her thesis due at the end of this year or her mother or how Sam would eventually have to trade Daniel’s heart in for her acceptance into a glorified drinking club. She simply leaned against the nearest wall and let her pulse rush in time with the piano’s wild thrashing.
“Hey there, doll.”
A shiver ran up and down her spine. This room was many things: joyful, musical, wild. Cold was not one of them. The shiver wasn’t from a chill; it was from Daniel’s warm breath on her neck.
When she looked at him, he was handsome enough to make her wish she hadn’t. He’d looked good, painfully good, in the well-tailored tuxedo he’d worn to her party. It was nothing compared to him now, in the green military fatigues of the 1940s British Army.
“Soldier boy,” she greeted. She liked the distance the foreign, antiquated words gave her. Talking like this was another way to pretend she wasn’t herself. “Hey, where are your parents?”
“What a thing to say to a fella!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so curious what spawned…” She waved at all of him, hoping he would take the joke. Totally removing the stiffness from her voice, the voice she’d trained and forced to remain emotionless, was difficult. “This.”
“Very funny.” He tried to adopt a tone of displeasure, but there was no hiding the twinkle in his eye. “They’re right over”—he pointed to a couple toward the front of the crowd—“there!”
Up on her tiptoes, Sam squinted at the couple. There was no doubting they were Daniel’s parents. He had his father’s height and broad chest; his mother had gifted him her kind eyes and golden hair. Daniel’s mother was a short, stout woman with a cheek-splitting smile, while her husband was her direct opposite, tall and almost lanky. They were unmistakably in their late forties, marked by a lifetime of wrinkles and gray hairs, but they held each other with all the desperation of a pair of fresh young lovers. Mr. Best expertly swung his wife around in a dizzying and practiced dance, laughing all the way. Every touch and glance they shared was soaked in sugar.They’re sickening, Sam wanted to say. Instead, she settled on a flat declaration:
“They’re adorable.”
It all looked nice, but Sam couldn’t help her scrolling thread of skepticism.She must be his second wife. She probably cheated on her first husband with him. They’re putting on a show for the crowd. Anyone can look happy for a few minutes. They probably fight like cats and dogs all the time. He’s probably having an affair. No, two affairs.
Her mind answered every seemingly convincing motion of affection with some explanation of why it wasn’t real. Therehadto be something lurking beneath the surface, something to explain away the perfect picture she saw before her.
“They’re my heroes. You know, they met when they were at university. And one night, they’d only been dating three months at this point, my dad got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.”
“Really?”
“Yep. And they told their family and friends they’d been dating for a year so no one thought they were being too hasty. They celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary a few weeks back.” Sam tore her eyes away from the dancing couple, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to look back at Daniel, either. Beside her, she felt him shrug against her bare shoulder. “I’ve never seen two people more in love.”
At least she knew now where he got his delusions. His parents explained so much about him. He was such a foolish romantic because he was living under the illusion of his parents’ love. He’d never seen heartbreak, so he could pretend it didn’t exist. Sam turned her attention back to the floor, only to feel his hot stare on her cheeks.
“You don’t believe it, do you? They’re living proof and you’re trying to figure out what the scam is.”
“Loveisthe scam, Daniel.”
Love and romance was fine for someone like him, but she knew better. She didn’t mind saying so. Part of her, a quiet, whispered part, wished he would open his eyes and believe her. It would make everything between them so much easier.
“So, do you wanna cut a rug?” he asked. A playful twinge, almost enough to make her smile, swayed on the edge of his tone.
She cleared her throat to cover the twitch of her lips. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You danced fine at your party.”
“Dancing to slow music is easy. We were basically swaying.I can’t do anything like that.” She pointed at a nearby couple. The man flipped the woman over his shoulder, then caught her hand and proceeded right back into a hopping spin. “I mean, how do they even do it?”
