His mortification is instant and so adorable that she laughs.
“Erm, well, you…” he starts.
“Except, you don’t know my name.”
“Shit.” But now he’s laughing too. “I came out here to be slaughtered. Literally stood no chance. Do I slink away before I keep embarrassing myself?”
She twirls her glass, flicking an idle glance at him. “The blush is cute.”
“It is one of my only skills.”
She tilts her head sideways, watching him, mapping the curve of his shoulders, the line of his jaw, how he’s skittish and sweet. Something about that appeals.
“Tell me about yourself, Mr. January,” she says. “What is it you love to do?”
“Okay, don’t let me ramble.” He’s still blushing. “But I’m renovating this house…”
Listening to him fills a hollow inside her, and it scares her how easy the minutes slip away, how comfortable it is to talk to him. She wants to put his honeyed drawl straight into her mouth. An odd tightness flits her belly, and she isn’t sure why until she realizes she’s having butterflies over a boy. An American boy. This is absurd and unsustainable and entirely ill-advised. But his jokes are self-deprecating, his flirting respectful, and when he talks about this old house he’s renovating, his entire face lights up with boyish happiness.
He’s in love, she realizes, with this house. The way he talks aboutit reminds her of when Jude dashes up to her with a crayon scribble drawing and bounces until she looks.
But for once, her thoughts aren’t consumed with only Jude.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” Brendan is saying. “Is that weird? I kind of want to look at all those boats.”
“Lead the way.”
They wander the marina boardwalk together, making quips about the luxurious boats and pretending they don’t notice when their hands brush. Water laps slow and calm at the stony shore, and everything smells of salt and brine, the chatter and music from the club a muted backdrop behind them.
“An accountant, hmm?” she says.
“Your opinion of me just took a dive,” he says. “I can feel it. What do you do when you’re not dancing?”
“I’m always dancing, nothing else. Nonstop pirouettes for me.”
“So I’m lucky to catch you in a rare moment you’re still?”
“You are,” she says quietly, “lucky.”
By the time they return to the club, they have lost over an hour together, and even now they’re still stealing glances at each other and pretending they didn’t. She feels warmed despite the June chill, and all she can think is how impossible it is that he made her laugh and how she will never see him again. An aching sort of want twists around her wrists, her throat, and it takes a careful minute to pack it back down.
Sentimental speeches about the studio’s anniversary have already been made, the cake cut, and people are starting to leave. Brendan leans in to whisper something in Elodie’s ear, but Jeanine chooses that moment to appear.
“Wherever did you go, Elodie?” She has an irritatingly high voice and a smile that drips condescension. “Wemissedyou. Next time you must bring your man. He shouldn’t skip all the fun.”
The knife slides in perfect and true; clever, really, because there is no way to turn to Brendan and explain there is no man. There is just a child.
Somehow that’s worse.
Jeanine is still chattering way, her smile insufferably smug, because she knows what she did. It takes less than a minute for Brendan to excuse himself, the glow of his earnest smile dimmed. As he drifts away, she tries to catch his eye, but he won’t meet her gaze, ashamed, perhaps, to have looked with such lust at another man’s girl.
Jeanine’s voice lowers, the saccharine curdling. “Don’t embarrass us. Be a slut when you’re not representing the studio.”
“Oh, but, Jeanine,” Elodie says coolly, “I can multitask.”
She breezes past Jeanine, but the blood pounding in her head is a drowning force. She is awash, she is untethered, she is going to do something she regrets. Heat blazes up her throat with such wild, wretched abandon she feels as if she could tear up the floor with crimson flames as she goes after him.
Outside the club, he’s already on the footpath and waiting for a car, and when he sees her coming, his mouth droops. She wants to dig her fingernails into his jaw and force him to stare into her eyes. Look at her. Truly look.
