Coats are being grabbed, Ubers summoned, bodies funnel toward the door in a wave of shrieks and laughter.
‘Coming, babe?’ Nevin’s hand finds my elbow.
I don’t look for Scottie. But I feel him move with the crowd, trailing behind me. And I’m glad he is here.
* * *
The Drum Vault lives up to its name. Brick walls, low ceilings, bass that reverberates through the floor. The air is tense with the manic desperation of a Saturday night in January when everyone’s trying to forget the dark and the cold.
Nevin is five drinks deep and louder by the minute, which means I’m the one driving us home. Not that he asked or anything. He is with a circle of players near the bar, laughing at a joke only he finds funny. At least judging by their faces.
I’m parked on a stool at the fringes of the action and wish I could join. Dr Menzies said I could dance again. But it’s unwise to remind Nevin what it’s like when I’m moving on my own instead of dangling on his arm.
The music shifts. A slower track, deeper, with a cello weeping under the thud of the bass. My body is already reacting while my mind is still buffering. It’s a version of a classical piece I’ve danced on the studio floor. My hips sway on the stool on pure instinct.
I shouldn’t.
I probably really shouldn’t.
But my feet are already carrying me toward the floor.
My body needs to move.
I find a small gap at the edge, barely room to stretch my arms. No choreography to remember – my brain is switching off. I let my weight sink through my hips, let my spine articulate one vertebra at a time. My tendon holds. My body sings.
And I forget.
I forget Nevin and the bruises. I move because moving is who I am, and I’ve been starving. Rhythm bleeds into my veins, a tide that is wiping out every conscious thought until nothing remains except the flex of my spine and the slide of my hips. It’s the rush of finally gulping down a greedy lungful of air after suffocating in a thimble.
My blood runs hot beneath my skin, sinking right between my thighs. Nevin hasn’t touched me in months. Not since the injury, not since I became something to manage rather than want. The less I resist, the less he seems interested. As if my compliance bores him.
I arch my spine and let the movement ripple down. Fever blooms across my skin. The beat wraps around me as I close my eyes and exist in the music.
When I open them, Scottie is watching me from the shadows.
Chapter 9
Scottie
Three weeks without her, and I’ve turned into a stalker. She wasn’t at The Wallace the last Tuesday in December. She wasn’t at the team’s Christmas party, either. And I still don’t know why. Of course, I didn’t text her, I’m not going to cause her grief with Nevin simply because I can’t stand not knowing.
Now I’m pressing my back against the whitewashed walls of Nevin’s sister’s mews. Everyone here is eager to forget it’s mid-January and dark by four o’clock.
Aye, this party’s shite.
Christmas was shite, too.
Three days in Oban. Most of my siblings couldn’t be arsed. Katie didn’t come at all. Neither did Evan. Work, uni, whatever. Erin was mostly out with her pals. David, Mum, and I played a bit of Scrabble. That was it. Ferry horns in the background. Salt and peat smoke seeping through the rotten door seal. Same view, same sounds.
Then I drove back to Duncraig and sat in an empty flat thinking about a woman who isn’t mine to think about. Finn was gone, too. Off to Switzerland, as it turned out, on the mother of all benders that landed him on national news. Tosshead. And his new girlfriend just eviscerated me at the pool table.
How could it possibly get worse?
Polly climbs onto her coffee table. ‘Listen up! This party is dead. We’re going to The Drum Vault. Everyone. It’s my birthday, so nobody is allowed to say no.’
I should bolt. I’ve no reason trailing this lot to a club where the bass will batter my hearing, and the bar staff are going to fleece me for a bevvy I’m only holding to look occupied.
But Ava’s heading for the door. Nevin’s hand on her elbow. And I can’t leave her. It’s physically impossible. So I follow the herd and tell myself it’s for the lads. Team spirit and all that.
