Matteo appears at my shoulder.
"I see you're enjoying the evening," he says.
I look at him. Say nothing.
He tries not to grin and fails woefully. "You know, most men at these things look bored. Or tired. You look?—"
"Don't."
"I was going to say focused."
"You weren't."
"Well then, try not to look so murderous, will you?" He chuckles.
"I don't look murderous."
Matteo says nothing. He looks at where I'm looking. He looks back at me. The silence does the rest of the work.
After dinner the room reconfigures. Tables pushed back, the low strings of the band starting up, couples beginning to move toward the floor. The conversations that actually matter continue at the edges under cover of the noise.
Matteo turns to me. "Go," he says simply, a tilt of his head toward where Gia stands with Alessia. "Be a husband. Publicly."
I cross the room.
Gia and Alessia are close together near the far wall, still talking, and I catch the end of something that makes Alessia press her lips together before I reach them. I stop in front of them both.
"Good evening, ladies." I let my eyes move to Gia. "Wife."
I hold out my hand.
Gia looks at it. Her chin lifts a quarter inch. Alessia, who misses nothing, finds somewhere else to be.
"We're being watched," I say, low enough that it's only hers. "You know what we agreed."
“Of course.” She mutters as she looks at my hand again. Something moves through her face and then she puts her hand in mine.
Her palm is warm. I close my hand around it and turn and she falls into step beside me. We reach the dance floor, and I turn to face her and she takes position without being guided, one hand in mine, the other settling at my shoulder with practiced ease. I bring her in. Not close enough to cause comment. Close enough.
She's stiff. Technically correct, the right distance, the performance of closeness without any of the reality. My hand sits at the small of her back and we begin to move and I wait.
It takes two minutes. I count those too.
The stiffness releases by degrees, a shoulder dropping, the spine under my hand losing its deliberateness, her weight shifting from managed to actual. She stops measuring the space between us and just stands in it. Her eyes, which have been fixed somewhere past my shoulder, come back to my face.
I don't say anything. Neither does she. The music does its thing and we move through it and somewhere in the second minute her hand at my shoulder stops being placed there and just rests, and the distance that was managed becomes something else, closer without either of us having moved.
Her eyes drop to my mouth.
One second. She pulls them back up.
My hand tightens at her back and I feel her breath change, the catch of it, the slight parting of her lips that she closes again immediately with the expression of a woman who is furious at her own body.
"Gia—"
"Hey, Rafe."
I turn to see Enzo at my shoulder, low and immediate.
