Page 112 of The Dangerous Dance

I lose track of him for a while. Not entirely — he's in the room, I know he's in the room, but I stop tracking him the way I usually track everything in a space and I just — move. Through the combination, into the next thing, the thing that follows from it naturally, the vocabulary of it speaking itself.

When I stop he's not at the door anymore.

He's in the center of the room, about fifteen feet away, watching me with the expression I've seen from him before but not quite like this — not the structural cataloguing, not the assessment. Something else.

"Say it," I tell him.

"You're beautiful," he says. Simple. Direct. In the register of a fact stated rather than a compliment offered.

I look at him.

"Not just right now," he says. "Always. But right now — right now you look like yourself. The whole version."

The studio is very quiet.

The work lights make everything warm and lateral and the floor is good under my feet in the slippers he chose with Petya's help and the city is doing its thing outside and we are in a room that nobody knows we're in except two men at forty feet and a man named Conor and a building that belongs to someone who owed a favor.

I cross the studio toward him.

Fifteen feet becomes ten becomes five and then I am in front of him, close enough to see the way he is looking at me. Something with heat in it. Something that has been building since the kitchen, since the pasta, since the brown paper package, since last week when he checked the floors.

I stop just short of touching him.

"Nadia," he says.

"You planned this."

"I planned dinner," he says. "The rest of it is." He stops. The corner of his mouth does the thing. "Incremental."

"Incremental."

"I wanted to see you dance. I didn't plan past that. I didn't." He breathes. "I didn't think about what it would do to me. Seeing you."

The work lights are warm on his face. The mirrors behind me are reflecting us. Me in my practice clothes. Him still in his coat.

I put my hand on his chest, over his coat, over his heart, which is beating in a way that tells me something about what seeing me dance did to him.

His hand comes up. Covers mine. Presses it there.

"Take this off," I say. The coat.

He does. Shrugs out of it, lets it fall behind him onto the studio floor. Underneath is the shirt from earlier, white, the collar open, the sleeves already rolled to his forearms from when he cooked. I can see the edge of the scar on his left arm, the one he got before I knew him.

My fingers find the buttons of his shirt. I do them slowly. His breath changes. Just slightly. Just enough for me to notice.

"We have time," I say.

"I know," he says.

"Then let me."

"I know," he says again. But there is something in his voice. Roughness.

I unbutton to his sternum. Then I flatten my palm against his chest, against skin and hair and the heat of him. His hand covers mine again but does not move it. His heart is beating hard against my palm.

"The mirrors," he says. His voice is low.

I turn my head. In the dusty glass, I can see us. My back to the mirror, his tall frame, my hand on his chest. The angle shows the barre, the floor, the quality of the light.