from him, even when the moments of stillness stretch on forever. I concentrate on trying to work out what’s coming next. Now we’ve been dancing a while, my feet are recognising the patterns. I want to be more than a lump that he’s dragging round the floor. For some reason it’s important I am a good partner.
‘You are thinking too much,’ he mumbles as he turns me once again, and then he steps across and blocks my raised foot with his own, uses his weight to send me in an unexpected direction. Suddenly, I feel as lost and off-balance as I did when we first started. I look down to try and work where his feet are going.
‘Ciera los ojos,’ he says. I don’t understand the words but the tone is a command.
‘I don’t underst—’
‘Close your eyes,’ he repeats, just as plainly. I know this is not a request. Nor is it an invitation. I keep my eyes wide open and glare at him. He stares back at me. Neither of us back down. I feel a flash of anger, although I don’t know where it has come from or why. It changes the way I move, and Cristian somehow knows this and changes his steps accordingly. Suddenly, this is more than arms and legs and torsos moving in unison. It becomes something primal. Something I am more than a little bit scared of.
I turn my head away, refusing to look at him, but my act of contrariness becomes part of the dance too. Or is it a conversation our bodies are having while our mouths are closed? I really can’t tell.
‘We call it entregar,’ he says. ‘It means to surrender. It is what a good follower in tango must do.’ His voice grows softer. ‘You almost have it, Sophie… Close your eyes.’
This time I do it. Not because I have been told to. Not in a fit of pique. But because I want to. I have seen the couples around me, even the silver-haired pair, lost in a place where the outside world doesn’t exist any more. I want that too. I want it so badly it’s like an ache deep inside me.
As we carry on I see what he means. Without my eyes I have no choice but to listen to what his body is telling mine. My whole frame becomes hungry to hear from him. He uses his weight, his legs, even the fingertips resting so, so lightly on my back. I feel the way he wants me to move and I just go with it. And he’s right—I’m not a lifeless puppet being directed. I am part of it and it makes me feel alive in a way I just can’t describe.
The feelings I’ve been stuffing down all week, those I’ve been too scared to let out come spilling out. There are moments of anger and moments of sadness. Times when I want to howl and times when I want to punch and scratch, yet the dance contains it all. Each emotion follows the next, working its way out from deep inside me, through my torso, my arms, my legs, even through my fingertips, and there they are exorcised. Set free, like doves that fly off never to return. I feel that Cristian knows me now. Knows all my secrets, for he has felt them reverberate through me and into him as we have moved as one body.
We dance on and on, from song to song. I can’t let go. I don’t want to. I feel as if I was meant to do this, to learn this dance, and that I was meant to do it with him. Something hot and warm slices through me, a wish that we’d met in a different time or a different place. It’s both surprising and terrifying.
Finally we come to a stop. I realise the music is dying away. We stand there not moving. I can tell his eyes are closed too, but I don’t know how. A strange energy pulses around us. With a reluctant sigh, he pulls away. I feel cold air rush in where his body just was and I open my eyes.
The way he’s looking at me makes me want to cry. It’s the way I always imagined Gareth would look when he turned to watch me walking down the aisle.
‘You are a quick learner,’ he tells me, and I can hear a slight tremor in his voice.
‘Thank you.’ I want to walk back into his hold again, lay my head on his cheek and just keep on dancing, but the band are packing up. Apart from a handful of people picking up their belongings from the tables at the edges, that the room is empty. Even Mel and Vikki are gone.
He’s still holding my right hand. A hum starts in the air between us. I realise that I want to kiss him. Not only that, but I think he wants to kiss me. I almost close my eyes and sway towards him. Instead, I snatch my hand from his and clasp it to my body, protecting myself.
‘I need to go,’ I mumble. I look towards the door. ‘My friends…’
‘Sophie?’
I turn my head away. I can’t stand that look in his eyes. ‘Don’t.’
He speaks anyway. ‘I would like to see you again.’
I nod. I know he does. I want it too.
I also know that it would be the stupidest thing in the world. No way am I ready to even notice another man yet, let alone date one. Inside me something starts to weep.
I weaken and look at him. All my pain and confusion must be written on my face, because his eyes grow bleak and then he tilts his head, as if he understands.
‘Dinner,’ he says, ‘is all I am asking for.’
I nod. And then I shake my head. I’m so confused.
He takes my hand, our one remaining point of contact, and raises it to his lips. They feel soft and firm as he kisses the back of my hand. He closes his eyes momentarily as he does so and it makes me want to run my fingers through his hair.
And then we are severed. He steps back.
‘I will wait for you in the lobby at eight o’clock tomorrow evening,’ he says and I feel my breath hitch. ‘It is up to you whether you choose to meet me or not.’ And then he turns and walks away, leaving me alone on the empty dance floor as a hotel employee flicks the overhead lights on one by one.
‘Good luck!’ Vikki says with a giggle.
‘Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!’ Mel adds.
They both wave me goodbye as the lift doors slice closed, cutting us off from each other. I breathe out and lean against the back of the lift as it begins to descend, but then I panic. I launch myself at the old-fashioned panel of round push-buttons and press a number, any number, as long as it’s lower than the floor I’ve just come from and higher than the one for the hotel lobby.
When the doors ding open a few seconds later I spill out of the confined space, almost knocking into an elderly couple. ‘Sorry!’ I yell, as they walk into the lift, tutting.
I stumble along the corridor, feeling safer when the lift doors are out of sight. And then I stop. I look down at my smart but not too sexy shift dress, at my black suede kitten heels.
What am I doing? Am I insane?
Maybe, I think, nodding to myself.
I’m considering going on date a mere eight days after being jilted very publicly and painfully at the altar. Clearly something is not as it should be with my mental health.
Of course, Mel and Vikki think it’s wonderful. I discovered when I got back up to the suite last night that they’d deliberately left me alone down there with Cristian, and were quite disappointed when I turned up at
