The Wake-Up Call(37)

I am instantly defensive. “We are both meant to be working.”

“Oh, please! You were the one who said we should stay. Besides, there is literally no work I can do remotely. Come dance. They’re playing noughties tunes with eye-wateringly misogynistic lyrics. Half the room’s raving, the other half is deconstructing the problematic songs. Basically, this is a fantastic party.”

She’s reaching a hand towards me. I’ve never held Izzy’s hand before—except when she pulled me into the pool.

“Fresh start?” she says, voice dropping a little. “We could try it? Just for a few minutes, until we go home?”

I meet her eyes. I can see mischief glimmering there—just like when she met my eyes through the lost-property-room door in her pink bra. Just like when her back was pressed to the side of the swimming pool.

I am a careful man by nature. But Izzy makes me feel reckless.

There is a physical attraction between us; that is becoming increasingly obvious. But she doesn’t respect me. There’s nothing to stop her taking what she wants from me and leaving it at that.

Which should be fine. It would be fine if I hated her as much as she hates me. We would be on the same level, and there would be no danger of anyone hurting anybody’s feelings.

Very suddenly, I see the problem. I don’t hate Izzy Jenkins at all.

“I’m Izzy,” she says, when I don’t answer. “Pleased to meet you.”

I stretch my hand out slowly and shake hers. It’s cool and small in mine. My heart beats harder, too hard.

“Lucas da Silva,” I say. “Pleased to meet you, too.”



* * *



? ? ? ? ?

We dance. There’s distance between us at first—as there would be, I suppose, if we really were the strangers we’re pretending to be. But the gap closes slowly from song to song, until my hips are bumping hers and her hair paints a trail across my arm each time she tosses her head. The music is bad American pop, but I don’t care. I want to dance with Izzy. I want to give in to the thump-thump of desire that courses through me when I see her. I want to ignore real life for once and just pretend that I’m a guy, at a party, dancing with a beautiful girl.

“You’re good,” she says, raising her voice over the music. “You can dance!”

“So can you.”

“Well, yeah,” she says, as if this should have been obvious. “But I thought the whole thing about Brazilians all being great dancers was a cliché.”

“It is a cliché. We are not all great dancers,” I tell her, thinking of my sister, who often cheerfully proclaims that she’s about as good at keeping time as she is at keeping boyfriends.

“But if any Brazilian was going to be bad at dancing,” Izzy says, “I feel like it would be you.”

I glare at her. She laughs.

“And how do you know I’m Brazilian?”

She pulls a face at the break from character. “I mean, ah, where are you from?” she asks.

“Niterói,” I tell her. The song shifts and I watch her body shift, too, finding the new beat. “It’s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.”

“Brazil! What’s it like there at this time of year?”

“Hot,” I say, holding her gaze. I take a sip of my beer.

That thump-thump of desire gets louder. She’s closer, looking up at me, the glitter on her shoulders sparkling under the light of Shannon’s chandelier.

“How about you? Where are you from?”

“Surrey,” she says, her leg brushing mine as she dances. “Way less exciting. Though I loved growing up there.”

Something passes over her face—a memory of her parents, perhaps.

“And what do you do?” I ask, to bring her back to me.

She stumbles slightly as someone moves past us, and I steady her with a hand on her waist. Somehow it feels right for the hand to stay there, and now we’re not just dancing, we’re dancing together. Her hands come to rest lightly on my shoulders, and her hips twist in time with mine.

“I work at a hotel.”

I try to imagine what I would say next if I didn’t stand beside her at the front desk every morning. It’s getting hard to concentrate. Her body moves with mine, and there’s just the soft fabric of her baby-blue top between my palm and her skin. She’s warm and a little breathless. I can smell her cinnamon scent every time I inhale.

I settle for the question I often get asked. “Are people always checking in under fake names to have affairs?”

She gives me a small, knowing smile. “That or turning up naked under trench coats. Yeah. Nonstop.”

I let out an ah of recognition as the song changes to Anitta’s “Envolver.” Izzy clocks it and lifts her gaze to mine. We’re body to body: her arms aren’t just resting lightly on my shoulders now, they’re wound around my neck, and my hand is at the small of her back, keeping our shifting hips in sync.

“Can you translate this song for me? What’s it actually about?” she asks me.

“Well, it’s in Spanish, so . . .”

“Oh.” She blushes. “Sorry. I thought it was in Portuguese.”

For once, I’m not interested in embarrassing her.

“My Spanish isn’t bad, so I can try . . . But, uh, the song is a little rude.”