Sewanee stepped back from the podium and clapped along with the audience, scanning the room. She didn’t see anyone approaching the stage. The applause faded and there was a slight titter in the room as the audience began searching for him. Someone shouted something from the back of the auditorium. “What?” Sewanee called out.
“He’s in the bathroom,” came the muted reply.
The crowd laughed. Sewanee chuckled and shrugged. “Well, in the meantime,” she braced an elbow on the podium and leaned down into the mic, “will the owner of a white Toyota Corolla please come to the security desk? Your audiobook is still playing.” The crowd chuckled. She continued to vamp. “Hey, how many narrators does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” She cupped a hand around her ear and the audience called out, “How many!”
“Two. One to do it and one to tell you they narrated a seventy-hour book on the history of the lightbulb once and did you know that Thomas Edison–” Sewanee dropped her head to her chest and snored. The audience laughingly groaned. “One to do it and everyone else to say we should be getting royalties for it.” This made the audience clap. She adopted a theatrical grimace. “Okay, now I have to go to the bathroom!” Big laugh. “No, I really do!” Bigger laugh. “Power of suggestion–”
“Here he comes!” someone shouted from the back.
“Oh thank God.” She tented a hand above her eye to see past the lights bearing down on her.
A sleek shadow dashed down the steps of the auditorium, practically jogging. The crowd cheered and Sewanee joined in, watching him reach the stage, head bowed, bounding up the stairs. He turned to the crowd and made a show of looking down at his fly in horror, mimed quickly zipping it. The crowd hooted and he took a small, mocking, self-deprecating bow. He turned, heading directly for the podium, for her, and the spotlight caught his face. Their eyes met.
And they were in a car crash.
Glass shattered, steel crunched, they were spun around, and around, and around. Like a roulette ball.
His pace slowed and her heart surged. He approached her as he had in the Las Vegas suite.
Deliberate.
Powerful.
Inevitable.
Part 4
It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense.
–Anton Chekhov, letter to Maria Kiselyova, January 14, 1887
Just make sure there’s some kind of sex by the midpoint. A reader will only trust you for so long.
–June French in Cosmopolitan
Chapter Ten
“Snowed In”
NICK AND SEWANEE DIDN’T STAY IN THE SUITE.
She was content at first, enjoying their conversation in their little snow globe. Then she’d decided to give him a tour, Nick following her so closely she could hear his breathing. But when they’d entered her bedroom and he’d placed both of his palms on the bed and pushed deeply into it, as if testing its buoyancy, she turned heel and beelined back to the safety of the living room.
When he rejoined her, hands thrust casually in his pockets, not a care in the world, she announced that she wanted to go down to the club, which was news to her.
She did her best to package her butterflies in the festive wrapping of a good idea. There was a table, with bottle service, waiting for them. She hadn’t been to a club in years. She was, you know, dressed for it. Why waste the opportunity? After some confusion about whether Nick was invited to join her （of course he was; oh, because it had sounded like she’d wanted to go by herself; oh, had it, she hadn’t meant it that way）， they silently left the suite, silently waited for the elevator, got on the elevator silently, got off on the wrong floor, got back on the elevator, laughed to break the silence, got off on the right floor, found the club’s nondescript entrance, spoke with the host, and were led through the three-story warehouse-style venue to a low-slung silver velvet horseshoe banquette with a bottle of vodka in an ice bucket on the glass table surrounded by various mixers.
They sat on opposite sides of the U.
The condensation rolling down the ice bucket mirrored the sweat she felt rolling down her lower back. The lights were low and vaguely purple. The occasional strobe. It was still early by club standards and the dance floor beyond the table was only half-full. Sewanee wouldn’t call what was booming through the room music so much as a succession of beats with some occasional screeching. But it entered her body and pounded inside her chest cavity.
She realized she hadn’t looked at Nick once since they sat down. She glanced up and he was looking at her. He smiled and raised an eyebrow, like, well? She couldn’t help it; she chuckled a little and shrugged, butterflies still fluttering.