“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting,” Amie said shyly. “But I thought I’d see if you’d like to dance.”
There was a brief pause before Ben smiled, and the relief warmed her body like sunlight.
“Of course,” he said.
They moved together toward the center of the room, and Ben took the lead, his arm lightly encircling her waist.
It was Ben who ventured first.
“I was beginning to think you never wanted to talk to me again.” He narrowed his eyes and raised his brow.
He was teasing her, Amie realized. A second relief.
“It wasn’t you, it . . . I . . . Nina and I were going through a rough patch,” Amie explained. “And it’s honestly all I could think about these past few weeks.”
“Oh,” Ben said. He looked genuinely concerned. “Is everything okay?”
“It is now.”
“So that just leaves you and me. And my letter.”
“How did you figure it out?” Amie asked.
“Well, there were all these little hints, about you and where you lived and where you worked, and finally it all clicked when you mentioned that letter about Gertrude,” he said. “Although I suppose I did take a bit of a risk that I had gotten it all wrong and the real ‘A’ would have been quite confused.”
Amie laughed, and she could feel Ben’s arm tightening around her. She stepped closer toward him in response.
“I’m sorry I’m not much of a dancer,” he said.
“Oh please, all of my recent dance experiences have been chaperoning students who seem to forget that their teachers are watching.”
“So you have to forcibly separate the poor hormonal kids?”
“Sometimes, yes,” she admitted, “but not if they look like that . . .” Amie nodded toward Nina and Maura, twirling along the edge of the crowd.
“They look so happy,” Ben said.
“And completely oblivious to anyone else.”
Ben shrugged. “That’s how it’s supposed to be, right?”
He was looking at Amie with such kindness, such sincerity, that she needed to break away from his gaze for just a moment. She leaned her body in even closer, until her chin hovered above his shoulder, and her eyes landed safely on the back wall, while the music drifted around them.
And Amie thought of all the times that she had wondered about the person on the other side of her letters, and how remarkable it was that she was actually with him now, feeling his warmth and breathing in his cologne. Amie felt her body relax, at ease with Ben, as if they had danced together many times before.
Amie closed her eyes and tried to imagine the future, the way she always had, with the lawyer and the poet and the handful of other men who had held her in their arms over the years.
She pictured herself with Ben in Central Park, sitting on a bench near the lake, and painting the walls of a bare apartment with rollers. She saw herself in white, holding his hands before her, and then smiling in a hospital bed, both of them kissing the bundle in her arms.
She could see each scene quite clearly; they weren’t blurred like some of her previous daydreams. She could see it, and she could almost feel it. And something about it felt right.
Unlike her visions of the men before, there were no caricatures of Ben’s flaws. The problem holding Amie back wasn’t a blemish in Ben’s character, the fault not in himself but in his stars.
Amie blinked, and she saw herself standing in the grass, with two small children dressed in black, and then weeping inside a cramped kitchen, alone this time, while pots and pans and lunch boxes littered the counter before her.
Amie must have read his last letter ten times by now. She knew what Ben wanted, and that he wanted it soon. And he deserved to have it all.
Of course, he had never specifically said that he wanted any of it with her, but she was the one he had kissed only a few weeks before, the one dancing with him now, and suddenly it all felt like too much, too fast. She felt dizzy and overwhelmed.
“I’m sorry, I just have to get some air,” she said, releasing Ben from her arms and escaping quickly toward the back door.
Outside, Amie sat down on the curb, rubbing her arms against the evening chill. Most of the buildings along the street housed government offices that were already closed, so everything around her was quiet.
She felt guilty and ashamed for running out on Ben, but she didn’t know if she could go back inside, if the beautiful visions she had seen could ever erase the dark ones that followed.
An older couple walked past Amie, on the opposite side of the street, holding hands and whispering to each other, conspiring against the world. She thought for a second that they looked familiar, but in the dusky light it was hard to tell.