Everyone is whooping and cheering. I glance back at Izzy, who is deep in conversation with two strangers; she’s laughing behind her hand. Lately, looking at Izzy has made me feel such a tangle of things. Fearful, lustful, wary, possessive. But watching her now through the anonymity of the crowd, I see a bright, bold young woman whose parents would be very proud of her, and the thought makes my chest feel tight.
She finds me in the spare bedroom some time later. I’m on my laptop in an armchair, going back over Mrs. SB’s spreadsheet. Izzy stops short, a champagne glass in hand, her bare shoulders now dotted with red and gold glitter. Through the window beside her, the snow is coming down in thick, feathery flakes.
“Oh my God,” Izzy says. “No way are you working.”
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.