One Dance Too Close

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“Tell me,” Isla said.

Finn looked at her father, then back at her.

“I said you went beyond your limits.”

Tom gave a short, bitter laugh.

“That's a neat version.”

“Dad. Go home.”

“He deserves to answer.”

“To me,” she said. “Not as part of whatever you've been doing to each other for thirty years.”

Tom hesitated. Then he left with his mouth pressed into the line she remembered from every family photograph after the accident.

Finn stood beside the silent speakers.

“Did you blame me for Owen getting hurt?” Isla asked.

“I made it sound that way.”

“Why?”

“Because I was a coward.”

“You're going to have to be more useful than that.”

He flinched. She was glad, then hated being glad.

“Owen and I had argued before he took the boat,” Finn said. “Afterward, everything was broken. Your brother's leg. Your family. My chance of explaining anything without making it worse.”

“So you chose the person leaving.”

“Yes.”

Isla pulled off his sweatshirt and set it on the counter. Beneath it, her damp shirt felt cold.

“Thank you for fixing the music.”

“Isla, there's more.”

“Then decide whether you're going to tell me. But don't make me drag it out of you in installments.”

He looked at the sweatshirt as if she'd put something wounded between them.

“I need to speak to Owen.”

“You need to speak to me.”

“I know.”

When he left, she locked the door and turned up the music until the windows trembled.

Saturday came clear and bright. Isla spent the morning arranging tables, slicing lemons, and answering questions from people who thought inheriting a business meant inheriting confidence.

Her brother arrived carrying a crate of glasses.

Owen still limped when he was tired. At thirty-four, he'd become quieter than the boy who used to dare her to swim past the outer buoy. But his eyes still searched her face before he spoke.

“Dad says you're angry.”

“Dad reports weather beautifully.”

He put down the crate.

“Are we all banned?”

“Only from making speeches about my mistakes.”

Owen managed a smile.

“I wasn't planning one.”

Owen examined the session schedule pinned beside the counter.

“You teach instructors now?”

“Sometimes.”

“I didn't know.”

“You never asked much about the work.”

He looked down at the lantern strings.

“I thought asking would sound like I wanted you farther away.”

“Not asking made it sound as though you didn't care where I was.”

Owen absorbed that without defending himself. Then he asked which part she liked best. Isla told him about watching an anxious new teacher finally trust her own voice. For a few minutes, they spoke as adults who had missed important pieces of each other's lives.

She wanted to ask him about Finn. The question had sat in her throat all morning. But Owen was holding Mags's old paper lanterns, carefully untangling their strings, and for a moment she wanted her brother rather than another witness.

“Remember when she made us hang these?” Isla asked.

“You fell off the chair.”

“You moved the chair.”

“I was helping.”

“You've always had an ambitious definition.”

They laughed. It felt like discovering an intact room inside a damaged house.

By evening, the club was full. The same customers who'd missed their swim brought friends. Bea served drinks. Isla wore a dark blue dress Mags had bought her years ago, insisting that every woman needed something she could wear to either a wedding or a magnificent mistake.

She'd packed it without knowing which.

Her father arrived with the harbor association's new chairman, who began loudly explaining how much support a young woman needed to run a waterfront business.

Isla smiled until her jaw hurt.

Then the chairman asked whether she planned to introduce “those foreign beach-club prices.”

“The tea is two pounds,” she said. “For you, the lecture is extra.”

People laughed. Her father looked embarrassed. For once, she let him.

Finn arrived just as she escaped to the terrace. He wore a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which ought to have been illegal given everything else.

“I brought the spare cable,” he said.

“Does it need its own invitation?”

“No. Neither do I. I can leave it with Bea.”

She looked past him at the crowded room. Her father had seen them. So had Owen.

Part of her wanted to use Finn's presence as a weapon. Let them look. Let them worry. But he was a person, not a match she could strike against her family.

“You can stay for one drink,” she said. “We aren't reconciled.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I'd like the chance to.”

He paid for his own drink. The small gesture shouldn't have mattered. It did.

For a while they stood at the end of the counter, watching people discover where to put their coats.

“What's wrong?” Finn asked.

“Nothing.”

He waited. She remembered that about him too: the infuriating patience when she wanted an easy escape.

“Everyone keeps telling me Mags would be proud.”

“She would.”

“Yes. But do they like the place? Or are they being kind because she's dead?”

Finn looked around the crowded room.

“Some came for her. Some came for you. That man came because Bea told him there'd be cake.”

Isla laughed despite herself.

“What if they stop coming?”

“Then you'll have to ask them why. I don't think you'd enjoy me promising you an effortless future.”

“No,” she said. “I wouldn't believe you.”

His expression changed. She knew why. Believing him was the thing they were carefully walking around.

She reached across him for a clean glass. He shifted to give her room, and suddenly his shoulder was close to her mouth.

Neither moved for a second.

Then Isla set the glass beside the others.

“You can stay there,” she said.

“At the counter?”

“For now.”

His smile was small enough to be private. She took it with her when somebody called her name.

Later, Bea turned the lights down and persuaded people to dance. Mags's terrible song came on. A collective groan rose from those who had known her.

Isla laughed into her glass.

Finn appeared beside her.

“She would haunt us if we sat this out.”

“You're relying heavily on a dead woman's authority.”

“It's all I've got.”

She looked at his offered hand.

“One dance,” she said.

His fingers closed around hers. Warm. Familiar. Changed only by the roughness along his palm.

They kept a polite distance for half the song. Then someone bumped Isla from behind, and Finn's hand steadied her waist.

Her breath caught.

He felt it. She knew because his own smile vanished.

“Too close?” he asked.

“No.”

The word came out before caution could catch it.

They moved slowly. Around them, chairs scraped, glasses clinked, someone sang badly. Isla heard none of it clearly.

Finn's thumb remained still against the fabric at her waist. Somehow that restraint was more intimate than a caress.

“You look happy here,” he said.

“I was. Before you became complicated.”

“I was always complicated.”

“No. You used to be very simple. Hungry, usually.”

He laughed, and she remembered evenings eating chips on the seawall, stealing the crisp ones from his paper bag. She remembered wanting him before she knew what wanting could cost.

“I missed that,” he said.

“What?”

“You telling me who I am.”

“I don't know who you are now.”

“Then don't dance with the old version.”

She looked up. His face was close enough that she could see a tiny shaving cut near his jaw.

For one reckless second, she wanted to kiss it.

Instead, she stepped back when the song ended.

Outside, she leaned against the terrace rail until the cold air settled her. Finn came no farther than the doorway.

“I won't follow if you want to be alone.”

“I don't know what I want.”

“That makes two of us.”

She turned. “Don't lie. You know.”

He held her gaze.

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

The honesty struck low and deep. She had spent years remembering a boy who'd failed her. This man was harder to dismiss.

He took one step closer. Stopped.

“Tell me to go back inside.”

She should have. Her father was somewhere behind the windows. Her brother knew a piece of the story nobody would give her. She was standing in the one place she'd promised herself not to become foolish.

“Stay,” she whispered.

Finn lifted his hand slowly enough for her to refuse. His fingers touched her cheek.

Then the terrace door slammed open.

Bea stood there, pale beneath the fairy lights.

“Isla. It's Owen.”

Through the doorway, Isla saw her brother on the floor beside the open windows, one hand pressed to his chest.

“He keeps saying the boat's going over,” Bea said.

But there was no boat. Only music, and people staring, and Owen trying desperately to breathe.