Losing Grip

“Dance with me”.

The music was playing quietly in the background, something old and vaguely familiar; she thought maybe she heard it in a movie once. It was a slow song, a waltz.

“Huh?” he looked up from his reading.

“Dance with me,” she repeated, his startled look making her smile. “C’mon.” She reached out her hand and watched as he put the pages away on the sofa, got up, walked over to her. Put one hand on his shoulder, let him take the other in his hand, proper ballroom dancing, it was. He led, gracefully, and she laughed. “I didn’t know you could waltz”.

“I didn’t know you could,” he smiled. He led her through the open space in the middle of the room, then around the sofas, into the dinning area and back again, just barely avoiding furniture on the way. The smile didn’t leave her face and her head was spinning. They locked gazes, but she looked away immediately, focusing instead on the moving scenery around her, on the place where a scar showed from under the neckline of his shirt, briefly back to his eyes, so blue, so goddamn blue, and away again.

The song ended, he stopped, waited a beat before letting her go, stepping away.