“Sof?”
I shove those thoughts aside and make myself sound calm. “Take my hand, like this. My other hand goes at your shoulder, just so, and yours goes at my waist.” I pause. “My waist, Gideon.”
His eyes flick up, revealing a wicked gleam there before he shifts his hand upward. “Must’ve misheard you there.”
“Mm-hmm.” I keep my voice deadpan. “Now, listen to the beat of the music. Hear that one-two-three pattern? That’s how our steps will go.…”
He’s a quick study. If I hadn’t already seen more than enough evidence of his agility while climbing through ducts and elevator shafts, this would convince me that all that exercise equipment in his den got put to good use. He’s got the basic idea down by the end of the first waltz, and the next several songs are a variety of other styles, giving me a chance to explain the differences in a few dances.
Judging by the number of songs elapsed, by the end of our first hour he’s more or less competent. The current song ends, and we pause, left slightly breathless. It was a faster song, and Gideon’s getting confident enough now to spin me around—with only limited success. He’s not a brilliant dancer, but he’s good enough. He won’t draw attention on the dance floor, either good or bad—which is exactly what we’re aiming for.
I know I should propose that we stop for the night—I know I should propose we divide up the blankets again and go to sleep in our separate corners. Turn the lights off and leave this place once more to the dust and the dark.
But I don’t.
The next song starts to play, beginning with a haunting patter of piano notes—and I freeze.
I know this song. It’s one of the only pieces I recognize, and I know it only because of a recording my father’s friend made of a broadcast twenty years before I was born, before the transmission embargo on Avon. When I first heard it I started crying, and my father’s friend—whose name I can’t remember, why can’t I remember it?—gave the recording to me to keep.
It wasn’t until after I left Avon that I learned its name: the Butterfly Waltz in E minor. It was composed by a fourteen-year-old prodigy in a country on Earth called Iran in the twenty-third century. She was killed in a shuttle crash not long after she finished the piece. It was the only song she ever wrote. Somehow, that detail—tragic and awful as it was—made the piece more beautiful. More poignant. She may have died a child, but this song, this part of her, is still here. Echoing through the empty buildings of an arcade abandoned before I was born.
“Something wrong?”
It’s only when Gideon speaks that I realize I’m not dancing. “Sorry—no. You’re doing well, I’m impressed.” I try to put everything else out of my thoughts and follow his lead into a slow turn. Just focus on your steps.
“It’s not so hard,” he replies, voice soft as though he, too, is affected by the music. “Who taught you how to do this?”
Don’t answer. Make something up. Change the subject. My mouth opens, though, and I reply with the truth: “My father.”
Gideon’s hand against my waist shifts and draws me a little closer. “How long ago did he die?” His voice is gentle.
“Nearly a year ago.”
“And you’ve been on your own since then?”
I think of Dani, and of a boy on the Polaris space station who helped me get my first fake ID, and I think of the couple on the Starchaser who let me stow away in their cabin on my way to Corinth. I swallow. “I prefer to be on my own.”
“Me too.” Gideon’s gaze, when I look up, is waiting for mine. “Easier that way. No complications.” He’s no longer trying out turns and spins. His palm against the small of my back is warm, and it’s only then that I realize that if his hand’s against my back and not at my waist, we must have drawn closer, breath by breath, over the last hour.
“No one interfering with your plans,” I reply, my voice barely audible.
His steps slow, and mine mirror his, until we’re standing still in a pool of light cast by the bookstore sign behind us. “No one you’ll hurt by messing up.”
“No one to hurt you.”
He lowers our joined hands—no longer even pretending that we’re still dancing—until they hang between us. His fingers tighten, and though I know what’s coming, I can’t make myself pull away. The neon lights turn his eyes every color, colors I never even knew growing up on Avon. His throat shifts in the light as he swallows.
“Gideon,” I whisper, unable to speak above a whisper. “This is a bad idea.”