It’s crazy inside. There are fancy-dressed people everywhere and even though I know I look the part, I sure don’t feel the part. This is part of some society that I’ve never belonged to and it’s only Lachlan’s vice-like grip on my hand that keeps me sane. In fact, he only lets go to shake the hand of someone and other than that, he’s holding onto me.
I can’t remember anyone’s names. I spot Thierry, John and a few other rugby players in different parts of the venue, and later we see Amara, Jessica and Donald, but other than that, all the people I meet blur into one. It’s pretty obvious right away that a lot of them don’t really care about the animals, or about Lachlan in particular. They just want to be seen doing the right thing in front of the right people. But charity for the wrong reasons is still charity and whatever can help the dogs is always a good thing.
I have to say, I’m completely smitten by the way Lachlan treats me. I was really worried about this event, more so than I admitted to myself. But he hasn’t had a thing to drink, while I swill champagne and feel guilty about it, he drinks sparkling water with lime and that’s it. While he’s approached by people again and again and again, he always introduces me first as his girlfriend. He pulls me into conversations, never leaves me out of them, always has his hand in mine or around my waist. He makes me as part of his world as possible, as if I’m a permanent fixture, as if I always have been.
And I can’t help but stare at him with big, googly eyes. If I was a cartoon, I would have hearts in them and I would be constantly sighing and I’m sure I look no different to someone watching me from afar. I am smitten, hanging onto his succinct words in that elegant brogue, the way he focuses on each and every person with those magnetic eyes of him, holding them in his stare. I know that he’s doing this because he has to, that he’s not usually so personable, but he’s just so damn good at it that he fools even me.
Throughout the night I fall more in love with him. I swear if you look close enough, you’ll see my heart beneath my rib cage, bursting at the seams. I can’t stop smiling. I don’t want to ever stop smiling.
At some point a band starts playing and Lachlan hands Lionel over to Amara and pulls me over to the dance floor.
“You dance?” I ask him as he wraps his arms around me, Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” starting to play.
“Not a bit,” he admits with a smile I feel down in my toes. “But I can fake it for a few steps.”
Okay, well maybe dancing isn’t one of Lachlan’s hidden talents. The man can’t be good at everything. But he does a good job of faking it and at least he doesn’t step on my toes.
We stay on the dance floor for more than a few songs. I’m in no hurry to return to schmoozing and I assume Lachlan isn’t either. That’s probably why we’re dancing for so long.
“I just wanted you to myself,” he says, burying his face in my hair. It’s like he read my mind.
“How much longer does this gala go for? I mean, when do you usually leave?” I ask him, staring at the other elegant partygoers gliding past us.
“I’m usually the last one standing,” he says. “I don’t want to be that guy who throws a party, asks for money, and then leaves.”
“No, that’s not you. Then we’ll stay till the end.”
“Till the very end,” he says.
The Beatles “All My Loving” comes on and he holds me tighter to him, his hands brushing down the length of my bare back and holding the small of my waist. He very faintly sings the lyrics in my ears and I close my eyes, letting the words sink deep, letting the moment last for as long as it possibly can. Everyone else drifts away and it’s me and him and a world built for two.
“I’m so in love with you,” he whispers, the roughness of his cheek pressed against mine. “So in love. There is no bottom. I just keep falling.”
I’m falling too. But my heart has grown wings. It threatens to carry me forever and each time I’m dropped, careening toward the abyss, it will pick me up again.
I never thought it could be like this.
I never want it to be any other way.