The sound bloomed around them, like a flower unfurling one petal at a time, carrying across the walls of white tiles with their patterns of black crosses. A passing police officer tilted his hat toward the man. Etta sat up, straining to see him over the heads between them.
She had, however, no trouble seeing the young couple that was dancing in their few feet of allotted space. The man’s arm was locked around her waist, and he took her hand in his. The woman laughed, looking around them nervously, but followed his slow, rocking movements, resting her head against his shoulder.
Nicholas watched them, entranced. Etta thought for sure he’d say something about how scandalous it was for them to be dancing so close together.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
He turned to her. “Would you like me to go take that violin for you? I’d gladly fight whatever angry mob rises up if it might make you smile.”
Her heart just about burst at that.
Be brave. “I would only want to play for you.”
He turned slowly, as if taking the time to assemble some sort of expression or response. But she didn’t want there to be any mistake, any way for him to dismiss or misunderstand her words. If she was wrong, and he wanted nothing more between them, she would pull back. But now…now she just wanted to be brave. Her hand came to rest on top of his, and despite all of his obvious strength, the shields he threw up to protect the privacy of his mind, she felt his fingers slide through hers.
The lights flickered again, sending her attention, and her heart, shooting upward. The banging was loud, like hands slamming down directly on top of them. A boy started wailing, and the sound moved like a wave through the other kids. The dancers stopped dancing, but the older gentleman didn’t stop playing until the lights blinked out completely, leaving them in pitch black.
Etta couldn’t stop shivering. She bit the inside of her mouth and drew blood. The darkness seemed to shudder and rock around them, and whatever terror she’d managed to bottle up broke free.
I don’t want to die down here.
I don’t want to disappear.
I have to get home.
Mom.
Mom is going to die, and it’s my fault—
Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and she hiccupped as she tried to take in air.
“Etta,” Nicholas said, close to her ear. He shifted, drawing her closer. She pressed her face against the slope of skin between his neck and shoulder, and felt a hand weave through her hair, pulling it back from where strands were sticking to her wet cheeks.
“Shhh, Etta, we’re safe,” he said. “The battle’s ours, pirate. They’ll strike their colors, and it will pass.”
She breathed in the sea salt that always seemed to cling to his skin, no matter how far from the ocean he was. Her mind felt foggy, her face raw, as his hand slipped away from her face and glided down her arm. With an aching tenderness, he laced his fingers through hers and brought them to his other arm, resting upturned in his lap.
He’d rolled the sleeve up, and she felt a shock of hot skin against her fingertips as he pressed her hand there. “Play me something.”
“What?” Etta whispered.
“Something that’ll lift us out of here.”
His fingers unhooked from hers, following that same path up her arm, and then back down it again. The feeling was so distracting, so good, so sweet against her clammy skin. She didn’t choose a piece from her repertoire; Etta gave herself over to the notes that started streaming through her mind, rising from somewhere deep inside of her.
The melody of her heart had no name; it was quick, and light. It rolled with the waves, falling as the breath left his chest, rising as he inhaled. It was the rain sliding down the glass; the fog spreading its fingers over the water. The creaking of a ship’s great body. The secrets whispered by the wind, and the unseen life that moved below.
It was the flame of one last candle.
Nicholas’s arm was a map of hard muscles and delicate sinews, heartbreakingly perfect. She wondered if he could hear her humming the piece against his skin over the droning roars overhead. Maybe. His free hand skimmed up her skin, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake.
With the world blacked out around them, she could catalog all of her other senses, capture this moment in the warm darkness forever. He brushed back the loose hair across her forehead, his breath hitching as she turned her face up. Soft lips found her cheek, the corner of her lips, her jaw, and she knew it had to be the same for him, that they’d never been so aware of another person in their entire lives.
She released his arm, and he drew it up around her, guiding both of them down so they were on their sides, their heads cushioned by the bag, his jacket drawn over them. Etta understood that here, in the darkness, they’d found a place beyond rules; a place that hung somewhere between the past and the future. This was a single moment of possibility.