‘I have.’
‘Good.’
‘She’s going to ask you to send her on a business trip.’ She draped her arm around his neck as they danced. ‘I thought you were gamer boy?’
‘I am.’
‘Crypto kid?’
‘That too.’
‘I’m not coming back to your apartment.’
‘So I’ll make you come here.’
‘Galen!’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can’t you feel me?’
Roula said nothing.
‘I can feel your breasts flat on my chest,’ Galen said. ‘Are they taped up?’
‘No...’ she smiled.
‘They must be,’ he said. ‘Because this dress is backless, and they are very beautiful, but I can’t feel...’
‘I think the bra is inbuilt,’ she said.
He put his hand in the small of her back, and her skin felt so warm she might have been standing in front of a fire before placing it there.
‘Maybe dancing isn’t so pointless,’ he said.
‘No...’
He dusted her arm with his fingers, as he had wanted to that night, and pulled her in closer. And he knew that for all the things he didn’t get in this life, hedidget Roula. Of that, he was sure.
‘I knew you were about to cry on the beach,’ Galen said into her ear. ‘That’s why I came over.’
She was very still.
‘You do this thing with your hands and your eyes. And when you’re upset you get angry...’
‘Galen...’ She felt as if she were being pulled apart even while held in his arms. This was a character assessment when she did not want scrutiny. But he held her in a way that she did not want to leave.
‘I don’t know what I’ve done,’ he admitted. ‘I can’t work that out.’
‘Good,’ Roula said, for she did not want him to know how much she loved him.
‘Our dance is over,’ Galen said, and she heard the music still a little more gently than it had the night they had met, when Leo had crashed. ‘History repeats itself.’
‘Does it?’
‘You went off into the night last time.’
‘If it wasn’t for Costa we’d never have seen each other again.’
‘Believe what you want, Roula, but I’d have got in touch.’