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Perfectly. Thank you very much.
I know how to handle myself in front of a room of people, whether I know them or not, and I have zero trouble being the center of attention.
“So…” I lift my beer to the room, then look down at Ami and Michael. “May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rain fall soft upon your fields. Until we meet again, my friends, may God hold you in the palm of his hand."
Jonah, my sister, and my brother Cian, all call out, “Sláinte” and I’m more grateful for them than I have been in a while.
The rest of the crowd follows suit and calls out, “Cheers!”
Everyone drinks and then Cian, my wonderful, impossible-to-embarrass baby brother—who definitely got a dose of the O’Grady confidence in his baby bottle too—gets to his feet and says loudly, "May your mornings bring joy and your evenings bring peace. May your troubles grow few as your blessings increase. May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past. May your hands be forever clasped in friendship and your hearts forever joined in love!”
Again, everyone hoists their glasses and bottles high, with a chorus of, “Cheers!” before drinking.
“Okay, well, this is fun.” This comes from Owen, who was already back. But now I’m happy to see him. Owen Landry is absolutely not shy of the spotlight either.
He makes a toast. Then others follow suit, including the bride’s and groom’s parents and grandparents.
But I don’t register a thing anyone else says, because Abigail moves in close, rises on tiptoe and says, “Okay, fine, you can have dance three, and five, for that.”
And that is all I need to hear.
I just stand next to her, grinning like an idiot, for the next fifteen minutes.
Then, as soon as the toasts and the first dances—the bride and groom, the bride and her father, and the groom and his mother—are over, I turn to Abigail and hold out my hand.
“May I?”
She lifts a brow. “Wow, you really are asking.”
“Of course.”
We both smile at that. It’s probably good she knows I don’t ask permission for much. I do have manners. I do understand how women think. I just…haven’t had to worry about that in…far too long.
She takes my hand, and I head straight to the middle of the dance floor.
“No one else is out here right now,” Abigail says, tugging on my hand as if to slow me down.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“But everyone will be watching us.”
“I love being the center of attention,” I tell her honestly.
“I hate being the center of attention.”
“You won’t even notice anyone else once we start,” I tell her with a wink, stopping when we are exactly in the center of the ‘dance floor’, which is actually the middle of the entire room.
She sighs and starts to put her hands on my shoulders, but I ask, “Do you need those?” I point to the floor under the table where she was sitting earlier. Her shoes are lying there. Yes, she’s been barefoot this entire time.
She looks up at me, a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Do I need to worry about my toes? You didn’t step on them last time.”
I’m actually an excellent dancer, but we’d safely swayed together last time. Nothing fancy. I nod thoughtfully, though. “What if I twirl you? I don’t want you to get a splinter.”
The bar’s floor is wood, but it’s been smoothed by years of foot traffic.
Now there’s a definite curl to one side of her mouth. “Are you going to twirl me?”
“I can’t promise not to.”
