“Let’s talk about something else,” he said, voice catching, then added with a note of yearning, “Please.” She shivered again. “Come here, you’re still cold.” So she moved her crate next to his and he put his arm around her. He smelled so inviting, and his embrace felt so solid and comforting that she leaned into it.
“So, what do you think of the proctor’s new beard?” John asked, his voice slightly strained.
“It suits him. Not everyone can pull off a beard,” Chloe said, leaping onto this life raft of trivial conversation. “Okay, top ten beards, famous or otherwise, go.”
“Excellent question, but are we allowed to play top ten without Kiko and Sean?”
“I think they’d give us a dispensation to play, under the circumstances.”
“In that case, Santa Claus, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Gandalf, Abraham Lincoln—this is in no particular order.”
“Castro?” she offered.
“I’ll give you young Castro. Bluebeard? I don’t know what he looks like, but he must have had a first-rate beard.”
Chloe laughed, relieved to have found something to distract them from the heat that still lingered between them. Once they’d exhausted beards, they moved on to top ten movies with food in the title, then top ten things you’d rather be doing than being trapped in a cellar.
She realized Rob would never be able to play a game like this, not with the whole internet at his fingertips. The fun of this game was in the debate, in suddenly remembering something everyone else had forgotten, arguing over facts half remembered. Phones were not allowed, because googling the answer would ruin the fun.
“A Clockwork Orange!” Chloe yelled triumphantly.
John burst out laughing, the kind of helpless, full-bodied laugh that fed her own until she couldn’t breathe. “We finished fruit ten minutes ago.”
She felt warm, her head spinning—the port had crept up on her.
“Oh did we? I think I’m drunk,” Chloe said, slipping off the crate onto the floor in a graceful collapse.
“Me too,” he admitted, sliding down beside her.
“How long have we been down here?” she asked, and he reached to check his phone.
“Forty minutes,” he said.
“They must have finished dinner by now. I’m offended no one’s noticed we’re not there.”
“Indeed,” he said.
“Indeed,” she mimicked in her best scholarly drawl, then hiccupped. He laughed, a happy drunk laugh, which made her suddenly feel nineteen again. John clicked open, then closed, the bottle opener in his hand. She smiled, remembering his habit of fiddling with things when he’d had too much to drink. There was a charming vulnerability about him after three glasses of wine. Rob would never be tipsy. He might be able to act like he was, but he would only be playing a part. It dawned on her that he wasalwaysplaying a part. He was a figment of her imagination, made real. The thought made her shiver.
“I need to move,” she said, getting to her feet and attempting some half-hearted star jumps. He sighed, amused, then stood up to join her.
“Shall we dance? It’s more dignified than star jumps.”
“Do you have music?”
He pulled out his phone and began scrolling, his thumb firm, deliberate. Then, quietly, the room was filled with the warm, melancholic voice of Norah Jones singing “And Then There Was You.” The sound was low, slightly tinny through the phone speaker, but it wrapped around them in the silence. “It’s all I’ve got downloaded,” he said with an apologetic tilt of his head.
Then he reached for her hand, fingers curling around hers, and he gave a small tug, inviting rather than insisting. She let herself be led. Her other hand found his shoulder without her thinking, and he settled a hand at her waist. And then they turned slowly in time with the music. The room around them contracting, blurring at the edges until it was just them, in no particular space or time.
Chloe could feel the steady beat of his heart beneath hisshirt, the warmth of his hands. The song lyrics brushing against something she hadn’t known was aching. She let herself rest her cheek lightly against his shoulder, and the moment feltpainfullyromantic.
“I take it you didn’t have the crazy chicken song, then?” she asked, smiling into his shoulder.
“That’s not in my repertoire,” he said, as he pulled her a little closer. They moved in small circles, the port dulling the voice telling her she was playing with fire. She didn’t care, because right now, being trapped underground in a damp wine cellar, dancing to this song, felt like the only place she wanted to be.
