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The beach club is, I will admit this, privately… excellent. The kind of place that understands what it is doing: the light, the sound, the warm humidity of the Bali night, the ocean somewhere close in the dark.

Patrick is immediately at ease, which is Patrick everywhere but more so, and he pulls me to the bar first.

"What do you want?" he says, over the music.

I look at the menu. Non-alcoholic options, several of them, the kind of place that has decided this matters and done it properly. "The mango one," I say.

He orders two. The bartender makes them without comment.

I have not been drinking alcohol for the last several months. This happened the same way most things happen around Patrick: gradually, without discussion, until one day it was simply true. Patrick doesn't drink. I noticed this early on, the way he navigated it at social occasions — the sparkling water, the non-alcoholic options held like they were the obvious choice, which for him they apparently were. I asked once and he said simply: it doesn't agree with me. I stopped years ago. And then he changed the subject.

I stopped ordering wine at dinner. I stopped picking up a beer without thinking. At some point I noticed I hadn't had a drink in three weeks and felt no particular way about it. It suits me. I have always preferred to be precise and I am more precise without it.

Patrick hands me my drink. It is excellent. Cold and sharp and entirely the right thing for a warm Bali night.

"Good?" he says.

"Good," I say.

He grins. He takes my hand. He pulls me toward the floor.

I dance.

This is, I want to note for the record, not something I do. I have convictions about this. And yet Patrick's hand in mine and the warmth of the evening and the fact that nobody here knows my name conspires against my convictions and I find myself, on a dance floor in Bali, dancing.

Patrick is looking at me like I am the best thing he has ever seen.

I am going to pretend, for the duration of this evening, that I don't notice that.

He leans in, the music requiring proximity to be heard. "You're a good dancer," he says, into my ear.

"I told you I don't dance."

"And yet." He pulls back slightly with the expression of someone whose point has been made for him. "You have moves, Jan."

"I don't have moves."

"You absolutely have moves." He says this with such complete certainty and warmth that I cannot produce a satisfactory rebuttal. The corner of my mouth does something I don't fully sanction.

He leans in again. "What's your favourite Taylor Swift song?"

I look at him. "Why."

"I'm ashamed I don't know this. I should know this."

"Patrick."

"Just tell me."

I look at the dance floor. I know exactly why he is asking and exactly what he is going to do. Here in Seminyak with the warm night and the mango cocktail and this person, I find I don't mind at all.

"Cruel Summer," I say.

He grins, and disappears toward the DJ booth.

I stand on the dance floor and wait.

Forty seconds later the song changes.