Getting Real

“Like you’re the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen?”

She blushed.

Harry had these pale, almost colourless eyes Rand wanted to drown in. She wore a simple black dress, a waist length strand of misshapen white pearls and drop pearls in her pierced ears. She smelled sweet as a spring garden, and the smile on her face showed off her cheek bones and perfect rosy skin.

“You look so different,” she said.

He shrugged. “Camouflage. You don’t like it?” He’d bought it that morning. He flapped the suit jacket, then took it off and hung it behind the chair, and undid another button of the dress shirt. “I couldn’t cope with a tie.”

She reached out her hand. “I like it a lot. But you didn’t need to change for me.”

He took it, rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “I wanted to.” He might’ve meant to say more but words were vapour. They stared at each other until a waiter coughed politely and handed them menus. When they’d ordered, Rand sat back in his chair. “So, do you have the answers to my technical questions yet?”

She studied the tablecloth. “If things go well tonight I should think we might achieve first base.” If she looked at him he might forget all about taking this slowly and just drag her out of here and back to her hotel right now. It would be a home run without a single base loaded.

He tapped that down. “And where are you

on the question of a combined first and second base?” he queried.

Now she looked up and gave him a sparkling smile, all sass, no innocence. “Oh, I’m all for it.” Rand put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, aiming for the pose of a professor interrogating a promising student. He realised he’d left his black metal thumb ring on and figured that probably destroyed the image somewhat, but decided to tough it out. “And third base?”

Harry bit her lip. He liked that look on her. Did things to him. Good things. “I should think we might get there eventually.”

Rand lifted his eyebrows, like he thought a professor might. “That’s not a precise answer. I was looking for something more definite.” He drummed his fingers against each other.

She caught his act: frowned, blinked, tilted her head to the side, playing the pretty student with an incomplete answer, and flirting with her professor to get around it. “Perhaps I could reconsider the answer if you danced with me tonight. It might give me a feel for what’s right.”

“You want to feel your way to an answer is that it?” He laughed, his demeanour of superiority and detachment falling away in the play of innuendo.

When they danced to Augie March’s One Crowded Hour, he surprised her again. He held her close, and moved her around the small dance floor with ease, as though this was what he did every day instead of thrashing a guitar and belting out rock songs.

Augie March’s lead singer Glenn Richards sang about a girl and a boy in a crowded room who only had eyes for each other. Rand couldn’t have ordered up a better song for the moment.

“Where did you learn to dance like this?”

He laughed. “You should be grateful I remember how to do this. I took lessons for months before the school formal and I made Rie practise with me until I learned how not to step on her. She used to kick me when I did. It’s come in handy over the years, and I also have really tough shins.”

“I’ll bet!” she said, laughing up at him, but then her expression changed abruptly. Was she imagining other women he’d danced with like this? There’d been plenty. Was she thinking of the night of the formal when they should’ve danced like this? He dumped her, not his fault but the effect was the same. He’d left her dateless with a formal dress and no one to wear it for while he sat in the hospital and waited for his mum to die, for his dad’s diagnosis, and for Rie to wake up.

“Hey, did I say something you didn’t like?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just thinking about how much I wanted to dance with you that night. And how embarrassing it was to feel sorry for myself, crying into my box of chocolates, when you had so much tragedy to deal with.”

He tightened his arms around her. “It was a long time ago, Harry.” He concentrated on moving her around the room and not treading on her, but he fought the feeling that had been dogging him since they’d touched down in Adelaide. That it wasn’t a long time ago. That it was still fresh and raw and capable of making him hurt. When the song ended, he led Harry back to the table, desperate to recapture their earlier playful mood.

“Did you feel your way to an answer about third base?” he asked, stressing the word ‘feel’ as he pushed in her chair and breathed in her perfume.

She blushed but let him see it. “Why don’t we play it by ear.”

Rand barked a laugh. “Third base has very little to do with ears!” Then he dropped his eyes. “Maybe a little to do with them,” and when she didn’t respond, he said more soberly, “It’s complicated. You see in practice, we’re already at third base, so it’s only a matter of—”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well I’m thinking about when we—”

She wagged a finger. “Oh, I think if there’s a twelve year gap in the game, the clock has to be reset.”

“Damn,” he laughed and took her hand in his again. “I thought you might say that.”