Chapter 5

"Doesn't she have any rhythm?" At the sound of the voice whispering in my ear, I turn from watching through the kitchen window that looks out onto one of the studio rooms where Darcy is dancing with a possible replacement for Julia.

"Claire!" I whisper loudly, and she draws me into a hug. I've known Claire as long as I've known Darcy, and although she's not my sister, she's probably the closest I have to one. Having been a fixture at the Franklins' for a long time, I've been treated to the same big-sister teasing that he has.

"How's it going?" she asks, releasing me.

"As you see." I cock a hip and flippantly gesture with my hand towards the window, earning a grin from Claire as she peers out to watch.

"Hmmm." She sounds non-committal, which isn't much like Claire. She normally has an opinion on everything. She's a lot like her mum in some ways, not that she likes to be reminded of that. But far too much like her to remain at the dance school. She'd made it very clear dancing wasn't going to be her career and put herself through university. She now works in media and marketing.

"How many have there been already?"

"One so far. This one, and then there are another three today."

We scoot across the kitchen to the other side, which looks out to the other studio room. The windows slide open and serve as hatches to pass drinks and refreshments straight out into the rooms. Once a month, the dance school hosts a social tea dance for the older generation and endless pots of tea are a necessity.

The other candidates are warming up or talking with whomever they brought along with them. They look alien in their unfamiliarity, and I can't imagine any one of them dancing with Darcy.

"Jeez, she looks older than Mum." Claire points to one of the candidates and giggles. I suppress a laugh and wander back over to the other side to watch Darcy some more. Claire joins me.

"Poor Darcy." She sighs. "Did my mum take it very badly?"

"What do you think?"

She looks at me with a grimace that tells me she knows exactly how it's been.

I let out an exaggerated gasp. "Wait? Have you stayed away this week even knowing what she'd be like?"

Claire's sheepish grin tells me I've hit upon the truth. She normally visits a couple of times a week, but I haven't seen her and Darcy hasn't mentioned her visiting at all this week.

"You coward!" I hiss. "You know what it's been like."

"I'm sorry, but you know how she is. Just having her hollering down the phone at me was bad enough."

"You don't need to apologise to me, Claire, but you need to say sorry to Darcy." I'm more than miffed with her. She's cut from the same cloth as her mother, thick-skinned, but Darcy is much more like his father, quiet and unassuming, and it's been hard for him. "You knew how this would be. He could have done with some support."

"He had you." Claire shrugs, as if that was enough.

I glare at her as I head to the sink to fill the kettle for a pot of tea. There is nothing as important as being supported by your family, but her words burrow their way into me, nestling deep inside.

Yes, he does have me. I'll always be there for him.

Inadvertently, my thoughts turn to the other night, like they have too many times in the last few days. When we were in the park, I'd been looking down at him. Darcy had stared up at me with the strangest expression on his face and he'd looked so vulnerable, his soul so open, that for a brief moment, I'd wanted to kiss down the white column of his throat.

But that is so very wrong, for lots of reasons. The first is that he's my best friend, and it's not normal to want to kiss your best friend. And he's straight. So wanting to kiss my straight best friend is definitely not something I should be doing. I push the thought deep down inside, refusing to allow it any chance of resurfacing. The last thing I want to do is make things awkward between us. Our friendship is the most important thing to me, and there's no way I'm going to ruin it for something that happened in a moment of weakness under a canopy of stars. It's an occurrence I can't let happen again.

Darcy pushes through the door to the kitchen and heads straight to the fridge. After roughly pulling the door open, he grabs a bottle of water, twists off the cap, and downs half of it in one go. It's only then that he turns and sees Claire and me standing by the window.

He narrows his eyes. "How long have you been here?" he directs at Claire.

"Look Darcy, I'm sorry." She walks over to him. "I shouldn't have left Mum to you all week."

"No, you shouldn't." His face darkens, and he continues through clenched teeth. "Have you any idea what it's been like? Well, I guess you do or you would have been here days ago."

"You can handle it," she replies, and he gives her the biggest "are you shitting me" look I've ever seen.

"Well, you're fixing it now, aren't you?" She gestures towards the studio he just exited. He drops his head back and looks towards the ceiling, letting out a wail of exasperation. "Urgh."

"That good, huh?" she asks, earning herself another glower. "You can't expect to find someone straight away, or to be immediately in sync with them," she says.

Darcy downs the rest of the water and aims the empty bottle towards the bin. It goes straight in; our hours spent idly throwing things in the trash weren't wasted.

"Now you sound just like Mum." He pushes past her and heads back out to the studio. She screws her face up as she turns back towards me. She looks as if she's about to say something cutting, but I guess the look on my face stops her. She'll get no sympathy from me. I'm always going to take Darcy's side, and she knows that. Instead, she sighs and rejoins me at the window. We watch the next few candidates dancing with Darcy and fall into an agreed but unspoken truce about her behaviour, joining forces to pass comment on the dancers.

"She looks like she's never worn a pair of dance shoes before."

"Can someone actually have two left feet?"

"It's ‘grab-a-granny' time."

To be fair, they weren't all bad and certainly not as awful as we made out, but we were just egging each other on to be more outrageous. I was more concerned about Darcy; by the end of it, he wasn't dancing well either. A casual observer probably wouldn't notice though, as he was always step-perfect.

There's a difference between playing a symphony note-perfect, and playing it with the feeling and passion that elevates it into something exceptional.

It's the same with dancing, which is why Darcy is so good. He imbues his dancing with a fluidity and flair that makes him distinctive. I've spent hours watching him, trying to work out how he does it and emulating it for myself. So I can tell when the spark has gone, and he's just going through the motions, even if those movements are still absolutely correct.

Eventually it's over, and Claire and I enter the studio. I wince a little at the volume of the exclamation from Sheila as she spies Claire. I want to talk to Darcy, but I'm caught up in the confusion of ushering the candidates out of the building with promises of being in touch soon to let them know. Sheila locks the front door and shepherds Claire upstairs, keen to have a new audience to tell her woes to. A quiet settles over the studio, the silence a stark reverence in contrast to the cacophony of a few moments previously.

I head back through the kitchen, grab a cold bottle of water, and head out to the studio. Darcy is standing looking out of the window, his posture a depiction of despondency. His shoulders are slumped as if he's curling in on himself. I hold out the bottle of water and he looks at me, a sad smile ghosting across his lips as he takes it and goes back to looking out the window. I reach out with my other hand to rub his neck and stop, hovering my hand just above his nape. It's a gesture I've done dozens of times. I've never shied away from a touch or a hug; it's been a huge part of our friendship. My brain spirals into thinking about why I've halted. Am I thinking Darcy might interpret it differently? Do I mean something else with the gesture? I dismiss both thoughts immediately. The first, Darcy has no idea what's been going through my mind, and the second, on the grounds that I'm certainly not allowing any more thoughts along those lines to happen. I take a breath and force my hand onto his neck, giving it a rub, and focusing only on how it makes me feel like a good friend when he leans into it and I feel the knot of tension I detect there begin to ease.

"Thank you," he says after a few minutes, and his grateful smile makes my stomach flutter slightly. "Is it wrong to not want to dance with any of them?"

"I don't know?" I shrug and release his neck, and he starts some shoulder rolls. "What's the problem with them?"

"I can"t explain it." He sighs. "It's like we're dancing to a different beat. I didn't feel in tune with any of them."

"It's still early days. If you think of how long you danced with Julia, that harmony didn't happen overnight; it was something you grew together."

"I know, which is why I don't think we'll find anyone suitable in time. I might as well give up the whole idea." A shadow darkens his face and I grab his arm as he walks past me.

"Don't give up, D. There'll be someone for you, you'll see."

"I wish I had your confidence." He huffs wryly. I release my hand and he goes over to the sound system. He punches a few buttons and then looks back at me with a cheeky smile. I love it when he looks like that, and haven't seen enough of it lately. Also, as I know Darcy almost as much as I know myself, I recognise what he's doing.

The first few notes of the song, "Moves like Jagger," reverberate through the room and, as I get into position, Darcy takes his place beside me. He flashes me a smile and I return it with a nod of acknowledgement. This is our song, our dance. Whilst the Franklin School of Dance is renowned for its tuition of ballroom dancing—which is Darcy's and my first love—it's no surprise that we love all forms of dance. There was also the phase we went through as teenagers, of imagining ourselves in a boy band. We developed this dance back then and have occasionally added to it. It's for fun, and always brings me joy to dance. It's not strictly ballroom, though it has some roots in jive and swing; we've incorporated other dance elements into it. It's very much freestyle, and we mostly dance side by side rather than together. We'll often use it as a warm-up, or just to let off steam. Or, like now, when I think Darcy's reason is to loosen up and remember how his body feels when he's dancing for the love of it.

The routine ends with us facing each other, one arm flung out, the other with our fingertips touching. The music dies away and we stand there. My chest is heaving from the exertion and there's a sheen on his brow. Something fizzles between our fingers and there's an expectant charge in the air. I watch him as he looks back at me silently, his expression unreadable. I notice his throat as he swallows, and the overwhelming urge to kiss it returns tenfold. I can't let this happen, and yet I cannot move away. I feel this indescribable pull towards him, and I fight the desire to take that step and discover what his lips taste like, with every fibre of my being. Appalled at the very thought of it, but powerless to do anything to break off. He isn't moving either and his green eyes lock onto mine, a question poised ready to spill forth.

"Darcy, Nick!" Claire's voice cuts through the weight of tension that hangs between us, cleaving it so cleanly I can feel the sharp edges catch on my skin, raising goosebumps. I gulp a breath in like I've been starved of air for a week. I turn away. I can't face Darcy right now, scared he'll see the shame of my thoughts written there.

"Oh, there you both are," she says brightly. "Nick, are you staying?"

"I—I can't. I have to—to go," I stutter, my mind scrambling as I grasp desperately for a coherent sentence. "I have to go do a thing, for, erm... my gran."

I walk to the kitchen, not looking back. I grab my hoodie and exit through the back door, allowing my legs to carry me as my brain spirals in a loop that I've just fucked up big time.