Dancing with Shadows

The bass was a living thing, a second heartbeat thrumming through the floor and up my spine. The strobe lights cut the darkness into a thousand frozen moments: a girl’s laugh, a raised glass, the glisten of sweat on a stranger’s neck. I was pressed between Lucas and Clara, the three of us a small, sweating island in the sea of bodies. It was for Antoine, the whole thing. His thesis. Five years of work, and he’d wanted to celebrate it here, in a place where the music was too loud to have a conversation.

I was happy for him. I was. But my phone was a dead weight in my pocket. Mathieu was home, probably already asleep, his side of the bed cold and empty. I’d texted him a photo of the neon cocktail sign. He’d replied with a single, tired thumbs-up. That was it. That was the whole conversation.

I took a long pull of my beer, the cheap lager warm and flat. Lucas was shouting something about the DJ’s setlist, his face inches from my ear. I nodded, not really hearing him. My eyes were scanning. That’s what you do in a club. You scan. You look for a familiar face, a pretty face, a fight about to start. You look for anything.

And then I saw him.

Sandro.

He was at the bar, his arm slung around the shoulders of a blonde woman I didn’t recognize. His girlfriend, probably. He looked the same. Better, even. The same sun-kissed skin, the same easy smile, the same way his linen shirt pulled tight across his shoulders when he leaned in to order. He looked like he’d just stepped off a boat in Corsica, not like he’d been marinating in a Parisian nightclub for two hours.

I hadn’t seen him in three years. Not since that week in Barcelona. The week where, after a bottle of cheap cava and a midnight swim, he’d put his hand on my thigh under the water and held it there for a full minute. The week where I’d convinced myself I’d imagined it, that he was just being friendly, that straight guys do that. They don’t. I know that now. I knew it then, too. I just didn’t want to admit what it meant.

I looked away. I drained my beer. I focused on the way the bass was rattling the fillings in my teeth.

That’s when I saw the boy.

He was young. Twenty-three, maybe. Dark hair, sharp jaw, a jaw that looked like it could cut glass. He was wearing a simple black t-shirt, and he was standing alone by the VIP rope, not looking at the dance floor, not looking at his phone. He was looking at me.

Our eyes locked.

And I felt it. That stupid, electric jolt. The one you’re supposed to grow out of after high school. I felt it shoot from my chest straight down to my gut. He didn’t smile. He just held my gaze, his head tilted slightly, like he was studying a puzzle he was pretty sure he could solve.

I broke first. I always break first. I turned back to Lucas and Clara, who were now arguing about something. I laughed at nothing. I felt my face go hot.

The night became a game of glances. I’d be talking to Antoine, and I’d catch the boy in my peripheral vision, leaning against a pillar. I’d be on my way to the bar, and he’d be walking past, close enough that I could smell his cologne. Something clean and sharp. Cedar and bergamot. The kind of scent that makes you want to lean in and breathe deeper.

Then came the queue for the toilets.

It was a long line, snaking down a narrow hallway that smelled like bleach and desperation. I was leaning against the wall, scrolling through my phone without seeing it, when he appeared beside me. He didn’t cut. He just stood there, close. Too close.

“You know,” he said, his voice a low murmur that cut through the muffled thump of the music, “they have a special bathroom for your kind.”

I blinked. The words hit me like a slap. Cold and sharp. I felt my defenses snap up, a wall of ice.

“Excuse me?” I said. My voice was flat. Hard.

He didn’t flinch. He just looked at me, and a slow, crooked grin spread across his face. “Relax. I’m kidding. It’s called the ‘men’s room.’ You’re allowed.”

It took a second. A full, stupid second. Then I got it. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“That’s a terrible joke,” I said. But I was smiling. I couldn’t help it.

“I know,” he said. “But it got you to talk to me. Name’s Enzo.”

“Léo.”

The line moved. We shuffled forward. The space between us stayed the same.

“You’re here with someone?” he asked.

“Friends,” I said. “A friend’s thesis party.”

“The tall guy with the glasses?”

“That’s him.”

He nodded. “You’ve been watching him all night. The guy at the bar. The one with the muscles and the girlfriend.”

My stomach dropped. He’d seen that. He’d seen me looking at Sandro.

“I know him,” I said. “Old friend.”

Enzo’s grin widened. “Sure. Old friend.”

There was no malice in it. Just a knowing look, a shared secret we hadn’t even acted on yet.

We didn’t dance together right away. It happened slowly. A brush of shoulders as we passed. A look from across the room. Then, around one in the morning, when the bass had dropped into something slower and heavier, he was just there. His hand found my hip. My hand found his chest. We moved without talking, our bodies finding a rhythm that had nothing to do with the music.

He smelled even better up close. His hand was warm through my shirt. He pulled me closer, his mouth near my ear.

“You feel good,” he said.

I didn’t answer. I just pressed my forehead against his shoulder and let the music take over.

Then Lucas was shaking my arm. “We have to go. They kicked Jules out. He’s fighting with the bouncers.”

The spell broke. I pulled back from Enzo, my head spinning. Jules. Of course. Jules and his big mouth.

“I have to go,” I said.

Enzo’s hand tightened on my hip. “Don’t.”

“I have to.”

I turned and followed Lucas out into the cool night air. The street was loud with shouting and the screech of a taxi. Jules was being held back by Antoine, his face red, his shirt untucked. I was trying to calm him down, trying to find my keys, when I felt a presence behind me.

I turned.

Enzo was there. Standing on the curb, his hands in his pockets, watching me.

He didn’t say anything. He just walked toward me, past the chaos, past my friends. He stopped a foot away.

“You’re not getting in that cab,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

I looked over my shoulder. Lucas was shoving Jules into the back seat. Antoine was paying the driver. They didn’t need me.

I turned back to Enzo. The streetlight caught the sharp line of his jaw, the dark of his eyes.

“No,” I said. “I guess I’m not.”

The cab pulled away. The sound of the engine faded. And then it was just us, standing on the empty street, the bass from the club still pulsing faintly through the walls.

He took a step closer. Then another.

“Your friend,” he said. “The one with the muscles. He was watching us dance.”

I felt my heart skip. “He has a girlfriend.”

“I know,” Enzo said. “But he was watching you. Not her.”

He reached out and took my hand. His fingers were warm, his grip firm.

“Come on,” he said.

And he pulled me down the street, into the dark, away from the lights.