American Prince

I threw back the rest of the gin and stood up. What the hell. “Come on,” I said, holding out my arms. “I’ll show you.”

He bit his lip once, blinked. And then he stood up, setting his glass aside and stepping close to me.

“It’s probably easiest if I lead first,” I told him. “Until you get a feel for it.”

“Okay,” he said, a little uncertainly. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“It means I’m the man right now, and you’re the woman. And since this is a waltz, pretend you have a ball gown and you just found out your husband is sleeping with the nanny.”

He laughed, his teeth looking extraordinarily white in the dim blue light of the room. I took one of those large, rough hands and put it on my shoulder, and then slid my own past his ribs so that it rested just below his shoulder blade. Then I took his other hand and held it, keeping our arms extended.

“Viennese waltzes are not the easiest place to start,” I apologized. “Just think of it like a drill. A sequence. One, two, three, one, two, three. Slow, quick, quick. Slow, quick, quick.”

The band had struck into a waltzed-up version of Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, when I realized what song they were playing. “As if Batman Forever wasn’t bad enough, Seal had to go and record this song.”

More white teeth from Colchester as he laughed at my joke, more knotting of my cherry-stem heart.

“Okay,” I said. “What we’re about to do is called a box, except it swivels in the Viennese waltz, which is not boxey at all, but just follow the way I turn. We step together twice and then pause—my feet crossed and yours together—and then step together twice and pause again—now with your feet crossed and mine together. Yes, just like that.”

Colchester was a quick learner. He grasped the steps easily, responded to my pressure on his back and hand readily. The only problem was that he had no sense of the music. Like, at all.

“Okay,” I said, trying not to laugh. “You know how we do the slow, quick, quick? The music does that too. You’re supposed to do it at the same time.”

He frowned. “I am.”

Fuck, but his hand felt so big in mine, the other so heavy on my shoulder. It made it hard to concentrate. “You’re not, I promise. It’s okay, I know it’s a lot to remember. Three whole steps, after all.”

That full mouth twisted. “It’s six, in total.”

“Now,” I said, ignoring him, “you add in the posture and the vertical motion. We are going to rise and fall as we move and also” —God, I don’t know why I did it, except it had to be the gin— “tuck our hips in as our shoulders lean out.” And I yanked his hips into mine.

His breath left him and his hand tightened in mine. “This is how we’re supposed to dance?” he asked. There was something in his voice, something shaky.

Shaky, uncertain Colchester felt like a victory to me, and I seized my ground like a victor. “This is how we hold each other. Now we move. One, two, three…slow, quick, quick. Yes, that’s right.”

“This is hard.”

I almost made a joke, but I stopped myself when I saw his face. He looked puzzled, a little fretful, confusion and concentration marring that perfect forehead. He wasn’t used to being bad at things.

So instead of joking, I took pity on him. “Forget the steps for a moment,” I said. “It’s about space. About presence and void. I’m taking my space and you’re yielding, my presence filling your void. It’s a chase, but it’s also a balance. Think of it like a chessboard, like boxing, even. I move into the openings you leave, even as you move away. The chase begins again. Taking, moving, taking, moving.”

“But it’s not like chess,” Colchester said. His feet were moving a little better then, his upper body less stiff. “There’s no real winner.”

“The dance is the winner,” I said.

He gave me a skeptical look.

“That sounds like a stale answer, but it’s true,” I insisted. “No matter how hard we worked or how elegantly we danced, we’d merely be spinning demented circles if we did it without a partner. But together, we create something worth watching.”

The music faded, but Colchester’s hand didn’t move away from mine. He kept stepping, his lip between his teeth and his eyes on our feet. He wanted to get it perfect, exactly right, which was so like him.

The band started into a waltz cover of Etta James’s “At Last,” and I resumed leading him again, trying to poke down the part of me that thrilled at having another three minutes of his body close to mine.

We’d danced for about thirty seconds without talking when he said, “You know when I saw you tonight, I thought of Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisited.”

It was my turn to frown. “Because you’re fucking my sister?”

He laughed. “Well, I suppose that comparison is inevitable, but no. Because you look so wealthy and princely in these clothes. Because you switch between brooding and charming so fast I can’t keep track of which version of you I’m talking to. Just like Sebastian.”

“Oh. I thought it was the teddy bear I carried everywhere.”

He smiled, and I felt his hips brush against mine. I hardened at the thought of his cock so close to mine, that all it would take was one accidental step to bring our groins all the way together…