The Demon in the Pastry Shop

50: To Dance Again, Part 2

 Silus paused long enough that Kit worried about what song the band was going to play next and if it was going to be possible to dance simply to it. His eyebrows pressed upward together and his lips parts but he took another moment of pause before speaking.

"... you're asking me to dance?"

She rolled her eyes and nodded at him, a little bit of hip in her response that gave her skirt a bounce.

His hand slipped into hers, a startling warmth to his skin that shocked her again. She wasn't fazed this time. Kit climbed up the steps and pulled Silus onto the deck with her until they were in the middle of the dancefloor, then she spun around into him. She bumped into his chest (hadn't meant to) and stepped back with a blush as she rested her hand on his shoulder and clasped his free hand in her own.

Jude gasped from the edge of the deck and Kit nearly melted into a puddle at the notion she was on display now. As Silus placed his arm around her lower back, Kit peeked over his shoulder at Jude conspiring with the band. He even had the gall to look over at her and wink.

The song they finished out flowed into a slow-dance melody (unsurprisingly given Jude's intrusion) and Kit exhaled long and shook her head as Silus and her began to dance along.

"We can wait for something else to play," he suggested to her, but as soon as he began to speak, Kit laid her head against his chest. "O-okay," his breath stippled shyly over her hair.

To her surprise, Silus was a steady dancer. He knew where to step, where to lean, when to turn. She let her left hand venture further along his shoulder, her fingers curling around his crinkly shirt. As they swayed, she peeped her mothers from the corner of her eye and she closed her eyes to block them out. Silus smelled like the soap from her parents' bathroom but the scent was much better on him so she breathed it in.

"I was selfish at the pastry shop," Silus told her.

Kit looked up at him. She didn't know what he meant. She drew her eyebrows together.

The structure of his face when he looked down at her was truly reminiscent of the stone he was cut from. His cheeks made heavy planes locking into place with the curved beams that supported his browbone and forehead. It was a hard face, Kit had thought, but the lights turned the harsh surfaces into soft, rounded curves. Replaced the look of alabaster with the look of clay. His white irises caught her eyes, his gaze some kind of snowflake chill, falling and prickling onto her skin.

"I've been telling myself that coming after you in the first place was excusable because I was trying to save my heart," he explained as they turned about the deck. One of the boards squeaked under their feet, but Kit barely noticed it. He continued, "but doing that to you for any reason... it's not excusable. I'm sorry, Kit."

Her notepad and pen sat on the railing in some distant realm apart from their spinning forms. She couldn't tell him she forgave him. That she understood. That if someone told her she could get Luca back (her heart), she might've hunted someone for it.

At least, that was before what Silus said about how she changed after Luca's death. For the better. Even if it didn't seem so, it was better this way. She wanted to tell Silus, he must have changed from the loss of his first heart -for the better- too. She didn't know how to without her pen. She slipped her hand out of his gentle grasp and rested it against his chest, over his new heart. She looked up at him and hoped he might understand this was a good heart. Silus often could from something so simple.

He sighed and placed the hand that had been holding hers around her lower back, clasping with the one already there. Silus' eyes painted her face and he said honestly, "I don't know what that means."

Kit sighed too. She put her head against his chest again. Maybe she would tell him some other time.

Silus went rigid against her (more than usual. Right about now, with her eyes closed, Kit might've believed she was dancing with an ironing board). He stopped dancing and even took her arms off him. She whipped her head up in a stomach-wise beat of rejection as he strode away from her.

"It's a bubble-gram from Lovell," he announced, rushing to the edge of the deck. Kit's arms dropped by her sides and her fingers trembled. With an authoritative flavor, Silus passed his eyes over the rest of the party and ordered, "everyone, be quiet. I have to listen to what Lovell wants us to hear and I can't risk missing a single inflection."

Just like this, the music stopped. And everyone became as silent as Kit.