Fiction: To The Social

I grab your hand, your left hand, without looking, without looking at you.

I don’t know you. But I know where your hand will be.

Then I pick up the pace.

From a slow walk to a giddying canter, a speeded-up straight-line waltz. Your sandals go slap slap slap as we go faster. Good job your dress is short or you couldn’t keep up with me. I know your other hand is crook-locked on to the top of your head, to try and keep your piled-up hair in place; stop a strap, your bag, from falling off your shoulder.

And all the time, though this acceleration, this kinetic adventure, I know you are smiling. But I know it will end the moment we reach the front of the club, break apart, and I will lose you to the embrace of dancing and drinking and everyone else.

I console myself against the future by knowing I’ll run back to this moment again and again and again.

Now I’m as fast as I ever have been. I’m on the floor. Moving. Forgetting. Failing.

And a hand grabs mine, perfectly fitting the space I didn’t know I’d left for it.