Moments of Julian (5 page)

Finally, he takes the file and looks
it over.

Gretch managed to smuggle a lead away
from the sales team and into my inbox this morning for the largest
bank in Toronto. It’s a huge chain that stretches through most of
Canada. With over sixty locations they’re a huge commodity. And
apparently they are looking to cut ties with their current
financial security company because of breaches.

“
Hmm,” he huffs. He
scratches his beard and turns the page. “Have you spoken to them
yet?”

“
I will give them a call
as soon as you give me approval,” I say, sitting up slightly
straighter. “I just wanted to check with you first since we’re just
starting to branch out into other countries.”

“
I think this could be a
good start,” he says, closing the file and handing it back to me.
“I want you to give their CEO a call and see if you can get an
appointment to meet with them face to face. If you can close this
deal, I think you’ll be looking at another bonus.”

“
I won’t close this deal
for the money, sir,” I say as a smile curls on my face. “But thank
you anyway.”

He nods and I see the smallest of
smiles curl on his lips.

He’s playing the hard ass, but I can
tell I’m forgiven.

Even if I didn’t need to be forgiven,
seeing as I did nothing wrong.

Gretch places the call for me and
transfers it over. It takes me a total of two minutes to reach
their CEO when I say who I am with. We set up an appointment for me
to meet with her at their corporate offices in Toronto in two
weeks.

I sense I just have to decide what I
want to spend my bonus on, because I have every confidence I will
close this deal.

“
So…” Gretch drags the
word out. “Looked like you met someone interesting at the banquet.
Someone dark and mysterious?”

I set my sandwich down and give her a
look. “Seriously, I thought we were going to just ignore this.
We’ve made it three days without bringing it up.”

“
I’m sorry,” she says with
a smile. We’re eating lunch in my office today, going over files
and reviewing the needs of our clients. “I’ve been thinking about
it all week and I just wondered if you were going to see him
again.”

I take a sip of my water, eying her
over the water bottle. “No,” I say, setting it down. “I am quite
sure I won’t be seeing him again.”

“
Uh, oh,” she says, her
face falling. “Did it end badly? Did he end up being a total
jerk?”

“
Well, other than him
telling me I was a terrible dancer, he was actually pretty
perfect,” I say reflectively, surprised by the words that come out
my mouth. “He wasn’t turned off by my…me.”

“
He said you can’t dance?”
Gretch says critically. “That’s rude. Did you guys ever even dance
at the banquet?”

“
For all of two minutes,”
I say, shaking my head and picking a pickle out of the sandwich and
popping it in my mouth. “He said I stepped on his toes
twice.”

“
It’s pissing you off,
isn’t it?” Gretch says with a smirk on her face.

A laugh bubbles between my lips.
“Actually, yeah, it’s bugging the heck out of me. No one says stuff
like that to me.”

“
That’s because you’re
pretty much good at everything,” Gretch says as she bites into a
baby carrot.

“
Apparently not
everything,” I shake my head as I take another sip of
water.

“
Hey, I saw this flyer
posted on the community board for ballroom dance lessons,” Gretch
perks up. I look up to see her eyes excited and bright. “It was
like a six week course, twice a week. I think it starts tomorrow
actually!”

I actually laugh and sit back in my
oversized office chair. “Dance lessons? I think I’m a little grown
up for that.”

Gretch shakes her head. “Lots of
people do that kind of thing. And why not? It’s not like you have
much going on in the even—”

Gretch comes to a screeching halt
there.

“
That will be all for now,
Gretchen,” I say, packing my sandwich away and turning back to the
files. “We can finish this all up tomorrow.”

She knows better than to hang around
and try to apologize. It will only make me more angry. She promptly
stands, gathers her things, and leaves my office.

I take myself very seriously. I’ve
worked hard; I’ve proven myself to be a successful adult. I’ve done
everything right.

So when I am insulted for not having
much of a social life, I have zero tolerance.

I don’t often get humiliated, I don’t
give people the chance. But it feels like I’ve had more than my
fair share in the last week.

I stay at the office late that night,
not really working on anything in particular, but keeping myself
busy. Once five hits, the building starts getting quiet really
fast. The lights are left on all night, it gives the outside world
the impression that a lot of people are working very hard here
twenty-four-seven. Which actually, our IT department has people
working at all hours. But the building feels peaceful and
quiet.

Around six, I order a salad and have
it delivered from one of the restaurants close by and make my
feelings go away with an online shopping spree that ends up
totaling seven hundred dollars for a pair of shoes, a new handbag,
and two blouses.

I feel slightly better when I’m
done.

But I’m still a pathetic twenty-seven
year old woman who has no social life.

Having built the life I have, it makes
it hard to connect with others who are either turning into
stay-at-home mommies, working barely above minimum wage jobs, or
are still wandering around blindly in the murky mists of their
lives. I don’t like wasting my time with awkward socializing when I
don’t have much in common with them anymore.

At eight, I gather my things up into
my purse and head to the lobby. The community board is in the
lunchroom which I have never eaten in a day in the five years I’ve
worked here. But to my relief, there is no one there and no one in
general on the main floor when I get there.

There’s everything you’d expect on the
community board. Flyers for shows, fundraiser events, classifieds
from employees trying to sell their unneeded
possessions.

And the flyer for ballroom dance
lessons.

Gretch didn’t quite get all the
details right. It’s a nine week course and meets Tuesdays and
Thursdays, starting tomorrow. The cost is $120 and they meet at one
of the buildings on Fifth Avenue from seven to nine.

People don’t insult me. I excel at
everything I put my mind to.

But apparently, not at dancing with
nameless men at parties.

I will fix this.

CHAPTER FOUR

I’m most worried about what to wear to
the class. As soon as I got home I spent two hours searching online
for what was appropriate to wear. On my lunch break I went
shopping. I found a place that sold ballroom shoes, which I read
were supposed to fit tightly. And they certainly do. I also settled
for some leggings, a loose fitting black skirt and a simple cotton
shirt.

But I still feel self-conscious as I
walk through the doors Thursday at six fifty-five.

There are five other people already
here. Three women of ages that range from probably nineteen to
fifty-five. Two men who look to be thirty and forty. And a woman
whom I assume is the instructor since she already has her shoes on
and is talking to one of the men and women.

I go to one of the chairs and start to
put my new shoes on.

“
Oh,” the instructor says
and I look up at her to see she’s talking to me. “Don’t put shoes
on for today. You’ll end up breaking an ankle. We usually wait
until week three to put shoes on.”

That prideful part of me wants to tell
her I’m quite used to walking in heels that are two to three inches
higher than these, thank you very much, but I won’t be rude. I drop
the shoes back into the black bag they came in and set them and my
things in a corner.

Another couple walks in the door just
as the clock turns to seven. Not wasting a second, the instructor
heads for the front of the classroom and stands before the wall
sized mirror.

“
All right, everyone,
let’s go ahead and get started, no sense wasting any time,” she
says with a smile. “My name is Elizabeth Petrov, but please just
call me Beth, it saves time.”

Most everyone in the room chuckles and
we all shift so that we are standing in front of her.

“
We will be learning three
dances in this class,” Beth continues. She paces before the class
and I sense this is a woman who does not slow down often. “The
waltz, rumba, and the cha-cha. If, when you get to the end of the
class, you decide you want to continue dancing and learn more, you
are invited to take my intermediate course which meets on Monday
and Wednesdays. Now, to start off, I would like everyone to take
their shoes off and we will go barefoot for today.”

I want to cringe, putting my bare feet
on this wooden floor isn’t something I want to do. There are germs
and dirt and very, very likely, human sweat. But I go ahead and
slip my black flats off and set them with my other
things.

Just as we are all heading back to
stand in front of the instructor, the door opens.

And in walks the reason I am
here.

I freeze the moment his eyes meet
mine.

Suddenly I’m in the back
seat of my car again and his body is on top of mine and his lips
are on my throat and I am sure I am going to spontaneously
combust
.

He, however, looks surprised for just
a moment, and then an amused grin starts to curl on his
face.

“
Ah, excellent,” Beth says
as he walks toward the front of the room. “So glad you could join
us this evening! Class, this is Julian. He’s a former student of
mine and when he has free evenings, he comes and helps out with my
beginner classes.”

Oh crap.

No wonder he called me a terrible
dancer. He’s a freaking substitute dance instructor.

His eyes meet mine again and I can
instantly recall the warmth of his hands on my body, the feel of
his tongue on mine, the taste of his kiss. How we fogged up the
windows of my car and how there was at once not near enough space
to what I wanted to do to him and all too much room for him to get
too far away.

At least now I know his
name.

“
Happy to be here today,”
he says, never looking away from me.

Oblivious to the awkward moment
building, Beth moves on. “Okay, let’s have all the women line up
behind me, and all the men line up behind Julian. We’ll start off
with a waltz. This is very elementary, we can keep it slow. Let’s
go over the basic step.”

I was already hesitant to come to this
class because of course there was the chance I’d make a total fool
of myself. It felt weird coming to a dance class because I am an
adult. But with Julian here, and his eyes flickering to me every
ten seconds, I feel like a total wreck trying to do the basic box
step Beth is teaching.

“
And back, side,
together,” she says. My eyes dart back to her feet, trying to study
the way her feet gracefully rise and fall as she does that back,
side, together. “Forward, side, together. One, two, three. One,
two, three.”

She turns around to watch the five of
us do the step and despite my distraction, I think I’ve got it down
pretty well. She gives each of us an approving nod.

My eyes flicker back to Julian of
their own free will. His feet move effortlessly in the box step,
doing the same rise and fall thing Beth does as he executes
it.

“
Okay,” Beth says loudly.
“Now we’re going to practice doing that with a quarter turn. With
each front and back of the box, you will turn one quarter until you
are back facing the way you started. This is called the box with a
quarter turn, just as it is. Like this.”

Even though it seems simple, I know I
am going to screw it up. Watching Beth closely, I step back on one
with a slight rotation, step side with just a bit more rotation,
and step together on three to close it up. Beth shifts so she can
once again be at the front and we can watch her. We repeat it, only
this time I start to somehow rotate the wrong way.

Instinctively, my eyes dart to Julian,
but mercifully, he is too preoccupied with the men to notice my
screw up.

It takes a good fifteen minutes of
practicing over and over, but we all seem to finally get the
rotation down. I finally feel confident I won’t mess it up
again.

“
Okay, looking good
everyone!” Beth says, clapping her hands together. “Let’s say we
try it out with a partner now!” And my stomach drops down into my
knees.

When I decided to do this dance class,
I forgot to consider one fundamental thing: Ballroom is danced
between two people. I am going to have to partner with someone and
someone will be very close witness to my terrible
dancing.