The Night
967 Words
The dress was black.
Tiny. Shameless. And according to Cass, absolutely perfect.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“Absolutely yes.” She dropped it in the basket without blinking.
It fit like a second skin.
The neckline dipped just enough to make my breath catch. The hem sat mid-thigh and didn’t apologise for it. I stood in front of Cass’s mirror and stared at the girl looking back at me.
I didn’t recognise her.
Good, I thought. That’s the point.
“Stop looking at it like it owes you an apology,” Cass said, pinning my hair up with the focus of a woman on a mission. Soft pieces fell around my face, loose and a little undone. Nothing like the polished styles my mother’s stylist always insisted on.
“I look,”
“Incredible. You look incredible. Say it.”
I said nothing.
Cass met my eyes in the mirror. “Say it, Isla.”
“…I look incredible.”
“Louder.”
“Cass,”
“We’ll work on it.” She stepped back and surveyed her work with satisfaction. “Let’s go.”
We heard the club before we saw it.
A deep, pulsing bass that hit me in the chest before the car had even stopped. The street outside was lined with black cars and people dressed like the night owed them something.
The two men at the entrance looked like a warning.
My feet slowed.
Cass grabbed my hand. “Don’t think. Just walk.”
So I walked.
The doors opened.
And the night swallowed me whole.
It was dark inside. Intentionally, beautifully dark.
Purple and gold lights swept across the room in slow, hypnotic pulses. The bar ran the entire length of the left wall, backlit in deep amber, bottles stacked like something between an art installation and a fever dream.
The music was loud. Not loud like noise, loud like a heartbeat. Like something alive.
And at the centre of the room, on a raised platform bathed in warm gold light,
The dancers.
Three women. Moving like they owned every inch of air around them. Like the music had been written specifically for their bodies.
I couldn’t look away.
I had known about the dancers. Cass had warned me. I had told myself I was prepared.
I was not prepared.
They’re incredible, I thought, watching the way one of them moved her hips like punctuation. I want to move like that. Just once in my life, I want to move like I own the room.
“Come on.” Cass pulled me toward the bar before I could stare any longer.
Two drinks appeared. Pink, cold, innocent-looking.
I eyed mine suspiciously.
“Drink,” Cass said.
I drank.
The second drink was easier than the first.
The third I barely noticed going down.
Somewhere between the third and the fourth, something shifted.
The music stopped being something happening around me and became something happening inside me. In my chest. My shoulders. The soles of my feet. Warm and insistent and impossible to ignore.
Cass appeared at my side, already moving. “Dance with me.”
“I don’t,”
“Isla.” She took both my hands. “Nobody here knows your name. Nobody here knows your father. Nobody here cares.” She squeezed. “Just move.”
So I moved.
And something cracked open inside me.
I had danced before, recitals, family events, choreographed and careful and always, always appropriate. But not like this. Never like this. Untimed. Unstructured. Not for an audience. Not for a camera or a family reputation or anyone’s benefit but my own.
Just my body and the music and the dark.
Cass was laughing beside me, and I laughed back, and for the first time since I had sat in that dining room and heard my future announced like a business transaction,
I forgot.
I forgot about the contract. The roses. The three months. The name that made my brother’s jaw tighten and my mother look away.
I was just a girl in a black dress in a dark room full of light.
This, I thought, breathless and warm and more alive than I had felt in years. This is what I was missing.
I didn’t notice the man at first, but he was cute and that was all that mattered.
He smiled at me.
I smiled back.
He moved closer.
I felt his hand reaching for my waist,
It never arrived.
Another hand got there first.
From behind me. Firm and unhurried and certain, like it had been there a hundred times before and fully intended to be there a hundred times more. It settled at my waist with a quiet authority that sent electricity shooting straight up my spine.
My brain said: turn around. Find out who this is. Remove the hand.
My body said something else entirely.
For half a second, I leaned back into it. Into the solid, warm, unmovable presence behind me. Like my body had already decided something my mind hadn’t been consulted on.
Then my brain caught up.
I spun around.
Dark eyes that didn’t rush. A jaw that looked like it could cut through me, and a face that was made for sinning.
He was looking at me.
Like he had already decided I was worth looking at and was simply confirming what he already knew.
His hand was still at my waist.
I hadn’t moved it.
I hadn’t moved at all.
And then he leaned down, just slightly, just enough, and said it, low and unhurried and terrifyingly calm.
“Hello, Kitten.”
My heart stopped.
Then started again, faster than before.
Oh, I thought, with the distant clarity of someone standing at the edge of something very high.
I’m in trouble.
- Writer
