This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Gold Dress

The bar had candles in jars, a four-piece band that knew six songs, and a dance floor with room for three couples.

We danced on it anyway.

Padraig was a terrible dancer, and he did it with total confidence.

"Your pulse is up," he said into my ear, with his hand on my bare back. "Resting sixty, that was the claim."

"I'm not resting."

"No. You're not."

The band played the same slow song twice, and nobody minded.

When we came out onto the street, the rain had stopped.

It was after midnight on a block of old brick buildings, with neon in the wet pavement and a streetlight that hummed at the corner.

I stood under the lamp in the gold dress.

The street was empty, and it was the first time in eight years that I wanted to be looked at.

"Stay there," Padraig said.

"Why?"

"I want to remember it."

He stood at the curb and looked at me for a long time, and he did not take out his phone.

"You said once that you were always cold," he said.

"I'm not now."

"No."

He crossed the pavement in three steps and kissed me against the lamppost.

It was a slow, deep, open kiss with his hand spread on my back and mine fisted in his tie.

A car went by and honked, and somebody whistled.

"Hotel," I said against his mouth. "Now."

"It's two blocks."

"Run."

We didn't run. We walked fast, with our hands locked, and I laughed the whole way.

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