Careless Whispers

One

Jack knew that he shouldn't take the version of a woman he once knew and sweep her across a dancefloor so crowded they could both be identified for who they truly were. He knew how wrong it was. But how do you fight something when it feels so right, even if it is the damned opposite. Even if one's heart was pounding out of its chest, as though it hasn't in years. As though he had died, and now he was brought back to life from one single and unwavering glance from blue/green glassy eyes which hadn't changed through the passage of time, but yet, had changed so much. The stark difference wasn't the small lines of ageing, because there very few. It wasn't that she had lost the softness of youth from her face, because she hadn't so much. It was more the fact that as she gained clarity just to who was the man before her, invading her line of sight, as though he was the holy ghost himself, and perhaps to her, he was. He recognised the longing with them. They seemed to be free of that certain sadness which had clouded here before but another sort of burden made him on edge. More aware. But then, he tossed every single thought to the devil...

There was a mere second or even longer when she was floating, with a gentle breeze coming from somewhere completely sending a rush of her curls forwards and they tumbled about her shoulders in an effortless way and suddenly, it was all real. She was real. This was real. How could it be anything other than utterly genuine. Her fingers joined at her stomach as she moved, gilded towards an unknown destination which both knew would lead to absolute trouble. To a devastating aching heart. But it was inevitable. It had to start, to end. And there had to be an end. There was always an end to something which shouldn't even begin, wasn't there? They wordlessly confirmed that before it had even started...

Rose was a married woman. The ring on her finger told him so, and it glittered beneath the sparkling chandeliers of the ballroom, but at that moment in time, it seemed to matter as little as the engagement ring upon her finger had thirteen years before. It was as though they were young again, somehow, stupidly naive and footloose, completely free of their sanity. Free of care. Free of life. Free of literally everything which now made up their entire beings.

Freedom had once been sought of so eagerly and she had trusted him with her entire life, he had known that much. She had trusted him once the damned ship had docked, to go with him and find a life worth living together. It was perhaps that which had sealed their fate; the belief that they would have even stood a chance out in the world which was so cruel and real. Would they have survived out there, with only the other a reality and seeking comfort from each other's body over and over again, so endlessly?

Was it that which had kept them apart?

Kept them apart for thirteen years...

In a clashing of bodies, they met; blue eyes on blue. Rough hands to delicate ones. Gold dress to white suit. It was as though all situations had been left at the front entrance of the hotel and now, there was no longer any need to have a conscience at all. Jack could only go with the rhythm of his soul, to the music and the way in which his heart beat. His stomach moved. His fingers were trembling as they reached out for the precious entity which he believed had been lost so many years ago, but now, she was still a jewel, shining as brightly as she had been back when he had been such a young bohemian kid in search of everything but matters of the heart and instead, he had found the piece which had completed the part which he never knew was even missing. She had been missing for so long. He wasn't complete now; he was overwhelmed.

The saxophone sounded so loudly that it completely disturbed his reverie, and he was mildly aware of other bodies joining to one in a wordless dance, and it was then, that in an unspoken invitation that he was about to extend his hand to hers, but then it occurred that their first dance he had simply placed his hands at the small of her back, upon her waist and pulled her closer to inhale everything about her and then stared down into uncertain eyes and held onto fragile fingers. He had felt her confidence dissolve into unworldly naivety and he had completely allowed himself to lead her about a crowded dance floor as though there would be no tomorrow. The truth was, there had been nothing passed that moment for either of them. Each moment could be their last. Wasn't that what they lived for? After the sinking of the Titanic, after the War, those words couldn't be more poignant. Sometimes, late at night, or even after his own marriage, as he witnessed his own lovely wife carry their children he would consider his own sanity all of these years. He had tried and failed so many times to capture their times onto paper, onto canvas but nothing ever emerged because it had all been locked away in his own imagination. It was sacred, it was private...