The Weight of Life Page 8

  "Ah. You just need to stop and soak in the moment that you're in. You’re breathing, you're living, you just had dinner with the loveliest family, and now you're walking down the street, free as can be. What a beautiful time to be alive, you know? How lucky are we?"

  I didn't wait for his response to that because my body started moving on its own accord, my hips doing circular motions to the rhythm of the beat. "I love this song."

  "I think you love a great many things."

  I laughed. "You say that with such a sour tone. As if I'm personally offending you, by enjoying this moment."

  I heard rather than saw him take another step closer.

  "You know what I thought the morning you came into my pub, the night after we met?"

  I shook my head and held my breath, wondering exactly how he saw me.

  "When I saw you come into my pub, the sun just exploded around you, and you had this smile on your lips; it seemed as if you were a mirage. And I thought to myself, this woman has never touched any sadness in her life."

  I let that sink in as my heart tumbled just a bit in my chest. "Well, that's not true. I’ve touched sadness. But I refuse to let it consume who I am.”

  "And that’s why I was an arse to you. I resented you—before I knew, about your boyfriend. That you could live happily when so many of us couldn’t.” He paused, which gave me a second to catch my breath from what he was saying. “And that's why I envy you. Because I don’t know how to wake up and feel happy. I don’t know what it’s like to not carry around this,” he pressed his fist to his chest, “weight. This heaviness.” He stepped closer still, the rain becoming louder, but his voice booming over it. “I can’t let it go. I won’t let go.”

  My arms dropped to my sides and I just stared at him. It was probably the most honest anyone had been with me in so long that my brain absorbed it like gospel, and I wanted more.

  “You don’t have to. You just have to learn to carry it.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  I nodded, and swallowed. “Okay.” And then I did something that surprised us both. I leaned forward and wrapped him in my arms, just holding him as the rain poured over us.

  It took a second before his arms came around me, and when they did they squeezed, like he’d been starving for it.

  I let go of the breath I’d been holding tight in my chest and just let him hold me the way he needed. And, if I was being honest, it was the way I needed, too.

  Giving in to the moment, I buried my face into his shoulder, my lips right next to his neck. He was so warm, so … solid. He was as grounding as gravity, and my heart hammered so hard in my chest that I was sure it was hammering into his, too.

  When he let go, he didn’t let me go all the way. His hand slid down my arm until it clasped mine and we continued on our walk. We were silent most of the way, and the rain lightened up enough that I wasn’t nearly as cold as I’d once been. I kept peeking glances at him, wondering if he felt the same way that I did—wondering where we’d go from here, from this moment. Just as we neared the entrance to my hotel, he looked at me. “This is you.”

  I looked up at the old brick building. “It is. Thanks for walking with me.”

  “Thanks for … well, everything.” He took my other hand with his and stared right into my eyes. And I thought, he’s going to kiss me.

  He stepped closer, and his thumbs on both hands rubbed into my palm. “Mila,” he said, his voice dark and gruff.

  “Yeah?”

  He focused on something over my shoulder and pulled me toward him harshly, so much so that we both tumbled back a few steps but didn’t fall. My hands gripped the sides of his jacket, and I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

  Startled, I looked at what passed us—a truck with support beams hanging out the sides, that would’ve clipped me across my head if I’d stayed where I’d been, beside the road.

  “Wow,” I said breathlessly, and looked at Ames, who was less than an inch from my face. My pulse was racing, and my arms were shaky and his lips were right there, and his eyes were boring into mine and my hands were holding onto his sides. I tightened my grip as we stood there together on the sidewalk, and again, I thought, he’s going to kiss me, and I nearly leaned in myself before he pulled away.

  “Goodnight, Mila,” he said in that gruff voice, and I felt all the adrenaline leave my body and felt that surge of disappointment that he hadn’t kissed me take its place.

  Nodding, I let him unwind himself from me until the only thing that linked us were the tips of our fingers clasped together. “Goodnight.”

  Then our fingers slipped away and I turned toward the entrance of my hotel.

  I didn’t make it more than two feet, however, before his arm wrapped around my waist and he turned me to him in a rush. The breath was knocked out of me once again, just as his mouth lowered and closed over mine. I barely had a second to react, but then I did—hands in his hair as his own wrapped around my waist just as my legs went weak.

  He tasted like heartbreak and hope, and my skin lit up with a thousand heat spots. I couldn’t get close enough, his mouth couldn’t kiss me long enough. I wanted more, more, more.

  His mouth shifted, slanting over mine as his tongue lashed at mine. I could melt in his arms, I knew. All my atoms were fusing, warming, and I felt like falling completely apart, knowing he’d be there to hold me.

  Then, just as quickly as he’d kissed me, his lips left mine. He pulled away just far enough to look me in the eyes. It was so quiet between us, just our breathing and my pulse pounding in my ears. His fingers touched my chin and gently, he lifted my face just an inch higher. His lips pressed again, gentler this time, and when he pulled away, it felt like he could have kept going. His hands cradled my face, and with our bottom lips still touching, he whispered into my mouth, “I’m sorry for breaking your rule.”

  His hair was a wild mess, and I knew that was my doing. Pleased with myself, I just smiled.

  “I’m not.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lotte’s studio was a few blocks from Free Refills—on the second floor of an old building that Lotte said had been around since before the last great war.

  “So glad you made it, Mila!” she exclaimed as she held open the door, which still had a closed sign flipped over it.

  “Oh, you didn’t have to open it just for me—if this is your day off, or something.”

  Lotte laughed and took my coat, hanging it up on the curved spoons by the door. “I don’t exactly keep regular, consistent business hours. Come on in.”

  We walked from the little foyer into a grand, open space. Wide planked wood floors gleamed, stretching across the room to an exposed brick wall with half-circle windows that overlooked a dozen other buildings. “Wow,” I said, and it echoed in the sparsely-decorated room. “This is a great spot.”

  “Thanks.” She followed me to the center window, which overlooked the street below us. Just beyond the building in front of us was a view of the river. I turned to her, and instantly realized just how young she really looked with the window light reflecting on her face. “This used to be a yoga studio, but the owner got so busy she had to move to a bigger space.” She turned and walked to the east side of the room toward the wall of mirrors. A ballet barre was mounted on the wall, and Lotte immediately started stretching with it.

  “This is a great setup. Do you have a lot of students?” I rested my ankle on the barre, kept my hips square and bent forward, legs turned out.

  She raised from her bend and changed positions. “A few after school kids, two regular students on weekends. It’s not much.”

  “It’s a good start,” I said reassuringly.

  “Yeah,” she replied, but she didn’t sound like she completely agreed with me. “So, what kind of dance do you do?”

  I switched legs and breathed through the stretch. “Lyrical hip-hop, mostly. But I did ballet a few years, just to help my coordination and balance.”

  “I loved b
allet.” She moved to the floor to do some deep leg stretches. “I went through a solid ten years of an awkward phase, all gangly limbs and bad posture. Ballet did wonders for me. Do you work with a metronome or just straight to music?”

  “I start the moves to the metronome, but then I use music to make sense of the moves.” I moved to the floor and stretched with her. “I’m nowhere near professional; I just like that I can get a great workout in without going to a gym.”

  She nodded. “Sounds good. Did you bring music?”

  I held up my phone. “I was working on choreography to this one song.” I scrolled to my playlist and put River by Bishop Briggs on repeat.

  As the song started, the beat was punctuated with claps and stomps. Lotte slid up to her feet and grabbed my phone. “Great choice. I’m just going to hook it up to the speakers.”

  She moved to the stereo near the entrance and a second later, music poured from the speakers above and beside us. It was truly a surround-sound experience, and I had to pause just to take it in. “This is really amazing,” I said, looking at the speakers mounted along the beams above us. “It’s like being in church.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure it doesn’t come to any surprise that Ames helped me with it.”

  I kept my face controlled and still stared up at the beams, which were wrapped in white Christmas lights. “That’s nice of him.” I hadn’t talked to him since the kiss, mostly because I’d been too chicken to go back to Free Refills. I didn’t know quite how to feel about it. Though I found him impossibly attractive, and intensely alluring, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that we were doing.

  Lotte laughed and rolled her shoulders. “Okay, show me what you’ve got so far.”

  The chorus had kicked on at that point, which was good because that was the only part I thought I had down pat. I bent at the knees and placed my hands on my hips, alternating stomping my feet to the beat, and rotated my upper body, locking and popping my joints to the beat.

  When the chorus was over, I collapsed onto my ass. “I’ve got the chorus, but I was working on the rest of it.”

  Lotte paused the music and held her hand to her chin as she considered, propping her elbow in her palm. “How flexible are you?”

  “Pretty flexible.” I tilted my head back and my hands followed until I was doing a backbend.

  “Okay good. Let’s try this.” She stood beside me and showed me a couple moves.

  Thirty minutes later, I was feeling a lot more solid about the song and was pouring sweat down the front of my shirt.

  “Let’s get some water and take a quick break.” Lotte grabbed two bottles from the mini fridge under the stereo and tossed me one.

  “Thanks.” I took one long pull and then wiped my hand across my mouth. “It’s been a few weeks since I danced. I’m a little rusty.”

  “Well, you’re really good.” She sat on the floor, legs bent and stretched in between taking sips. “It’ll come back. Just got to stay religious with it.”

  I rubbed the tightness in my calf. “You hardly broke a sweat. How often are you here?”

  “Daily, if sometimes for only a couple hours.” She laid on her back and stretched her arms above her head. “I love those big windows, but it gets really dusty in here. I have to mop every single day I have people here.”

  “If you got more students, could you spend less time at Free Refills and work here more?”

  Her eyes closed and a small smile tilted her lips. “I don’t know if I want more students.”

  “Really?” I took one more pull from my water before capping it. “Don’t you enjoy it?”

  She shook her head. “No, I do. But it’s just not what I expected at twenty-three.” She sat up again and then waved her hand about the room. “I was gifted this place when I turned twenty-one. There aren’t many young twenty-somethings that have their career already in place, you know?”

  She looked at me sideways. “I’m sure that makes me sound ungrateful.”

  “Not at all.” I pulled my knees to my chest and bent my head forward, stretching my neck. “It’s a lot of responsibility, so young.”

  “I envy you, Mila.”

  It was the second time in as many days that someone from this family said it to me, but it made it no less surprising. “Why?”

  “Because you’re not from here, but you’re here anyway. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “And what were you doing at twenty-one?”

  I had to think about it before answering. “I was in Madagascar with my brother for part of the summer. And then we spent a couple weeks in Florida before heading back to Colorado.”

  “And at twenty-three?”

  “I was in Canada for a good chunk of it. And Iceland, too.”

  She sighed and looked almost pained by my answer. “And if someone had gifted you a business at that age, would you have been grateful? A business that kept you grounded. Stuck?”

  I tried to imagine it, tried to imagine being tied down to one place. But I couldn’t. “No. I don’t think I would have.”

  “Exactly.” She pulled her hair into a messy bun on top of her head. “I’ve lived in the same flat my whole life. I haven’t even traveled to Scotland, and we share this island with it.” Her gaze moved to the window and she looked out wistfully. “I can’t tell you how badly I want to see the world. I love dance, but I’m not ready to make it my life right now.”

  “So, travel. See the world. What’s stopping you?”

  She raised an eyebrow when she looked back at me. “Ames. My dad. The pub. And the overwhelming guilt I feel.”

  “Guilt?”

  She laughed and rubbed her fingers along the grooves of wood between us. “When I told Ames and my dad about my desire to see the world, they both had this look of stricken panic on their faces. My dad had a hard enough time when I went to university, and I still came home every day. Crossing the sea and being out of reach? He’d have a coronary.”

  “That’s tough.” I tried to imagine if my parents had tried to dissuade me from doing anything, but I couldn’t. Jude was the one wrapped in bubble wrap; I was the one running with scissors. They voiced their displeasure with me more than once, but they’d never actually told me I couldn’t do what I wanted. “Maybe if you include them in your plans, they’d be more open to it?”

  She shook her head sadly. “It’s not just me being far.” She looked around us at the large, sunlit room. “I’d need to sell this place.”

  “Ah.” I stretched my legs back out and nodded. “I would have a hard time letting go of a place this nice, too.”

  “Oh, I could let it go. My grandparents acquired it for me, it was my gift. After my sister died, they bestowed this place upon me years before they’d planned to. I guess they thought I needed a distraction, but I didn’t. I didn’t need a distraction—I needed an adventure. And I’m stuck. Ames, believe it or not, is more adamantly against me selling this place than my father is.”

  “Why is he against it?”

  “Because he knows if I sell this place, the majority of the proceeds would go to him, which would be funneled into Free Refills and then into his restaurant.”

  “Ames has a restaurant?” I furrowed my brow, trying to recall if he’d ever talked about it with me.

  “Exactly. He doesn’t talk about it, because the reality is hitting that he’s going to have to let it go soon—unless something drastically changes.” She sat cross-legged and turned to face me. “My grandparents bought the building Free Refills is in. And when Mal and Ames married, her gift was the restaurant. They scrimped and saved their earnings from working at Free Refills to purchase things, little by little, for the restaurant.” Lotte smiled wistfully, and looked off, out the windows. “Mahlon loved that little place. I don’t think I’d ever seen her happier. That was their dream, you know?”

  I nodded. I understood. No one had ever inhibited what I’d wanted to do. Sure, my parents had blatantly expressed displeasure wit
h some of my ideas, but never had they told me to change my plans to suit them.

  “So, Ames doesn’t want you to sell.”

  She nodded and grabbed our now empty water bottles. “I love Ames. When Mahlon died, my father fell apart. I thought I’d seen him hit the bottom when my mum died. But I was wrong. Mahlon was his first born, his mini-me. She had a love for the things he loves—building a legacy.” She tossed the water bottles in the recycle and then wrapped her arms around her middle. I stood and continued my stretches. “Ames wasn’t allowed to fall apart. Free Refills is our only real income stream.” She waved her hands around and laughed sardonically. “I love this place, but it’s not exactly paying for the food on our table.”

  “So you want to sell it and use the money to travel.”

  “I want to sell it and give most of it to my dad, who will give a solid chunk to Ames to finish the restaurant.”

  “And Ames doesn’t want the money.”

  “He sees it as me selling my dream to fund his. Which he refuses. He’d rather see my sister’s restaurant, her baby—his baby—go under than see me sell.”

  “Oh. I can see the dilemma.”

  “It’s asinine to me. But it’s not exactly unexpected.” She drummed her fingers on the table that held the stereo. “My whole life, everyone has been telling me what is best for me. I did it all—went to university, studied things I didn’t care about. I didn’t date.” She stopped abruptly and I thought about the way she had looked at Sam at his family’s dinner. She had something there, deeper than just friendly affection. “I was a good girl. And then—boom, boom. My mum died and my sister died, and my dad fell apart and Ames was there, holding us all together. And then my grandparents dropped this place on me.” She spun around, her hands held up. “And I love this studio—I love the sound it makes when I dance, and I love my students. But this—this isn’t my dream. This is the dream everyone else has for me.”

  She bent over at her waist and expelled a breath before pulling herself up straight again. “Sorry, I don’t mean to dump this all on you. But because you travel, I feel like you understand. You know what I’m after.”