“Come dance with me, Dad,” Ashley chirped at him, snagging his hands and drawing him into the middle of the floor, which the students had decided was the dance floor. They had been dancing together since it had been Ray dancing around with her in his arms when she was just a baby. It was all very silly and energetic, and the good-spirited teenagers cheered them on as they went.
As he gripped his daughter’s hands and spun her, the room whirled past him, mostly in a blur. One thing stood out, though. Mandy, sitting in the corner with her disapproving mother glowering over her, looking utterly miserable as she watched her classmates having fun.
“Hey, Ash,” Ray murmured, leaning in to speak more quietly in her ear. “Maybe you could go talk to Mandy?” For obvious reasons, it wasn’t going to be appropriate for him to do it, but Ashley was the same age, and that would work out far better.
“Mandy?” Ashley looked baffled. Miss Popularity probably didn’t even really know Mandy was alive. Ashley wasn’t mean or anything, but she was pretty caught up in her own life, like pretty much every teenager ever. She would never do anything to hurt anyone deliberately, but indifference could cut just as deeply as outright hostility.
“Yeah. I think she could use someone to talk to,” Ray said, his tone encouraging. He wasn’t going to go into the details, of course, for multiple different reasons, not the least of which was Mandy’s privacy as well as his own.
Ashley was glancing over at the other girl curiously, and Ray figured that he had done his job, just by pulling poor Mandy into his daughter’s consciousness.
“She never seems interested in hanging out,” Ashley mused as if to herself. “And her mom is terrifying.” She turned her gaze to Ray, a little half-smile on her face. “But I guess I’m not going to be the best person to judge mothers, right?”
They never talked about Ashley’s mother, or very rarely, anyway. Ray had tried to be gentle, but he wasn’t so sure that his parents, Ashley’s grandparents, had been quite as circumspect. She knew that her mother had left when Ashley was very young and that there was no way to contact her, but as far as he knew, that was all.
Of course, what else did she need to know?
“I’ll go talk to her,” Ashley decided, and she broke away from their dance to do just that. Ray couldn’t hide a little smile as she sailed over to where poor Mandy was sitting with her domineering mother, and even though his daughter’s back was to him, he knew that she would have a big, wide, friendly smile on her face.
“That was a nice thing you did,” Simon commented. He had come up to stand beside Ray, close enough that Ray could feel the warmth coming off of his body, although they weren’t touching, not quite.
“I just thought that Mandy could use some friends her own age,” Ray murmured, glancing over at Simon and giving him a little bit of a smile. It was hard to do, though. Honestly, he was feeling a little bit sad about the whole thing. Okay, more like devastated. But he was trying to make the best of it. They still had one more night together, and the way Ray was feeling, poor Simon wasn’t going to be getting much sleep.
“It’s brilliant. Ashley is so popular. She can do good things for Mandy socially,” Simon replied. “Mandy could use some friends. She’s one of those people who just sort of fades into the woodwork.”
Ray nodded. Even though he wasn’t entirely sure about what Mandy’s role was in this whole clusterfuck of a mess he and Simon found themselves in because of Nancy, Mandy was just a kid, and clearly a lonely one.
“Okay, hello, can I have your attention?” The owner of the hotel herself was there, beaming and radiant, standing in the middle of the dance floor and smiling around at all of the students. By some miracle, they all did look at her, but she was a commanding sort of confidence that made it hard to ignore her. The lovely, lyrical French accent didn’t hurt, either, although she spoke very good English.
“It’s only five minutes until midnight, my American friends,” she explained. “So I’m going to tell you how we ring in the New Year French style. It’s not that different from how you do it in America. Count backwards from ten, and I expect to hear you doing it in French, of course. And when you reachun,one, then you sayBonne Anneeand do like this.”
To Ray’s surprise, she leaned in, captured him by the wrist, and kissed him twice, once on each cheek. She laughed at his response, and he felt a flush color his cheeks as the students giggled.
“That is it. So let’s do it the French way, and give you all a grand sending off as you go back to your beautiful country. I will put on the television so we can watch the countdown.” The woman let him go, and Ray turned back to see Simon looking not particularly happy.
Before he could ask what was up with that, he was jumped on by his daughter, who was still laughing. He was glad to see that she had gotten Mandy away from her mother, who looked just as displeased as Simon did.
“Dad, you didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend,” she teased, in boisterous good spirits. Ray rolled his eyes at Ashley, giving her a superior look that just made her laugh more. He was swept up into the excitement, and he had no chance to talk to Simon about much of anything as the clock swept on towards midnight.
“Okay, here we go!” The hotel owner was too well-bred and classy to bounce with delight, but she nevertheless gave the impression of great joy and goodwill as she looked at the TV screen. “Dix, neuf, huit, sept …”
Ray was not going to claim to be an expert in French, but even he had picked up enough to know these basic numbers in French. He was even able to do something that he would never have been able to do even one short month ago, and count down along with everyone else.
“Six, cinq, quatre, trois, deux …”
There was always an aura of excitement about the New Year, a sense of hope, a new beginning. The closing out of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one. What would this year hold for him? Ray had no idea, but at that moment, it was easy to think that it could be what he made of it.
“Un, BONNE ANNEE!”
Everyone was cheering, going crazy around each other, kissing cheeks and giggling. In all of the confusion, Ray felt fingers wrap around his own, felt himself turned around, and for just a second, Simon’s lips were on his own, burning hot but too briefly to be noticed. Just enough to leave Ray wanting more.
“Happy New Year,” Simon whispered in Ray’s ear, his breath sending little tingles shivering through his whole body. There was a sort of fierceness to it, Ray was sure of it, even if he didn’t know what it meant.
“Bonne annee,” Ray murmured back in his terribly accented, inexpert French. But even as he was smiling at the other man, he couldn’t help but wish that Simon was going to be a big part of the year ahead of him. But that was too much to wish for, of course.
Chapter Twenty
Simon
