Page 42 of The Wake-Up Call

“You’re good,” she says, raising her voice over the music. “You can dance!”

“So can you.”

“Well, yeah,” she says, as if this should have been obvious. “But I thought the whole thing about Brazilians all being great dancers was a cliché.”

“It is a cliché. We are not all great dancers,” I tell her, thinking of my sister, who often cheerfully proclaims that she’s about as good at keeping time as she is at keeping boyfriends.

“But if any Brazilian was going to be bad at dancing,” Izzy says, “I feel like it would be you.”

I glare at her. She laughs.

“And how do you know I’m Brazilian?”

She pulls a face at the break from character. “I mean, ah, where are you from?” she asks.

“Niterói,” I tell her. The song shifts and I watch her body shift, too, finding the new beat. “It’s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.”

“Brazil! What’s it like there at this time of year?”

“Hot,” I say, holding her gaze. I take a sip of my beer.

That thump-thump of desire gets louder. She’s closer, looking up at me, the glitter on her shoulders sparkling under the light of Shannon’s chandelier.

“How about you? Where are you from?”

“Surrey,” she says, her leg brushing mine as she dances. “Way less exciting. Though I loved growing up there.”

Something passes over her face—a memory of her parents, perhaps.

“And what do you do?” I ask, to bring her back to me.

She stumbles slightly as someone moves past us, and I steadyher with a hand on her waist. Somehow it feels right for the hand to stay there, and now we’re not just dancing, we’re dancingtogether. Her hands come to rest lightly on my shoulders, and her hips twist in time with mine.

“I work at a hotel.”

I try to imagine what I would say next if I didn’t stand beside her at the front desk every morning. It’s getting hard to concentrate. Her body moves with mine, and there’s just the soft fabric of her baby-blue top between my palm and her skin. She’s warm and a little breathless. I can smell her cinnamon scent every time I inhale.

I settle for the question I often get asked. “Are people always checking in under fake names to have affairs?”

She gives me a small, knowing smile. “That or turning up naked under trench coats. Yeah. Nonstop.”

I let out anahof recognition as the song changes to Anitta’s “Envolver.” Izzy clocks it and lifts her gaze to mine. We’re body to body: her arms aren’t just resting lightly on my shoulders now, they’re wound around my neck, and my hand is at the small of her back, keeping our shifting hips in sync.

“Can you translate this song for me? What’s it actually about?” she asks me.

“Well, it’s in Spanish, so...”

“Oh.” She blushes. “Sorry. I thought it was in Portuguese.”

For once, I’m not interested in embarrassing her.

“My Spanish isn’t bad, so I can try... But, uh, the song is a little rude.”

“We just danced to ‘212,’ ” she says, tilting her head back far enough that her hair tickles my hand on her waist as she looks up at me. “I think I can handle some sexual undertones.”

I take a swig of my beer. “She’s saying something like... ‘Tell me what we’re supposed to do when we want each other this much.’She’s saying, ‘If we go to bed together... you won’t last five minutes.’ ”

Izzy laughs at that, still dancing. “What else?”

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