Slow Dancing

11 | caesura

1 1

c a e s u r a

[It.] : Pause.

MY VERSION OF normal had always differed vastly from Parker's, but I hadn't realised exactly how different it was until I moved into his place. It was a penthouse apartment but almost twice as big as my old house altogether.

The first thing I did when I got to Parker's apartment was to open all the windows. The light sting of sea breeze was thoroughly refreshing and I felt like I could almost taste the salt on my lips. Then I went out on the balcony, bracing my arms against the railing and gazed out at the vast landscape.

To say it was breath-taking would be an understatement. The sea seemed limitless and it glittered undulating shades of green and blue under the sunlight. And the beach, exactly twenty-two floors below, was dotted with tourists and regular beach-goers.

My eyes scanned the beach over and over again, but I couldn't exactly pinpoint what I was looking for. Perhaps it was the memory of a girl and a boy slow dancing on the beach, with no one but the sea and the sky as their audience. Perhaps it was that.

"I love this place," a familiar voice shook me out of my trance and I turned, only to see my best friend Millie glancing around the apartment with a look of pure wonder on her face. I couldn't blame her. Parker's apartment was beautiful, to say the least.

And now this apartment was mine for the time being. After the semester ended, Parker had offered me an internship at the company he worked at even though they weren't short staffed. But he'd persuaded me to take the job all the same.

"Besides," he had said, "it'll help you forget."

I knew exactly what he was referring to. But I didn't want to forget. None of it was worth forgetting; not even when things got ugly, not even during the tears and the screaming and the lies. It was all a devastating, beautiful mess and they played over and over with the brightest, most vivid colours in my memory.

Nevertheless, I took the job because it was a good experience for me. Dad had assured me that he was going to be fine, especially since Rosemary had begun to contact him again these past few weeks. I was suspicious, and rightfully so, since that damned woman had left us without so much as a backward glance years ago.

But then the day came when the press caught Rosemary and my Dad at a café. The press had a brief field day, mostly because it was Rosemary Collins, widow of celebrity lawyer Martin Collins, and – in their words – 'she had finally found love again'.

Rosemary made a statement acknowledging it this time but ensured that my Dad's identity was kept a secret and I thought to myself that maybe, just maybe, she deserved a second chance.

So after many firm promises that I was going to visit at least once a week, I reluctantly left Dad and moved into Parker's spare apartment. Parker had bought this house several years ago and intended to live here whenever he came to the beach for a vacation.

But like all plans with the best intentions at heart, this too didn't materialise. And so my brother continued to live in his modest apartment a good distance away and this place lay empty and vacated ever since.

But even the emptiest, most vacated places could be easily salvaged. When I agreed to live here, Parker sent people to clean up the place and he was almost going to renovate the house if I hadn't stopped him in time. Parker and I moved my things in about two days ago. And now, Millie, her boyfriend Castor and I were bringing in the last of my belongings.