The only thing Jamie knew about waltzes was how to play them on piano. If asked, he couldn't have picked out the waltz in a lineup of dancers. He started playing a Chopin piece he knew well – a sultry little waltz that always managed to cause his back to tingle in the slightest when he played it correctly, which wasn't the case when messing around with quirky rags or Christmas hymns. Parts of the piece were absurdly fast, and the day that the nimble, skinny fingers on his comically large hands were first able to handle playing it had been a proud one. It was one of those pieces you needed to practice a million times because sight reading it would have been murder. It was a show-offy piece – a recital piece for sure, which he'd once played for a piano exam when he was nine or ten – and it wasn't anything he would have pulled out of his bag of tricks without a request. His stickbug fingers made it look easy as they danced from key to key. It was easy, but only because it had once been very, very hard. Those fingers had, during hours and hours of practice time, walked this path so many times that they knew the way by heart. Lazy, unmotivated Jamie wasn't always lazy and unmotivated. It just took the right sort of challenge to get him to see something all the way through. 

It was cruel, however, that he was stuck at the keys when he was certain that there was a show going on just behind him. He was dying to look. He was more than capable of looking up while playing, but as soon as he distracted himself he knew that he wouldn't be able to anticipate what to play next and he'd end up mashing keys in his pursuit of a peek. It didn't keep him from trying, though, a mischievous grin on his face all the while. He waited until he was at a tame portion and then snapped his head around. He did this a few times, only for about two seconds each time, but it was enough to create a flip-book in his mind. He was glad when she finally moved where he could see her easily, and his eyes continually jumped upward to get a real peek. She looked pretty, spinning about with her invisible lad. He didn't know enough to know if she was any good or not, but she looked great to him – a little silly, sure, but he admired that. He was great at making an arse of himself, but it was rarely intentional. 

”Who do you think would kiss me?”

He wasn't through with the piece yet when she suddenly decided she was done and started talking to him. He would have answered straight away, but he was invested in a lovely few measures of fast and precise playing and didn't say a word until the music grew soft and simple again. “I don't know,” he replied, knowing it was the worst answer in the world and not at all what she wanted to hear. Most of his mental capacity was going to remembering the way the piece he was playing went, though, so he wasn't really in a position to search his mind. “Way I see it, anyone who wouldn't is missing out. Let me finish this,” he muttered vaguely and distractedly, focusing hard on the conclusion of the waltz. It ended as abruptly as Julia had earlier, but it was complete. He felt like he should stand up and bow - it was just one of those pieces. 

 “What did you say? Right, who would kiss you?" he asked, coming back down to Earth. "Nat Warwick. Why shouldn't he?” Jamie asked, as though getting her lifelong, much older, potentially engaged crush to kiss her was nothing. “Or anyone else yous like. Anyone.” Well, not anyone. There were probably a few lads with birds of their own who wouldn't be up for it. But other than them? Easy. “The hardest bit'll be getting up your nerve, I bet.” 


a simple rule that every good man knows by heart: its smarter to be lucky than its lucky to be smart