Page 35 of Slow Burn

Just when I didn’t think European cities could get any more stunning after three nights in laid-back, colourful Porto, we arrived in Lisbon for a five-night run.

The sun had been shining and the skies were a clear electric blue as we’d stepped off the plane that afternoon, and although we were needed for a light check later that day, we weren’t actually performing until the following evening, so I fully intended to make the most of every single minute I had spare.

Guidebook in hand, I left my hotel room almost as soon as I’d checked in and bumped straight into… Gabriele.

‘Hi,’ I said, pausing reluctantly, suddenly wishing I hadn’t worn the tiny, flippy mini dress that I was pretty sure had been shrunk in the hotel laundry in Barcelona, because I did not remember it being this short.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ said Gabriele, who somehow looked cool and polished and not like he’d stepped off a plane an hour ago.

His eyes skimmed briefly over my body, which sent a not-unpleasant fizzing sensation running through me.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, even if what I really wanted to do was fly into his arms and have him kiss me wildly right there in the hotel corridor.

‘Thought I’d go and take some photos of the city for the James Jive socials,’ I stuttered eventually.

Julie’s warning about our members not being happy about my absence had been weighing heavily on my mind and I was aware I needed to keep up the momentum when it came to making our clients feel connected to me and the rest of the James family, even if hardly any of us were actually in the country and – in the case of my siblings, at least – the studio was the furthest thing from their minds.

‘Then I have the perfect location,’ said Gabriele, leaning easily against the wall.

‘Have you now?’ I asked a little flirtatiously. I could do with a little local knowledge.

‘I am planning to buy the original and best custard tarts in Portugal. Believe me when I say this place would make a spectacular photo for your social media. Come, I will show you.’

He pushed off the wall and started down the corridor.

I hesitated for a second, not because I didn’t want to go with him, but because I was thrown by the easiness between us.

We hadn’t had sex again since that night in Barcelona – the cast had tended to hang out together in Porto and there hadn’t been time to be alone together, even if we’d wanted to be.

We walked along the banks of the River Tagus, glittering and powerful, and, according to my guidebook, at its widest here in Lisbon after starting over six hundred miles away in Spain and now about to spill out into the Atlantic Ocean.

I reckoned this explained why I felt like I was on the coast – the River Thames this was not.

In fact, it was giving me San Francisco vibes and, referring to my guidebook again, the stunning orange suspension bridge leading from Lisbon to an area called Almada had partly been modelled on the Golden Gate Bridge.

‘I take it you’ve been to Lisbon before, then?’ I said, glancing across at Gabriele, who had expensive-looking sunglasses on and was sporting a soft white cotton shirt that rippled in the gentle breeze.

‘Many times,’ he said, ‘although when I come to a different city to perform, I often do not see much more than the hotel and the theatre. Perhaps I will get to see some cafés and restaurants, but that is it. Being with you is making me feel that I should get out and explore more,’ he said with a shrug.

‘I guess when you travel so much, it loses that magical appeal.’

‘I am not sure it does, or should. There is always more to discover.’

I nodded, thinking briefly to how it could have been the same for me if I’d continued on a similar trajectory after winning the World Championships all those years ago. How different things would have been, how well travelled I’d be by now, too.

‘How’s everything with your dad?’ I asked gently.

I’d picked up that Gabriele rarely talked about his family.

When we were together as a company, the other dancers would share funny stories about their childhoods, or perhaps a parent or a school friend or a sibling would be coming in to watch a particular show and we’d all be introduced to them afterwards.

I knew very little about Gabriele’s background, other than what he’d revealed to me that night in Barcelona, and to my knowledge nobody he knew had been to see any of our shows.

I felt a small comfort at not being alone in that, although I also wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Gabriele sighed. ‘Not great. He is still refusing to see a doctor. And he will not listen to my mother. She has spoken to his staff, has asked them to take on a little more of the workload to secretly ease what my father has to do, and they have agreed, of course, because they are worried too.’

‘Maybe you could get through to him?’ I suggested. ‘You’ll see him when we get to Italy, won’t you? Perhaps if you tell him how upset it’s making you all—’

Gabriele laughed hollowly. ‘If he will not listen to my mother, there is zero chance he will listen to me. We are not close in that way, not anymore. Feelings and concerns are not something we discuss, as a family.’

‘That’s normal, I reckon,’ I said. ‘It’s the same for me. I don’t think I’ve had an in-depth conversation about feelings with my parents ever.’

‘But you have your sisters…’

‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly craving how close Sedi, Nolo and I had been before Slow Burn came along.

I hoped it would get back to normal eventually, but I thought that maybe it would take me a while to get over everything that had happened.

I’d known my parents would be unhappy, but I’d honestly thought Sedi and Nolo would have had my back no matter what, especially since they were more than capable of standing up to our parents about their own stuff.

I’d honestly thought they’d have come around quickly, excited to see their big sister having the kind of career they’d enjoyed themselves.

I took a photo of the bridge and pinged it to the WhatsApp group.

Things might be a little off between us all, but I didn’t want the distance to get any wider, and I’d always been the one to pull the three of us together.

Sedi immediately sent a heart emoji back.

Nolo, in New York, would still be sleeping.

‘So this is one of the places I wanted to show you,’ said Gabriele, sweeping his arm out towards some kind of fortress sitting in a small bay, several metres from the shore. ‘The Belém Tower. It makes a beautiful picture, no?’

I flicked to the relevant page in my guidebook and read it out to him.

‘The Belém Tower, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of Lisbon’s most striking monuments. In 1514, King Jo?o II led a project to defend Lisbon from enemy ships, a plan that included the building of the Belém Tower.’

‘I had no idea it was so old,’ said Gabriele, looking surprised. ‘We can climb up to the top, I think, but look, the queues…’

The line to get in was about a hundred people deep and I was pretty sure that the view from ground level was almost as lovely.

I began snapping away, adding in a couple of videos, panning from one side of the tower across to the bridge on the other, accidentally getting a bemused Gabriele in shot.

I loved the way he smiled so naturally at the lens, how he never seemed fazed by having a camera pointed at his face.

In front of us was a small beach, where clear and shallow water from the river washed onto a sandy shore with the tower as its backdrop. Gabriele saw me watching people kicking off their shoes and wading in.

‘Come,’ he said, bending to slip off his loafers and promptly rolling up the hem of his trousers. ‘We must go in.’

‘What?’ I said, laughing.

‘We must paddle. I have always wanted to, but I felt like a fool on my own. But now you are here,’ he said, standing up with a satisfied smile and holding out his hand. ‘Ready?’

I nodded and took his hand, feeling safe and looked after the instant his fingers closed around mine. Kicking off my sandals, I dipped a toe in the water, grimacing.

‘It’s freezing!’ I exclaimed.

Gabriele laughed. ‘This is the Atlantic Ocean, you must be brave. Come, let us go deeper.’

Together we waded further out so that the water soon came up to my knees.

‘Your trousers are already soaked,’ I warned him, looking down, thinking he’d be irritated, but he just laughed it off.

‘Then there is nothing for it,’ he said. ‘I am going to have to soak you, too.’

He dropped my hand to bend and scoop up palmfuls of water before throwing it all over me, breaking out into a deep rumble of a laugh that I’d never heard from him before.

Shocked for a second and gasping at the sharp coldness of the water on my face and arms, I barely hesitated before dipping my own hand into the Tagus and splashing him right back.

Our clothes dried off in the sun during the fifteen minutes or so it took us to walk to the infamous Pastéis de Belém, the former monastery and home of the Portuguese egg tart – pastel de nata – that I’d been dying to try ever since I’d heard we were coming to Portugal.

According to every single travel guide ever, the tarts at Belém were the original and the best.

As we stood in the – long ! – queue to be served, Gabriele and I chatted easily about, well, custard tarts, mainly, but also about how he thought the show was going, what he thought I should do next – he wanted to introduce me to his agent – and also what he was most looking forward to about returning to Italy in a few days’ time.

I teased him that he wanted to be asked for autographs again, that was what he was most excited about, but he denied it vehemently, insisting it was the food.

And seeing his mama, who he told me had booked tickets for herself and his dad for the last night of our run in Florence.

I took a photo of the monastery and then a selfie of both of us grinning madly in front of it and posted it straight onto the James Jive Instagram account, with a caption about arriving in Lisbon and heading straight for custard tarts.

Then I clicked on the red heart at the top of the page and nearly dropped my phone clean out of my hand when I saw that the teaser reel I’d posted of Gabriele and me running through an Argentine tango routine in Barcelona now had 625 likes and seventy-nine comments.

This was unheard of for the James Jive account, which could usually expect about ten reactions – at most!

– to any given post. I flicked through the brief messages underneath, which were mostly from studio members congratulating me and saying they wished they’d known about the show when it was in London, and how they couldn’t wait to practice the steps Gabriele and I had demonstrated.

The @jamesjivestudio account even had seventy-five new followers, which potentially meant several new clients.

Gabriele was on to something here! I showed him, my mouth open in slightly exaggerated shock.

‘I told you,’ he said smugly. ‘Followers adore this kind of content.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said, reluctant to tell him he was right, because I knew he liked to be, and therefore I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction.

Soon it was our turn in the queue and Gabriele bought us two tarts each, which I thought was a little excessive until we found a spot at a table and I tasted them.

‘Oh. My. God,’ I said, pausing my munching for effect.

They were unbelievably good – flaky yet crunchy pastry, soft wobbly custard, caramelized sugar on top; they might just be the most delicious thing I’d tasted in my entire life. Gabriele wasn’t holding back, either.

‘These things are addictive,’ he enthused, in between mouthfuls.

‘I think I’m in love with custard tarts,’ I said dreamily, already wondering whether it would be too much to go back to the counter to buy a box of them to take back to my room.

We didn’t speak properly again until we’d finished eating, the silence peppered only by loud chewing and moans of delight. With four tarts polished off between us, I wiped my mouth with a napkin and dusted pastry flakes off the front of my dress.

‘Wow,’ I said.

Gabriele smiled.

‘It is nice to have someone to share these things with,’ he said.

I’d never seen him as light and happy as he’d been this morning, a playful side to him appearing that I’d never known existed.

We either seemed to be tearing each other’s clothes off or putting our hearts and souls into a performance.

Seeing this different aspect of him made me wonder why he didn’t show people these parts of him more often.

‘I never knew you were capable of such jollity,’ I said, winking at him to prove I was joking.

He shrugged. ‘There is much you do not know about me.’

‘Is there now?’ I said, challenging him to tell me – or show me – exactly what.

‘Maybe one day you will find out.’

‘That sounds like a promise.’

‘Okay, I promise that one day you will know me better than you do now. That you will realize there is more to me than you think there is. That you will discover I am not always so serious.’

‘And that you’re not always on the verge of a bad mood?’

He raised his eyebrows and I thought maybe I’d pushed it too far. But then I thought, so what? It was true.

‘For that very uncalled-for comment, Lira James, I instruct you to eat one more custard tart,’ he said, pushing back his chair and heading back to the counter.