Page 41 of Slow Burn

Venice was even more beautiful than I’d imagined from the photos I’d seen, especially in the early morning sunlight, which gave it a misty, ethereal feel.

We were sitting at a table outside a little café, with the most perfect view of the Doge’s Palace, and the iconic Grand Canal churning majestically in front of it.

Or, at least, it would have been perfect if it was Gabriele sitting opposite me rather than Tomas.

Gabriele had been on my mind almost every minute of every day, except for those brief moments on stage, when I’d managed to lose myself in the music and focus on my performance.

I smiled at Tomas. None of this was his fault, and I was grateful to him for stepping in.

Luckily for us, he was in between shows and had a month off, and two weeks of travelling through Italy performing in a hit show to guaranteed sell-out audiences had fallen into his lap like a gift.

Carlos and the producers had taken some convincing, but then again, Gabriele was very persuasive, and I think they felt so bad for him that they finally agreed to fly Tomas over and have him try out with me.

As Italy was Gabriele’s home country, his appearance in the show had been the main draw, and they’d been worried that the audience wouldn’t be happy with a replacement.

But luckily the advance reviews from London, Spain and Portugal had been so positive that the Italian theatres hadn’t cancelled, and any returned tickets had been swiftly snapped up.

Tomas had joined us for the final few days of the Lisbon run, with him and I working on our routines during the day.

Despite him having only five days to learn all of the duets – Luca had agreed to step into Gabriele’s role in the group numbers – everything seemed to be working out pretty well, although we were both apprehensive for our first performance together.

‘Can we run through the Argentine tango a couple of times before tonight?’ asked Tomas, stirring sugar into his double espresso. ‘I’m still struggling with that second set of boleos into the colgada .’

‘Yeah, that’s tricky. We struggled with that at first, too,’ I admitted.

Thankfully, Tomas and I had fallen right back into the way we’d always danced. It wasn’t what I had with Gabriele, but it was good enough, and ten times better than it had been with Luca.

‘I remember seeing you and Gabriele dancing the Argentine tango in Paris,’ said Tomas with a half-smile.

‘I was sitting at the hotel bar and desperately wanted to ask you to dance, but that wasn’t the done thing, was it, to dance with your own partner?

But you looked so pretty sitting there, and I saw you swaying your shoulders to the music.

You were wearing a red dress, if I remember rightly.

I was on my feet about to come over when I saw Gabriele swoop in. ’

‘You saw that?’ I asked, feeling my cheeks redden. It had been a moment I’d played over and over in my mind, one that had felt much too intimate for anyone else to have witnessed. But now here was Tomas, telling me he’d been watching us the whole time.

He nodded. ‘I sat back down on my stool, feeling utterly dejected, and that only got worse when I saw how good you looked together; how your chemistry was raw and instant. I was insanely jealous.’

I laughed lightly, hoping he was joking.

‘I’m serious,’ he insisted. ‘I was in love with you, if you hadn’t realized.’

Aaaargh. My sisters had been right all along.

How could I have missed the signs? But, then, Tomas had been like the brother I’d never had.

We’d danced together since we were eleven years old, since boys and love and sex were the very last things on my mind.

He was handsome in his own way, but his boyish good looks and dimples had never appealed to me.

Even if Gabriele hadn’t been there, nothing would ever have happened with Tomas.

‘I never knew,’ I said, touching his arm lightly, not wanting him to feel embarrassed. Years had passed; he’d have got over it long ago. ‘All those raging hormones flying around, I’m surprised we weren’t all in love with each other.’

‘Are you in love with him , then? Gabriele?’ asked Tomas.

I nearly choked on my coffee.

‘We lost touch that night. I hadn’t seen him for thirteen years until very recently.’

‘And yet I can see it in your eyes,’ said Tomas. ‘When you talk about him, when you were teaching me the steps you’d danced with him.’

‘I’m worried about him, not in love with him,’ I said, trying to convince myself at the same time.

It couldn’t be love. Could it? Although I had nothing to compare it to, because I’d never been in love with anyone .

Was that sad, at thirty-two years old, never to have experienced a feeling like that?

And yes, Gabriele and I had messaged each other several times a day since he left to go home to Tuscany, and that felt new and different, for us at least. But it wasn’t necessarily love I was feeling.

‘Don’t close yourself off to it, that’s all I’m saying,’ said Tomas. ‘I could see something special between the two of you, even then. And look at the reviews you’ve had! We’re great together, but we’d never get the reaction you two do when you take to the stage.’

I tried to shrug it off.

‘We’re a great partnership. On the stage.’

Then I downed the rest of my cappuccino and stood up, needing to not be under Tomas’s scrutiny any longer, because he was making me think about things I had been doing an excellent job of avoiding until now.

That night on stage, I tried to enjoy the experience for what it was – a gorgeous venue, the Teatro Goldoni, which looked like a wedding cake if you were on the inside of it, and an enthusiastic crowd.

Tomas was confident in the steps and the music was as rousing as ever.

The cast were just as enthusiastic, but there was something missing.

As Tomas twirled and swung and spun me around the stage, I still wasn’t quite feeling it.

Sure, I was faking it, very well – I wasn’t even sure the audience could tell the difference, although judging by the slightly less exuberant standing ovation at the end, perhaps they could.

But I wasn’t enjoying things in the same way.

And it wasn’t anything to do with Tomas; it had to do with me, and how I felt inside.

Which meant that there was something special about dancing with Gabriele, and I was beginning to understand that it wasn’t just about the connection we shared on stage, but about the one we’d begun to forge off of it.

My hotel room had a gorgeous view of the Rialto Bridge, which I tried to show to Sedi and Nolo on screen before throwing myself on the bed and sticking my laptop right in front of my face.

I was too tired to chat, really, but Nolo had suggested we meet, and it had been the first time they’d reached out to me in weeks, not to mention the first time they’d spontaneously organized a Zoom themselves, ever.

I’d worried that if I’d said no this time, it would be ages before we all got together again.

Which admittedly was confirmation that I still struggled with boundaries – if one of those two had been as exhausted as I felt right now, they’d have cancelled our call in a heartbeat.

And, as usual, Sedi had been ten minutes late, meaning I had even less energy to talk by the time her face burst onto the screen.

‘So I read that you’re dancing with Tomas again.

What happened to that Gabriele Riccitelli guy?

The Stage just said he’d had a “family emergency”?

’ asked Nolo, who was sitting by the window of her apartment.

She had it thrown open and I could hear the wailing of a siren and the honking of cars and taxis from the street below, the kind of sounds you imagined when you pictured New York.

‘Ummm…’ I said, trying to engage my brain, which had suddenly drifted off into a daydream about Gabriele, and everything he was going through, and his flat, emotionless voice when I’d spoken to him last.

For some bizarre reason my bottom lip started quivering, as though I was about to cry. I shuffled about, changing position, plumping up my pillows, anything to distract myself from the fact that I was about to lose it while my face was blown up on both of my sisters’ computer screens. Fuck.

‘Go on, then, why are you stalling? Give us the gossip,’ demanded Sedi precociously.

I was going to have to talk somehow, otherwise they’d know something was up, and I didn’t even know how to begin to explain.

‘His father died,’ I said, feeling a very inconvenient tear roll down my cheek.

I was torn – if I wiped it away, it would be obvious, so should I leave it there in the hope that they were too self-absorbed to notice? Which was always a possibility.

Of course, on this occasion, I had no such luck.

‘Li, are you crying ?’ asked Nolo, peering at her screen, scrutinizing my face for clues as to what the hell was going on.

When I said I’d never cried in front of them, that was no exaggeration.

Even when our grandmother – Dad’s mum – died a few years ago, I sobbed only in the comfort of my own bedroom, late at night so that nobody could hear me, because I didn’t want to upset my sisters, and I definitely hadn’t wanted to set my mum off again.

She’d been wailing for hours as it was – I was already dreading the moment when her own mother, my ouma in South Africa, passed away.

Mum looked strong and robust from the outside, but when it came to anything related to death or illness, she fell apart completely.

I always felt under pressure to keep it totally together for her.

‘You are!’ exclaimed Sedi, having the decency to look concerned.

I didn’t think I’d given my sisters cause to worry about me, ever. They probably had no idea how to react to this mysterious turn of events.