Dancing. It’s brought up maybe once or twice in conversation, and is only a passing mention over the years; frankly, the only real dancing she’s done recently is in her underwear when she’s home alone. While that’s a perfectly enjoyable pastime -- and she’ll tell you so without shame -- there hasn’t been an occasion in public where she’s been comfortable enough to just dance; not since wild nights in Los Angeles, shouting along to offensive hip-hop lyrics after several Red Bull and vodka tinctures. No one could miss the tall blonde with the button nose in those days, and to her detriment, no one had stopped her either. Cara Davies doesn’t dance like that anymore, and it’s something that she’s been okay with for around five years.
Tonight, she’s handily drained her fancy cherry seltzer; mutual friends have gone to place their bids on a silent auction, and through all the formalwear, the chintzy art, and even some of the catered food she has no desire to pronounce, Cara very well could’ve considered herself to be under a certain influence. She wasn’t, of course; it was the company, the lights, the breeze, and magic of another Californian holiday. There were too many things to consider and dissect, given the opportunity, and when Wyatt tugs her out to the dance floor, those Things whip into a tizzy so quickly that they’re easily confused with mental white noise. To an astute, figurative eye like Cara’s, however, each Thing has its own glow.
By any estimation, the overwhelming coalescence of Every Thing would’ve done the Average Joe in, boiling and reducing itself to some bizarre attempt at feigned humility, used to avoid the situation all together. Cara Davies was not that Average Joe; she’d spent her entire life ensuring that she wasn’t.. And to think, one of the demonstrations of this’d come down to a dance floor? Another one, all these years later? The irony of the whole situation was spread thick. Thankfully, a sense of humor wasn’t something that she lacked, so she’d sandwiched her irony in within it; sealing it up and looking to her partner when the Hella Fitzgerald ballad on the sound system demanded their slowing.
This kind of dancing, Cara determined then, was a vastly different type of dancing-in-public than the one she’d all but condemned (save for London’s birthday party, but karaoke among friends was a near-equivalent of the dancing-at-home). This was soft and intentional; it came with hummed laughs, shifting hands, and one or two dropped kisses when it was presumed that no one in the near vicinity was looking. Maybe this wasn’t dancing at all, in that respect. It wasn’t a show for the remainder of the room.
Maybe this was something else entirely, she thought. A product of the white noise, the force of the night and everything that came with it; maybe it was the time it’d taken for her to retire one definition in favor of a more relevant one. Maybe.. Just maybe.. She was seeing the forest instead of each and every tree.
.. And maybe dancing, Cara’d decided, was something that she could stand to do again.
Tonight, she’s handily drained her fancy cherry seltzer; mutual friends have gone to place their bids on a silent auction, and through all the formalwear, the chintzy art, and even some of the catered food she has no desire to pronounce, Cara very well could’ve considered herself to be under a certain influence. She wasn’t, of course; it was the company, the lights, the breeze, and magic of another Californian holiday. There were too many things to consider and dissect, given the opportunity, and when Wyatt tugs her out to the dance floor, those Things whip into a tizzy so quickly that they’re easily confused with mental white noise. To an astute, figurative eye like Cara’s, however, each Thing has its own glow.
By any estimation, the overwhelming coalescence of Every Thing would’ve done the Average Joe in, boiling and reducing itself to some bizarre attempt at feigned humility, used to avoid the situation all together. Cara Davies was not that Average Joe; she’d spent her entire life ensuring that she wasn’t.. And to think, one of the demonstrations of this’d come down to a dance floor? Another one, all these years later? The irony of the whole situation was spread thick. Thankfully, a sense of humor wasn’t something that she lacked, so she’d sandwiched her irony in within it; sealing it up and looking to her partner when the Hella Fitzgerald ballad on the sound system demanded their slowing.
This kind of dancing, Cara determined then, was a vastly different type of dancing-in-public than the one she’d all but condemned (save for London’s birthday party, but karaoke among friends was a near-equivalent of the dancing-at-home). This was soft and intentional; it came with hummed laughs, shifting hands, and one or two dropped kisses when it was presumed that no one in the near vicinity was looking. Maybe this wasn’t dancing at all, in that respect. It wasn’t a show for the remainder of the room.
Maybe this was something else entirely, she thought. A product of the white noise, the force of the night and everything that came with it; maybe it was the time it’d taken for her to retire one definition in favor of a more relevant one. Maybe.. Just maybe.. She was seeing the forest instead of each and every tree.
.. And maybe dancing, Cara’d decided, was something that she could stand to do again.