Chapter 16 Adam “Cheek to Cheek” #4
Putting my arm around her, we walk home past the Peregrine, and the Chez Jules sign that’s been up for two months now.
She’s only opening the restaurant every other Saturday to begin with, but word’s already getting around and it’s becoming quite the hot ticket.
Especially with all the incredible dishes she keeps coming up with from this new French gastronomique course she’s been doing online.
It’s not the only thing we pause to look at.
There’s Rose, dressed in pink dungarees, her long gray hair hanging loosely down to her waist, dancing with her solicitor “friend” Eddy, who’s twirling her round, the jukebox in the Peregrine’s bar casting them both pretty in pink.
We still don’t know who wrote that letter Eddy delivered. Does it matter? That same question Jules asked me when we first read those sheets of paper. Does it? If it’s helped make us this happy again? If it’s helped us remember how much better we are together than alone?
“Don’t they look lovely?” Jules says.
“Beautiful.”
“I hope we still dance together when we’re that old.”
“Me too,” I say.
“It’s funny thinking of us getting old, isn’t it?”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Except embrace it.”
“Go down fighting.”
“Adam and Jules against the world,” she says, squeezing my hand.
—
We get home ten minutes later.
Mum’s old ?koda glints eerily in the moonlight, though the only supernatural thing about it is that it’s passed its MOT—again.
Even so, I’ve got a partner for it in mind. A little redder. A whole lot sleeker. A car that’s going to make Jules smile. Of course, I’ve still got to save up the money first.
“Come on,” Jules says, as she takes my hand and shuts the door behind us. I give Groucho a little tickle behind his ear as I follow her into the moonlit kitchen.
BBC Radio 6 Music is playing on the speaker—I must have forgotten to turn it off earlier. Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” of all things.
I feel the same poignant flutter I always do as Jules takes Mum’s mirrored antique box down off the shelf and opens its lid.
Our time capsule of all the good times. Inside are the ticket stubs from the hundreds of music gigs we’ve been to over the years.
As she adds this latest one—perhaps our most precious, what with it bearing Liam’s band’s name—the moonlight streaming in through the window is suddenly so bright, I could swear that these stubs of ours, they almost seem to glow…
As Joy Division fades, a piano riff breaks the spell, and the familiar tango beat of Gotan Project’s “Mi Confesión” starts crackling louchely out of the speaker. Jules and I face each other grinning, because this really is one of our favorite songs of all time.
We set off in a clumsy tango and two minutes later I’m grimacing at her laughing and wincing as I tread on her toes again.
“I’d always hoped that by this stage in our marriage I’d have mastered the intricacies of the Argentine tango,” I say.
“What, as well as the Dad Dance?” she teases, stepping back and throwing a few mid-nineties ironic Pulp-style Britpop shapes into the mix.
“Hey, Mrs. Hole, you were well aware of my dance moves before you married me,” I say, sweeping her up into my arms and kissing her.
Only we lurch a little to the left and nearly fall as I try to copy that cool tilting-each-other-over-in-a-swoon thing that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers do so well.
“I’d better take you to bed before my back goes and Liam gets home,” I tell her, laughing.
“Hmm…I think we might be a bit squiffy for romance,” Jules says. “And knackered,” she admits with a sleepy smile.
“Oh.” I’m disappointed, but maybe she has a point. We have been out drinking and bopping about to bands for the last three hours.
I follow her through to the sitting room, where she flops down on the moth-eaten sofa. Watching me closely, she kicks off her Doc Martens and peels off her tights.
“Aaaaannd now I have your attention”—she grins—“can you tell me what I want, what I really, really want?”
“A zig-a-zig-ah?” I suggest, even though I still don’t know what the hell the Spice Girls actually meant by that.
“Nope. A foot massage.”
“Really?”
“Oh, come on.” She wiggles her toes at me. “They’re bloody killing me.”
I sigh helplessly. Why is she so hard to resist? Collapsing on the sofa next to her, I take her feet in my hands.
“Mmm,” she says.
“Put something on.” I nod at the TV remote beside her.
“Why? Aren’t I distracting enough?”
“It’s more your feet I’m trying to distract myself from, actually. I’m no Tarantino, you know.”
She switches Netflix on. “Just so long as it’s not Secrets of the Neanderthals.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Anyway, I bet all their so-called secrets are totally rubbish. Like what tree stump Kevin the Neanderthal hid his gooseberries in. Or who Karen the Neanderthal knobbed.”
“Kevin and Karen?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” She turns over to Prime. “What about When Harry Met Sally?”
But it’s more music I’m in the mood for now. Grabbing the control, I switch on Spotify.
I put on the You & Me playlist we made together this morning, covering all our favorite songs from the last twenty-five years.
“Lonely Planet” by The The kicks us off.
“Chuck us one of those Maltesers, will you?” I say.
“What Maltesers?”
“The ones you keep hidden under the cushion on your side.”
She pouts. Annoyed at me, but impressed too. Reluctantly, she throws one into my mouth and I let it melt as she crunches down on two herself.
“Good this, isn’t it?” she says. “Just you and me. I mean, as much as I love the kids, it is sometimes nice being on our own.”
“Very nice indeed.”
“On our shitty sofa.”
“In our shitty house.”
“With our whole bright future still stretching ahead of us,” she says.
We cuddle up as Matt Johnson sings something about changing yourself if you can’t change your world, or maybe it’s the other way round, and me and Jules both sing along.
“I bloody love you, Mrs. Hole,” I say.
“Just as well,” she says, “because you’re stuck with me for eternity. Or didn’t you realize that yet?”