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She hates wearing boots.
If it was up to her, these dances would encourage comfortable footwear instead of whatever leather monstrosity some cowboy invented a million years ago. She scrunches her toes up for a second to relieve some of the pressure already forming on the balls of her feet.
“Are these things always this awkward?”
Phil Coulson looks up from where he’s re-writing his name on one of those sticky name tags. The first one had fallen off when he and Melinda decided to blow the crowd away with their twirls and fancy steps.
“Not usually,” he answers encouragingly, and Daisy sighs.
She’s not normally that bad at getting to know people. Her social skills are part of what rocketed her up to senior status in the CIA at only thirty-two. She knows her way around a crowd, how to get people to initiate a conversation without saying anything, how to keep people interested and wondering about her. She likes being mysterious. Never quite fully known, always an enigma.
But these cowboy-esque square dancers are a different breed.
Some are way too friendly. The older gentlemen are old-fashioned and respectful, asking her to dance from a distance, holding out their hands with no obligation for her to accept. Their memories are flawless, knowing exactly who they asked and when, knowing that once this girl finishes that dance with that guy, it’ll be his turn.
Honestly, she respects the oldness and classic feel of this whole thing. She does enjoy wearing a long skirt and letting herself be led around and spinning with the music.
But she still feels out of place. Her usual moves don’t work on old, weathered ranchers. Even the ones who look to be in their 30s keep this wall up in front of them, not responding to her usual flirtatious advances.
So she sits this one out, standing in the corner, watching May and Coulson as they expertly weave between dancers, turning and spinning until she wonders how they’re not dizzy.
She claps along to the music, feeling the twangy guitar and accented voice down in her chest, tapping her foot on the weathered hardwood floor. Little lights line the corners of the room, illuminating the barn in the softest yellow glow. The caller on stage is so animated, she hopes he doesn’t fall off.
Just as the last notes of “The Cowboy Rides Away” fade out, she feels more than sees a figure approach from her left. She turns slightly and notices his right hand held out . . . and it’s knobby and wrinkled. She meets the eyes of a kind, wise-looking older gentleman with skin like faded leather. He’s dressed in a plaid shirt, clean black vest, and a bolo tie with a silver and red pendant.
“A dance, miss?” he asks in a voice that sounds like it’s been dragged over gravel for sixty years.
She smiles and accepts, deciding she would have a good time tonight, even if it was only seventy-or-eighty-somethings that asked her to the floor.
“I’m Dan,” he introduces himself as they search for a square to join with.
“Daisy,” she responds. “Nice to meet you.”
The man smells like old cigarettes and gunpowder. His hand is calloused and curled in on itself after decades of hard, manual labor: the signature mark of a true cowboy.
“Do this often?” Dan asks conversationally. In front of them, another couple appears, all flushed and beaming from the previous dance.
Daisy shakes her head. “My friends drag me here sometimes. They met here like a decade ago, so they think I’ll meet my soulmate or something.” She gestures to where Coulson and May are raiding the snack counter. Coulson has a piece of cheese stuck to his cheek, and May laughs at him. It’s a snapshot frozen in time, a moment of true joy between the two of them. May’s usually-stoic demeanor has completely fallen around the one man she loves more than life itself.
She hates that it leaves a bitter taste in the back of her throat.
The man chuckles. “Maybe so, if all us old geezers would leave and make room for you young’uns to dance, hey?”
Daisy smiles and relaxes her shoulders a bit. The caller is queueing the music and she stares down at her boots. Two pairs of shoes appear at her right, completing the square.
She looks up, ready to give a forced smile to another old rancher and his white-haired wife . . . but the smile freezes on her face.
That’s no geriatric cowboy beside her.
He must be around her own age, probably a bit older. Striking, dark eyes look out from under a black Stetson, and the sleeves of his deep blue shirt are rolled up almost to his elbows. She notices a bit of salt and pepper in the black hair at his temples.
He has nice hands.
The small blonde girl next to him looks to be a teenager, maybe fifteen at the most. She’s practically bouncing on her heels waiting for the music to start.
Dan looks around Daisy to see the newcomers and gives a half-wave. “Well, look who the cat dragged in!”
The man to Daisy’s right smiles back. “Hey, Dad.”
“Grandpa!” the blonde girl exclaims, lifting their clasped hands in greeting.
“You’re late,” Dan scolds lightly, just as the band lifts their fiddles and the caller’s accented drawl starts the first dance.
“Bow to your partner-” Daisy turns and lowers herself slightly. Dan makes an exaggerated sweeping motion with his hand, and she smiles. “And to your corner.” She turns around to the right, and time immediately seems to slow.
She meets the man’s eyes.
They’re so kind, honest, and inviting, she thinks she might forget the little she knows about square dancing. It takes everything in her just to remember how to bow.
She can feel every motion of her muscles, every single pound of her heartbeat.
Oh, this is bad.
But then she’s taking Dan’s hand again and being swept forward as the calls start coming one after the other, circle left, then right. Allemande, promenade.
The nice thing about square dancing, Daisy remembers, is that the time you actually spend with your partner is pretty limited. The two most important people are your partner and your corner, and more often than not, you’ll end up with your corner.
Her corner.
Ah, shit.
The calls keep coming. She starts to feel the rhythm of the dance, timing her steps to the music, letting her long skirt sway with her feet, just focusing on where her hands should be. This dance has a few more different calls than she’s used to from the last couple times, and she starts to falter.
She almost trips over her own feet.
Where did her partner go? Where was she supposed to be?
Being lost in the middle of a square is probably the most embarrassing thing she’s experienced, and she feels dumb for it.
Just when she’s about to bail and just return to her original spot, a hand snatches hers and sends her into a spin, then pulls her to the outside circle to promenade home. The hands holding hers definitely aren’t Dan’s, and her heart immediately lodges in her throat. She looks up to see a black hat and a dark blue shirt.
“Thanks,” she whispers, hoping he can hear over the music.
“My pleasure.” He grins, and gives her a courtesy turn when they arrive back to his spot.
She’s had lots of . . . encounters with men. She’s not inexperienced in that department. But when his hand meets the small of her back to turn her around, she feels . . . not sparks, but more like a deep warmth that spreads out to her fingertips. If he does that one more time, she swears she’s going to pass out.
From the starting point, the caller announces a grand square. Sides face, walk backwards, in and out in a way that reminds her of a patchwork quilt.
“And reverse!”
She turns around again, backward, forward again, and when their eyes meet again and she walks toward him to clasp his right hand and face the group, she feels like taking off and practically flying away.
Pull yourself together, Johnson, she scolds herself. He has a daughter for gosh sakes. With my luck, he’s definitely married.
But there’s no ring on his finger.
It’s hard to talk while dancing. She’s constantly being swapped and spun, weaving in and out of the circle.
And yet, she keeps wishing with every ounce of her being that she’ll end up next to that mysterious man with the blue shirt again.
The universe answers her pleas, and the next promenade she’s swept up next to him, grasping both his hands and realizing, like a brick to the face, that she really enjoys feeling protected. It’s a new revelation, honestly. She’s so used to carving her own path, forging ahead no matter the opposition, figuring things out on her own. It’s how she made it so far in her career, how she’s still perfectly fine living alone in her little apartment, how she refuses to call for help when something goes wrong. Even May and Coulson, her semi-adopted parents, know that she prides herself on being hyper-independent, and won’t push when it’s not important. She’s happy with her life, with the more masculine aura she projects.
But now, holding his hands, being led around in a circle, being held at the waist and guided here and there, she suddenly feels more safe than she’s probably ever felt in her entire life. It’s a strange, completely foreign feeling. But it’s so enticing.
The caller announces the last round, and her heart drops.
She’s swept away by Dan again, having switched spots for about the tenth time already, and as he guides her home she realizes her face hurts from smiling.
“Bow to your partner, and to your corner!”
She exchanges a laugh and a thank you with Dan, who excuses himself to properly greet his granddaughter. And she’s left facing the blue-clad man.
He reaches for her hand in thanks as they finish the bow, and she’s so captivated by his smile that she almost doesn’t process his words.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name earlier. I’m Daniel.”
It takes every ounce of self control to answer in a cohesive fashion. “Daisy.”
“Do much dancing, Daisy?”
His voice is solid. Smooth and low and polished. Just barely a hint of that iconic country twang. She could listen to it forever.
“Not really,” she says with a smile, and lets him lead her slowly to the side of the dance floor. “My friends sort of dragged me here to find a date, or whatever.”
Daniel laughs at that and nods in agreement. “My dad does the same thing. Thinks he’ll finally find me the–” he makes air quotes, “ perfect partner, or something. Not sure what that means.”
There’s a split second where she’s processing his words, and she looks up to meet his eyes. At almost the exact same time, they burst out laughing.
Daisy claps a hand over her mouth, hoping her flushed face isn’t too obvious in the dim light. “Oh my god.”
She didn’t have to worry, because his face is just about as red as a beet.
He glances back at her, total hilarity filling his eyes. “What a coincidence.”
“Heads up!” A small pair of hands suddenly grabs his right arm from behind, and the blonde girl from earlier swings herself in an arc, using his elbow as an anchor point. She brushes skirts with Daisy, literal inches from collision.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry!” she exclaims, stumbling back and trying to reach out toward Daisy in a gesture of apology.
Daisy just smiles, amused. “It’s okay, don’t worry.”
And just like that, she’s gone again, leaving a chuckling Daniel and a slightly confused Daisy in her wake.
She must have shown it on her face more than she thought, because Daniel jerks his thumb in the direction the girl disappeared to. “My niece,” he explains. “She’s really the one that drags me here. Her mom–” he pauses so quickly that Daisy almost misses it, but there’s something else there. A backstory that he never shares, a twinge of a wound that just hasn’t healed yet. “–my sister ran this group back in the day.”
Behind her, another cluster of dancers is gathering, but this time in two long lines that face each other, with girls on one side and guys on the other.
Daniel’s face lights up. “I do love a good line dance,” he says quietly and with a smile, almost to himself like a one-man inside joke, then turns to Daisy and extends his hand, palm up. “Join me?”
The strangest, sharpest, most bone-shattering thrill shoots straight through Daisy even at just the sight of his hand waiting to take hers, and she throws a mental punch straight into her own gut. Stop that.
She doesn’t have to worry about the random rush of adrenaline for long, because this dance they’re thrown into is just about the most non-stop, high-energy event she’s ever experienced. Well, outside of work, that is. She tries to make light conversation with Daniel, but her attempts are completely thwarted every time. Dancers weave in and out, over and under. Couples sashay down the line and back, people clapping and cheering the whole way, music blares, feet stomp, voices laugh.
It’s like magic. And Daisy, more than most people, has never believed in magic.
When it’s finally their turn to be head couple, the room seems to disappear and all she can focus on is not tripping over her own feet. Oh yeah, and the face in front of her, grinning ear to ear. Daniel seems exhilarated, even more than she is. His neck is flushed, his eyes are almost literally sparkling. There’s a joy behind them that Daisy rarely sees in anyone. A sense of belonging, she thinks it might be. That feeling of being in your element and that nothing else matters.
He half-shouts something to her before they start, but she doesn’t quite catch it over the mayhem. When he registers her blank face, he just yells, “Follow my lead!”
And just like that, he’s gripping her hands as they take off, sashaying and skipping through the line of onlookers, and all Daisy can actually process is the proximity she is to him, and the slight musky smell of the aging wooden floorboards combined with that unmistakable sharp scent of exertion and joy.
When they get to the end of the line, he stops for just a second. Just one confusing moment, where she realizes that none of the other couples did this, and she wonders what in the world he’s thinking.
With a sly wink and all the glee in the world, he swings their hands high, spins her arm up and over her head so she does a full one-eighty, then pulls her in using the momentum from her spin . . .
And suddenly, she’s in his arms.
One foot is swung up and out, and she feels the solid support of his arms holding her weight.
She’s not one for cliches. She likes to have a firm grasp on reality most of the time, and cliches are just sentimental nonsense for people who romanticize nostalgia. But she could swear that time suddenly just . . . froze.
It’s like even her blink is fifteen times slower.
Dark, enthralling eyes stare back at her from under that black Stetson.
She notices every wrinkle at the corners of his mouth, every eyelash, every miniscule crease in the collar of his blue shirt. She’s convinced she can feel each of his fingers pressing into her sides as he holds her off the ground. One of the dancers behind him is perfectly still, frozen mid-clap.
It’s quiet.
Peaceful.
Something she hasn’t felt in years.
And then she’s spinning again. The room whirls in a streak of string lights, and he’s grabbing both her hands again to sashay back the way they came amid deafening cheering and clapping and whooping. They make it back to the front of the line, and she’s never felt more dazed.
To finish the pattern of the dance, she has to let go of his hands, turn, and skip down the row of women again, all the way to the end. And then he’s there waiting for her, meeting her with a double high-five and a breathtaking smile as they weave in and out, up and down, through and around the line of people.
It’s over too soon.
She’s completely out of breath, feeling like she just ran five miles at a sprint. Daniel raises his hand for a high-five and she hardly hears his laughing compliment over the chatter in the room. He beckons her to a more secluded corner, closer to the entrance where a draft of chilly November air feels like a breath of heaven.
“Thanks,” she half-laughs, half-gasps.
“Gets suffocating in there, huh?” Daniel agrees. He leans against a low half-wall and makes sure there’s room for Daisy. She hops up next to him, flicking her skirt up to let the cold air in, under the guise of smoothing it out.
“For someone who doesn’t dance much, you sure catch on quick,” Daniel says.
She grins at the compliment. “It’s hard not to, I guess. The music does most of the work.”
At that, he chuckles knowingly.
This is her chance.
Where is the flirting gusto when she really needs it? What’s taking her mouth so long to catch up with her brain?
Wait too much longer, she scolds herself, and the pause will be awkwardly long instead of cute.
Okay. Here goes.
“Doesn’t hurt having a great partner, either.”
She expects a witty response, but she watches as the base of his neck turns a deep red. He fiddles nervously with his opposite thumb.
But he turns to meet her gaze and his mouth crooks up into a half smile. “Right back at you.”
There are very few things in this world that can rattle Daisy to her core. You don’t grow up like she did and come out the other end remotely shy or flighty. She likes to joke that she has bones of steel, since not even sticks or stones can break her bones. She’s immune to most insults, letting things just roll off her back without a second thought. No one’s ever been able to jump scare her from around a corner, because she walks around corners always expecting the worst. Words and sentiments mean nothing. She lives her life from behind a five-foot-thick, reinforced steel bank vault wall. She can count on one hand the amount of people in the world who have ever come close to breaching her defenses, and that’s only because she consciously let them.
But this man.
This stranger she met in a repurposed barn, who’s been nothing but just respectful and old-fashioned and effortlessly warm.
He’s the one who finally makes her want to spill her entire soul and lay bare every thought, every dark corner of her psyche? Who makes her want to confide every secret she’s ever kept?
How would she explain that to a total stranger without sounding like she belongs in an insane asylum?
Short answer: She can’t.
But small talk feels too inconsequential. Too mundane and just . . . normal.
But what else does she have? The sudden onslaught of feelings she’s experiencing isn’t normal either. They’ve exchanged no more than a handful of sentences. They danced together twice . For all she knows, he could be a serial killer or worse.
(Would a hardened sociopathic serial killer blush at the most basic of compliments? No, duh.)
She needs to be rational about this.
Being rational sucks.
There’s nothing rational about the way her heart beats two hundred times a minute when he extends his hand again because the band just queued up another song, and there’s no way he’s missing this one.
There’s nothing rational about the way she can’t stop looking into his eyes, hoping beyond hope that she’ll find something there that matches the way she’s feeling right now.
There’s nothing rational about the way he slightly leans in when she nudges his arm. About the way he keeps staring at his feet and smiling just a bit too wide. About the way she wants to ask him about everything – about his niece, his sister, his life, his dreams, his past, his future, his everything in between.
There’s nothing rational about the way she lets him lead her away, letting her independent shell flake away piece by piece, feeling like she actually can open herself to being led, to being cared for, to being . . . loved?
Slow down, Johnson. Good lord.
Even just the absurdity of the thought makes her face flush red.
She’s grasping his hand, letting herself be pulled back toward the glinting, glittering lights over the dance floor, and somehow this is the most at peace she’s ever felt in her life.
It’s a pretty scene.
The dark, aging wood. The dozens of gorgeous dresses and pressed shirts, the sound of boots on the floor. The strings of little yellow lights. The gingham tablecloth at the other end of the room, covered with punch and cookies and crackers with cheese. The band up on stage, stringed instruments and brass, all glimmering in the light.
The figure walking beside her. Blue shirt and black hat, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Just a hint of a five-o-clock shadow. Intense, warm eyes that she could study all day.
And the possibility of a future that now is opening itself to her more, minute by minute, as something she never thought possible but always ached for.
“This song is my favorite,” Daniel murmurs just loud enough for her to hear and no one else.
She smiles.
Squeezes his hand.
And steps onto the dance floor.