Sometime around sunset, as the evening buffet was being laid out, I got something that felt a little bit like a second wind—although given the day I’d had, it was more like a fourth or fifth. Grabbing Oliver by the hand, I dragged him towards the dance floor where my friends were already clustered. And suddenly it was like seeing a decade telescoped in front of me. There were the James Royce-Royces, inseparable as always, except now James Royce-Royce had Baby J strapped firmly to his chest. And there was Priya, still doggedly goth-stomping to a song you couldn’t goth-stomp to, except the girl who didn’t do relationships was now in a relationship with two other women. And there was Bridge, except she was on the other side of the room, in the arms of the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. Which felt bad for a moment, then good, then something else that was neither. A sort of soft, nostalgic ache for a time you didn’t particularly want to go back to but resented that you couldn’t.

Then I noticed Oliver was being slightly resistant. “Lucien, you know I’m a terrible dancer.”

“You’re good at everything,” I shouted over the music. “It’s one of the things I like-slash-find-intimidating about you.”

“There are many things I am poor at, Lucien, and dancing is one of them.”

I kept dragging. “Your dancing can’t be anything like as bad as my cooking.”

I waited for a reply, but there wasn’t one.

“Well?”

“I’m afraid I can’t think of a rebuttal. Your cooking really is that bad.”

“Then dance with me.”

“Lucien…”

“Seriously”—I stopped dragging and stepped in close—“dance with me.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “If it will make you happy, but be warned I am not exaggerating. If I were on Strictly Come Dancing, they’d put me with Anton du Beke.”

“You know,” I told him, “I would legitimately love to see that.”

We hit the floor just as the playlist flicked over from “Thinking Out Loud” to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me).” And I did. I did want to dance with somebody who loved me. And I was. Which was pretty cool.

Although it turned out that Oliver’s dancing was, in fact, as bad as my cooking. All elbows and rocking side to side like a dad at a disco, which, thinking about it, was the age group we were both rapidly entering. And wasn’t that a sobering thought.

The soberingness of my thoughts must have leaked onto my face because Oliver abruptly stopped flailing and stood stock-still in the swirl of bodies. “I told you I was terrible at this. If you’re embarrassed, it’s your own fault.”

“You could never embarrass me.”