The Grandest Game

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“You never stopped dancing,” Grayson said behind her. “Every time you move, you dance.” “I do not.” Arguing with him was the easiest thing in the world. “It’s there in the way you hold your head, like there’s music the rest of us can’t hear.” Grayson Hawthorne was a natural debater. “Every step you take, every twist, every turn, every pissed-off whirl.” He could have stopped there and won. He didn’t. “The way you stand,” he continued mercilessly, “one foot slightly in front of the other. The way you lift your heels off the ground when you’re deep in thought, like it’s everything you can do not to rise all the way to the tips of your toes. The spread of your fingers when your hands hang loose by your side. The lines of your body when you stretch those hands overhead.”