Excerpted from SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU SOONER by Jane Ward:
Chapter 7
The Disco, November 1990
The dance beat pounded, steady and unvaried. At the song’s chorus, the press of people on the disco floor raised their arms into the air in unison while colored lights strobed, illuminating the floors and walls and bodies. “Take me dancing naked in the rain!”
Noel stood apart from the scene, looking down from the balcony where the drinks were sold. She nursed a gin and tonic; she couldn’t stand the sweet, yeasty smell of ales or cider. Discotheques were unfamiliar to her and she was too self-conscious for dancing. Alone up here, she felt out of place and conspicuous.
She had come at Calum’s urging but knew no one in the crowd well except for him, and he was currently one of the arm wavers down in the crush of moving bodies. As she watched them, her overactive imagination conjured a fire breaking out, a stampede that might block a mass exit from the disco, the newspaper story she might not live to see the next day: Death, Disaster at the Disco.
“I should go home,” she whispered to herself.
“You must come out tonight,” Cal had said earlier that day on their way out of the lecture hall. He had linked his arm through hers and batted his eyes at her until she laughed. He was the first friend she had made at university, and now her closest one.
“You know I’m hopeless in crowds,” she had protested while still laughing at his mugging.
“Even introverts need to blow off steam after the grind of exams and papers. You’ll see, the minute you get out on the dance floor you can be alone in your own world, if that’s what you want.”
She’d taken a beat to give some thought to what he’d said. “Oh, all right,” she’d finally agreed, “but only because you look so pathetically sad when I tell you no.”
Cal and his easy-going ways had put her at ease from their first meeting over books at the bookstore. Other students in her course had acted aloof at first, wary of potential rivals. The art history college was competitive; museum jobs in London were scarce and highly sought-after. Such circumstances didn’t breed easy camaraderie, and it didn’t help that she was from America, still trying to find her way so many miles from home and her grandmother. But in a few short months, Cal had managed to endear himself to a large network of friends and acquaintances—male and female, foreigners and locals alike—both in and outside of university. He especially believed in balancing study with dancing.
He was also a good friend. Noel knew he’d look for her when he came up for air, and if she wasn’t there, he would be disappointed to find out she had ditched him.
Resigned, she sighed and sipped her drink. It was warm. She had asked for ice and the bartender had given her one ice cube in return. She turned to look back at the bar, wondering if there might be a different server tending who would be more generous. Blocking her view was a young man dancing by himself, eyes closed, shoulders loose, his head bobbing and keeping time with the synthed beat.
He was breathtakingly good-looking. Not cute, not even handsome. Beautiful was all she could think about him. Sleek, dark hair that looked blue-black under the recessed lighting of the bar alcove and long enough to curl slightly at the nape of his neck. Olive skin, maybe; looked it, but it was hard to tell in the low light. He was compactly built—not short, not tall—and supple, at one with the rhythm of the music. Soccer player, maybe, she thought. Football, she corrected herself, and she watched him a moment longer, certain he was too lost in the music to notice and take offense at her staring.
She smiled, shook her head at him and at herself for watching, and then looked back out over the crowd. The song was ending finally, and she could see Cal below, searching the balcony for her. When their eyes met, he held up a finger for her to stay put, and he started to push his way through the other dancers.
As she waited for Cal to climb the stairs, a new song started, opening with an odd trill of plucked guitar strings followed by a simple chord progression on the keyboard. It was a song she knew, she realized, one her mother had sung to her often when she was in second or maybe third grade—in any case, only a short time before she’d had to pack up and go live with her grandmother. Ellie would play this one song from her favorite album over and over, picking up and dropping the needle each time it ended, saying to Noel as the song opened again with those first few, funny, plucked notes, “I will stay with you. Will you stay with me? This is a song about us, sweetie, about how we’ll always be together.”
She hadn’t heard this song since she was a child. Slow, a love song—nothing like the hard-driving dance music that had been playing all night.
Cal appeared at the top of the stairs. “Noel,” he called across the room, “you missed . . .”
But the rest of what he said was lost, because someone behind tapped her on the shoulder and she turned to find the beautiful boy standing before her, his hand outstretched, palm up, fingers wiggling, calling for hers. He was smiling, and now that his eyes were open, she could see they were blue.
“Dance with me,” he said. “I can’t dance to this one alone.”
Excerpted from SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU SOONER, Copyright ©2026 Jane Ward
Song lyrics:
Naked In The Rain
Words and Music by Martin Glover and Pamela Carol McBroom
Copyright © 1990 by Universal Music MGB Ltd. and Truelove Music International
All Rights for Universal Music MGB Ltd. in the United States and Canada Administered by Universal Music – MGB Songs
International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU SOONER by Jane Ward
A Novel
When Noel Enfield is offered a secondment at a museum in London, it’s a chance for her career aspirations to finally come to fruition—but also leads to the opening of some old wounds—in this story of art, love lost, and second chances, perfect for fans of David Nicholls and Claire Lombardo.
While studying art history at a London university, Noel Enfield falls passionately in love with aspiring artist and art school student Bryn Jones. Shortly after Bryn leaves for a five-month painting trip through Italy, Noel discovers she is pregnant. She is ecstatic and believes Bryn will be too—they have plans to marry, after all. But mishaps part the two lovers, and a desperate Noel makes a split-second choice to move forward in a way that will change not only her life but also the lives of everyone she loves.
Three decades later, when she is offered a six-month secondment to a London museum, Noel decides it’s time to prove she really has moved on from that difficult period by returning to the city where she met and lost Bryn. But rather than proving she has persevered, the move lands Noel in the thick of London’s insular art world, with only one or two degrees of separation from her past and the people she once loved. After she reconnects with an old, dear friend and learns finally what kept Bryn from returning to her all those years ago, the very underpinnings of her life are rocked to their core. Some decisions made in the past can never be put behind her, she realizes, and armed with this new understanding, she sets out on a journey to reclaim what—and who—she left behind.
Fiction Literary | Fiction Family Life [ She Writes Press, On Sale: February 10, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798896360667 / eISBN: 9798896360674 ]
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About Jane Ward
Jane Ward is the author of Hunger (Forge 2001), The Mosaic Artist (2011), and In the Aftermath (She Writes Press 2021). After graduating from Simmons College, she worked in the food and hospitality industry; later, she became a contributing writer to an online food magazine and a blogger and occasional host of cooking videos for an internet recipe resource affiliated with several regional newspapers. Most recently she has contributed book reviews to Story Circle and Mom Egg Review. She loves to travel, and to document her trips through travel photography. Jane lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
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