A/N: Terribly sorry for the delay in chapters, but I conveniently enough managed to get another story deleted, and was suspended from updating for a week. Anyway, I'm back now, as you can see. And Storm Front, I am working on a sequel to Anything Fiercer and The Glare of His Eyes. I'm having problems with the plot, however, and it will take a while before I post any of it. Oh, and to my knowledge, Pounce and Misto don't have anything going on. But what do I know, I'm just the writer...

Disclaimer: Still don't own CATS. I also don't own the song being described in the end of the chapter. Cookie points to you if you know who does.

Nine: Some Enchanted Evening

She wore a white dress that must be new, since Tugger had never seen it before. Her hair was being kept from her face with a white ribbon, pearl earrings adorned her ears, and she had a thin silver chain around her neck. She also had dainty white shoes on, and she was smiling brightly at him.

"Hi," she said shyly.

Tugger felt a strange sensation of pride fill his chest. This was his date for the dance. She looked nice, and now everyone would see that. This would be an enchanted evening, in more than the glaringly obvious way.

"Hi," he said. "You look lovely."

"Really?"

"Really. White's your colour."

"Thank you." Paige paused for a moment. "You look really nice too."

Well duh. Of course he did. Tugger smiled and thanked her anyway, and then he offered her his arm.

"Shall we?"

She accepted it, grinning. "Okay."

"Wait!" Mrs Talbot cried out and ran up to stand in front of the door, to stop them from leaving. "First we must take your picture! Such a cute couple!"

"Muuum!" said Paige impatiently and a little embarrassed. "We should really be going."

"You'll thank me for this later, sweetheart."

Mrs Talbot raised the camera, and Paige resigned. Tugger put his arm around her and the couple smiled broadly into the lens. FLASH.

"There," said Paige's mother contentedly and patted the camera. "Have fun."

"Thanks mum! Bye!" Paige poked her head into the living room. "Bye dad!"

Mr Talbot grumbled something. Paige rolled her eyes and returned to Tugger's side.

"It was very nice meeting you, Mr Tugger," said Mrs Talbot and smiled at him.

"You too, ma'am," he replied politely.

Then Paige dragged him outside, and the door slammed shut behind them. Tugger lead her to the car, which she 'oooh'ed and 'aaah'ed over, and they sat down inside it. Tugger nervously placed his hands on the steering wheel, and murmured the name of Paige's school. The car started up immediately and merrily rolled on. Tugger tried to concentrate on pretending like he was driving, but Paige didn't seem to focus much on how he handled the car at all. He was thankful for that. If she had shown any interest in anything but the dance, she might have noticed that Tugger was just turning the wheel at random when he thought saw fit.

They didn't speak much at first. Paige was fiddling with her necklace and looking out the window, clearly thinking about what would happen tonight. Tugger dared to take his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her.

"You okay, love?"

She jumped and looked up. "Oh. Yeah. I'm fine. Just a little nervous."

"What'd you got to be nervous about? If anyone should be nervous, it's me."

Paige looked surprised. "Why's that?"

"Because you look so wonderful tonight, some guy might try and steal you away from me."

Paige giggled, and Tugger smiled. Mission accomplished.

"There's my girl," he said. "Cheer up now. It'll be fine."

They pulled up outside a large grey building, and there, the car abruptly stopped. Paige looked a little confused.

"Tom, you can't stay here. You have to find a parking space."

"Parking space?" Tugger frowned. Then realization dawned. "Oh right! A parking space! Um. Yeah. Tell you what, you go ahead and wait for me while I find that, and I'll catch up."

Paige seemed hesitant. She turned her head to look at the door to the school. They were open, and in front of them stood a group of girls Paige's age, laughing and talking to each other. Behind them, there was definitely a party going on. The sounds of it leaked out into the street, and they could both hear it. Paige looked at Tugger.

"Okay. I'll wait for you inside."

"Won't be a minute, love."

Paige stepped out of the car, closed the door, and carefully made her way towards the group of girls. Tugger turned his attention to the car and tried starting the engine again.

"Come on, my pretty," he murmured softly to the steering wheel. "Find me a parking space. Um. A close one. Please."

The car started hesitantly, as if it wasn't completely certain what its master wanted from it, but it left the street right in front of the school and drove into a nearby alley. There it stopped. Tugger nodded, pleased, and petted the dashboard.

"Good car."

He pocketed the keys, went outside and walked back to the school to meet up with Paige. He could see her talking to the girls outside the school, and that made him frown. The girls had looks of distain on their faces, and Paige was suddenly looking like she'd walked right into a lion's den. Her eyes darted back and forward, desperately seeking help. Tugger walked faster. He could hear the girls speaking now.

"So you dared to show up alone then, Talbot?" sneered one of them, and from her body language Tugger could see that she was the undisputed leader. "That's really pathetic, to come to a dance alone."

"Really pathetic," echoed another girl.

Paige mumbled something that Tugger couldn't hear, but he was proud to notice that there was something defiant in her voice.

The leader, on the other hand, was not impressed. "Yeah, right... And where is this guy, if you don't mind me..."

"Excuse me."

Paige sighed with relief as Tugger came up to her and placed a kiss on her forehead. He smiled apologetically, not caring about the girls who were all standing there staring at him with their mouths open.

"I hope I wasn't gone too long."

She shook her head. "Just a few minutes."

"Good." He kissed her again. "Want to go inside?"

Paige peeked at the girls and grinned. "Yeah."

Tugger turned around, pretending that he had not noticed them until now. "Oh I'm sorry, how rude of me! I'm Tom Tugger. I'm Paige's date for the evening."

"I..." said the leader, staring unashamedly.

Tugger looked at Paige. "Not very talkative, is she?"

"She usually is," said Paige. Her mirth was clearly showing in her eyes, and her hand thankfully caressed Tugger's. He took her by the hand and squeezed it gently.

"Wonder why she's suddenly struck dumb, then." Tugger shrugged. "Ah well. A pleasure to meet you, ladies." He looked at his date, paying the girls no more heed. "Shall we, Paige?"

"Absolutely."

He offered her his arm once more, and together they went into the building. The dance was being held in the school cafeteria, which had been decorated with streamers in all colours of the rainbow. In the ceiling hanged a large mirrored ball that cast its reflections on the walls and floor, highly appealing to the cat that Tugger had been once. He suppressed an urge to swat at the reflections and continued taking in the room. It was pretty dark, and only a few coloured lights had been put up to provide illumination on the dance floor. By one side of the room stood a table with two bowls of liquid, one red and one yellow, and a number of plastic cups. Around it stood several teenage boys, awkwardly lumped together since no one dared to dance yet.

The girls stood together at the other side of the room, casting long, nervous glances at the boys and hastily looking the other way when the object of their affection saw them.

'Ah, behold the humans courting,' thought Tugger and shook his head in bemusement. 'So much easier with cats. At this rate, no one will ever get on that dance floor.'

He held out a hand to Paige. "So, what do you want to do first? Dance?"

The music was loud, but not so loud that they had to shout to hear each other. It was a heavy drum beat that was so completely different to Jellicle tunes that Tugger felt a little bit uncomfortable, but he wasn't about to let her know that. To his immense relief, though, Paige shook her head.

"I thought maybe we could have some punch before we dance?" she suggested.

"Fine by me."

He followed her to the table, where she picked the yellow liquid and handed him a cup with the red. Tugger tasted it gingerly. It was very sweet, with an intense flavour that reminded him a bit of a perfume Paige had worn once. The perfume had been much too strong for her, and she had only worn it once, but Tugger remembered.

"Not bad," he shrugged.

She relaxed a little. "We can dance now, if you want."

Before Tugger could reply, a girl came over to them. She had brown hair and freckles all over her nose, and her dress was, as far as Tugger could tell in the poor light, as red as the drink in his glass. She was also smiling.

"Hi Paige," she said cheerfully.

Paige looked surprised, but smiled back. "Anne, hi! I didn't think you'd show up tonight."

"Yeah, I wasn't, but then my mum felt that I was being antisocial and she got all worried and started going on and on about the importance of contact and stuff like that..." The girl, Anne, waved a hand around in the air and shrugged. "So I went, just to get her off my back." She suddenly noticed Tugger, and her eyes widened just a bit. "Oh. Hi. I don't think we've met."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Paige rolled her eyes at herself. "Anne, this is Tom Tugger. My date." She said the last part with a certain amount of delight, and then she turned to Tugger. "Tom, this is Anne Powell. She's in my English class."

Tugger shook Anne's outstretched hand. "Nice to meet you, Anne."

"L-likewise. Wow. Um. So, how did you two meet?"

"I walked into her and spilled her stuff on the street about a week ago," said Tugger honestly. "And then we went for coffee."

"Which he hated," put in Paige with a sly grin at her date. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you always order tea nowadays."

Anne frowned at Tugger. "You've never had coffee before that? That's, that's a little weird."

"Well, I am a little weird." He shrugged disarmingly and took Paige's hand again. "She likes me anyway. Isn't that right, love?"

"Mmm," sighed Paige dreamily and leaned against him slightly.

Tugger smiled at first, and then with a bang he remembered what he must do. Break her heart. He felt it like a cold chill down his spine as realization hit, and tried to shrug it off.

'Not yet,' he thought. 'Wait until the end of the evening. Don't spoil this night.'

He smiled at Anne. "I hope you don't mind, but Paige promised me a dance, and I'm going to hold it to her."

A few couples had managed to sneak up to the dance floor by now, and were slowly dancing to the soft voices of a man and a woman proclaiming their everlasting love to each other. It seemed fairly uncomplicated, thought Tugger. Just basically hugging and rocking in sync with the music. He was thankful for the slow dance, since he had a feeling it was different when the music was upbeat.

Paige excused herself to Anne, who watched them go while sipping on her punch. The couple made their way to the centre of the dance floor. Since Tugger was so much taller than she was, Paige had to stand on her tiptoes to reach and put her arms around his neck like the other couples did, but it worked better when Tugger crouched down a bit. They began dancing, slowly. Paige was smiling a little shyly, and her cheeks were flushed as per usual, but she didn't avert her eyes. She kept looking at him like he was the grandest thing in the world. Usually Tugger would have welcomed that, but now he only felt like a prick.

While the man and the woman in the song sang that they wouldn't need dreams anymore after this, and that love goes on and on, Tugger and Paige danced like it was the last night of the world.