Burning Moon (7 page)

“I guess we are,” I said, as I watched the last of the fish disappear. I heard a loud swishing sound and turned to see that Damian was standing up.

“How 'bout we find out where those hamburgers are?” he said, trying to shake some of the water off.

“Sounds like a plan. I'm actually starved.”

I'd just started getting up onto my knees when a hand reached down to help me up, and without thinking, I took it. In one swift movement Damian pulled me up out of the water and we came face-to-face. The two of us stood dead still, inches away from each other, holding hands, and for some bizarre reason I don't understand, neither of us let go.

We just stood there.

Staring.

Holding.

I could hear him breathing.

I could hear my heart beating in my ears.

He smiled at me.

I smiled at him.

And then he reached up and touched my cheek. It was so gentle and soft, my whole body responded with a shiver. I felt his finger trace the surface of my cheek and then he held up a single eyelash in front of my face.

He took a small step toward me. “Make a wish, Lilly.”

And so I blew.

And blew.

And blew.

And blew.

But the lash clung on for dear life.

And so I blew some more.

Harder.

Maybe a bit too hard.

I winced as I caught the glimmer of a tiny fleck of spittle tumbling through the air with a trajectory that put it on a collision course with his finger.

But no matter how hard…

Or how much…

That lash wasn't going anywhere.

So much for my much-needed wish.

“Oh my God,
I can't believe this
!” I jumped up and flung my arms in the air.

“What?” Damian was clearly taken aback by my sudden and rather dramatic outburst.

“I don't know whether to laugh or cry or scream or shoot myself.”

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing is going right in my life at the bloody moment and I keep making a complete idiot of myself. I mean, I set myself on fire—
fire, for heaven's sake
—and now I can't even blow an eyelash off a finger, and, and, and…”

Damian's eyes followed me as I started to pace up and down the embankment waving my arms in the air like a rag doll in a tumble dryer.

“This has got to be some kind of elaborate plot against me! My life cannot be going this badly, surely?”

“Lilly…” His tone was soft and soothing, which made me want to slap him. “That stuff could have happened to anyone.”

“Name one person that it's happened to. One person.”

Damian rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “This girl at university once wore mismatching shoes to class,” he offered pleadingly.

I swung around and looked him directly in the eye. “That's hardly the same. Besides, did her fiancé leave her at the altar the day before and did she embarrassingly throw up on everyone in class?
No!
”

I kicked some sand into the water, hoping it would serve as a good exclamation point for the end of that sentence. “You know what these past few days have felt like? They've felt like someone, or something, has been conspiring against me, turning my whole life into some kind of sick joke. I'm almost expecting Ashton Kutcher to rise up out of the water disguised as a merman and shout, ‘Surprise. You've been
Punk'd
.'”

I kicked some more sand into the water, trying to make the mother of all exclamation marks. It was all very dramatic. But I didn't care, because that eyelash was the straw that broke this camel's back. It wasn't about the lash. This was about the fact that I felt victimized by the world. That I felt like somewhere, out there, was a cinema full of people with popcorn and Coke laughing at me.

“He-he-he-he. Look, she's gonna get sick, she's gonna get sick.” *Hides behind a tub of popcorn*

“Ha-ha, look she's wearing pajamas on the plane.” *Laughs so hard, Coke shoots out of nose*

“Wa-ha-ha, she's on fire! She's on fire!” *Slaps knee and sprays popcorn everywhere*

I was angry, and kicking the sand into the water wasn't generating the kind of punctuation marks that could even remotely emphasize my current state of distress; in fact, my toe was sore. I think I hit a shell or, knowing my luck, a giant, rusty metal anchor, and now I was bound to get tetanus.

“I guess I'm just tired of crappy stuff happening to me.” I walked over to the table, sat down, and hoped that we were close enough to the Bermuda Triangle for it to magically suck me in.

“Guess what my wish was?” I said.

“What?”

“That bad shit would stop happening to me.”

Damian walked over to the table and sat down. He looked genuinely concerned.

“I've been trying so hard not to think about it, but do you know what it felt like when he didn't show up, in front of five hundred guests?”

“I can't even imagine, Lilly.” Damian reached across the table, and for a moment I thought he was going to hold my hand, but at the last second he picked up the bottle of water and poured us both a glass.

I mentally sighed; my life was a complete disaster zone.

We sat there in silence, sipping our sparkling water and listening to the bubbles pop and fizz. For some reason I thought about my wedding invitations—I'd put so much effort into them.

I'd spent hours at the paper shop choosing just the right color, texture, and thickness. Hours spent with the designer finding the right layout and design elements to make it perfect. The invites were an off-white color—Romantic Eggshell Dream was the name of the paper. They were embossed in the corners with a delicate flower design and all handwritten in calligraphy—some old lady sat there for days doing them all—and then folded them in half and tied them together with pale lavender ribbons. What a waste!

And then another thought hit me. This scandal was going to be spoken about by my family for the next millennium,
at least
. In fact, it would probably be passed down from generation to generation in the great African tradition of oral storytelling. Some great-great-great-niece of mine living in the year 2104, where robots feed you breakfast and everyone lives in hydroponic bubble suits, would still be hearing the legendary story of poor Aunt Lilly who was left at the altar in front of all her friends and family. So for the rest of my life, at every family function I would probably hear…

“Shame, shame poor Lilly. You must be heartbroken.”

“Oh shame. You must be so embarrassed. I don't know how you cope.”

“Poor, poor Lilly, maybe you should just go live out the rest of your sad, pathetic, lonely life under a rock in the middle of the desert with only lizards to keep you company.”

I was grateful when a loud voice suddenly broke through my terribly unhappy thoughts.

“Your hamburgers,” said the man in the black suit, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He started moving things around the table to make space for our food. He glanced at me with a displeased look as he bent down and picked up all the candles and flowers that had fallen over. I mentally kicked him in the groin and smiled politely.

I looked at my plate. My burger might as well have been hanging from the roof of the Sistine Chapel. It was a work of art and I almost felt bad for eating it…
almost
. But at this point, I was famished. I grabbed the burger, took an enormous bite, and started wolfing it down. It dawned on me that I didn't care that I probably looked like a hungry scavenger, frantically gnawing on the last remains of a carcass. Because the one good thing about having your life declared as a disaster zone is that things that bothered you before seemed so insignificant now.

Take eating in front of a guy, for example. Why is it that when a waiter arrives, whilst in the company of a male we're trying to impress, we become panic-stricken and in anxious trembling little voices say, “I'll have the salad, please. No dressing, no croutons, no feta, just leaves.”

We have these strict woman rules about what to eat and what not to eat on a date—no spinach or any other kind of green that clings to your teeth, no ribs or spaghetti, and definitely no soup. So we order a bunch of leaves and spend the night moving a lonely piece of lettuce around our plate, as if eating something with the calorific equivalent of air would impress him. And you know the hotter the guy, the less you're gonna eat!

But since I didn't like Damian in that way, and this wasn't a date, I didn't care if he looked at me like I was a yeti that had just emerged from hibernation and was eating the arse end off a low-flying crow.

I continued to ravage the burger, and I got so lost in the process that at some stage I caught myself making loud
mmm
sounds. I don't think I looked up once, either. I was just so focused on the task of consuming as much fat as possible. I swallowed the last mouthful and finally looked up and straight into the face of a smiling Damian.

“What?” I snapped at him, a fleck of something flying onto the table.

“Have you ever considered a career as a professional eater?” he said, putting a chip into his mouth.

Although I'd just claimed not to care, I was terribly offended by this suggestion, and he could see that.

“I mean that in the nicest way possible,” he said, pointing to the corner of his mouth in a
You've got something on your face
kind of gesture.

I grabbed my napkin and rubbed my mouth, then looked at him for confirmation that it was gone. He shook his head and pointed to the other side, and I repeated the process again, looking up for confirmation once more. But Damian shook his head again, got his phone out, and then took a photo of me. He turned it around so I could see.

How I'd managed to get tomato ketchup on my forehead was beyond me.

“Oops” was all I could manage. But before I could do anything about the splotches of wayward sauce, Damian leaned across the table and wiped my face with his napkin. He had such a look of concentration on his face as he poured a little bit of water onto it and went to work on my forehead. Then my cheek, and then the corner of my mouth. My lips tingled as the cool fabric touched them. Suddenly all I could feel were my lips and all I could see was him.

I pulled away quickly and sat back in my chair.

“Thanks.”

“Pleasure.”

This whole situation was just so,
so
bizarre. Here I was, on my honeymoon, in the most romantic place in the world, with a stranger who had just been gently, and very familiarly, wiping my face clean with his napkin. Who the hell had seen this coming?

Not even my mother's psychic Esmeralda (real name Mary) had predicted this, not that I placed much confidence in her psychic abilities, but surely something this big would have come through somewhere, considering she “read me” the day before my wedding! My mother had insisted on it. My mother didn't do anything without consulting her; she barely went to the toilet without a phone call to find out whether her bowel did in fact want to move. I'd never held psychics in very high esteem, especially not this one, who my mother met in rehab. I do placate my stepsister Stormy in the nicest way possible, though. She too professes to get “vibey vibes and the feels” about things. They're usually along the lines of, “Lilly, you must wear pink today. Or red. Maybe both. Actually, I think it's green I'm seeing, and watch out for the number 794.”

When Michael and I had first gotten together, my mother was adamant that I get our cards read to make sure we were compatible. Of course I'd said no, but then she pulled one of her famous guilt trips.

“It's fine, don't go, it's your choice. But what am I going to do now? I've already paid. Maybe I can get a refund? But it's fine if it's not for you, sweetie. Oh my God, but she canceled that other appointment for you! But I'm sure she won't mind. Like I said, no worries.”

So half an hour later I was sitting in Esmeralda's “reading room,” a dark and very dingy cottage at the back of her property. As I walked in, I was instantly deafened by the cacophony of wind chimes. Chimes made of shells, feathers, crystals, and the skulls of little woodland creatures hung like bats from her roof. The next thing to assault my senses was the incense that practically choked me, followed by the near heart attack her pet monitor lizard, Sid, gave me as his scaly tail brushed past my ankle.

And there she was, in full chiffon-draped glory, the star, Esmeralda, sitting at her little table covered in black velvet. And you know what it's like—even if you don't believe in the powers of the woman sitting across from you fingering a pack of dirty cards, you want to. My mother had obviously told her about Michael, and even though I knew that, I still soaked it all in.

“I see a man. A blond man.” She had a very fake mystical-sounding accent.

Of course, my heart did cartwheels at this point.

“Yes, I see him very clearly now.” She fanned her cards out and moved her fingers around in little circles. “I see your future with him. I see you walking down the aisle. I see he will be very rich one day and you will live in a big house.” I hung on her words like they were a magical rope that would pull me toward a happy future. “Yes, I see three children. I see blond children with blue eyes, and one is a boy and the other two are girls. And you will be very happy and in love forever.”

And of course you want to believe it all, and I did, right up until the second I held that note in my hand. Perhaps I'd wanted the fairy tale so badly that I'd missed something real?

The wind had picked up, creating little ripples on the water. I was still wet, and although the breeze was warm, I suddenly felt very cold. I folded my arms across my chest to shield myself from the intensifying wind.

“Cold?” Damian asked.

“Freezing.” I started to shiver.

The man in the black suit returned to inform us that they were expecting a storm and we should get inside as soon as possible. I was surprised by how fast and furiously the storm escalated, beating the sky into a frenzy of raging wind and rolling black clouds. By the time we'd reached our room, the rain was pelting down, soaking our already-wet clothes and hair. We rushed inside and I watched Damian get pulled into a wrestling match with the wind, until he finally managed to slam the door shut.

Thailand was a place of extremes—no doubt about it. Ten minutes ago we were enjoying a warm tropical evening, and now we were watching violent lightning severing a stormy sky. It was breathtaking.

I shivered, colder now than I'd been before, and all I wanted to do was slip into a warm bath, but then I remembered that slightly inconvenient problem—the open-plan layout of the room. I walked over to the bath and Damian must have noticed.

“I'm pretty sure I can resist the urge to look if you want to have another bath,” he said with that devilish, slightly skewed smile again. “In fact, I'd love to have one, too, so I'll promise not to peep, if you promise not to peep?”

“Why would I peep?” I felt a little uncomfortable with this conversation and its subject matter—casually devising a strategy to get naked in the same room as if we were talking about something as casual as making a cup of coffee. And then, because we were talking about it, I suddenly started to imagine Damian naked. I couldn't help it, okay? It was human nature, or something. I banished the thought quickly, hoping that my shocked blush wasn't as visible as it felt.

“Um…” I scanned the room. “Okay, you have to sit on that couch over there with your back to me. And don't you dare look, not like you did at the airport.”

“Hey, I turned around at the wrong time. It was an accident. Besides, it's not like I stared.”

“Well, let's try and not have any accidents happen this time,” I said, turning on the taps.

The bath was enormous, manufactured for optimal romance and relaxation, and stretching out in the warm water was exactly what my body needed. Of course, I made sure that my back was turned away from Damian at all times, and for added security, I'd dimmed the lights. This time, if there were any “accidents,” he still wouldn't see anything.

We sat in complete silence, and I tried not to make any sudden movements that would draw additional attention to me. “How's the bath?” he finally said, which I was glad about, because it was all starting to feel pretty damn capital
A
.

“Good.” Monosyllabic answer. I didn't want to encourage too much interaction in my current state of total and utter nakedness.

“Good.” A monosyllabic answer back.

Then more silence.

Is there some foolproof method for diffusing an awkward situation? Are there no self-help books about this common subject?
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Awkward Situations.

I could really use a few tips right now. A joke, maybe? I was terrible at telling them. And what kind of joke; I didn't see “Knock, Knock. Who's there?” doing the trick. Perhaps if we listened to music? But I didn't have any on my phone and my iPod was at home, and I certainly didn't want to listen to Depeche Mode in case I felt an uncontrollable urge to slit my wrists. Perhaps I could steer the conversation in another direction.
“So what about South Africa's current turbulent political climate and the upcoming general elections? Death penalty perhaps?”
I was fast running out of ideas when…

CRASH!

“Holy fuck.” I instinctually screamed and leapt out of the bath as it felt like an enormous bolt of lightning hit our room. The thunder was deafening and everything went very bright. Luckily, in that moment, I'd remembered something from my science class about water and lightning not being the best of friends—and it was this thought that had sent me scrambling for dry land. Everything then went very black as all the lights flickered and died.

“Are you okay, Lilly?”

“Um…” My heart was pounding. “Well, I didn't get hit or anything.”

“It felt like it hit the room,” Damian said, clearly sounding unnerved.

“Where are you?”

I looked into the darkness—my eyes had not yet adjusted and it was pitch black. “I don't know.” And then I suddenly realized that I was completely naked. I gasped. “Oh my God!”

“What?” The concern in his voice was clearly audible.

“Nothing, nothing,” I replied as quickly as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was remind him of my nakedness.

But…oh my God, what if the lights suddenly went on?

Terror took hold of me, and I strained my eyes against the darkness trying to see something,
anything
. But everything was so black and I was completely disoriented. There was a towel on the bed, that much I was sure of—but I had no idea in which direction the bed was, or even where the bath was. I decided to guess and started crab walking to my left very, very slowly. Shuffling one foot in front of the other and waving my arms around in the air in front of me. I inched my way forward, until I felt a pain in my leg. I'd walked into the corner of the coffee table, and hard.

“Ow!” I cried out loudly, wincing in pain.

“What happened?”

“I walked into something.” My leg was throbbing now.

“Just stay where you are, I'm sure the lights will come on soon.”

That's exactly what I was afraid of.

And then I heard it, the upward lilting inflection in his voice that made me realize he knew what was going on. “Oh, I see,” he said.

God I was embarrassed. The last thing I wanted was for him to start thinking about me naked. And I didn't want to wonder whether or not he was and have him wondering if I thought he was being a pervy naked thinker or—
crap!
This was awkward.

“I was looking for a towel,” I said authoritatively.

“I've got one here,” he said, and I heard a bit of shuffling.

“Why have you got a towel?” My tone sounded accusatory because for a split second I imagined him taking mine on purpose.

“I was going to bathe, so I took one.”

“Oh. Right.” Another silence, and I could practically hear the cogs in his brain turning.

“I could bring it to you?”

“Why don't you just throw it to me?” There was no way I wanted him anywhere near my nakedness.

“And how do you plan on finding it?”

He had a good point.

“Why don't you just wait until the lights come on. I'll keep my eyes shut.”

“No way!” My tone was forceful. “I'm not standing here naked.”

“Well, then let me bring it to you.”

I was hesitant to accept his offer, but I didn't see an alternative.

“Fine, but—”

He cut me off. “No groping,” he said, and laughed.

“And keep your eyes shut, in case the lights come back on.”

“Sure.”

Damian started to move toward me, and I could hear him as he bumped into things along the way.

“Say something to me, Lilly.”

“Hello, I'm here.”

I could hear Damian changing direction, and he was definitely getting closer.

“Again,” he said. He was very close now.

“Hi.”

“Right. I'm going to hold out the towel now. I think you're close enough.”

I hoped he didn't touch me. I covered my boobs with my free arm and tentatively stuck my other arm out. I waved it about, expecting to bump into him at some point—but I didn't.

“Where are you?” My arm was moving from side to side.

“Here!”

He was close, but clearly not close enough. I cautiously took a tiny step forward, not knowing that he'd done the same, and suddenly jumped as I felt something hit my stomach.

Damian responded instantly. “Sorry, I didn't mean to. Sorry. I…I didn't hit you anywhere…um…?” His tone was hesitant and I knew what he was trying to say.

“No! No! It was just my…
never mind
.”

“Okay,” Damian said. “I'm going to hold my arm out very still and you can find it.”

Yes, this was clearly a better plan, and a few seconds later I had safely retrieved the towel and wrapped it around myself. I sighed with relief. And thought I heard him do the same.

“So now what?” I felt so much better with the towel around me, but I couldn't just stand there waiting for the lights to come back on.

“If you give me your hand, I can lead us back to the sitting area.”

Damian didn't even give me the chance to respond, because a second later I felt his arm bump into mine, and our hands meet.

I remember the first time I held hands with a guy. At the time, it was the most thrilling and sexually charged thing that had ever happened to me. It was with a pimply boy called Charlie Lieberman, who sat behind me in math. One day I felt a tap on my shoulder and a little note suddenly appeared in my lap.

I ticked the second box and suddenly we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Which basically meant nothing. But after a few months, we went on our first real date. And when I say
date
, I mean that we went to a movie with a big group of friends—
and
we were chaperoned by my brother and future sister-in-law, who sat two rows behind us.

Charlie and I sat next to each other, and the atmosphere was electric. We had both strategically placed our hands on the armrest just a few inches away from each other—our little fingers almost touching. We must have then spent the next ten minutes moving our hands toward each other at a snail's pace until they finally touched. From that point, I think it took us about half an hour to finally do something that resembled holding hands. And even though I was only thirteen at the time, it was the most physically intense moment of my little life.

We sat there in silence holding hands, our eyes glued to the screen, not daring to look at each other. I can't tell you what that film was about because all I could feel was Charlie's hand. That was also the first and last time I felt it because soon after that he dumped me for Melanie Andrew. (Bitch.)

That day at the movies, with Charlie's hands in mine, I had felt something
real
. Something extremely potent. Because there's holding hands, and then there's Holding Hands (with a capital
H
). And you can instantly feel the difference.

Well,
I
instantly felt the difference…

Damian intertwined his fingers with mine. His thumb, instead of going straight to the top of my hand, slipped itself, oh so slowly, across my sensitive palm. I felt my breath quicken. I loosened my fingers so that they could gently slide down the length of his, until our fingertips brushed each other. We both moved our fingers simultaneously, letting them slip up and down, curl around and stroke.

We finally reached the couch, and I sat down. Our fingers untwined themselves and I suddenly felt a rush of intense guilt. As if I was cheating on Michael. Not that I should care, but I did. My fingers were still tingling and I wanted to see the look on Damian's face. I was very glad that the darkness was concealing mine: my blush, my smile. I wondered if he was smiling, too. Under the shroud of darkness, everything felt so much more intense. The silence was deafening, until he spoke. His voice was soft, low and gravelly. It sounded different.

“Lilly?”

“Yes, Damian?” I whispered.

More silence.

The anticipation was killing me. What was he going to say?

“Yes, Damian?” My voice was even softer this time.

The silence throbbed in my ears.

But he said nothing.

I waited for what seemed like forever. And then I heard him.

“How's your leg?”

Huh?

“My what?”

“Didn't you bump your leg?” At first I didn't know what he was talking about, and then it clicked.

“It's fine.” I snapped at him as anger bubbled up inside me.

I was angry. Furious even. But it wasn't at Damian. I was angry with myself for letting my thoughts go somewhere they shouldn't have. I was being such a moron…what was I expecting him to say to me? That he liked me? We didn't even know each other, and I had a fiancé. Well, at least I
had
one…

Clearly I was suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. I was obviously still in a state of shock and it was seriously impeding my judgment and turning me into an utter idiot.
What the hell was I doing with this guy?
This was the second time tonight we'd held hands, and it was entirely inappropriate and weird and wrong and strange and all those kinds of words.

I heard a buzz and the lights flickered back on. I blinked several times as my eyes adjusted to the brightness. Damian sat opposite me, looking in my direction, and I quickly averted my eyes, furious for what I was letting myself feel.

“What's wrong? You look angry?” Damn, I hated that he was so observant. This was something completely new to me. Michael was as observant as a doorstop. In fact, I was always having to spell things out for him.

“Nothing.” I spat the word out quickly but I didn't really mean it. “Everything's wrong, okay? It's all gone so, so wrong. How has it all gone so bloody wrong?” I paused. I felt angry and victimized by the world.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see he was looking at me curiously.