Gone (17 page)

“Hungry?” I ask against her mouth.

Bex hesitates twirling one of my dreads in her fingers. “Yes.” The way she says it makes it clear she is not hungry for food.

“Excellent, I have dinner.” I drag myself away from her touch and reach into the cool bag I left on the sand hours before.

Digging deep I find cans of coke, and packages wrapped in foil. “Here.” I chuck one over at her.

“Very romantic.”

“I aim to please.”

I watch as she opens up the foil packet. “
A cheese and pickle sandwich?” 

“Only the best for our first date.”

“No cider?”

“I figured you wouldn’t fancy one after the vodka last night.” I watch as her skin turns a notch paler and then a red fiery burn lights up her cheeks.

“Well that’s true I guess.”

She lifts the sandwic
h to her nose and gives a dainty sniff. I grin into the can of coke I have popped open. “I’m not going to poison you.”

“Well you can never be too sure.”

“So what was with the vodka last night?” I curse myself silently. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to ask, but the question slips out into the night air.

Bex leaves me hanging for a moment as she makes a long job of chewing her bite of sandwich. “Sometimes I get really angry at myself.” Her face flickers with an internal thought. I wish I knew what it was.

“And vodka helps because?”

Bex looks intently at the sand surrounding her toes as if she is trying to find the answers to the universe there. I don’t want to ruin this date by talking about sensitive subjects so I change the subject before she can answer. “Fancy a swim.”

“You’re kidding right? If it’s cold during the day, it will be bloody freezing now?”

“It’s warmer now.” I know this for a fact.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Try it.”

“I don’t have my bikini.”

“And? You have underwear on?”

“Joshua, you are more than aware of the fact I don’t have any underwear on my top half.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed?” The schoolboy giggle I make ruins my outrageous lie. I am so aware of her lack of underwear it is almost painful.

I need to see my challenge through though so I stand on the blanket and start to undo my jeans. “Well I am not scared, and I have more to lose by the water being cold than you do.”

This makes her laugh out loud. “I think you may be covering your own back. Are you making an excuse for a teeny tiny?”

“Maybe.” I wink at her and quickly push down my jeans and stand on the sand in my boxers and T-shirt.

“Joshua, anyone could walk along!”

“Better run then.” I turn away from her, strip off my remaining clothes and the dash for the water’s edge.

Fuck that’
s cold.

Okay, this may have been a mistake. It really is very cold. I hear her call from the water’s edge. “You forgot your towel!”

Well this could be very embarrassing.

I wade out further and then t
urn to face her. She is stood on the damp sand dressed only in her knickers.

Good grief.

Cute knickers though.

“Turn around,” she instructs. I don’t hesitate but follow her direction. I try and listen for the sound of splashing or gasping, cursing even, but there is nothing. I am about to turn to see if she has run off with all the towels and my clothes when I feel her wrap her arms around my waist from where she is standing behind me. Her lips kiss along my shoulder blades and I feel goose-bumps not caused by the frigid water spread over my skin.

“You know I have seen you naked before.”

“I know.” I feel her lips smile against my skin.

“So can I turn around now?”

Instead of answering she edges me around with her hands until we are face to face. The sea is as still as a pond, the water covering us just to our waists. I slide my hands around her back and pull her in towards me until we are pressed tight together. The cold water has no effect on me as I feel her breasts pushed up against my chest.

Bex is watching me intently and the silence between us is so deafeningly loud I can’t even hear the tide on the shore any more. “You look like you are made out of the moon,” she says.  The girl made of the sun thinks I am made of the moon.

I use my fingers to tilt her mouth up to mine. Her lips open hungrily and I move myself closer still. She lowers a hand and slides it along my hip, for a brief moment I think she is going to aim lower but then I realise she is touching my tattoo.

“What is your tattoo, Joshua?”

I catch her fingers from my skin and raise them to my lips. “I’ll show you one day.”

“I want to see now.”

“
Patience, Rebecca.” Finally I crush us together until I can no longer feel anything except her skin burning into mine and I know that I will always feel her skin burning into mine even after she is gone.

EIGHT DAYS TO GO

Bridge Cottage

St Agnes

Cornwall

19th August 2013

Dear E,

Did you ever think I would be the sort of girl to skip around a castle? Me neither.

What about a date?

Skinny dip?

How can I be doing all of this without you?

You’d like him. You’d probably like him a bit too much and we would end up in one of our twenty minute strops Do you remember those?! Remember the time we sulked the whole way through Hollyoaks until my dad came in and told us he had ice cream, and then we both went running through to the kitchen screaming our heads off. Then we fought over who got which flavour.

If I had the chance again I would give you the chocolate. I would give you the chocolate every time.

I wish you could meet Josh-u-a. I wish that more than you will ever know. I wish I didn’t have to keep him from you but if he knew about you, I don’t think I would get to do the things like I have today again. And I can’t give them up quite yet. Not quite yet. Just a few more days of this and then I will go back to how things were before.

Before him.

Miss you as always

B.

xx

Ps: Did you know driftwood fires are blue? I know! Me neither!

Rebecca

Breakfast

“Pancakes.”

I am asleep but I am pretty sure I just heard someone mention pancakes.

Oh yeah I so did.

“Pancakes are the best way to start the day.”

I roll a little and face Joshua who has a sleepy smirk on his face. Last night after I got in from the date I said a quick hello to Mum and Dad before running up the stairs to my room where Josh was waiting for me. He lay on the bed as still as a statue while I counted off my bangles. Then I pounced on him.

“Pancakes are a fattening way to start the day. Muesli is far better for you.”

“Well you could do with some fattening up.” He slides one hand up along my bare midriff, running his fingers along my rib cage.

I hold my breath in expectation of where his hands may go next. I am not disappointed. He smoothes his warm touch over my right breast and I feel my entire body respond exactly the same way it has all night. Like I am smouldering with anticipation.

We haven
’t slept a huge amount, just lying in the dark talking, kissing and touching. Not much else than that. Joshua is determined that whatever this is we are doing for the next few days we are going to do it properly. No regrets, he told me. Nothing to look back on and wish that we had done differently.

It’s frustrating but also making me smile like crazy.

Too much smiling. I am going to have to hide from Mum and Dad today, otherwise they will turn on their parenting super detective skills and work out that I have been skinny dipping, and spent the night practically naked alongside a boy with dreadlocks. I am pretty sure that will be the end of my tuition fees.

I must remember the tuition fees. It keeps slipping my mind but I must focus on it.

I should probably clarify that it is me who has been ‘clothes off’ all night. For some reason that I can’t quite explain, I still have not managed to get close enough to Joshua’s tattoo to find out what it is. Last night in the sea it was too dark and all night, every time my hand strayed to investigate he pulled me away. It’s a little annoying. Why won’t he let me see?

“Okay, so I have got to go before your dad catches me sliding down the drain pipe.” Joshua kisses under my ear with his words. In response I slide my legs around one of his thighs and edge myself closer.

“Then what?”

“Then what? Let me think. I will pick you up, take you for a surf lesson and introduce you properly to my friends, if that is okay with you? And possibly my Aunt May.”

I scrunch my face a little at this. During the night as we whispered and touched, Joshua told me all about his parents being killed when he was young. It made me feel sick to my stomach. He went on to tell me all about his Aunt and about meeting his friend Faye the first day. I still think she is the girl in the paintings but I didn’t bother saying anything. We did agree to hold our own secrets and at the end of the day, what does it matter? I haven’t told him everything about me either. I am not sure his Aunt is going to like me though. Something about the way he held his arms tighter around me as he described her to me makes me realise that she might not be my biggest fan. Not that anyone ever has been.

“Okay. I can do that,” I say. Although I am not sure that I can. I am not the kind of girl that gets introduced to friends and family.

“How quick can you get ready?”

“Why?”

“I fancy a race.”

“No.”

“Half an hour, lets go.” Joshua jumps from the bed and catches his jeans up from the floor. I use the opportunity to conduct a full out ogle of his washboard stomach. I have a distinct urge to trace my tongue along it.

I give my head a shake when I realise he has been talking to me. “Sorry what?”

“Do I even want to know what you were thinking then?”

“Probably not, no.”

“Okay. See you in thirty minutes.”

He levers himself out of the window and I wrap myself in my duvet and follow him over to the window sill. “Okay, crazy hyper person.” I whisper /shout after him.

At the bottom he grins up at me and offers me a salute which makes me snigger as I watch him jog down the lane back towards town.

After he is out of view I turn back into my room and catch a glimpse of myself in the dressing table mirror. I don’t recognise the girl covered in orange freckles, her hair is standing on end and she has a wide cheek splitting smile all over her face.

I avert my gaze from the stranger in the mirror and focus on the wallpaper behind it.

Bloody hell.
I’ve never noticed how truly terrible it is. All giant pink roses. I stand up and slide my finger nail under the edge of a panel. It takes a few moments but eventually I get a good grip and rip the whole lot off. I work another section and pull that off too. Leaves of rose painted paper land on the floor by my bare feet.

I’ve cleared half the wall when I realise what I am doing. I am decorating a room I never expected to stay in.

***

“
Emmm!” I am standing at the top of the stairs to the attic screeching as loud as I possibly can. Joshua left twenty five minutes ago and all I have done since then is managed to strip half the wallpaper in my room.

“What?” Emily comes to the bottom of the stairs and looks up at me expectantly.  I am still wrapped in a duvet which I am sure looks odd in itself, but she chooses not to comment.

“I need your help,” I state.

This makes her hesitate. They are possibly words I have never said before. “Doing what?”

“Come and see.”

“What on earth is going on?” Mum walks along to join Emily at the bottom of the stairs, stopping in surprise when she sees my duvet outfit and stares up at me inquisitively.

“Oh, you can come too.” I wave at them both and then quickly head back into my room to fling some clothes on and fluff my pillows removing all trace of my overnight – not sleeping a wink – guest.

Mum walks in the door first and comes to a halt just inside. Emily is hot on her heels and looks about admiringly at the mess I have made.

“Aren’t you supposed to be seeing Josh?” asks Emily.

“Yeah, how do you know?”

“He is in the front garden talking to Dad.”

Shit.

“Good maybe he can help too,” I say.

Mum looks about the room, her quick light brown eyes taking everything in. The unpacked suitcase, my biker boots in the corner that I haven’t worn in days and my bangles which are still on the dresser.

Double shit.

I walk over and sweep a handful up and shove them on my wrist. I don’t have time to count them now.