The Day Of The Wave (21 page)

'Not that much,' I say, finishing what's left of the cocktail. 

You don't talk, either?'

'We don't have much to talk about.'

'Really? You have an amazing life out here, Ben!'

'I can't talk to her,' I say, trying to keep my tone even. 'It's not that simple. Time for another bucket? This one's broken.' I pick it up.

'By broken, you mean empty?' she says, raising an eyebrow.

'Exactly, I'll be right back.'

The karaoke guy catches me on the way to the bar, and again on my way back with the fresh bucket. 'I've seen you two trying to keep it on the down-low,' he says, beaming. He's huge, hot and sweaty and sounds like he's from Essex. His beer belly is bloating out under the ubiquitous Chang T-shirt. He's boozed up outside and in. 'I'm putting you down for Endless Love - the Mariah Carey version, yeah?'

'Um, no,' I say. 'Don't do that, buddy.'

'Ah, come on, we need a duet!'

I tell him no again, go put the bucket back down on the table. Izzy's smiling lopsidedly. 'Is he going to make us sing?' 

'I hope not!'

She's buzzed already, I can see it in her eyes. She's luminous in pinks and greens and sparkles from the lights and the glitter ball. Three girls are dancing, holding a bucket each, wearing nothing but bikinis and sarongs. I'm guessing they've been in here since the rain started, straight off the beach.

'You know,' Izzy says, contemplatively, watching them twirling each other round in an epileptic's nightmare, 'if you're in London while I'm there I'm going to take you to this deli near my office. They have the best hot cross buns, you need to try them.'

'Hot cross buns?' I say, drawn to her mouth again. 

'Usually they're an Easter thing in Britain,' she says, 'but this place has them all the time, we go there most days. It's near Covent Garden. You'd love it. You'd love London. I can't believe you haven't been.'

She talks and I lose myself in her voice, the way I did when I first met her. I don't know what the hell hot cross buns are, but she makes them sound like something I could feast on and live inside and be happy with for the rest of my life. I can see her coming back more every day; the confident her, the vibrant her, the adventurous her. I imagine walking round London with her, holding her hand, riding one of those big red buses and taking photos of Big Ben. I'd be little Ben next to Big Ben; that's what she'd say. I smile. I've zoned out.
Damn, this rum is strong.

We're halfway through the second bucket when our names are called - or rather, 'Girl in green dress, guy in green shirt! Get up here!' We look at each other, only just realizing our colors match.

'I can't sing,' Izzy says now. Her tongue is pink from the juice.

'Can't because you're full of rum?' I laugh.

'Can't because I really can't!'

She tries to cover her face and bury her head in her arms but everyone's cheering for us now, stomping on the floor, clapping their hands. The three girls are wolf-whistling and one of them has taken off her sarong so she's literally standing on the dance floor in her bikini, doing some kind of weird hippy welcome dance as she beckons us forwards with her hands. 

'OK, OK, come on,' I say, holding my hand out to Izzy. She groans dramatically as she lets me pull her up but we're both grinning like drunken idiots three seconds later when we get to the mics. The music's already started. It's a slow one but it doesn't stop the buzz in the room. 

My love, there's only you in my life. The only thing that's right.

My first love, you're every breath that I take, you're every step I make.

The rum's rolling round in my brain but I can see it's getting to Izzy, more than me. She can protest all she wants but she's animated now, like she hasn't had this much fun in forever. Maybe she hasn't. She reaches for my hand. I twirl her around obligingly, like we're doing a slow dance. She gets caught for a second in the mic wire and I help her untangle herself as she cracks up, still singing, while the room whistles and whoops and dances.

'Another drink?' a guy from the bar asks us. Obviously he thinks we're too sober. 

I pause. 'I don't think so...' 

'Yes please, we'll have one more,' Izzy cuts in. 'And maybe one more after that.'

'Are you trying to get me drunk now?' I say. 

'It was your idea!' She sticks out her pink tongue, spins again next to me in a kaleidoscope of color and in my mind I'm pulling her in and kissing her sugary lips. In my mind I'm carrying her right out of this bar and right back to that bed.

Two hearts. Two hearts that beat as one. Our lives have just begun...

My love, my love, my love, my endless love.

No. What good would ever come from me starting something? Nothing good at all. But Izzy is another tsunami. She's sweeping me up, faster and faster now and I'm not entirely sure how long I can fight.

'You're wearing Ghostbusters pajamas?' Ben says, the moment I step out of the bathroom. My hand reaches for the doorframe. I'm having a little bit of trouble walking straight. I don't actually know how many buckets we had but I have a feeling it was too many because the karaoke guy told us it was one a.m when we left. That was just before he said he couldn't play
Bohemian Rhapsody
again because we'd already sung it. I look down at my pajamas. 

'What's wrong with them? I say. 

'Nothing, I love Ghostbusters,' he smiles. He's sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me, and he's only wearing red boxer shorts. I can see two of him and they're both way too sexy to be real. 'Wait, do those glow in the dark?' he says now, standing up. I see his torso coming right at me before he walks past me and switches off the light. My shirt lights up with the words
I ain't afraid of no ghost,
and he snorts, flicking it back on it again.

'You're too funny,' he says. I see two torsos again as he walks back towards me but this time he stops, puts a hand on my arm. 'Are you OK? You don't feel sick do you?'

'No, I feel good,' I lie, focusing straight at the fine patch of sandy hair at the top of his chest. In truth I feel terrible but I'm not about to tell Ben that. He chuckles again at my pajama top as he heads around me into the bathroom. I move to the bed. He pokes his head out with his toothbrush in his hand.

'Why did you bring bath salts?' he asks, holding one up. 'I wouldn't take a bath here, you might catch something.'

I groan as I stumble towards him again, take the bottle from his hands and put it back with the other two on the shelf, in a line. He watches me, obviously wondering what the hell I'm doing. I can't blame him. 

'They were my mom's', I say simply. I don't have the energy to explain I take them everywhere. I also don't really want to explain that Colin has matching Ghostbuster pajamas, or that we bought them with coupons he saved up. When I told Amy, she didn't think it was as romantic as I did. She said he was a knob.

I frown to myself, walk back over to the bed and flop down. In seconds, Ben's sitting down on the other side. I realize how heavy my feet are, and that I might possibly still be wearing my flip flops. I shake my feet. One shoe goes flying across the room, hits the desk, and makes me stumble onto the bed. 'Sorry,' I say, but Ben's moved to lean himself up against the headboard now. His arms are folded.

'You're so cute when you're inebriated,' he grins.

'Stop insulting me.'

'I'm not insulting you, I think you're awesome.'

Something in his voice - real, genuine admiration - sends the butterflies surging through me again with the cocktails and I hold my breath, concentrate hard on sitting up straight against the headboard next to him. My squinting eyes fall to his abs - the sheer ridiculous perfection of them. I lift my shirt on my stomach and inspect my own. Are they that good? They're probably not because I haven't done my Pilates in about two weeks, and I've eaten a lot of Pad Thai.

'What are you doing?' Ben asks. I drop my shirt. 

'Nothing.'

'Seriously, it's been a really long day, are you sure you're alright? Here...' he climbs off the bed again, goes to the fridge under the desk. I watch him as he pulls out a big plastic bottle of water; then he comes right back and hands it to me. I unscrew it, seeing two bottles. 'Drink as much as you can, Izzy, OK?'

'I don't normally drink buckets,' I explain, screwing up my face.

'I know, shit, I was being irresponsible making you drink those...'

'I'm a big girl. You didn't pour them down my throat.'

'Well, no, you were doing that on your own.' He smiles and observes me drinking. I spill a little down my chin and he takes the bottle as I swipe at my face. I grab it back. 

'No, I only had two!'

'What?'

'Two sips.' I take a third quickly and put the bottle down next to me, next to the photo of mom and dad I got back with my stolen stuff. When I turn to Ben he's frowning. I study the scratches on his face, still red, like my temper when I think of Kalaya attacking him. I open my mouth to say something but a buzzing sound in my ear makes me dart my head away and almost makes me fall off the bed. 

'Damn mosquitoes!' Ben jumps up on the bed quickly in his red boxers. I watch every line of his tanned body spring into action on the green blanket as he lifts his hands in the air and claps them together ferociously. 'Ah haaaaa! Gotcha!' 

'Colin wouldn't like that,' I say out loud as he shakes his hands off triumphantly and reaches them up to try and squish another one. He misses, curses, then fiddles with a tie till it comes undone and releases the mosquito net down around us. It puts us in a white mesh tent that makes us seem even more enclosed than we already are.

Ben looks down at me, eyebrow cocked. 'Why wouldn't Colin like me killing mosquitos?'

'Once when we hired a cottage in the Brecon Beacons... that's in Wales... there were some mosquitoes in the bathroom and he gathered them all up in a jar and put them back outside.' 

'Wait, what?' Ben drops back to the mattress on his haunches in front of me. 'Are you serious?' 

'Yes.' I cross my legs. I realize I must have forgotten to shave the side of one of my calves because suddenly it feels more spiky than the other one. I pull the sheet further up from the end of the bed. Hopefully he won't notice.

'Izzy? Your boyfriend put mosquitoes in a
jar?'

'Yes, he didn't want to kill anything.'

Ben tilts his head back and laughs out loud; so loud it makes me laugh straight away. I can't help it, I've never seen him laugh like this. I slap his shoulder though, get to my knees. 'Shut up!' I say, but he clutches his arm and doubles over, laughing even harder. I whack him again and he leans back against the headboard. 'Stop, Ben!'

'Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' he says, holding up his hands, 'but that is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Does he sponsor malaria, like, the benefits? Does he have a T-shirt with
Save The Mosquitos
on it? Or
Dengue Derby
? Can I get one? I want a
Dengue Derby
shirt...'

'Ben!' 

The image of poor Colin rescuing the mosquitoes, standing on a chair to make sure he could reach them comes back to me in full colored craziness and I'm having to try really hard not to laugh again myself. 'He was just being nice.'

'Izzy...' Ben stops himself, folds his arms across his chest again. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh, I don't even know the guy.' 

Neither do I anymore
. I uncross my legs and lie down flat on my back. I can still hear the rain on the windows and the howling of the wind, though it's not as strong as it was this afternoon. The fan is blowing the net about.

'It's like a princess's cape,' I say quietly, touching it with my fingers. 'I used to dream of having a bed like this when I was a kid.'

Ben lies on his back, too, looks up at the fan and rubs his eyes. 'I know,' he says after a moment. You told me.'

'When?'

'When I met you. I don't know, you told me a lot of things but you definitely mentioned a princess bed.'

I squeeze my eyes shut. 'It was in the resort, in my room, on Khao Lak,' I say as my head spins. 'The rooms were really nice. I'd never seen anything like them before.'

The memory makes us both fall silent. I'm so aware now of Ben's body, of the heat of him and the weight of him right next to me. If I wasn't so cutely inebriated, as he put it, chances are I would be an absolute nervous wreck by now, but actually, even though I can sense that things are a bit weird, I also feel pretty comfortable. I'm so tired.

'I've never slept with a guy apart from Colin,' I say out loud. Ben's grins, turns his head to me on the pillow. 

'So you keep saying.' 

I tut. 'I meant slept next to, like, in a bed with.'

'Is it weird? You and me?' he says.

'Yes.' I turn my head to face him, too. 'But not that weird. I never laughed about dengue in bed before. Or anywhere for that matter.'

He smiles at me with his perfect American teeth, shifts his whole body so he's lying on his side, studying me. His eyes are a darker blue in the low light, almost gray like the storm. The stubble round his chin is thicker. I like it; it makes him look older and even more manly. I can hear another mosquito buzzing. It must have slipped inside the net but I'm feeling floaty and dreamy now and I can't even be bothered to swipe at it. 

'So you got your notebook back, in the purse?' Ben asks, in a softer voice. 'The one with all the ideas in it for your book?'

'Yes,' I say. I'm so tired now. So, so, so sleepy.

'When are you going to start working on it?'

'On my birthday,' I answer. 'Week after next.'

'It's your birthday in two weeks?'

'Hmmmm,' I say. My limbs are feeling really heavy. I'm aware of the blanket being pulled up with the sheet, Ben switching out the light. I feel the bed move as he lies back down again and shifts position. I can feel his face close to mine on the other pillow, but I'm drifting, spinning and drifting. 

'What day is your birthday?' he asks.

'September twenty-seventh. Libra. Very balanced, like the scales,' I babble and I hear him laughing softly to himself. 'And you're a Gemini,' I follow sleepily, 'I remember. 'We're both air-signs.'