Writing Our Song (19 page)

Jeremy walked past doors until he arrived at number nine and unlocked it.  Pushing the door open he then stood aside and made a dramatic gesture.

“Ladies first,” he said.

“Thank you, kind sir.”

Upon entering the room, I saw that there was a combined shower and toilet room immediately to the right, the entire floor tiled and subtly sloping towards a drain.  Directly ahead after about ten feet were three steps down into the bedroom, with a sliding glass door on the wall furthest from the front door opening on to a small private balcony. The balcony overlooked precisely nothing but a chain link fence and some scraggly trees, which were themselves set on the rear boundary of some set of stores that fronted on to a different street.

I dumped my backpack on the ground unceremoniously and rubbed at my shoulders, hoping that the heaviest thing I had to carry for the next seven days was a ludicrously girly fruity drink with a small umbrella in it.  Jeremy leaned his pack carefully against the wall, he had a few gadgets in there that would probably not withstand being slammed on the unforgiving tiles as well as my bikinis would.

Stepping up behind me I felt his strong hands push mine away and take over the shoulder-rubbing duties.  I let my arms drop to my sides and closed my eyes, leaning back against him as the weariness of all the travelling it took to get this far seemed to finally catch up with me.

Jeremy’s hands slid from my shoulders, down the length of my arms, the very tips of his fingers just brushing the sides of my breasts, bringing a playful smile to my face.  Lower they roamed until he wrapped his arms around my midriff, partially supporting my weight, and gave me a loving kiss on the neck.

I turned in his arms to face him and pulled my top off over my head suggestively, leaving just my simple bra to cover the nakedness of my upper body.

“Do you know what I’m thinking?” I asked.

Jeremy smiled and leaned in to kiss me on the lips, but stopped an inch or two short and pulled back, a suspicious look on his face.

“It’s swimming, isn’t it?  You’re thinking about swimming?”

“That’s right, J-man, but maybe later on you can have your way with this damsel in distress.”

“You
sure
?”

My God I wanted him right there and then, my heart and body argued relentlessly with my mind… but I wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weather and the location too. I was going to be with him my whole life, but probably would never come back to this tiny island as long as I lived.

“Yeah…”

“OK then.”

With one last squeeze, he let me go and went to his back pack to find his swimming trunks.  I knew I’d be paying later, in the best possible way, for making him wait.  The thought of it almost made me pull him towards the bed, but instead I searched through my backpack to find a bikini to wear.  My heart was fluttering with excitement, I loved how even after being with him for six years he could still make me feel like I had butterflies in my stomach.

“Love you, babe,” I said.

Jeremy stood with his swimming trunks in his hand and began to get changed.

“Love you too, Bea.  Thanks again for talking me into this holiday, I never really considered the possibility of just going to a nice place where nobody knew me.  It’s quite a relief, actually.”

I finally tracked down a matching top and bottom and changed into them while Jeremy retrieved some beach towels from the bathroom.  When he came back he was also carrying two set of snorkeling masks and flippers.

“Hey, we haven’t been snorkeling in a while, want to?”

“Yeah!”

Jeremy handed me my mask and fins as we walked out the door, then locked it and tucked the keys away inside a Velcro-sealed pocket on the inside of his swimming trunks.  We passed the pool again and I saw three of the women sitting in the shade at various tables in the Oasis bar glance over and then do a double take at the sight of my husband.

Even without the expensive suits and Italian sports cars, he was quite eye-catching.  Wearing nothing but his swimming trunks, his perfect six-pack abs were on full display.  I turned my head and had to admit he looked like a Greek God making a triumphant return to the modern world.  Without the huge bushy beard, though.

I skipped across the road, the tar seal nigh-on incinerating my feet, finally getting out of the fire and into the frying pan when I stepped into the almost-as-hot sand.  I took a few more paces before throwing my towel down and hopping on to it, so as to give myself a safe platform to put the mask and fins on from.

“Did you see those women checking you out?” Jeremy asked, standing on his own towel.

“Shut up.”

With my mask and fins securely attached I proceeded walking backwards in the direction of the ocean, as I had been taught how to do back when I first snorkeled.  Jeremy walked forwards, taking big comical waddling steps to avoid the fins catching on the ground and tripping him up.

The water first lapped around my ankles and then splashed around my legs until I let myself collapse backwards and rolled over to face the bottom, blowing any water out of the breathing tube that had managed to get in and kicking to propel myself into even deeper waters.  I had been expecting it to be cold, but the water was lukewarm, like a bath that had been poured an hour ago and forgotten about.

The water was as clear as any ocean I had ever swam in and as the ocean washed away the sweat and dust of our travels, I felt invigorated.  A few fish, though less than I had expected, swam lazily here and there, seeming to give us a cursory glance before determining that there was no possible way we could swim fast enough to catch them and just carrying on their fishy business.

At last, the holiday had really begun, just Jeremy, me, and the fish!

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