by Jo Watson
And then something awful happened: the room erupted into a cacophony of fake, forced laughter. We sounded more like a pack of hyenas than a happy group of friends. And you just knew that under the hahahahahahas were deep feelings of hatred and annoyance. But no one was going to show them, so we all just pretended to find everything very amusing and interesting.
“Your rooms are ready.” Thankfully the petite masseuse interrupted the artificial merriment.
“Rooms?” Trevv’s keen lawyer senses had kicked in. “Didn’t you guys get a couple’s room like we did?” He was testing us again, I could see it in the way he ran his eyes up and down, as if trying to read us like a column of words.
“There were none available when we booked.” The answer just flew out of my mouth but was quickly rebutted when the masseuse informed us that there was indeed a couple’s room available.
“Great. Well that’s good news!” I quickly piped up, trying to look genuinely happy as the therapist indicated for Chris and me to follow her.
But it wasn’t good news. It was the worst news ever. Chris and I were going to share a massage room. Half-naked I might add.
CHAPTER TEN
I looked at Chris.
And he looked at me.
I cleared my throat.
Chris cleared his.
I scratched my head—it wasn’t itchy.
Chris ran his fingers through his hair—I doubt it was necessary.
I pretended to smell a flower.
Chris pretended to look out the window.
“So…” I finally mustered the courage to speak.
“So…,” Chris echoed back to me.
“So…” Words had officially escaped my brain. “Um…”
Then silence.
A silence that was so loaded and loud that it was deafening.
And then thankfully he spoke.
“Okay, let me be the first to say that this is awkward.”
The relief that came from acknowledging the situation for what it was, was instant.
“So awkward.”
“So what are we going to do?” Chris said, peering around the door to check whether the therapists were coming yet.
“We could not have the massage and just sit here for an hour pretending we were?” This was the only thing I could think of at the time.
Chris shook his head. “I think that ex of yours is starting to get suspicious.”
“So you’re saying…that we should…together…in the same room…almost naked?”
I looked around—there was nowhere to get dressed or undressed, and there was hardly any room between the beds, either. Everything was open, and very, very romantic. Clearly the couple’s room was laid out for maximum relaxation and optimum romance; magnolia flowers lay scattered across the floor, and bright pink bougainvillea graced the pillows of the beds.
“Well it’s not like we’ll be sharing the same massage bed.”
“But we’ll be half-naked. In the same room.”
Chris shot me one of his mischievous smiles. “Not as weird as if we were both totally naked!”
“This is no time for jokes, Chris.”
Knock, knock.
We both turned and looked at the door, as if some kind of dreadful creature was lurking behind it, ready to rush inside and pounce.
“Are you ready yet?” the little French voice asked softly through the door.
“Give us another minute, please.” Chris was quick with his reply and then walked over to me. He squared off and looked me straight in the eyes.
“It won’t be that bad. I’ll turn around and you can undress. I won’t peep, I promise.”
I looked at Chris for a moment, scrutinizing him, trying to weigh up his character—a character that, quite frankly, I knew absolutely nothing about. And my conclusion was this: This boyfriend farce was the stupidest thing I’d ever been a part of.
It was a mess from which I didn’t know how to untangle myself. It was out of control and it had gone way, way too far. I could no longer perpetuate it. This was not me. So I decided right there and then that I would put an immediate end to it. No matter how embarrassing. No matter how much smug satisfaction Trevv and Tess would get out of it. But just as I was about to throw in the towel—literally, I was holding one—I heard the sarcastic bleating of Trevv as he walked past.
“Enjoy your massage, guys.” There was a pause, and I could almost hear his thoughts, I know we’ll enjoy ours. His last words dripped with a kind of slimy sexiness that was repulsive.
And that was it. All he needed to say. The smug-eyed, self-righteous, self-serving, ego-inflated bastard turd had challenged me…
“Oh we will,” I shouted back. “Trust me. We will. It’s going to be sooo good. Isn’t it, baby?”
I shot Chris the kind of look that said, If you don’t act along now, I will beat you over the head with something hard.
Chris jumped in quickly like a good little student. “So good.”
Once Trevv and Tess were out of earshot, I turned to Chris. “Now take your clothes off and get on that bed immediately!”
That boyish smile lit up his face again and I could sense a clever, witty retort coming on. “And don’t you dare say something clever and witty now, just get naked and onto that bloody bed.”
My finger was out now, waggling and pointing fervently. This seemed to have the opposite effect, though, because instead of imbuing him with a healthy dose of fear and respect, it only seemed to amuse him further.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving me a military salute before pulling his shirt off over his head.
My rational, intellectual brain told me to turn away immediately, but curiosity (bad, bad, naughty curiosity) prevailed and I watched him undress. He had broad shoulders and a large, solid frame. He was in good shape, but not in that chiseled, defined gym way. It was actually rather refreshing. Trevv spent hours at the gym, and on several occasions I’d caught him in front of the mirror flexing. He worked out until everything was perfect and honed; every muscle was a defined work of art, and every line sat in the right place. But I’ve since learned that apparent perfection is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Chris had a splattering of chest hair; Trevv was as smooth as a baby’s bottom.
His shoulders were dotted with wayward freckles; Trevv’s complexion was even, to the point of being porcelain.
He had a small scar on his stomach where it looked like he’d had an appendix removed and a small bruise on his shoulder.
He was completely and utterly imperfect, and in that imperfection, totally flippin’ hot.
So hot in fact that I felt my breath involuntarily quicken and my mouth go dry. Unable to move, I continued to stare as he pulled his shorts off. I really should have turned around at this point—I should have turned around.
“Take a picture. It lasts longer.” Chris sounded amused.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Mortified, I instinctually smacked my hands over my eyes and swung round.
I heard a soft chuckle behind me. “Your turn. I’ll turn around, though.”
I peered back tentatively to see if he had indeed turned around, which he had. But taking off my clothes felt like an impossible task. The thought of exposing myself in the same room as a stranger felt beyond bizarre. But it had to be done. I wondered if I couldn’t just leave my bra on and the masseuse could work around it. That seemed like a more reasonable idea, and one that I was definitely more comfortable with.
I pulled my dress off slowly and dropped it to the floor. The cool sea breeze felt good against my skin, and I slipped under the towel on the bed.
“Okay, you can turn around now.”
Chris climbed onto the bed just as the masseuse came through the door. If I were a fly on the wall right now, an objective observer to this scene, I might have laughed out loud. The pure, unadulterated ludicrousness of my current situation was undeniable. It felt more like surreal insanity than actually reality.
But it w
as real. And it was happening.
And I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be the last awkward situation we’d find ourselves in. And I was right.
“I’ll just push them together,” the masseuse said and suddenly started pushing Chris’s bed next to mine. I stared in horror as Chris’s half-naked body got closer, and closer and—
“You can stop there!” I said quickly. “That won’t be necessary.” I tried to protest but she wasn’t having it.
“Mauritius is for romance.” She gave one last push—she was surprisingly strong—and voilà, Chris was lying next to me. The beds were so narrow and close that our shoulders were touching. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them he wouldn’t be so damn close to me. But he was. And I could hear his breathing.
“Hi, neighbor,” he whispered.
“Heya.” *Trying to be cool, collected, and casual but actually dying inside*
Another masseuse came into the room and I vaguely heard someone mumble something like “No bra.”
The words went in one ear and straight out the other because I was way too busy focusing on the electric feeling of Chris’s shoulder rubbing against mine. So before I was able to mount any kind of a protest, I felt it. Quick, nimble fingers went to work on my bra strap and within seconds, she’d unclipped it like a pro.
“Wait. Stop.” But just like the bed, she wasn’t having it, and I felt it being pulled out from under me.
“Wait!” I raised my body off the bed and swung around, trying to pull my bra back. It was an instinctual move, like instantly pulling your skirt down when the wind blows it up. But in my panicked state, I really hadn’t thought this through. At all.
There were several things wrong with my hasty, un-thought-out plan.
Firstly, in raising my body off the bed, I flashed my boobs to the entire room—Chris included. And secondly, in collapsing back down to the bed with vigor, given the close proximity, I mushed my boob into Chris’s outstretched hand on the bed.
Awesome. Chris and I had basically just gone to second base.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I should have floated out of the room feeling relaxed. Feeling as light as a feather, as soft as silk, and as warm and content as a baby wrapped in its mother’s arms.
But I didn’t.
I walked out feeling very unrelaxed. I had been feeling tense since the unfortunate boob incident. And what made it even worse was the way Chris had responded.
He hadn’t looked away in embarrassment, or apologized or laughed at the silly mistake. No, he’d held my gaze. Held it with such intensity that it had frozen me in place. Our eyes locked; it probably only lasted for a second, but it felt like forever. I couldn’t disengage from the stare no matter how hard I willed my eyes to look away.
His eyes changed, his pupils dilated, and something darker washed through them. And when I finally managed to pry my eyes away, I stuck my head through the hole in the bed as fast as I possibly could and kept it there.
All I could then feel, the whole way through the massage, was the warmth of his skin against my breast. And even when the masseuse painfully dug her elbows into my back, it was still all I could feel. So instead of relaxing while very expert hands worked away my tensions, I spent the next ninety minutes counting down the seconds until I could escape.
The moment the masseuses clapped their hands to signal the end of our torture, I hopped off the table and scrambled for my clothes.
“Hey, wait,” Chris called after me as I dashed out of the room.
“Mmmm?” I mumbled, not turning around to look at him.
“Why are you in such a rush?”
“I’m not in a rush.” I tried to be casual.
“Oh please, you practically threw yourself out of the room.”
“Did I?” I tried to sound innocent.
“Are you trying to get away from me, Annie?”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“Did it have something to do with…” Chris moved closer to me and I tightened my arms across my chest. “With what happened?”
“What happened?” I feigned ignorance, badly. I tried to contort my face into all kinds of nonchalant looks, but I just started to feel like my face was having a seizure. I was such a terrible actress.
“You know, with your…”
“My breast,” I blurted out. “You saw my…it touched you…your hand and I didn’t mean to. I apologize.” I was curt.
Chris smiled. “I didn’t mind.”
I swayed from side to side. This conversation was making me feel so awkward and…I was turned on. So turned on, and all my breast wanted to do was fly right back into his hand.
I decided to remove my misbehaving mammary from the situation. “I need to buy a decent dress, or something.” I could probably only afford a sarong, but hey, anything was better than what I was currently wearing.
Chris nodded. “There’s a shop by the lobby that sells beachwear. I’ll have a drink at the bar and wait for you?”
“Okay.” I ran off to the shop, glad to be away from him.
The shop was tropical themed. Tropical might be an understatement. Because in case you hadn’t already worked out that you were staying on a very tropical island, the shop was here to remind you. Every corner was decorated with tropical sarongs, palm fronds, and magnolias, and there were clumps of large shells on the floor, which was made of sand.
“Can I help you?” a woman said, coming forward.
“I’m looking for some beachwear, dresses, maybe a sarong.” I was stating the obvious. You couldn’t buy anything else from this shop.
“Mmmm”—the woman looked me up and down—“maybe something, not so, how you say in English, red?”
She had a very strong French accent, but there was no way she didn’t know what the word red was in English. She was just one of those bitchy shop attendants, making me feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, except I didn’t have some rich, handsome man waiting for me in a hotel room. Well, I did, but not a real one. She grabbed me by the arm and started heading toward the dress section, shouting, “Come, come!”
After holding up a few dresses in front of me, she finally nodded and handed me a flowy, white midlength dress with pretty straps and a crisscross effect on the back. It was beautiful. And the white actually downplayed the redness of my skin, making it look more tanned than burned.
She marched me toward the dressing room, pushed me in, and then turned and disappeared into the jungle. I hung the dress up against the wall and started undressing in front of the mirror. I hate dressing room mirrors. They have obviously been wickedly designed to accentuate everything that is wrong with your body. They possess some microscopic, magic ability to accentuate even the smallest lump of cellulite. So I turned my back on the evil thing and started trying on the dress.
In retrospect, I should have taken a few minutes to figure out how the dress worked. After five minutes of struggling, I was clutching a mess of straps, and bits of fabric that I couldn’t get into a position that looked like it would fit over my body.
But I persisted. I pushed my head and arms through the dress and tried to wiggle it over my rib cage. But moments later my arms got stuck, my shoulder became tangled, and I think I might have forced my head through what was meant to be the sleeve.
You would think that with a degree in fashion, something like this wouldn’t have confounded me. But it had. And now I was officially stuck. And the more I tried to dislodge myself, the more tangled I got and the tighter the dress became. It bunched around my shoulders and neck and forced my arms to stretch out in front of me. I looked like a zombie with its dead arms extended in front of it.
From my neck down, I was only wearing my underwear. I couldn’t move. And then I didn’t want to move, as I heard the door to the changing room next to mine open and the shop assistant saying “Oh oui, oui. Very nice. You look like ze movie star. I’ll find ze right shoes. In red perhaps?”
Red, I scoffed. Bitc
h.
There was silence for a few moments before a violent knock on my door nearly made me fall over.
“Mademoiselle. You are ready?”
“Uh. Just a minute.” I tried vigorously to untangle myself again, or at least to free my left arm so I could pull the dress down a bit so it covered my bra. But it was as if I had gotten myself into a straitjacket that pulled tighter the more I struggled.
“Actually…” I managed to bend my body over in a forty-five-degree angle in order to reach the lock on the door and open it. “Can you please help me?” I said as I stepped out.
But instead of seeing the shop assistant, I saw Tess. She swiveled and looked at me with a mixture of shock and confusion.
“Annie, is that you?”
I felt like replying with something snarky, witty, and clever, like Chris might have done. But with the strap around my neck cutting off the blood supply to my brain, nothing came. Instead all I said was, “Help.”
Within seconds the shop assistant was there, clucking her tongue in blatant disapproval. As if I’d done this on purpose.
“Oh no, no. Maybe zis dress is not ze right one for you, no.” Her French accent was now laced with condescension.
She started pulling and pushing on all my body parts and pulling and pushing on the dress…but it didn’t budge.
“I need help,” I heard her say, and suddenly Tess joined in. Oh God! How much more mortifying could you get? Four hands went to work on the stubborn dress, and I felt like a marionette puppet as I was pulled and manipulated and then…
Rrrrriiiiiipppp.
The sound of the tear was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. And although utterly impossible, the noise echoed and reverberated through the now-silent room. Everyone turned and watched as the dress fell to the floor, as if in slow motion. And that’s when I realized I was in my underwear, in front of Tess. My body ached and I had red lines carved into my neck and back where the straps had dug into me.
“You must pay for zis,” the French B said while picking the dress up like it was now nothing more than a discarded dirty diaper.