I knew it was wrong to go on the back of his moped and not tell anyone, but somehow, despite the fact that I had lied to my sister, it seemed so right. Like it was meant to be.
Perhaps if I had just explained to Ellie how important this date with Rex was to me she would’ve given me her blessing, even been happy for me, but it was a risk I was too scared to take. Besides, Mum had made her put her hand on her heart and promise to look after me, ‘Girl Guides’ Honour,’ and I was pretty sure that this didn’t include allowing me to ride on the back of an older guy’s moped and go off to the beach with him alone, even if there would be loads of people there and I instinctively trusted him.
We carried on up towards some mountains and I wondered if we were anywhere near Alfredo’s villa, where we’d been the night before.
‘Not far now,’ I thought I heard him say, although I was in no hurry for the journey to end, as I figured this might be the only time I could legitimately hold on to him so tightly.
We finally stopped at the edge of a small road and to the right of me I saw the stretch of white sand dotted with pine trees and the clear sea twinkling in the sunshine.
‘Wow, it looks so beautiful,’ I said, taking in the view.
‘The view from where I’m standing is pretty good too,’ he said, turning to look at me. No one had ever really told me I was beautiful before and his remark filled me with confidence. If someone as gorgeous and cool as Rex thought I could possibly be beautiful, then maybe I really was.
He opened the compartment at the back of the bike and pulled out a small picnic basket and a blanket. ‘Provisions!’ he said, smiling at me. We held each other’s gaze nervously, but I didn’t look away first; I was scared it might break the magic.
‘Come on, race you!’ he said, sprinting off.
We ran down towards the beach like a couple of little kids and I thought I might collapse with happiness – or heat exhaustion – before we got to the bottom.
‘This is my favourite beach ever,’ he said catching his breath as we finally made it to the sand. ‘I learned to dive here and, when I can, I come running here every morning, just as the sun comes up.’
‘Wow, that’s dedicated,’ I said. The last time I ran for anything was the number 32 bus that took me to school. ‘I can see why it would be your favourite,’ I said, taking in the idyllic surroundings. Cala Jondal was a beautiful white stretch of beach surrounded by more pebbly parts. It was quiet and relaxed with just a few sun worshippers scattered around taking shade under the pine trees, and small groups of people chilling out playing volleyball and swimming in the sea.
‘Let’s go up to my favourite place,’ he said and I slipped my gold flip-flops off and held them in my hand as I followed, watching him. He was wearing some cut-off denim shorts just below the knee; they looked old and soft with frayed edges and had a patch on the back pocket that made them look even more careworn and cool. His white T-shirt covered his chest and set off his deeply-tanned arms well, and he was wearing blue-and-white striped pool shoes that I knew must be really trendy because I’d noticed other lads wearing them at Alfredo’s party the night before. I saw he still had the beads on that he’d been wearing when we’d met and I made a mental note to myself to remember to ask him about them, as well as the whole how-he-knew-my-name-without-me-ever-telling-him business.
After a few minutes we approached what looked like a small cave, and Rex turned to me and took my hand – mainly I thought to help me over the small rocks that led the way into it.
‘Take a seat,’ he said, as he pulled off his T-shirt and laid down the blanket he’d been carrying. I turned away, embarrassed by the sight of him undressing.
‘I brought refreshments! Lassi and water,’ he said, pulling some bottles out of the basket to show me. I had no idea what lassi was, so I just smiled and said, ‘Great.’
‘And nectarines and grapes. I wasn’t sure what you liked so I just grabbed some fruit from the market on the way here. Oh! And I bought some cheese and crackers too. Do you like cheese?’ he asked. And then he stopped and shook his head and started to laugh. ‘God, I’m such a smoothy, eh? “Do you like cheese?” How’s that for a chat-up line?’
I giggled. He was doing that thing I do where I cringe at the things I say, and it made me feel relaxed.
‘It was a time for romance . . . Their eyes met across a crowded beach and he enticed her into his heart with promises of diamonds and – cheese and crackers,’ he said, mocking himself, putting on a deep, dramatic voice like the ones you hear on trailers for films.
I creased up laughing.
‘Don’t be daft, I love cheese!’ I said, even though I had to admit the conversation was taking a rather ridiculous turn.
He punched the air in victory. ‘It’s a winner! The lady loves cheese! She is powerless to resist his charms – and cheddar!’
We were both really laughing now and I tried not to stare at his bare, tanned chest as he produced all this wonderful stuff from the basket.
I realised I would have to do the same – strip off, I mean. I couldn’t just lie there in the sweltering heat dressed in a top and denim skirt. But when I attempted to unbutton my skirt, I found I had completely lost the strength in my wrists and my hands kept slipping.
‘I’m just going to test the water,’ he said, his eyes scanning me softly. ‘It’s bound to be perfect swimming temperature . . .’
He walked off in the direction of the sea and left me standing there, inside this little shady alcove with a basket of goodies that he’d so thoughtfully brought along. I thought perhaps I’d been involved in a plane crash on the way to Ibiza and that really I’d died and that this was my life as I had always imagined it to be. He had sensed I was nervous about undressing and had made an excuse so I wouldn’t have to suffer the mortal pain of doing it in front of him. I wondered if he was perhaps the most perfect man I had ever met. I took the advantage anyway, and when he was out of sight I frantically slipped my top over my head and wriggled out of my denim mini and hoped that if I closed my eyes and wished hard enough I might somehow miraculously gain a figure like Ellie’s by the time he came back from the sea. Failing that, a sarong would’ve done, and I could’ve kicked myself for not remembering to bring one. But it was too late. As he returned, I realised I was standing there as good as in my underwear, and I suddenly felt very exposed.
‘The sea is perfect,’ he said, his skin glistening with tiny water droplets. I sat down on the soft blanket he’d brought along and attempted to adjust my body in the most flattering pose possible, even though no matter how I lay my thighs seemed to spread like margarine. I noticed him looking at me – not staring, just glancing – and I wondered if he was thinking, ‘Wow, check out those thunder thighs.’
‘You’re embarrassed,’ he said, smiling at me gently.
I was so embarrassed I wanted to dig a hole in the sand and hide in it.
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘You look fantastic in your bikini – a real beach goddess!’
Goddess? More like a big ice cream blob melting in the sun, but I felt thrilled that he had said it. The fact that he’d brought my body fear out into the open had made it seem less of an issue, and I found myself relaxing slightly.
‘Perfection, dear lady, is in the eye of the beholder,’ he said in a mock-plummy accent. I could feel he was looking at me intensely, so I looked at him too and our eyes scanned each other’s faces. ‘Do you know what I mean?’ he asked, putting on a jokey cockney accent this time.
‘Yes,’ I replied, allowing myself to look into his green eyes properly, like I had wanted to do the night we met, but had been too shy. ‘I know exactly what you mean. But then it’s easy for you to say. You swim and dive and work out at the gym everyday.’
We both smiled and looked away, leaving the tension between us hanging in the air for a second.
‘So, what do you think of the beach then?’ he said after a few moments’ silence, his normal accent resumed.
‘It’s the most beautiful beach I’ve seen,’ I said, adding, ‘although I haven’t really been to many beaches in Ibiza.’ And when I said ‘many’, what I really meant was ‘any’.
‘I come here to think as well as run,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘when things get a bit hectic and I need time to reflect. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to be alone with your thoughts and chill out, especially in a place as beautiful as this.’
He took a swig of his water and I wondered what he could want to reflect about, on the beach, alone. Past girlfriends maybe? Jo-Jo perhaps?
‘Have you lived in Ibiza a long time?’ I had held back asking him too many questions and by now I was desperate to know everything about him.
‘About five years. I came here on holiday and never left. Fell in love with the place on sight,’ he said, looking at me in a strange way and smiling. I couldn’t tell whether he was teasing me or if he was actually suggesting – no, he couldn’t be. It was ridiculous to think that he’d fallen in love with me at first sight.
‘Really? What did your parents think about you staying?’ I asked, wishing I hadn’t, because it made me sound like I couldn’t do anything without my parents’ permission.
‘Oh, you know, they were a bit freaked out at first but once they’d been out to see me, they were cool. They fell in love with the place too. But then, that’s Ibiza. It’s got magical properties and once you’ve been here you don’t want to leave.’
I was beginning to understand what he meant.
‘So how old were you when you first came here on holiday?’ I asked, thinking that it was a pretty clever way of finding out his age.
‘Young,’ he said, smiling a little at the memory and continuing to hold my gaze, ‘I was twenty-one.’
Now I’m not exactly great at maths, as my school report will testify, but even I could work out that this made him twenty-six years old. Oh. My. God. Twenty-six!
I didn’t know why I was so surprised. I’d guessed he was a bit older than me, maybe twenty-three at most – but twenty-six! If he thought twenty-one was young, what would he make of me being sixteen? This was, as Willow would say, a twenty-four carat disaster (or in this case, twenty-six). So far he hadn’t guessed I was that much younger, and I felt sure he would be put off if I told him my real age. Even if I hadn’t been sure of his reaction, I wasn’t prepared to find out, not since this was fast turning out to be the most special day of my sixteen (almost seventeen) years on this planet so far. Why spoil it now?
‘I was pretty bored with life back in England,’ he continued, rolling over on to his side and moving in a little closer to me, causing my heart to start pounding loudly in my chest again. I hoped he couldn’t hear it, being that close to me and all. ‘The rat-race,’ he said, ‘it’s not really me.’
‘And what is you?’ I asked him, our bodies almost touching now. I was looking right into his eyes and noticed they were flecked with tiny bits of brown.
He broke my gaze and looked down for a moment. I wondered if I was asking him too many questions, but I felt so comfortable around him that I couldn’t help myself.
He grabbed a handful of grapes and popped one into my mouth and then one in his own. It tasted delicious. ‘Music is me,’ he said thoughtfully, chewing on the grape. ‘Music and friends and family and – being with people I love, I suppose.’
The mere mention of the word ‘love’ sent my head into a spin and I began to play with the beading on the ties of my bikini nervously.
We sat looking at each other for a second, neither of us saying anything. It wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but I sensed a tension, like he wanted to elaborate on what he’d just said, but wasn’t sure whether to or not.
‘Shall we go for a swim?’ he finally said, breaking the moment. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling quite warm.’
‘That’s a great idea,’ I said and he took my hand to pull me up.
So I discovered that Rex Brown was twenty-six and originally from Aldersley Hedge, a little village just outside Manchester – which kind of accounted for the soft lilt in his voice – and that he came to Ibiza five years ago with his friend, Steve, and a box of records and had never looked back. A few years of DJing in ‘dives’, as he had put it, paved the way to better clubs and bigger audiences and within a couple of years, the pair of them were playing to massive crowds and had earned themselves superstar DJ status.
He was a keen swimmer, diver and runner, and worked-out at the local gym. He liked fishing – everything to do with the sea in fact, and he dreamed of owning his own boat one day. Like me, he was an animal-lover and missed his family dog, Benjy, who he’d grown up with back home.
Even though I was reluctant to give away too much, we talked a bit about me too, and I told him all about my plans to become a vet, or at least work with animals somehow. I also mentioned my ambition to swim with dolphins and he said he wasn’t surprised by that because I seemed like a very spiritual woman and dolphins are very spiritual creatures indeed. It felt great that he’d used the word ‘woman’, because it made me feel mature and slightly exotic and gave me the confidence to talk some more about myself. I was terrified he’d ask me how old I was and I kept waiting for him to bring it up but he didn’t – which was kind of a relief, but also made me feel a bit bad too, because even though I figured that not saying anything was not exactly the same thing as lying, in my heart I knew that it probably was.
We’d been walking and talking so much that until I had mentioned the dolphins, we had clean forgotten about that swim we were supposed to be having.
‘Ladies first!’ he said, gesturing towards the glittering crystal water as we finally approached the sea.
‘Chicken!’ I laughed as I waded out up to my knees. The water was warm and clear, like a bath, so I went out a little further and broke into a swim.
He followed, swimming towards me and suddenly he was right up close to me, holding me by the waist and gently moving me up through the water.
Just his touch sent ripples of excitement through me and I couldn’t help giggling, which I hoped didn’t sound too girly and stupid.
We swam around a bit and he splashed me, sending the salty water cascading over my head, and I screamed to get away because I was worried my mascara might run as I’d forgotten to wear the waterproof stuff, but by now I was having way too much fun to care, panda-eyes or not.
‘I’m DJing at a beach party tonight at Café Del Sol in San Antonio. Do you know it?’ he asked.
I said I’d heard of it, just to sound like I was well up on the scene, but really I had no idea where or what it was.
‘It’s one of the most famous bars in Ibiza,’ he said. ‘It’s on the beach in San Antonio, you know, not far from where you’re staying.’ I nodded, thinking that this must be the beach that Ellie and gang had gone to today.
‘The sunset there is so amazing, and if you haven’t seen an Ibizan sunset before, well!’ he said, mock-indignant. Before I could answer I suddenly lost my footing and momentarily slipped underwater. I began to cough violently as the salty water stung my throat.
‘You OK?’ he said, putting his hands on my shoulders and he looked so concerned that it was almost worth the embarrassment.
‘I’m fine,’ I spluttered, and realised I had lost my hairband and now my unruly mass of curls was hanging down in straggles around my face and shoulders. How attractive.
‘You have the most amazing hair,’ he said, staring at me.
I looked at him to see if he was being serious.
‘What, this bird’s nest?’ I said, pointing to my head. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
He stood still in the water and I realised that he could actually touch the bottom of the sea, unlike me.
‘You’re so not like all the other women I usually meet, do you know that?’ he said, looking at me, his head cocked to one side.
‘Why, do they all have straight hair then?’ I smiled, knowing I was being facetious again, but kind of enjoyin
g the fact that we were flirting again.
‘Touché,’ he said, laughing, but I wasn’t sure if he was joking with me so I didn’t answer.
‘You’re so, so . . . self-deprecating – it’s very refreshing,’ he said. ‘But you shouldn’t put yourself down, you’ve no need. You’re lovely just as you are.’
Now I really didn’t have a clue what he was on about. Self-deprecating?
As much as I wanted to accept that he was attempting to pay me a compliment, the fact that he’d mentioned ‘other women’ made me wonder whether he did this kind of thing all the time. Meet girls, whisk them off to the beach on his moped, feed them grapes and tell them they looked beautiful as he gave them the ‘you’re not like any of the other girls I meet’ line. I mean, he was utterly stunning to look at and he was a DJ. Even I knew that this came with a bit of a reputation. He was bound to have girls flocking round him 24/7. Maybe he even had a girlfriend already? But something inside me sensed he wasn’t a player. I couldn’t be sure of course, but it was just a feeling I had when I looked into his eyes. They say that the eyes are the window to your soul, and when I looked into his, all I could see was honesty and kindness. Despite this, all these niggling doubts had got me thinking of Jo-Jo and I couldn’t stop myself from asking about her.
‘Did you manage to drop Jo-Jo off safely?’ I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
‘Yeah, she’s going through a rough time at the moment. Her and Steve used to be an item until recently and – well, you know how these things go. Stuff happens. They split a week or so ago. She’s pretty cut up, so I’ve been looking after her.’
Ibiza Summer Page 5