Claudia shook off her dreams, took some painkillers for her headache, and made herself a cup of tea and a slice of raisin toast. She took her breakfast out on the balcony to enjoy the sea breeze. Then she caught up with the news on the net.
She stared in horror when she saw a photograph of her and Gil together on the beach. The photo was taken when he was comforting her, but they were entwined in such a passionate embrace it looked like they were just about to strip each other’s clothes off and have sex there and then.
The article was titled, “The Psychic and the Skeptic: We should have seen this coming.”
Chapter 23
It must have been a slow news day because the story was splashed across the media. They said that Claudia and Gil met up in Australia for a secret rendezvous to escape the press. They reported that the pair spent the afternoon cavorting on the beach. That night, they had been spotted together enjoying an intimate dinner at a local restaurant. The couple left the establishment at around 10pm. They were drunk. They laughed and kissed, while Gil had his arm wrapped around Claudia’s waist. They went back to a tiny cottage near the beach they were renting. Then Gil emerged about 4am, looking like he’d been kicked out of bed after a “blue”, whatever that meant.
They called her a hypocrite for sleeping with the enemy.
Claudia was fuming, but she wasn’t sure where to direct her anger. The paparazzi hounded people like Gil, violating the privacy of celebrities wherever they went and telling lies about them. Or did Gil orchestrate this? Did he tip them off about his whereabouts as a publicity stunt? Maybe he was framing her to make her look bad. Perhaps she should be angry with herself for bothering to talk to Gil yesterday.
Claudia still had a headache so she decided to go out for a walk to clear her head and get some coffee. When she went into her bedroom to get changed she sniffed the air and frowned. She swore she could smell Gil’s cologne in the room. For years he’d worn Chanel’s Allure Homme Sport Eau Extreme. It had a sweet and musky scent. She could even smell it a little on her clothes and in her hair. It must have rubbed onto her when he was comforting her on the beach. That man wore way too much cologne! It wasn’t an unpleasant odor, but it smelled of Gil, and that association made it unpleasant for her. She took a long, hot shower and changed the bed sheets to get rid of the overwhelming smell.
Claudia threw on a pair of jeans, a hoodie, a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap and went out for coffee. As she walked along the beachfront people seemed to recognize her, even though she was dressed incognito. They stared and whispered as she went by.
Thanks a lot Gil, she thought.
She found a hip-looking place that looked like an old garage that had been converted into a coffee shop. She looked at the menu. They had an espresso drink called a flat white and another one called a long black. They both sounded like racial insults.
She ordered a cappuccino and a biscuit, but she was given a cookie.
“Here, a biscuit is a cookie, and what you’d call a biscuit is a scone,” the barista explained to her complete confusion.
Australians speak English just like Americans, but sometimes they seem like entirely different languages, she thought.
Her phone rang. It was Gil.
She ignored him.
Claudia sat outside with her cappuccino and watched the waves crashing onto the sand. Soon she found herself people watching and then checking out the men that walked by. I need to get myself one of those, she thought. When was the last time she’d had sex anyway? It must have been at least a year ago when she was seeing that Urologist. She had another week of her vacation left and it was time to have some fun. She was a single woman in a country full of hot guys. She decided to dress up and hit the town that night. She was going to find that lifesaver of her fantasies and get laid.
Claudia didn’t pack much in the way of clothing, shoes, and makeup, so this was an excuse for her to go shopping. She found a mall nearby and wandered into a department store. She was searching for sexy underwear and obviously looked lost because a sales assistant approached her.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes, please. Where can I find the thongs?”
“Let me show you,” the woman said.
They walked through the store, but to Claudia’s bewilderment they went straight past the lingerie section and arrived at the shoe department.
“Um…Where are the thongs?” she asked.
“Here,” the woman said in surprise, as she pointed to a wall of flip-flops.
“Those are flip-flops!”
“Oh, did you mean G-strings?” she asked. “Flip-flops are called thongs here and thongs are called G-strings.”
Claudia felt like she needed a translator.
After some shopping and lunch, Claudia got her hair done at a salon. Her hairstylist, Misty, had fire engine red hair and wore one of those sleek geometric bobs that no one else but a stylist can carry off. Misty looked at Claudia like she recognized her.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” she asked.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
“I don’t think so,” said Claudia innocently.
“Hey! I know where I’ve seen you,” Misty said excitedly. “You were in the newspapers this morning!”
Snip. Snip. Snip.
“You were on the beach with that spunky psychic Gil Godsend. Aren’t you his girlfriend?”
Claudia sniffed.
“No, I’m not. Well, I was, but that was a long time ago.”
Snip. Snip. Snip.
“If you’re not seeing him can I get his phone number?”
Shut up and do my hair, thought Claudia, otherwise I’m going to seize those scissors and ram them up your ass.
“Sorry, but I don’t have his number,” she said sweetly.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
“Okay,” Misty said, not believing Claudia at all. “So… is he really as, you know…big…as he looks?”
Claudia shook her head.
“No. He stuffs a sock down his underpants,” she whispered. “It’s sad, really.”
That night, Claudia stepped out wearing a flesh-colored silk and metallic dress that defied the fashion rule that a woman should accentuate either her tits or legs but not both at the same time. With a plunging neckline, her dress showed her cleavage, while a thigh high slit in the skirt flaunted her long legs. Her hair was styled; she’d had a manicure and pedicure, and she managed to fit in a bikini wax. She was ready to go on the prowl.
As she strolled along the beachfront her phone rang again. It was Gil. She threw her phone into her clutch and decided not to look at it again that night.
She passed coffee shops and restaurants until she came across a pub that always seemed popular. She walked inside and found the place was swarming with football fans watching a game on TV. She stopped to watch it for a minute. It didn’t look like American football; these guys weren’t wearing helmets or any padding although it was a considerably more violent game than gridiron.
Claudia scanned the pub and immediately she zoomed in on a good-looking guy across the room. He was tall and tanned with curly dark blonde hair. He looked like he might be a lifesaver. And he was looking straight back at her. They locked eyes for a few seconds. He was standing behind a table full of loud-mouthed guys who were wearing football jerseys and drinking beer. They noticed her too and started wolf whistling and cat calling.
“The stripper’s here!”
“Give us a lap dance, luv!”
“How much?”
Claudia realized she was overdressed for the pub. Most people there were wearing t-shirts or football jerseys with jeans or shorts. She looked like she was on her way to a nightclub, or a street corner. Feeling self-conscious, she made her way over to the bar where she sat on a stool and pulled down awkwardly on her dress.
“What can I get ya, luv?” the bartender asked.
“I’ll have a lemonade, please.”
Her headache had only just eased off so she
wanted to work her way up to the harder stuff that night.
The bartender brought over a glass filled with a clear, carbonated drink.
She was confused.
“Um, I didn’t order a soda, I wanted a lemonade,” she said to the bartender.
“That is a lemonade, luv,” he replied.
Suddenly, the hot guy with the blonde curls was standing right beside her.
“I can translate,” he said as he came to her rescue. “Carbonated lemon-lime drinks like Sprite and 7UP are all called “lemonade” here. Also, a soda is called a soft drink.”
Claudia barely heard him. She was too busy gazing into his vivid green eyes. They were the color of emeralds, of rice terraces, of a field of grass after rain, of moss growing on rocks and of the iridescent wings on a butterfly.
She shook her head and snapped out of it.
“Two countries divided by a common language!” she said with her sexiest smile. “Thank you.”
“No worries,” he said with a gorgeous grin. “I can speak American. I spent two years living in New York City working as a hedge fund manager.”
Okay, so he wasn’t a lifesaver, but he would do. He would do very nicely indeed.
“What’s your name?” Claudia asked him.
“I’m Jeremy,” he replied, offering his hand. “Jeremy Collins.”
“I’m Claudia Cox.”
They shook hands. Then a wave of recognition spread across his face.
“Hey! Aren’t you that chick who was in the newspapers today? You’re the girlfriend of that Yank fella who thinks he’s psychic.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, she thought.
“He is not my boyfriend,” she said indignantly. “Well, to be honest, he was my fiancé, but that was a lifetime ago. I can assure you that I’m a single woman!”
“Sweet,” he said with another one of those irresistible grins, “but dressed like that you won’t be single for long.”
Dammit, why did his smile remind her of Gil’s? She tried to push Gil out of her mind. She looked down at her outfit.
“I think I overdressed tonight.”
“I think you look great,” he said. “You look just like one of those fancy American actresses on the red carpet at the Oscars.”
“Like Nicole Kidman or Naomi Watts?”
He laughed. It was a deep, sexy laugh that made her lick her lips unconsciously.
“If you’re feeling uncomfortable,” he said, “why don’t you cover up with my jumper?”
He took off his football jersey and handed it to her. It was the gesture of a gentleman and it touched her. It also gave her the chance to check out his chiseled chest through his t-shirt. She thanked him as she slipped the jersey over her head and pulled it down over her dress. It smelled good and still felt warm from his body heat.
“Now, that looks better on you than it does on me!” he said.
It would look better crumpled up on the floor next to your bed, she thought.
“Sorry about my mates,” Jeremy said with a nod towards his friends. “They carry on like a bunch of yobbos when they’re pissed and watching the footy.”
“Why are they angry?” Claudia asked. “Is their team losing?”
He laughed good-naturedly.
“Pissed means drunk here. Pissed off means angry.”
Claudia blushed. She didn’t feel like she was fitting in at all.
“I feel like an idiot,” she said.
“You’re not an idiot. You just don’t know the lingo. Let me shout you a drink and I can teach you some Aussie slang.”
“It is loud in here but you don’t have to shout,” she replied. “I can hear you.”
“To shout means to buy someone a drink,” he explained.
She blushed again.
“Okay,” she said sheepishly.
“What would you like?”
“I’ll have something that an Aussie would drink. How about a Foster’s?”
He shook his head.
“Foster’s is promoted overseas as Australia’s favorite beer, but a fair dinkum Aussie wouldn’t touch the stuff. Let’s get you what I like to drink, a Cooper’s Green on tap.”
“Okay,” she said. “But what’s fair dinkum?” she asked.
“Someone or something that’s real or true.”
“And what’s a blue?” she asked, thinking about the newspaper articles.
“It’s a fight,” he explained.
Hmm… So the media thought she’d had a lover’s tiff with Gil and booted him out of bed. She laughed silently to herself.
The pub was crowded and noisy. They decided to go outside to the courtyard so they could talk, or have a “chinwag”, as Jeremy put it. They had a few drinks and talked about their lives. Jeremy had worked in finance for the past ten years and his job had taken him not only to cities across the United States, but to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and other financial centers. Next week he would be traveling to Hong Kong for two months. His home was on the Sunshine Coast but he was on the road so frequently that it had caused a breakup with his fiancé a few months before.
Claudia pretended that she was sympathetic.
Throughout their conversation she caught herself listening not to what he said, but how he said it. Jeremy’s accent was incredibly sexy. She had always had a thing for accents, especially the Aussie accent. Jeremy didn’t speak like Steve Irwin or Paul Hogan, instead he sounded a bit more like he was British. She also loved the colorful Australian slang he used, and he taught her a lot of it that night. She learned that fair dinkum Aussies never say, “Put another shrimp on the barbie” because they don’t say shrimp, they call them prawns. When Aussies say they have the shits they aren’t suffering from a bout of diarrhea, they’re angry. When something is not bad, it’s good, and when someone insults you, sometimes it’s because they like you.
Jeremy wasn’t the lifeguard of her fantasies, but he was a surfer. He was born in the Sydney beachside suburb called Manly, which Claudia thought was very apt. He grew up on the beach and could swim before he could walk. Most days he was in town he woke up at 6am to head down to the beach for a surf, even during wintertime.
Jeremy was smart, funny, and handsome. She hated to admit it, but he reminded her of Gil, although the thing she liked most about Jeremy was that he didn’t believe in psychics. He was down to earth, easygoing, and he thought that Gil was full of bullshit.
Jeremy wasn’t the lifeguard of her fantasies; he was even better.
Claudia wanted to go home with him that night. A little part of her wanted to have his babies too.
They decided to leave the pub and go for a walk. As they strolled down the beachfront they passed by a convenience store.
“Have you ever eaten a Tim Tam?” Jeremy asked.
“A Tim what?”
“A Tim Tam,” he said. “It’s a biscuit. You’d call it a cookie. You can’t visit Australia without trying a Tim Tam.”
Jeremy raced into the convenience store and bought a packet of Tim Tams. He tore open the packet and offered her one. She took a bite and her eyes widened. It was a decadent cookie sandwich filled with chocolate cream and coated in chocolate fudge. It melted in her mouth and she immediately wanted another one.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
“These are dangerously good. Get them away from me!” she cried. “Those are better than sex.”
“Then you’re doing it wrong,” he joked. “But you only say that because you haven’t had sex with me.”
Yet, she thought.
“There are lots of Aussie treats you need to try while you’re here,” he said. “Like lamingtons, Cherry Ripes, meat pies, Vegemite, and a true blue Aussie breakfast…I’ll make that for you tomorrow morning,” he said with a wink.
Claudia knew she would be going home with him that night.
They walked along the beach together. Finally, she was part of one of those happy couples, instead of being alone.
She slipped off h
er heels and her feet sank into the warm, wet sand. Soon they decided to sit down on the sand to watch the sunset. She realized they were sitting right in the area where she was standing with Gil the day before when the paparazzi took their photographs. She wondered where Gil was and what he was doing. He was probably out on a date right now with some Aussie beauty. Perhaps Misty the hairstylist had tracked him down and figured out that wasn’t a sock in his underpants. But why should she care? She had to stop thinking about Gil…
She stared out at the golden sun as it disappeared into the dark blue ocean.
“It’s so beautiful,” she sighed.
“You are so beautiful,” Jeremy said.
He laid her down gently onto the sand. He leaned in towards her and kissed her. His lips were soft and his stubble tickled her chin. She ran her hands through his thick curls and pulled him closer towards her. His skin smelled just like his jersey, not of pretentious cologne, but a heady natural scent of the ocean and coconut-scented surfboard wax. He lay down on top of her. It felt so good to have a man above her again. She was very turned on, and with his body pressed against hers; she could feel that he was too.
Claudia forgot all about Gil Godsend.
Jeremy pulled back and looked into her eyes.
“Do you want to come back to my place?” he asked her. “I’ll try to perform better than the Tim Tams.”
She smiled.
“I thought you’d never ask…”
They went back to Jeremy’s apartment. Claudia looked around the place while he went to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine. He had a fancy bachelor pad. There was modern art on the walls and some interesting curios on display that he had collected from his travels. There were also signs that he was a beach bum. A wetsuit was strewn over a chair at the kitchen table and a surfboard stood up in a corner of his office. The place was otherwise neat and clean and minimalist. It didn’t have that lived in look. Claudia could tell that he didn’t spend much time there.
Jeremy came back into the room and gave her a glass of red wine. He took her by the hand and led her outside to a couch on his balcony. They sat down and he put his arm around her. She snuggled into him. His apartment had sweeping views of the beach and they gazed up to look at the stars in the sky. He pointed out to her the Southern Cross, a constellation in the shape of a cross, and told her it was a symbol on the Australian flag. She only knew it as the Crosby, Stills and Nash song.
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