by Bronwyn Sell
He grimaced. ‘Probably not millions of step-siblings.’
‘One would hope not.’
‘But it has to be on the condition that neither of us has real feelings for the other. It’s just sex.’
Her stomach clunked. But that was how it had to be. So what if she was short-changing herself? He’d made it clear he’d reject her if she asked for anything more. She didn’t want to be rejected, not by him, not by anyone ever again. Don’t ask, don’t get never had been her motto. More like, Don’t ask and don’t get rejected. Just getting this far was enough of a risk for one evening. Friends with benefits—just what she’d always had. But whatever. And she’d never set such clear ground rules before. She knew exactly where she stood, and in a way that was liberating. Just sex. Just fun. Although right now it seemed less about fun and more about the primal need to rip that shirt off him.
‘Understood,’ she said. She caught movement in her peripheral vision. Cody wasn’t quite out of sight, and she and Josh were illuminated like garden gnomes. Damn. ‘This is so not happening.’
‘Oh,’ Josh said, frowning, his grip loosening.
‘No!’ She practically clawed his forearms. ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean it’s definitely happening if you want it to happen, because I know I want it to happen, but officially it’s not happening.’
‘Oh.’
She loved how relieved he sounded. They stood still for a few long seconds, a forearm-length apart, boxers being held back before a bout. Then his fingers moved a centimetre and her hands moved a fraction, and the magnets snapped together. You couldn’t fight science.
They kissed as if Carmen’s tsunami were about to engulf them, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders and his hands gripping her arse, flooding liquid heat into her every vein, muscle, curve, dip. Finally!
And tomorrow, it’d be like it’d never happened.
Trip Review: Curlew Bay
Rating:
Review: My kids are fussy eaters and they didn’t like anything on the menu so they had to have fish and chips every day.
30
Sophia
At last. A knock at the door.
Sophia checked her watch with a joyous squeak. Harry’s dinner must be over. She waited a few seconds in case the knock was one of the resort staff, who always immediately announced themselves. Silence. Here we go. She exhaled a noisy yoga breath and adjusted her dress—a floaty emerald backless halter-neck that was getting its first outing, though with a bit of luck, or merely good planning since she didn’t go in for luck, she wouldn’t be wearing it long. She laid a hand on her belly. Was that fear or excitement, or both? Wow, this was fun—even the nervousness. Like the promise of Christmas when you were a kid.
She paused at the heavy white curtain, pasting on what she hoped was an I-knew-you’d-come smile, though she hadn’t known anything of the sort. In fact, she’d told herself she’d give it thirty more minutes before washing off the Harry eyeshadow palette and going to bed.
She opened the curtain and door with a single, dramatic sweep. It took her a second to compute. That face. That body. The way he was standing, one shoulder hiked, head tilted. So familiar her chest ached.
‘Jeremy?’ Her mouth went dry.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me,’ he said in a shaky voice that wasn’t the one she knew. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He looked like she’d looked when she’d arrived on the island. ‘But I have to see you, Soph. I left messages. Way too many I know but …’
She was incapable of doing anything but blinking repeatedly, like if she did it often enough, eventually she’d open her eyes and he’d be gone. Did she want him gone? The stupid thing was that a little part of her—fine, a big part of her—wanted to dive into his arms and feel them wrap around her, hear him say he loved her, he wanted to get married after all, he’d made a huge mistake, he needed her to forgive him, he had a good explanation. A really good explanation. Rewind her life to the moment before her future dissolved, to the north terrace at her parents’ house where, instead of announcing he couldn’t go through with the wedding, he’d say he’d pulled her out there because he needed to have her all to himself for a few minutes, and then everything would proceed as it was meant to—the wedding, the honeymoon, babies. Problem solved.
But then Harry wouldn’t have happened. He’d be a random person on the island while she honeymooned, her attention focused on Jeremy. Would she have even noticed him? She felt the imaginary loss as a hollowness inside. She felt guilty for hypothetically ignoring him.
Confused much?
‘Soph? Can I come in?’ Jeremy said.
On autopilot, she pushed the door wider and stood aside. He walked in, carrying a backpack big enough to suggest he was planning to stay awhile, but his tall, lanky frame was faintly cowed. Well, this was uncharted territory. Ever since their first date they’d been at ease with each other. There’d been no games, no playing hard to get, no doubts, no road bumps. They’d met, they’d liked each other, they’d started a relationship. They’d been confident of where they’d stood and where they were headed, on the same page of their mutually agreed plan. Right up until the night they weren’t.
She closed the door and curtain and stood transfixed, her fingers clutching the thick white fabric. She couldn’t bring herself to turn and face this, whatever this was. Her stomach churned, and not in the good way it had two minutes ago. Surely he wouldn’t have come unless …?
A knock, inches from her face. She squeaked and recoiled, and her hand reflexively jerked the curtain aside.
Harry.
No.
She slid the door open a fraction. He opened his mouth to speak but she jumped in first. ‘Sorry, I should have called reception back. The air-con seems to be working again. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
His expression transitioned through a few emotions, and then he looked over her shoulder and spotted Jeremy, and it settled on stony disbelief. ‘Sure,’ he said blankly, backing away, nodding fiercely. ‘I see.’ He turned, crossed the veranda and jogged down the steps. She took a step and stopped, jamming her lips together to force herself to shut up. She’d dismissed him like a dirty secret, like he was literally the help. And why? To protect Jeremy?
She inhaled, retreated, and closed the door. The curtain fell back into place. This time she got as far as turning and leaning her spine against the door, the glass cooling her back through the curtain. So much had changed since that first morning Harry had knocked on this very door. And now Jeremy stood in the middle of the room, still holding his backpack as if waiting for a cue from her. Two worlds colliding.
Another knock. She screeched, jumped off the door, and eyed it, her face heating. Harry, returning to stake his claim, to tell Jeremy he didn’t deserve her?
‘You gonna get that?’ Jeremy said after an awkward amount of time.
‘Of course.’ She drew the door and curtain back an inch.
Cody stood outside, bouncing on the spot as if trying to warm up. ‘Is Harry here?’ he whispered.
‘You just missed him,’ she mouthed.
A force pulled the door wide open—Jeremy, his hand at the top edge. She stumbled, and he caught her waist with his free hand. Cody looked at Jeremy’s hand, then back to Sophia’s face, his mind obviously turning over. He pulled a phone from his back pocket.
‘Hey, mate,’ he said, offering it to Jeremy. ‘Sorry for disturbing you. You left this on the chopper. I just looked for you at reception but you must have cleared through pretty quick.’
Jeremy held up his palms. ‘Not mine, sorry. Must have been another passenger, but cheers anyway.’ He touched Sophia’s elbow. The familiarity of it settled her breath, which made no sense. ‘Soph, I need to use the facilities. Back in a sec. You look incredible, by the way.’ Seemingly without thinking he brushed a kiss on her cheek. He nodded at Cody and retreated.
‘Uh, everything all good?’ Cody asked quietly.
Sophi
a waited until the bathroom door closed. ‘I’m not really sure. I had no idea he …’
‘And I had no idea who he was until we got back. You okay with this guy being here?’
‘This guy?’ She touched her cheek. ‘If you’re concerned about my personal safety, then yes, I’m fine. I was engaged to him, until recently.’
‘Shit,’ Cody said, stepping back. ‘I’m being a Harry.’
‘A what?’
‘Trying to play the hero.’ He backed across the veranda. ‘Call reception and ask for me if you need backup or whatever. Shit,’ he said again, to himself, ‘there I go again.’ He jogged down the steps with exactly the same stride as Harry. The darkness swallowed him.
‘Soph,’ Jeremy said quietly from right behind her. She flinched. Men were jumping out at her from every angle tonight. He laid a hand on her shoulder, which she gently shrugged off. Without looking at his face, because she couldn’t bring herself to just yet, she went to sit on the sofa, changed her mind, and sat heavily in the armchair instead.
‘Why did you come?’ she managed. What does this mean?
He perched on the sofa, leaning forward with his hands clasped, the characteristic movement repellent and appealing at the same time. She bunched the fabric of her dress in her fists. She’d bought this dress with Jeremy in mind. He loved it when she wore backless dresses and tops—anything that gave him access to the bare skin of her back and shoulders. And she loved it too. Nothing better than standing around chatting with friends at a bar or a function or a party while he casually caressed her with tingling promises of what would come later.
‘I’ve been trying to think about what to say the whole trip up. In the taxi, in the airport lounge, on the plane, on the chopper,’ he said. ‘I still don’t know. I mean, obviously I’m sorry but I know that’s completely—’
‘Inadequate?’ she finished, an edge to her voice.
A curt laugh. ‘Yeah. But I’m here now.’
He was here.
And did she want that? Or did she want something else now?
31
Half an hour later, Sophia stood on a veranda, her hand fisted before a door, the curtain drawn behind it, her nerves twice as grated. It really was a night for knocking on doors. And she’d thought she’d been nervous before that first knock.
Do it.
She knocked, and then clutched her hands in front of her as shuffling noises sounded inside. The curtain slid across, quickly followed by the door, and Harry stood there, his face drawn. How was it she knew that face so intimately? But as much as she’d memorised his lines and freckles, this new expression was beyond her comprehension.
‘Any room at the inn?’ she said, failing to carry off the joke.
‘Of course,’ he said, terrifyingly neutral as he opened the door wider and slipped her hastily packed tote from her shoulder. ‘Come in.’
His apartment was so small you could stand in the centre of it and see into all four corners. Unlike her villa, which was all airy, floaty, beachy whites and neutrals, it was decorated in a Balinese style, with cream walls, dark wooden floors and splashes of vivid colour in the cushions and art. There was a heavy sweetness in the air, and the hum of an extractor fan from the bathroom. He slid the door closed and pulled the curtain across, and it felt like something had been decided when really it hadn’t. The bare skin on her back tingled. They’d been alone together for many hours, in confined places and endless ones, but this cosy, personal space was a new level of intimacy. She felt both cocooned and out of her comfort zone.
‘I’m so sorry about before, when you came to my villa,’ she said. ‘I was in shock, I guess. I shouldn’t have said that. I should have … I don’t know.’
‘You have nothing to apologise for. Here, sit down.’ He moved a scattering of magazines from a tiny sofa. Australian Geographic, Smithsonian, boating mags. He was wearing a faded White Stripes T-shirt and boxers. She tried not to stare at his legs, which were usually half-hidden by board shorts. Not that she was likely to get an opportunity to explore this new territory, not now. She rubbed her lips together as she sank deep into the sofa.
‘You know where I live,’ he said, a question dressed up as a statement.
‘Your nan might have told me.’
‘You asked Nan?’ he said, sitting beside her. If she adjusted her position, their legs would touch.
‘She turned up in reception just now when I was asking if there were any rooms available. She came up right behind me and I didn’t know she was there until she spoke.’
‘She has a habit of that.’
‘It was her suggestion for me to come here. She said the resort was fully booked for the wedding, and the backpackers too, and that yours was the only apartment she could think of with a spare bed.’
‘I don’t have a spare and she knows that.’
‘Yes, I see that now,’ Sophia said, feeling like a fool. She hadn’t even known where the staff quarters were. ‘I did suggest I knock on Amy’s door, but Cody was at reception too, and he told me her place wasn’t a good option but he was very cagey about why, though I have my suspicions. Oh, and he was looking for you earlier, by the way. It sounded urgent. He knocked on my—’ She swore, her head falling back. ‘I just clicked. He was coming to warn us about Jeremy’s arrival. I didn’t …’ She trailed off, twigging to her slip of the tongue. Us? ‘You came,’ she said, looking at him. ‘I was waiting for you, then there was a knock, but it wasn’t you.’
She swallowed and Harry closed the gap between them, which required merely relaxing his quad muscle. She looked at their skin touching, her knee against his thigh. Her dress had twisted around her when she’d sat, the split exposing her leg nearly to her waist. He gently trailed three fingers up her outer thigh, starting at her knee. The combination of watching his fingers, and hearing the slide, and feeling the buzzing in her veins, and seeing her skin goosepimple … She willed those fingers to climb all the way up her leg, push her dress up.
Abruptly, she stood. It wasn’t that type of visit, though a few hours ago that had been what she’d wanted most. ‘Jeremy wants to get back together,’ she blurted. There. It was out, whether or not it should be.
Silence. ‘And?’ he said eventually, his voice low and even but maybe with a touch of harshness.
‘And I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know,’ he repeated baldly.
‘It’s not like flicking a switch. One moment I’m in love with him and I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and the next I’m not and I don’t.’ She was pacing. She didn’t know people actually paced. She’d never paced in her life, and in Harry’s apartment it involved a lot of turning. ‘It’s maybe a lever.’
Harry adjusted his position to sit forward—far too similar to the pose Jeremy had assumed as he’d casually admitted with a trace of anguish that he was wrong and he’d made a mistake and he was deeply in love with her and couldn’t imagine a life without her.
‘And where’s the lever at?’ Harry said.
‘It’s mostly to the side of he’s broken my heart and I’d be a fool to go back.’
‘But not all the way.’ He sounded like a counsellor. Dispassionate. Neutral.
‘Turns out, no. When I saw him, it was a shock, and my first instinct was …’ Good grief, she couldn’t tell Harry the details. The way she’d wanted to walk into his arms only seconds after visualising herself walking into Harry’s arms. She forced herself to stop pacing and swivelled to face the sofa. ‘It turns out he’s still the same Jeremy I loved. Love. I don’t know. He hasn’t grown horns or run off with his physio. He’s the same guy who’s listens out for new music I might like and adds it to my playlist, who knows my favourite perfume and my favourite body lotion and my favourite damn tea, and notices when they get low and buys me more, who knows just where I get tense in my neck and my back and how to dig into it and make it better. And he wants me back, Harry.’ It felt like a confession. ‘He’s the same guy.’
; ‘What he wants is irrelevant.’ Still with that opaque measured tone that made her want to shake him.
‘Isn’t that the most relevant thing here? Or, at minimum, half of the equation?’
‘The only thing that matters is whether you want him back. He doesn’t get to make that call. You get to make your own choices.’
‘My first thought, my first instinctive, almost subconscious thought, was that maybe I should make up with him so I don’t have to go through the pain of finding a new guy and establishing a new relationship. An easy out.’ Tears pricked and she looked up at the vaulted timber ceiling to hold them in. ‘And when I say that aloud, it sounds so pathetic but I’m running low on options. I mean, I know I could have a kid solo but that wasn’t my plan, and that’s going to take me a long time to get my head around. And I’ve been spending all this time trying to convince myself to hate him but …’ She clutched chunks of her hair at either side of her head, staring unseeing over the sofa, over Harry, into his little kitchen, which was just a hotplate, a sink and a bar fridge. ‘It’s like you said. It’s not like with your relationship, where you gradually broke up, where by the end there was no going back. We suddenly lurched one way and now he wants to lurch back the other. A market correction. What if he did just make a mistake? Wedding nerves, like he says. What if I’m throwing something away because of a glitch, because of my pride or something, and I never get another chance? Maybe we could quietly get married—elope to Fiji—and in a few weeks everything will be back to where it should be.’ She looked down at him, at that I’m-not-taking-sides expression.
Take a side. Please take a side.
‘I had to get out of there,’ she said, ‘otherwise I might have said yes.’
‘I hope …’ He trailed off, then started again with renewed resolve. ‘I hope you’re not factoring me into this equation. I can’t be a consideration here. I mean, I know we haven’t … but …’
She filled in the gaps. We haven’t known each other long but there’s an obvious connection? We haven’t had sex but we were minutes away?