“Come on!” he insisted.
I padded over to him, so we were both standing with our feet just in the water. “It gets deep pretty quick,” he said. I felt his warm hand suddenly on the small of my back. “It’s OK though, it won’t go up further than your chest, and I’ve got you.”
I nodded.
“Best thing is just to run in,” he said.
I exhaled unsteadily.
He grabbed my hand, and before I knew what was really happening, he pulled us both into the lake in one swift tug, and we both tumbled and splashed in. And just as I lost my footing and was about to suck up a lungful of lake water, his hands were around my waist, keeping me upright. We both gasped with the shock of the cold water, but laughing too, breathless and exhilarated. Then his hands found mine as we bobbed in the water, feet occasionally brushing the silt and stones on the bottom. “OK?” he said.
“That was … surprising,” I said.
“You’d have taken half an hour to get in otherwise.” He squeezed my hands in his. “I’ve got you though.”
We stayed like that as our breathing settled down and slowed, and the water started to feel beautifully warm.
“Come on,” he said. “I want you to hold on to my shoulders with your hands, and just let yourself float up.”
I didn’t really want to let go of his hands, and he must have got bored of waiting for me to do it, because he just moved my hands himself, placing them on his shoulders. “Like this,” he said, as though I might not have understood his simple instruction. “You can press down on me,” he continued. “Use me to keep yourself steady and just relax your body and float.”
I tried, but I couldn’t.
“Just relax,” Ben repeated. “Let your lower half go floppy.”
I pretended he didn’t just say that and tried again, which just resulted in a hell of a lot of leg splashing.
Ben laughed.
“I’m trying,” I protested.
“I know you are.”
“I think I’m doomed to never swim.”
“No, you’re not,” he smiled.
“I’m an idiot.”
“No. You’re not.”
Our eyes locked together at that point.
And I felt it again.
The same feeling as outside the pizza place that time.
His hands found my hips, and he stepped towards me, slightly weightless in the water.
I moved my hands down to his waist too, and he caught his breath and tensed. “Sorry,” I muttered.
He didn’t reply, just rested his forehead against mine again. “Hi,” he muttered.
“Um … hi. Hello,” I said.
His breath was heavy as he pulled me closer to him, our stomachs brushing under the water, legs intertwined, as he pressed himself into me and then his lips were on mine or mine were on his, I’m not quite sure who initiated it, and… It. Was. Epic. I mean, I really don’t mean to brag, but my first kiss was happening with a really hot boy, in a lake, at sunset, no one was drunk, you know, I think that’s definitely a win.
He kissed gently. So tenderly. Like every single one had been thought about and meant something and whilst this wasn’t the time to be thinking of middle-aged women, I thought of Maggie, because she was right. When the moment comes, you do know what to do.
We came to a slow, gradual stop, and he rested his head on my shoulder, nestled into my neck, and sighed.
“Great swimming lesson,” I muttered.
He laughed.
“Can’t wait for the next one.”
He kissed me again, just once this time, and then sighed. I saw the look in his eyes – the same conflict I’d seen outside the pizza place. Not that again. “OK, Ben,” I said. “I surrender. This is the moment I surrender.”
He just stared at me, mouth slightly open.
I was going against every word of advice, but to hell with the advice. If this was going to be “too keen” then so be it, I was going to be that person. I was not going to be a game player any longer. “Ben, I totally love you.”
His eyes widened.
I nevertheless pressed on.
“You are so perfect. You’re so nice. I know I’m doing this all wrong. I know I should be playing it cool and hard to get, but I want you to absolutely know – I am not cool about this. I am … the opposite of cool, I am … really hot about this. About you.”
“Alex…”
“‘Love’ just felt like the best word, Ben. That’s all. It’s more than ‘like’ and it’s not just ‘lust’ so what else is there? Really like? I enormously like you?”
“Alex—”
“OK, I do now regret saying it all like that.”
He blew out a breath. “Let’s get out of the water.”
He reached for my hand and helped me out of the water, before we sat down by the lake’s edge, legs drawn up, with our towels draped over our shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Everything I said just then was all wrong.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“I don’t even… Ben, I’m confused because I thought you were with Bella, in fact you said you were, and now… I mean, it’s cool, whatever you are, even if you don’t know, it’s cool. I just … I guess I wanted you to know where I was at, anyway.”
He hung his head between his knees and sighed. “But for ages, I thought you liked Caleb.”
“No, I liked you!”
“But you said you liked him!”
“No, you said I did, and I went along with it because I thought if you were saying that, it meant you didn’t like me!”
He blew out a breath. “OK, so we got quite a bit wrong then.”
“What about Bella?!”
“OK, so, me and Bella have been best mates since Year Nine, and we went to prom together and we sort of kissed, and we kind of became a bit of a thing, except not really much of one. I dunno, it felt like everyone else was pairing off, and so we did too, except it never really felt quite right, if I’m honest. And I’m sure Bella would say the same. We both agreed the whole debacle was over whilst she was away traveling.”
I wasn’t sure I dared ask, but I wanted to know. “How did you know it was over?”
Ben looked up at me. “Bella knew before I did.”
“How?”
He cracked a smile. “Because one day she said to me, ‘You know all you talk about is this Alex guy?’ And I was like, ‘No!’ and she said, ‘Er, yes!’ And she told me, ‘You like him, don’t you?’ and as soon as she said it, it just slotted into place and, you know, I had to admit, yeah, I did. I do.”
He was telling me he liked me, and my heart was pounding. “And Bella is … she was fine with this?”
Ben nodded. “Bella is such a cool girl. Nothing fazes her. And she knows me better than I know myself, pretty much. I mean, obviously, I think this proves it. She’s been trying to get us together since she got back. That whole thing in the pizza place, when you were with Caleb? She was all, ‘Let’s feed each other dough balls, it might make him jealous!’”
“Oh … how … manipulative,” I said.
Ben glanced across at me. “Caleb was doing the same with you, blatantly.”
I stifled a grin.
Ben sighed. “But Alex … you’re going to have to be patient with me. It’s taken me a while to realize I like boys, so this is all new. It’s why I got a bit funny with you in the cleaning cupboard that time – my head was all over the place, and I thought maybe you would want to talk about the fact I’d tried to kiss you the night before—”
“So you did try to kiss me!”
“Oh my god, yes! I mean, I’d kind of hoped you might kiss me first, you know, since you’ve clearly known you’re gay for a while and I’m a total newbie, but you didn’t look like you were going to, so I thought I might try, but I bottled it, so.”
“I would have! Ben, I so would have, but Bella!”
“Yeah, I know,” Ben said. “But then in work the next day, you seemed super weird, and
I just assumed I’d overstepped the mark, like, you fancied Caleb, and I was just being all obsessed with you, like some lovesick puppy. And then you suggested bringing Bella to dinner, and that was seriously friend-zoning me. That’s why I backed off.”
I blinked at him. “Oh, wow. We’re ridiculous. That’s what I was thinking! That’s why I backed off!”
“OK, wow. Yeah, we are ridiculous.” He laughed. “Can we just … pretend that conversation never happened?”
“What conversation?” I waited to see if he got my little joke. “Hey? What conversation?!”
He laughed again, shaking his head at my appalling comedic efforts. Then his face softened. “I like you, Alex.”
“Really like? Enormously like?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “And then some.” Hearing that, it was like New Year’s Eve and all the fireworks exploding at once.
He put his arm across my shoulders and pulled me into him, and we rested our heads against each other.
“It’s been a tough year though,” he muttered.
“I know it has.”
“What with Mum, and then Dad sinking into this pit of despair … like, I was seriously wondering if anything good would ever happen again.”
I put my arm around his waist. “It’s not remotely the same, but at the start of this summer, I wasn’t in the best place either. Everyone seemed to have moved on, except me. And I didn’t think anything would change … and then I met you. And everything did.”
“Snap,” Ben said, giving me a little smile.
He shuffled round towards me a bit, rested his forehead on my shoulder and traced his finger along the path of a little droplet of water, running down from my shoulder. I gasped as his finger drifted over my chest, nearly exploding into a million pieces as he brushed past my nipple, then held my breath as he wandered down over my stomach, coming to a rest at the waistband of my swim shorts.
I was an absolute quivering mess.
“Can I kiss you again?” I asked.
“I was hoping you might,” he said.
So we did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It was Saturday, and I wasn’t on the rota until midday, which meant I could have a lie-in, basking in the awesomeness of everything that had happened the night before with Ben, and enjoying the fact that tonight I would be going to the pool party with an actual boy, like some sort of regular person for whom things actually work out. A stupid grin spread across my face as I relived the previous night for about the ten millionth time – Ben’s hand, gently tracing down my chest, towards my stomach, and the waistband of my swimming shorts. Our kisses, more breathless and urgent. I can’t get enough of him. He’s lying on top of me, and we’re seconds away from tipping over into something neither of us would be able to stop – I can feel the blood coursing through me, adrenaline, excitement, but also fear, because I really don’t know what I’m doing, and nor does he, and we both want to, but we also both don’t want to, not yet, not quite yet. It doesn’t matter. This is enough. He’s trembling and so am I. It’s because I want him so much. I hope it’s the same for him. He whispers in my ear and I totally melt.
“Rise and shine, it’s poached egg and avocado time!”
I crash about and whip my duvet practically up to my ears just as Kendra flings my bedroom door open, like she’s never heard of the wisdom of knocking before you enter a boy’s bedroom because obviously we wouldn’t be doing anything other than a spot of cross-stitching, or crocheting some booties for the next-door neighbour’s new baby.
“Hi, morning!” I gasp.
“Poached egg – protein. Avocado – one of your five a day. It’s ready, so can you come downstairs now, please?” She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.
“OK,” I said. “I’m coming.”
She nodded. “I’ll wait.”
“No,” I said. I definitely did not want her to do that.
“If I go, you’ll just go back to sleep.”
I shook my head. “I promise I won’t.”
“Get up, Alex. It’s ten o’clock. You can’t just fester here all—”
“I’m not festering!” I protested. “I’m … relaxing.”
“The poached eggs will go hard,” she told me, advancing into the room.
I mean, I literally couldn’t have cared less about the eggs, but she was acting like the situation would start World War Three. I gripped on to the duvet, because I was pretty sure what was going to happen next.
“Up!” she demanded, tugging at the bottom of my duvet.
“No! Kendra! I am doing!”
“Up!”
“Please!”
She reached down with her other hand. She had both hands on my duvet. I also had both of mine on my end, but she was a woman with rock-hard abs who did kick-boxing, and I was a teenage boy with disappointing muscle development and no strength. The odds were stacked against me, so I went into damage limitation mode, gripping on to the duvet with every part of my body possible, while Kendra attempted to whip the whole thing away. I scrunched myself in a ball, and with part of the duvet wedged between my thighs, and another bit wrapped around my arms, I rolled off the bed, using the momentum as I dropped on to my bedroom floor to take the rest of the duvet with me. I ended up face down, my boxers still halfway down my legs because I hadn’t had chance to pull them back up, with my bare arse in the air. But it was still better than the alternative.
“For the love of god, at least wear some boxers in bed,” Kendra said.
I groaned into the duvet.
“One egg or two?”
Why was this still happening?
“I don’t know – two?” I said.
“Do you want a side of spinach?”
“No! Thank you. No spinach.”
I buried my face back in the duvet. I heard her move, and then felt a ripple of cold air across my bottom as she pulled the door shut after her. I waited until I heard her descend the stairs, then rolled out of my duvet nest and quickly pulled my boxers back up and then some joggers and a white T-shirt.
“Nice time with Ben?” Dad grinned as I walked through to the kitchen.
“Yup.”
I poured myself a glass of orange juice, while Kendra silently mashed an avocado with simmering aggression.
“So, is Ben going to be your date for the pool party?” Dad asked.
I perched on one of the breakfast bar stools. “I guess.” I tried to play it cool, but the smile I was suppressing spread across my face anyway.
Dad laughed. “Nice one, Alex. He seems like a nice lad.”
“You’ve barely met him.”
“I’m a good judge of character!” Dad said.
I came this close to raising my eyebrow and glancing in Kendra’s direction. Instead, I just smiled, and Dad squeezed my shoulder as he went to help Kendra plate up.
He glanced back at me after exchanging a few words with Kendra. “Alex?”
“Oh, sorry, what do you need me to do?” I said.
“Nothing. I was just going to say, I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I smiled. “Me too.”
I bounced along the pavement of the promenade, weaving between the lunchtime crowds of holidaymakers, most of whom were wanting to grab fish and chips or ice cream before returning to the beach to catch the afternoon sun. I had started this summer so down and out, but now, just a few weeks later, everything had changed. For the first time in my life, I felt excited about the future, and I was ready. I was ready to jump in and see where the rapids of life took me.
First stop, the bakery, to get some fresh blueberry muffins for the squad. I bought six, and just as I pulled out a fiver to pay for them, a little card fluttered out and on to the floor. And that’s when I saw it:
Tyler Phillips
Managing Director, Develop Newsands Ltd.
I just stared at it. I hadn’t made the connection before; why would I? Tyler told me he was on some sort of committee to help local traders,
but his business card made it clear he ran the company who had recently bought the Bellevue Café.
Oh my god.
I ran out of the bakery, then ran back again and gave them back the muffins I hadn’t paid for, and then ran all the way to where Efia and Ben were waiting on our usual bench.
“Guys!” I said. “Develop Newsands is run by Tyler Phillips, the same guy that offered to help with the PR for the relaunch, if he’s behind this, if he wants Wonderland as well as the Bellevue, maybe he got all the press to come to the relaunch knowing it would go wrong, for maximum bad publicity!” I could barely breathe, but I had to get this all out. “He seemed like such a nice guy, but what if it’s all an act? What if it’s him?”
“We know,” Efia said.
My eyes widened. “You do? So it’s true?”
“Alex…” She looked away. “God, Alex.”
I stared at them both, neither of them looking back at me. “I didn’t know,” I said. “He came up to me at the lemon, I mean you saw, but ask Caleb! He seemed genuine, I didn’t even properly look at his business card, I—”
“Alex, we know it’s not Tyler,” Efia said, standing up to face me.
OK, now I was confused. “What?”
“It’s not Tyler, is it?” Efia said.
I shook my head in bewilderment. “Then … who?”
She stared at me for about five silent seconds. “We know what you did, what you’ve been doing. Why don’t you just come clean, Alex? Please? Just admit it, ’cause we know now.”
I stared back at her, stomach tingling.
“At least do the brave thing and own it,” she continued.
I swallowed. “What…” I looked between her (glaring at me) and Ben (still not even looking up). “I don’t understand… Tyler—”
“Not Tyler, you!”
“What … what have I done?”
Efia gave a contemptuous laugh and shook her head. “You’re playing innocent? Of course you are. You had us all fooled, so good job there.”
I looked, desperately, at Ben. “Ben? I—” I reached out to touch his arm, but he shrugged me off.
“Stop it,” he muttered, standing up next to Efia. “Just … stop it.” He still wouldn’t look at me.
“OK,” I said. “I have literally no idea what any of this is about. I haven’t done anything. Not that I know of. So, please, just tell me!” I blew out a breath and flopped down on the bench. “I mean, what the hell is this?”
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