by Beth O'Leary
Our first time is frantic. All shaking hands and gasping breath. We don’t make it out of the kitchen, and when we untangle ourselves, weak-limbed and laughing, he turns me around and brushes away flakes of bread crust from the skin of my bum and thighs.
‘God, you’re stunning,’ he says, voice hushed.
He’s behind me, and he holds me in place when I move as if to turn. His hand is still brushing over my thighs, more deliberate now. Gentling. I glance over my shoulder. He’s looking at my body like he’s learning it, almost reverent. He meets my gaze and his eyes catch me up and I want him again, already. So much my pulse starts racing.
My legs are shaky; I stumble as we make our way to the bed. When I collapse face down on the mattress he’s just seconds behind me, pulling my body flush against his. He traces soft kisses up the back of my neck and I feel that quiet heat unfurl in the pit of my stomach again.
‘This,’ he says throatily, pressing a single finger to the spot where my waist becomes my hip. ‘This place might be the sexiest half an inch I’ve ever seen.’
‘There?’ I say, turning in his arms. ‘Seriously?’
He shifts down the bed a little. ‘Maybe here,’ he says, and presses a string of hot, slow kisses to the skin of my throat. I tip my head back with a moan.
‘Or here.’ The slope of my breast. ‘Here.’ The dip of my hip bone. ‘Here.’ The soft, sensitive skin of my thigh.
He’s like no one I’ve ever slept with. We take our time now. Minutes slip by in a haze, like I’m dreaming. He’s fierce, then teasingly slow, then so gentle and sweet I’m shocked to find myself moved, eyes pricking as he leans his forehead against mine and shifts back and forth just a little, not enough, not yet, until I’m jellylike and wild with wanting him.
We fall asleep tangled and sweaty. I wake in the dark, totally disorientated. His chest hair is tickling my cheek. I sit up sharply and look down at the mess of clothes and bedsheets, the book I kicked off the nightstand at some point after midnight. Dylan’s naked form, long and tanned, coming into focus as my eyes adjust to the dark.
I smile into the gloom, pressing my hands to my face. This feels like . . . more than a summer romance. It feels epic.
The sun’s up when I wake again, and Terry is banging on the door to the flat.
I fell asleep with my head on Dylan’s arm. It spasms abruptly as he wakes and I dodge, just about avoiding a sharp smack in the face.
‘Oi!’ I yelp.
‘Hmm?’ he says, turning absent eyes my way. He does a comedy double take, hair falling into his eyes. ‘Oh, hullo.’
I can’t help smiling. ‘Hi. You nearly decked me.’
‘Did I?’ Dylan shuffles up to sit against the pillow, brushing his hair back. He rubs his cheeks like he’s trying to bring his face back to life. ‘Oh, Christ, sorry. I’m a flailer. So sorry. At least you’re a snorer, so we’re even.’
‘Hello?’ Terry calls from outside the flat. ‘Dylan!’
I groan, turning my face into the pillow. We can’t have got more than three hours’ sleep. I’d like to stay in bed for another nine or so.
‘Bloody Uncle Terry,’ Dylan announces to the ceiling.
I laugh into the pillow. ‘Are all your family this weird?’
‘Oh, definitely. But different-weird. Varied.’ He rolls over and plants a kiss on my shoulder. ‘Morning,’ he says, resting his forehead against me. ‘Please stay exactly like this, in this attire, in this bed, until I return from booze-cruising with my uncle?’
‘I’m not wearing any “attire”,’ I say, twisting to look at him.
‘Precisely.’
‘Dylan! We should be setting off!’ Terry calls.
Dylan leans forward and kisses me gently on the lips. ‘All right. You can dress, and move around, if absolutely necessary. But don’t disappear. Please?’
‘I’m here all summer,’ I say. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
He smiles then. Laid back, a little dishevelled, hair already falling back into his eyes. ‘Perfect,’ he says. He kisses me softly. ‘Last night was . . . unforgettable. You’re extraordinary.’
I blush so fiercely he chuckles – I’m sure he can feel the heat radiating from my skin. I want to tell him he always says the perfect thing, but it feels too much. I don’t want to give him that. I don’t want him to know how completely he has me already. If he knows that, he has all the power. Then the joy of yesterday – his hangdog eyes following me around the pool – will be gone.
NOW
Dylan
The accidental breakdown cover men are here, fixing Deb’s car. I really do try to listen to the explanation about what happened with the brakes and the steering but there’s something about car talk that just makes me switch off entirely. A similar thing occurs whenever my father talks to me about rugby. I could learn the whole of Twelfth Night off by heart aged sixteen, but I am still unclear on what exactly they’re all doing when they get in a scrum.
While Kevin launches into an in-depth chat with Deb about brake fluid, with Rodney at his shoulder, nodding eagerly, I watch Addie. And Marcus watches me.
‘You keep staring at her like that, you’re going to give her the creeps,’ Marcus says, sidling over with his hands in his pockets.
We’re still on the verge; I’ve already got so accustomed to the roar of traffic I don’t hear it now, and the realisation makes me think of the crickets in France, how I’d tune out their endless chirrups and only know they’d been singing when they suddenly hushed.
The car guy laughs at something Addie says, and I feel a shock of almost-pain as I watch her smile back at him. He’s handsome – Spanish, perhaps, with a short beard and striking eyes.
‘I know you don’t want to hear this,’ Marcus says quietly as he follows me down the bank towards the others. ‘I’m not trying to be a dick. I lost my head in the car, fine, but the point still stands, Dyl – I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t say it. You can’t go back there. You need to move on. Christ, I would have thought you had already. It’s been almost two years, hasn’t it?’
I want to hit him. Maybe I could hit him, just once? I’ve wanted to so many times and I never have. Perhaps one punch would get it out of my system, and then I could go back to being a mature, supportive friend.
‘Addie,’ Deb calls, waving her phone. ‘Addie . . . Cherry’s ringing.’
Deb returned from her trip to Tesco looking very happy and dishevelled. When I asked the obvious questions – Sorry, but how? As in, where? – she announced with great glee that Kevin had a shipment of chairs in the back of his lorry, and that she’d been able to fulfil two of her favourite activities simultaneously: having sex and having a nice sit-down.
‘Don’t answer,’ I call, just as Addie says,
‘Don’t pick up!’
Everyone watches the phone ringing out in Deb’s hand.
‘We’re going to have to tell her eventually,’ Deb says as the call goes to voicemail. ‘We’ll never make it there to set up for the barbecue now.’
She opens Maps on her phone.
‘We’ve travelled one hundred and twenty miles in five and a half hours. There’s still . . . three hundred miles to go.’
Addie throws her head back and groans up at the sky. ‘How has this gone so wrong?’
‘Let’s just drive faster,’ Marcus says.
‘It’s five hours of solid driving,’ Deb says. ‘And it’s . . . almost eleven right now.’
‘What time did we say we’d be there?’
‘Three o’clock,’ Addie says, pulling a face. ‘And I’m not speeding. I’ve already got three points on my licence.’
I stare at her, mouth open. She scrupulously avoids my gaze.
‘Me neither,’ Deb says. ‘I have a son. I’m not allowed to die these days.’
‘I’ll text her,’ Addie says, chewing her lip. �
��That’s . . . that’ll be fine.’
Everyone makes supportive noises, as though this is an ingenious idea, when we all know it’s a cop-out.
‘Right – back in the car, everyone. Oh! Kevin,’ Addie says, stopping short. ‘Sorry. I forgot you weren’t part of the gang.’
This seems to please Kevin. Then his grimace-smile wavers. ‘You’re going? Already?’
‘Car’s fixed,’ Addie says, gesturing to the breakdown guys and shooting them a smile.
The Spanish one definitely just checked out her arse. I absolutely must not look like I mind. But I do, a lot. God, she’s so beautiful.
I catch Marcus watching me again, his eyebrows raised, and I try to studiously look at something other than Addie.
‘You don’t want to stick around, have lunch? See the inside of the lorry cab? Eh?’ Kevin says.
All of this is directed at Deb, who is busy packing food into plastic bags and seems to have written Kevin out of her reality altogether. Since their return from Tesco she’s regarded him with the same absent-minded blankness with which Addie looks at Rodney. The Gilbert family’s ability to focus on what matters to them and ignore everything else is truly remarkable.
‘Well,’ Kevin says, grimace-smile fading. He rubs his chin. ‘Goodbye.’
‘So long, Kevin,’ Marcus says, climbing into the front seat of the car. His friendliness has ebbed since Deb went to Tesco with Kevin; Marcus doesn’t like to lose, even if he didn’t particularly care about winning.
The rest of us say our goodbyes, which just leaves Deb. She finishes tidying the litter and half-eaten food we’ve all discarded on the verge-side, touching her hand to her lower back as she straightens up.
‘Oh. Bye, Kevin. Thanks,’ she says, focusing on him at last.
‘Perhaps we’ll cross paths again!’ Kevin tries.
‘Seems unlikely,’ Deb says, opening the car boot and chucking in the rubbish bag.
‘Call me!’ he yells as she slams the car door.
It takes a while for Deb to pull out into the slow lane – the traffic shoots by, gleaming bonnets catching the sun – and Kevin waits on the verge to wave us off. I watch him shrinking away in the mirror and feel Addie’s leg pressed against mine in the back seat, and I wonder why we all find it so very hard to let the Gilbert women go.
We drive for an hour or so without any incident. Well, technically speaking, without incident – as far as I’m concerned, every slight shift of Addie’s leg against mine is worth a whole poem.
Having her so close is making me dizzy. I’ve thought about seeing her again more times than I could possibly count, but it’s nothing like I expected. In my mind she’d looked exactly as she had when I left her – tired, sad eyes and dark hair to her waist – but she’s different now. She’s warmer; less guarded, oddly enough; she knows herself better. The edges of her nails aren’t bitten down raw, and there’s a stillness to her that’s completely new.
And then there’s the hair, of course, and the glasses, both of which I’m finding impossibly sexy.
‘So, Rodney,’ Deb says over her shoulder, as she moves the car out into the fast lane. ‘What’s your story?’
‘Oh, I don’t have a story,’ Rodney says.
Marcus huffs a laugh. He’s been gazing out the window from the front seat, suspiciously quiet. It’s too hot in the car; there’s a nasty sort of stickiness to the air, like the stale fug of a room that’s not been aired since somebody slept there.
‘Everyone has a story,’ Addie says.
She glances at me, but it brings our faces so close – a kiss away from one another – that she turns to the front again within half a second, a blush colouring her cheeks.
‘Rodney?’ she prompts.
Rodney squirms. ‘Oh, really, nothing to tell!’
I look at him with a pang of pity, then realise – as Addie just did – how close our faces are now we’re turned towards one another. I can see every pore on his nose.
‘Come on, Rodney – what is it you do, for instance?’ I say, quickly returning my gaze to the road ahead. The middle seat is unequivocally the worst. There’s nowhere to put my feet, for starters, and my arms feel very inconvenient, like a couple of extra limbs I really should have had the decency to leave in the boot.
‘I work with Cherry,’ Rodney says. ‘I’m in the sales team.’
I can tell without looking that Addie is as surprised as I am. I don’t know why none of us had thought to ask how exactly Rodney knew Cherry, but this wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting. Since moving to live with Krishna in Chichester, Cherry works for a luxury travel company, selling ten-thousand-pound holidays to people who are far too busy to organise them for themselves. Not one of those hideous package sites that’s always shouting at you to book things before somebody else does, but a boutique travel agency with a cosy office and staff who are astonishingly nice to you. The niceness only applies to the right sort of person, of course. It’s very exclusive.
Rodney doesn’t exactly scream exclusivity.
I should say something – I’ve left it too long. ‘That’s great!’ I say, much too enthusiastically. Addie shoots me an amused glance and I make a quick face, like, What would you have done? I feel rather than see her smile.
‘What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done, Rodney?’ Marcus asks, without turning around.
‘Marcus,’ Addie begins.
‘What? Five questions! I did it earlier, didn’t I?’ He turns then, and smiles. ‘Come on, Rodney, it’ll be fun. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?’
This is a wildly inaccurate statement.
Rodney clears his throat. ‘Umm. Most embarrassing . . . Oh, let’s see . . . I once wet myself in bed.’
There is a long silence.
‘With a girl there,’ he says.
‘What?’ everyone choruses.
‘What, like, as an adult?’
‘Well, yeah,’ Rodney says. ‘Haha!’
I cringe as Marcus laughs to himself. I suspect Rodney has not heard the end of this story and will sincerely regret sharing it.
‘Next question?’ Rodney says hopefully.
‘Like, full-bladder-wet-yourself?’ Deb asks, with curiosity. ‘Or just a dribble?’
‘Oh, gosh,’ Rodney says. ‘Haha! Let’s not go into the details?’
‘I think you’re misunderstanding, Rodney,’ Marcus says. ‘The details are the only interesting part.’
Addie leans into me for a moment as she adjusts her seat belt. I wonder if she feels that heat between us too, if the left side of her body is blazing like the right side of mine, hypersensitive to touch.
‘Let’s allow Rodney to retain some dignity,’ Addie says. ‘When did you and Cherry become friends, Rodney?’
‘What a waste of a question,’ Marcus says.
‘Christmas party, year before last,’ Rodney says, with pride.
I remember Cherry telling me about that Christmas party. She always has excellent anecdotes, largely because she’s so ridiculous – she’s always in one scrape or another. For a while I used to hope for them, because when she needed rescuing it would usually be Addie who turned up to save her. Cherry always caved eventually and gave me the details of exactly how Addie was, what she was doing, whether she was dating, and all the other questions I would insist on torturing myself by asking.
That particular Christmas party had been one month before the night out with me in Chichester when Cherry had first met Krishna, her now fiancé. That Christmas she’d had one ill-fated sexual encounter with a man who had subsequently spent a year sending her very poorly written poems, a story that had always made me feel deeply uncomfortable (embarrassingly bad poets always hit a nerve); if I remember the tale correctly, she also bought shots for everybody in the business and kissed seven colleagues at that party. This was an e
ntirely standard Cherry anecdote; I remember her telling it at the pub in a fit of giggles, and when Grace had said to her, Darling, have you no shame? Cherry had said, What’s shame good for, except keeping people down?
‘She’s fun, isn’t she, Cherry?’ I ask Rodney.
He beams. ‘She’s brilliant. Helped me through all sorts.’
Ah – so he’s a Cherry charity case. Cherry collects waifs and strays like a benevolent nineteenth-century widow: she once put up fifteen homeless teenagers in a large marquee in her parents’ garden; she owns eight rescue animals, who have about six limbs remaining between them. Even Addie and Deb’s stint as caretakers was a by-product of Cherry’s boundless goodwill: Deb was between jobs, and Addie was planning on spending the summer working in her local old-man pub before Cherry swooped in and got them four months in Provence.
I swallow. Thinking of that summer brings an ache to the back of my throat. I can’t cast my mind back to the heat and dust and sexual tension without feeling sure that I rolled the dice, then, and came up with the wrong numbers. We were both so unformed. So sure of ourselves and so utterly lost.
If we’d met now, as adults, would we have been able to make it work?
The music shifts. Taylor Swift, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’.
A timely reminder from the universe. Or Marcus, rather, who I now realise is manning the Spotify playlist.
Addie
Bloody hell, it’s hot in this car. The air con can’t contend with five adults and – I check my phone – thirty-degree heat. The forecast says it’s going to be thirty-six by mid-afternoon. Wish I’d not bothered putting make-up on now. It’ll probably be puddling on my chin by the time we get to Scotland.
Dylan shifts beside me. He’s being a gentleman and not complaining about being in the middle seat, but his knees are jutting up towards his chest and he’s pulling both elbows in. Kind of a T-rex pose. We’d save a lot of space if I sat in his lap.
I blink. That thought was . . . inappropriate. Dylan’s body is pressed against the side of mine. He’s radiating heat, and as Taylor Swift sings out from the speaker – Marcus is on a Taylor thing, probably trying to make some sort of point – I think about how easy it would be to put my hand on Dylan’s knee. Instead I press both palms together between my legs and try to get a bloody grip on myself.