21. Twenty-One

The metallic shell of the quad bike is gleaming under the hot sun. I hang back as we approach it to let Alex get on first, but he stops in his tracks, and I go walking straight into him.

“After you,” he says, politely stepping back.

“No, you go,” I tell him. “You’re the driver, after all.”

He looks at me speculatively.

“I was thinking you could drive us back,” he says, as casually as if he’s suggesting I do something I’m actually capable of. As if he’s mistaken me for the much cooler version of myself that seems doomed to exist only in my head. “What do you say?”

“Um, I say you’re insane,” I reply. “You saw me back at the training place. I didn’t leave a single traffic cone standing.”

“That’s true,” he says seriously. “Have you ever tried playing video games? I think you’d be pretty good at the ones where you have to take out a bunch of targets. Seriously, though; you wanted to ride a bike. And I know this isn’t quite what you had in mind, but even so, don’t you think you should give it a go?”

“I did,” I remind him. “The guy told me I had no control, then banned me from riding alone. I don’t think he’d be very impressed if he saw me trying to drive this thing.”

“So we’ll make sure he doesn’t see you.”

Alex nods in the direction of the tour leader, who’s busy loading the cool box back onto his bike. He’s not looking at us. Which means…

“No,” I say, shaking my head decisively. “He told me not to. It’s against the rules.”

“And what do you think your Fairy Godmother would say about that if she were here?” Alex says teasingly. “Because I think she’d say rules are meant to be broken. Don’t you?”

“That… does sound like something she might say,” I admit, ignoring the fact that I only spoke to the crone in question for less than 10 minutes, and have no idea what she’d say about me riding a quad bike. Weirdly enough, the topic didn’t come up during our New Year’s Eve conversation. The thought of the FG and her warning, though, combined with the revelation that Jamie Reynolds isn’t the reason I came here, suddenly makes me think this is exactly the kind of thing she’d tell me to do.

“You can do this, Summer,” says Alex firmly, seeing me hesitate. “I know you can. I wouldn’t risk getting on behind you if I didn’t believe in you, would I?”

I take a hesitant step towards the bike.

“Come on, you two,” yells Chloe, who’s already up behind Jamie. “We’re going. And no funny stuff this time!”

They roar off to take their place at the end of the line of bikes, which are snaking their way out of the viewpoint and back onto the trail. I watch them for a second, then reach for the helmet that’s hanging from one of the handlebars and put it on.

“Okay, let’s do it,” I tell Alex, my voice muffled by the visor. “But don’t blame me if it all goes badly wrong.”

“Summer, come ON.”

Chloe’s voice makes me spring into action, and I swing my leg over the seat of the bike and position my feet on the pedals. After a moment, I feel Alex’s arms around my waist, and I freeze at the contact. If I’d thought our previous seating arrangement felt intimate, it’s absolutely nothing to the way he’s currently spooned against my body; his chest against my back, and his arms wrapped around me.

This is another one for the ‘best not to think about it’ files.

Even though I am most definitely thinking about it.

“You have to press down on the accelerator to get it to move,” he says, his voice coming from right behind my ear.

“I know,” I say quickly, relieved to find that my own voice sounds relatively normal.

Clearing my throat, I press tentatively down on the pedal, then hold my breath and wait for the crash.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead, the bike moves smoothly forward. I breathe out slowly as I guide it out of the viewpoint parking area, and into line behind Chloe and Jamie, who’s very deliberately avoiding my gaze.

“Well done,” says Alex. “I knew you could do it.”

And it turns out I can. I’m doing it.

I’m actually doing it.

We ride back through the forest, and down the hill towards the place we started. It’s hard to talk over the sound of the engines, which is a relief, because I suspect it would be hard to carry out a normal conversation with Alex’s arms around me like this. Instead, I do my best to concentrate on my driving, silently congratulating myself as I manage to keep up with the rest of the group without crashing or knocking anything over. As we approach the little arena we picked up the bikes from, I realize I’m actually disappointed that the ride is almost over; I’ve been enjoying it so much I could easily have kept on going.

“That was amazing,” I say as Alex unwinds his arms from my waist and climbs back off the bike. “Thanks for encouraging me to do it. I don’t think I’d have had the nerve if you hadn’t talked me into it.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he replies, pulling his bike helmet off and grinning at me. “It was all you.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” I reply, feeling suddenly shy under the force of those green eyes. “I really enjoyed it. I didn’t expect to, but I did.”

Which makes me wonder what else I might enjoy, if I just gave it a chance?

“Summer, can we go?” Chloe says, wobbling towards us on shaky legs. “I don’t feel great.”

She doesn’t look great, either; which is so unusual for Chloe that I step forward and put my hand on her forehead, assuming she must be ill.

“You’re burning up,” I say, frowning at her green-tinged complexion. “You must be coming down with something.”

“I bet I caught it on the plane,” she groans, looking like she’s about to throw up. “This is why I don’t usually travel economy.”

She doesn’t usually travel anything other than economy either, but I keep this thought to myself as Jamie calls for a taxi. We all squeeze into it together, with me sandwiched between Alex and Jamie in the back, while Chloe insists on riding shotgun, with the window rolled down. No one talks much on the drive back down to the coast. Chloe’s feeling too sick to speak, and all of my conversation starters seem horribly banal when I’m sitting squeezed against the man I once thought was going to be the love of my life, and the man who… I just keep bumping into, to quote Alex, himself.

I’ve totally exhausted the subject of the weather and the scenery, and am considering asking them both how they feel Brexit has worked out for us, just for something to say, when we finally pull up outside Jamie’s bar.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to drop you off at home?” I ask, as he opens the car door, looking relieved to be escaping. “Where do you live, by the way? You didn’t say.”

“Oh, here’s fine,” he replies, trying to hand me some money for the taxi, which I wave away. “I should really get back to work. Great seeing you, guys!”

He gives a small wave, which includes me and Chloe while somehow excluding Alex. Then he’s gone, heading off towards the Squirrel at a quick jog. I quickly shuffle into the seat he’s just vacated, and we travel the rest of the way in silence, punctuated only by the occasional groan from Chloe, who’s milking her ‘invalid’ status for all it’s worth.

“Just get some rest,” I tell her, as I help her back to her room. “I’ll come and get you when it’s time for dinner, okay? You might be feeling better by then.”

When I knock on her door a few hours later, though, having spent a pleasant afternoon by the pool, with absolutely no sign of Alex, Rita, or anyone else who might start asking awkward questions about me and Jamie, there’s no answer. I hover outside the room for a few minutes, before knocking again, but when there’s still no sign of life from behind the door, I decide she must be sleeping, and head down to the restaurant on my own, trying not to feel relieved.

I’m not glad Chloe’s ill, obviously. I’m just glad she’s not here, is all.

But Alex is.

He’s sitting waiting for me at our usual table, which is heaped with so many plates it looks like he’s expecting more than just the one of me to be joining him. My heart gives an unexpected little flutter of pleasure at the sight of him, which I do my best to ignore, because it’s just too confusing.

Maybe I’m coming down with whatever it is Chloe has? That would certainly explain the whole ‘racing heart’ thing in a way that doesn’t involve me suddenly liking Alex…

“I know you like to have dessert first,” he says as I sit down.“But I still think that’s weird, so I got you some normal starters, too.”

“Wow,” I reply, looking at the spread in front of me, which, sure enough, contains both sweet and savory. “Thanks. You didn’t have to get me all this, though. I could have gone up myself.”

“Thought I’d save you the trouble,” Alex says, grinning. “It’s like feeding time at the zoo up there. And I’ve noticed it always takes you ages to choose.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, there’s a lot to choose from.”

I don’t want to tell him the reason it always takes me so long is that I’m normally trying to avoid him, so I sit down and pick up my napkin, double-checking that it is, in fact, a napkin this time, and not the tablecloth.

“I’m going to take a leaf out of your book and try the dessert-first thing tonight,” declares Alex, selecting a slice of chocolate cake from the selection in front of him. “Live dangerously. Why not, after all?”

“Um, well, probably because it’s just a bit weird,” I admit, laughing at the expression on his face. “I guess there are good reasons we don’t normally do it that way around.”

“Aha!” he says, putting the bowl back down again. “I knew it! I knew you were just pretending to be the wild and crazy type.”

“I think it’s more that I was trying to convince myself that’s who I was,” I confess, handing him his usual salmon starter. “But it wasn’t really me.”

I pick up a bowl of Canarian potatoes instead, relieved not to have to continue the facade of being someone less basic than I really am.

“So, what were you and Whatshisface talking about earlier, then?” asks Alex, as I reach for the mojo sauce to go with them. “It looked like a proper heart-to-heart.”

“I think you should stop pretending you can’t remember his name, now that you’ve actually met him, don’t you?” I reply, not really wanting to get into my complicated feelings about Jamie — especially not with Alex.

“OK, Jamie, then,” he shrugs, making the name sound like it tastes bad. “Your turn to answer my question now.”

“You’re very interested, all of a sudden,” I reply, still stalling for time.

“Of course I’m interested,” he says. “Your love life is of the utmost importance to me, Summer. I live for these updates on it. And trust me, I could be doing with the distraction.”

“Really?” I pause, my fork halfway to my mouth. “Why’s that? What do you need to be distracted from?”

He hesitates for just a moment, then shakes his head, as if he’s talking himself out of whatever it was he was about to say.

“Nothing,” he says instead. “My turn with the questions again. So, come on, out with it. Were you telling him about the diary?, and your list?”

“Nuh-uh.” I put my cutlery down in an ‘I mean business’ kind of way. “You’re not getting away with that,” I tell him firmly. “You don’t get to tell me you need a distraction, then refuse to tell me what from. Is it the same thing you were thinking about on the balcony last night?”

“Leave it, Summer.”

Alex’s face darkens, like the sun going behind a cloud. I pick up my fork again and fiddle with it thoughtfully. I really want to know what’s going on with him, but he’s got that whole ‘tortured poet’ thing going on again, and even though the moody, intense look suits him, it’s a sure sign that if I push any further, he’s probably just going to get up and storm off again, like he did at breakfast that time. So I file it under ‘Things I’ll Come Back to Later’, and go back to my potatoes.

Alex looks like he’s about to ask again about me and Jamie, but before he can get the words out, Emilio the waiter appears, carrying a large silver tray, and carefully avoiding my seat — presumably in case I end up breaking something again.

“For the happy couple,” he says, deftly removing some of the empty plates in front of us, so he can replace them with the one on his tray. “Compliments of the hotel.”

“More free stuff?” I say, amazed. “Okay, this is starting to get weird now. What have we done to keep getting things ‘compliments of the hotel’? This can’t all just be a coincidence, surely?”

By way of answer, Emilio lowers his latest offering to the table with a dramatic flourish. It’s some kind of fancy pastry, presented on a large white plate, with two forks beside it. A chocolate sauce has been drizzled over the top, and then out onto the plate, where it’s been carefully poured to form two words in large, looping letters:

“Oh my God,” I say, slapping my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “Sorry, Emilio, but you’ve got the wrong table. This isn’t for us. We’re not married.”

I look over at Alex with a ‘How hilarious is this?’ smile on my face, but he doesn’t smile back. Actually, he looks like he might be about to explode.

“No mistake,” says Emilio, clearly annoyed that his offering isn’t going down as well as he expected it to. “For the very happy couple, yes?”

“No,” I tell him, shaking my head. “No, you don’t understand. We’re not a couple. We’re not on our honeymoon.”

“No, we’re not,” says Alex, speaking up at last. It takes me a second to pick up on the emphasis he’s put on the word ‘we’. “We’re not on our honeymoon,” he says again, standing up with the air of a man who’s about to go storming off again.

“But I am supposed to be on mine.”