27. Twenty-Seven

It’s like someone took every single romantic movie I’ve ever seen, mashed them all up, then turned them into the private area of the beach where Alex and I are having dinner.

The table for two has been set up on the sand, and it’s far enough away from the water’s edge for us not to risk being swamped by the waves, but close enough to feel like the setting sun is putting on a private performance just for the two of us.

The table is covered in flowers and the light comes from flickering candles, plus some twinkling fairy lights that have been draped over a wooden canopy above us.

So, yes, definitely not a date, then. And I’m definitely not going to treat it like one. No matter how good Alex looks in his open-necked shirt, with a slight hint of stubble on his chin, giving him a vaguely roguish air.

Oh, God, save me from the stubble.

“You look beautiful,” he says, pulling out my seat for me and waiting for me to sit down. “Thanks for coming tonight; I really appreciate it.”

“No problem,” I reply, smoothing down my dress self-consciously. I gave Chloe her little red number back this morning, and am wearing an old favorite of my own, which she’s never liked.

But I do. And it seems Alex does too; unless, of course, he’s just being polite, to thank me for this ‘favor’ I’m allegedly doing for him?

“Yeah, I’d have felt pretty stupid sitting here on my own,” he goes on, as the waiter pours wine into our glasses, before retreating tactfully. “I was planning to ask Rita next, if you’d turned me down. Even Gerald would’ve done in a pinch.”

He grins across the table at me, and I smile back weakly.

Okay, so he really has just invited me here as a favor. Good to know.

“We should make a toast,” he says, picking up his glass.

“Okay. What are we toasting?”

“I think there’s only one thing we can toast under the circumstances,” he says. “New beginnings, of course. For both of us.”

“To new beginnings,” I repeat, clinking glasses with him.

“And to you winning the karaoke contest tomorrow night,” he adds with a wink.

“Tomorrow? Is it really that soon?”

A familiar twinge of anxiety twists my stomach at the thought of singing in front of an audience, but Alex just nods, like it’s no big deal. Which I suppose it isn’t, when you’re not the one doing it.

“Yup. It’s our last full day here. Then it’s back to reality for both of us.”

His smile falters slightly, and the twinge in my stomach turns into a full-blown stitch.

“Wow.” I take a sip of my drink, trying to hide my disappointment. “I guess I must have lost track of time since I’ve been here. I can’t believe the holiday’s almost over. I’m not … I’m not ready for it to be over.”

To my horror, I feel tears well up behind my eyes. I stare down at my plate, hoping he won’t notice.

“I’m not either,” Alex says ruefully. “But hey; you’ve done everything you came here to do, haven’t you? Or you will have once you’ve won the karaoke contest tomorrow. Which you will, of course.”

“Have I, though?” I reply, trying to ignore the gnawing feeling of sadness that’s suddenly descended. “I’m not sure I feel like I’ve changed my life. I haven’t miraculously become ‘cool’. There’s been a fair bit of ‘other stuff TBC’ though, I’ll give you that.”

I put my fork down, my appetite suddenly gone.

“Well, there’s still time for the rest,” says Alex, who’s tucking into his appetizer with gusto. “A lot can happen in 48 hours, Summer. And I don’t think things like climbing mountains and riding motorcycles are the sort of thing you can really expect to change your life, anyway. They’re fun, sure. But life changing? Probably not.”

“Well, one thing’s for sure; kissing Jamie Reynolds definitely didn’t change my life,” I say ruefully. “Although calling him a lying traitor was kind of empowering.”

“Maybe that’s the answer,” says Alex, the last rays of sunshine making his skin look almost golden. “Maybe you just need to write a different list.”

“Maybe I need to write a completely different life story,” I tell him, shrugging. “One where I don’t spend all my time wanting things I can’t have, like Chloe said.”

Alex raises his eyebrows quizzically, but doesn’t question this.

“You can’t go back in time, Summer. You can’t rewrite the story to fix everything you think went wrong. It was an airplane that brought you here, not a time machine.”

“I know,” I sigh. “I know you’re right. I’m starting to think maybe my 13-year-old self wasn’t the best person to decide what my future life should look like after all. Maybe I shouldn’t have given her the wheel on this trip. Maybe I should … oh!”

I grab at my napkin as the breeze coming in from the sea picks it up and hurls it towards me. The candles on the table flicker.

“Are you cold?” Alex asks, seeing me rub my arms. “Do you want to go inside?”

“No, I’m fine,” I insist, picking my fork back up. “I only have two nights left here. I’m determined to enjoy them. And it’s not every night a girl gets treated to a romant… to a dinner on the beach.”

I might be determined to enjoy myself, but the wind, it seems, has other ideas. It dies down slightly as we eat our main course, but by the time Emilio appears to ask what we’d like for dessert, we’re having to use our phones, plus a couple of small rocks from the beach, to anchor the cloth to the table, and I have a horrible feeling that when I look in the mirror back at my room, my hair’s going to look a lot like that Barbie my brother once gave a mohawk.

“What d’you say we skip dessert?” Alex suggests as the menu goes fluttering out of the waiter’s hands and skips gaily down towards the sea, with Emilio in hot pursuit. “There’s an ice cream shop not far from here. It’ll be less windy the further we are from the sea.”

We walk the short distance to the shop in question, and, after a few minutes, Alex emerges from its doors carrying two of those gigantic cones that are so big they start melting before you can finish them.

“Are you really going to tell Jamie’s wife about how he was with you?” he asks, as we wander along the promenade next to the sea, me holding my ice cream at arm’s length to stop it dribbling down my arm.

I shake my head firmly, thinking of Jamie’s little girl, and the adoring way she’d looked up at him.

“No. I’m not going to be responsible for breaking up a family. It’s up to him to decide whether he feels guilty enough to tell his wife or not. I just wanted to make him stew for a bit.”

“Do you think he’ll tell her?”

“Nah. I doubt it. Nothing really happened between us, after all. The ‘kiss’ was just a brush on the lips — he could explain it away as just a friendly goodbye between friends. Or say I imagined it. Sometimes I’m not sure if I did.”

“Don’t do that,” says Alex after a second. “Don’t try to downplay it. He was leading you on, and he was married. That’s not okay.”

“No,” I agree, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. “No, it’s not.”

I turn my cone around, trying to catch the trickle of ice cream that’s started to melt on the other side of it.

“So, what about you?” I say, hoping I haven’t got any of it on my nose. “What will you do when you get home? Will you have to move house? I’m guessing you and Rebecca live together?”

“We did,” he says. “But the house is mine, thankfully. I told her to move her stuff out while I was away. That’s one of the reasons I came on this trip, actually: so I didn’t have to be around while she was doing it. At least this way by the time I get back, every trace of her should be gone.”

He says this with a bitterness that makes me wonder whether the empty house he’s going home to is going to be a good thing or a bad one. Because I know he says the relationship should have ended long ago, but I also know you don’t get engaged to someone without having any feelings about them at all.

He must have some feelings for her, surely?

There’s no way for me to ask this without it being intrusive, though, so I swallow the question on my lips with another mouthful of ice cream.

“You mean you didn’t come here to have Rita read your tea leaves and talk to Gerald about ‘the darts’, then?” I ask playfully instead.

“Nope. Although I must say, I am looking forward to hearing the best singer in the Canary Islands tomorrow night,” he replies. “So I suppose some good’s come of my weird solo honeymoon.”

“I’m amazed you went through with it. I’m not sure I could’ve,” I say cautiously. “Not that I’ve got the slightest clue what you’ve been going through, obviously.”

“I almost didn’t go through with it,” he admits. He’s somehow managing to eat his ice cream without getting it all over his face, like I am, but there’s a tiny dot of strawberry on his upper lip, which is proving very distracting. “It was tempting just to pretend this wasn’t supposed to be happening, either. But then, I knew I wasn’t going to get my money back if I canceled — funnily enough, holiday insurance doesn’t cover finding out your fiancée is cheating — and I just thought, fuck it, why not?”

“Why not?” I echo, thinking about how I’d said almost the same thing to myself when I spontaneously decided to come on this holiday. I think about Alex, making the same decision at the same time: two seemingly random choices from two people whose paths might not otherwise have crossed, but which ended with us sitting right next to each other on the plane. And in the same hotel. And even in rooms right next to each other.

And now here we are.

In some other world — some Sliding Doors moment, as Alex once put it — we would never have met. If I’d stayed in that night and not a takeaway, like I’d planned, rather than going to Diamonds with Chloe. If his wedding had been due to take place on literally any other day of the year. If Mum hadn’t dropped that box of old diaries off at my flat earlier in the week. If he’d had better holiday insurance. All the little choices and micro-moments that somehow shuffled into line and created a chain of chance decisions that led us to this windswept beach on an island off the coast of Africa, thousands of miles from home.

It’s actually quite amazing when you really think about it.

But in two days’ time, it’s going to be over, and I’ll probably never see him again.

That’s how holidays work. You meet people, then you never see them again.

Isn’t that what Alex said, that first night on the balcony?

The thought hits me like a piano falling from a building in an old cartoon. I try to shrug it off, because it would be blatantly ridiculous to feel sad at the thought of not seeing someone I’ve known for less than a week — and liked for only a fraction of that time — but all the same, there it is. Sadness. Following me down the little side streets near the resort, past the perfume stores and supermercados, around the edges of the tapas restaurants and hotel pools, and all the way back to the ocean, which is lying in wait for us, silver-tinged in the twilight.

I came here to find the boy next door, but it turns out the guy in the hotel room next door is a whole lot more interesting.

Trust me to only figure that out when it’s too late.

Alex offers me his hand to help me down onto the beach, where I slip out of my sandals before following him across the cool sand in the direction of the hotel. It’s just a short distance back to the steps leading up from the beach to the terrace, but Alex pauses at the water’s edge, and we stand together for a moment, watching the waves crash against the shore. The wind is still blowing in from the sea, making my hair float in snarled tangles around my head, and my eyes sting as the breeze throws grains of sand into my face. There are goose pimples on my arms, my hands still feel uncomfortably sticky from all the ice cream that trickled onto them, and my right foot is throbbing from the sharp edge of a shell I stepped on a few seconds ago.

All things considered, it’s pretty uncomfortable, really.

Kind of shit, in fact.

But then I look at Alex, who’s staring up at the darkening sky as if it’s something magical, and I think of Rita and Fred, sharing their bag of greasy chips in Skegness, and how, pretty soon, I’m going to be back in my little flat in Margate, driving to work on another gray morning on which all the color seems to have been bleached out of the world.

On second thoughts, maybe this imperfect moment isn’t so bad after all.

As if to underline this thought, Alex turns and favors me with one of his rare smiles. I grin back at him stupidly, and then —

“Ouch!”

The wind whips another fistful of sand into my face, and I close my eyes against the sting of it.

I am not appreciating Mother Nature’s attempt at exfoliation, thanks.

“That’s quite a look you’ve got going on there,” Alex says, peering down at me. “I’m not sure what you’ve got more of on your face: sand or ice cream. You look like a sugar-coated iced cookie.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, scrubbing at my cheek with my hand. “It’s a shame I don’t taste like one.”

I blush, seeing the look that crosses his face at this. It’s a look that suggests he wouldn’t mind putting that theory to the test, and suddenly my mouth is as dry as my face is.

“How have you managed to avoid getting covered in this… this stuff?” I ask, just for something to say. “It’s like you’re not even human.”

“Oh, I’m definitely human,” he assures me. “Here, let me.” He takes a step towards me, then leans down and cups my face in his hands.

I’m so surprised I freeze on the spot, my heart thumping loudly in time to the music trickling down from the hotel bar, just above us.

“Relax, Summer,” Alex murmurs, his fingers tenderly brushing my cheeks. “I’m just helping you get the sand off your face. I’m not going to bite you.”

Maybe not, but this feels dangerously intimate all of a sudden, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to relax with him standing this close to me. And touching me. And sending shivers down my spine that have absolutely nothing to do with the breeze that’s still blowing.

My heart is no longer keeping time to the music. In fact, it’s playing a completely different tune now; one that gets faster and faster until I close my eyes in a bid to slow it down by shutting out Alex’s face.

It doesn’t work.

With my eyes closed, every sensation is intensified; his hands on my face move slowly and deliberately, and, look, surely to God there can’t be that much sand on me?

“Are you done?” I ask in a croak that doesn’t sound remotely like the cool girl I’m pretending to be. “Did you get all the sand off? And the ice cream?”

“Oh. Yeah,” says Alex, sounding oddly hoarse. “I did that ages ago. I’m just … I’m just looking at you now.”

My eyelids fly open.

“You’re… looking at me?”

“Sorry,” Alex says sheepishly, releasing me. “That sounded creepy, didn’t it? I didn’t mean it to. It’s just… you’re so incredibly beautiful, Summer. It’s very hard not to want to look at you when I get the chance.”

My eyes narrow with suspicion as I look up at him. He doesn’t sound like he’s messing with me, but… he has to be, right?

“Sorry,” he says again, looking adorably awkward. “I probably shouldn’t have said that. I’m very out of practice with this kind of thing.”

“You think I’m beautiful?” I ask, wondering what ‘this kind of thing’ is, exactly.

“Yes, of course. I already told you that.”

“No, you said you thought I wasn’t ugly,” I insist. “That’s totally different.”

“Well, I meant to say I think you’re beautiful,” he replies, his eyes fixed on mine. “Are you always this determined to argue with someone who’s trying to pay you a compliment, or am I special?”

I want to tell him I’m not arguing to be difficult; I’m doing it to protect myself. Because he’s just got out of a serious relationship. Because we’re leaving here in two days. Because if I let myself believe he’s being honest, and that someone like him might have even the slightest chance of falling for someone like me, then he could hurt me — for all the above reasons.

I want to tell him all of this, but when I open my mouth, none of it comes out.

“Yes, you’re special,” I say instead.

Which is when he steps forward and kisses me; on the suddenly chilly beach, with the wind still blowing my hair into knots that will take forever to untangle, and a rubbery piece of seaweed wrapped around my ankle. But Alex kisses me, and none of that matters. Not even the small list of objections I ran through in my head a few seconds earlier — ex-fiancée; never seeing him again; possibly going to end up hurting me — because this is the kind of kiss that puts all previous kisses to shame: firm but soft, and with an urgency that takes my breath away, until I have to grab onto him to ground myself and stay upright.

Everything about it is perfect.

Right up until the moment when a cloud of something dark and unidentifiable goes swooshing over our heads, making us jump guiltily apart and look up at the sky, wondering what just happened.

“Whoops. Sorry, you two,” says Gerald’s voice from a few feet away. “That were my wife, Margot.”