About a Girl Read online

  ‘Sorry, that was out of order,’ he grunted, breaking off the awkward stand-off, and started down the beach and into the trees beyond. ‘It’s this way.’

  Smiling, I followed.

  For as long as I could, I trailed Nick in silence. It was easy to be distracted ? the valley was breathtaking and I kept stopping to touch everything. Flowers, leaves, trees, birds that were too slow to get away from me. After getting my wrists slapped twice, I stopped running my fingers through the bougainvillea and plumeria and stayed close to my stoic tour guide. We wandered through some beautiful trees, down a beautiful path, up some less beautiful rocks and finally down a desperately unbeautiful mud bank that tested my ability to hike in flip-flops.

  ‘Nick?’ I called as I faltered halfway down the path, flapping around like a drunken mountain goat. I clawed at the slippery stones either side of me and felt my feet slipping further and further apart. ‘A little help?’

  ‘Oh, shit.’ He darted back, took hold of my wrist and hoisted me down the path. Once my feet were on solid ground, he didn’t let go. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked as though he meant it. ‘I get carried away.’

  ‘I’m not really an experienced hiker,’ I said, annoyed with myself at having to ask for help when I was so enjoying giving him the silent treatment. ‘If I’d known we were climbing mountains, I’d have worn proper shoes.’

  ‘That was hardly a mountain.’ Nick’s fingers slid down my wrist until we were holding hands. ‘And did you even bring proper shoes?’

  I looked down at our hands and blushed.

  He smiled and reached behind me to pluck a soft pink flower from a tree and tucked it behind my right ear.

  ‘Wearing a flower behind your right ear in Hawaii means you’re looking for a mate,’ he said, fingertips trailing from the flower down my cheek. ‘On the left side it means you’re already spoken for.’

  Without saying anything, he pulled it out from behind my right ear, combed out my hair with his fingers, and placed it behind my left ear.

  ‘You cheesy bastard,’ I said, gingerly touching the soft petals and threatening myself not to blush. Nick gave my fingers a squeeze and then turned away quickly, dropping my hand.

  ‘Come on.’ He started walking faster. ‘It’s right around here.’

  ‘What’s right here?’ I was trying to watch where I was going, not lose my flower and work out when was the last time I’d held a boy’s hand, all at the same time. It was not easy. ‘How do you know where we’re going?’

  ‘This is right here,’ he said, standing back and gently pushing me in front of him. ‘And I know because I’ve been here before. And when you’ve been here once, it’s very hard to forget.’

  I turned a corner at Nick’s nod and pushed my way through a thick, rubbery bush, following the sound of running water.

  ‘Oh. Oh, wow,’ I whispered, grabbing his hand again, squeezing it tightly. ‘Oh, Nick.’

  In front of us was a small pool about the same size as the mill pond back at home. But that was where the similarities ended. The blue-green water was surrounded by tall cliffs that stretched up so high, covered in green vines and trees, and sheltered us with a canopy of trees. Sunlight found its way through the branches and dappled the water, making it sparkle and glitter, and directly opposite us a narrow white waterfall danced down the black rocks from somewhere unseen up in the sky. It was too much.

  ‘How did you know this was here?’ I asked, my voice low and reverential. I was waiting for mermaids to come out and tell me to be quiet or at the very least start singing a Disney medley.

  ‘I spent a summer in Hawaii a few years ago,’ he said, leading me down the gently sloping pebbled shore to the water’s edge. ‘Me and my girlfriend were travelling, and one day I went out exploring the island and found this place.’

  I tried not to flinch at the use of the word ‘girlfriend’ and the distinct lack of a qualifying ex in front of it. He said he was single, didn’t he?

  ‘Can you believe we’re still on Bennett’s property?’ Nick set the picnic basket down on a large, smooth stone and kicked off his shoes to paddle into the water, never letting go of my hand. I followed, abandoning my flip-flops, and followed suit. The water was so cool and refreshing, the horrors of the hike were immediately forgotten. Dozens of tiny tadpoles darted around my feet in the shallows, disappearing as we got deeper. ‘Technically, you could say I was trespassing the last time.’

  ‘Technically?’

  ‘I was trespassing.’ He was up to his knees in the water and I watched as the edges of his shorts darkened. Tess would have pointed that out, but Vanessa kept her mouth shut and concentrated on his story. ‘It’s one of the reasons I took this job, actually ? I’ve wanted to come back for so long but never had the chance. It seemed fortuitous.’

  We stayed where we were, knee-deep in the water, holding hands and staring up at the waterfall.

  ‘You didn’t want to come back with your girlfriend?’ I asked with as light a voice as I could conjure up. ‘Wouldn’t this be a “you and her” place?’

  ‘We broke up just after we came here,’ he replied just as casually. ‘And she didn’t come with me to the waterfall. I tried to get her to come back after I’d found it, but she was more of a lie-by-the-pool girl than a walk-through-fifteen-minutes-of-beautiful-forest-to-see-something-extraordinary kind of a girl.’

  Somewhere in my cold, black little heart, a spark flared for just a second, warmed by the fact that Nick had chosen to share this special place with me and only me. Not that he’d told me there was going to be a fifteen-minute walk. If he had, there would have been no guarantees I would have done it.

  ‘I thought, since Bennett cancelled on us again, he owed us this,’ he said, turning towards me and peeling off his T-shirt. Fuck a duck, he was so handsome. And romantic. Maybe he was something special after all. ‘And I thought, after last night, you owed me round two.’

  And then I remembered that he was an arrogant twat and this was just a one-week sexathon, nothing more, nothing less.

  Not that I was about to stop him. There was something about Nick’s hands on my body that made me lose all sense of myself. They were big and strong and hot and they made me feel small and weak in the best way. I had had a lifetime of liaisons that had been awkward at best. There hadn’t been a single sexual encounter where I hadn’t spent at least half the foreplay desperately trying to manoeuvre myself into a flattering angle or, better yet, under the covers. Even with Charlie I hadn’t been able to banish the thought of the gargantuan size of my arse from the back of my mind, but with Nick I was too busy revelling in the sensation, the firmness of his touch, the intention behind every move, to worry whether or not he thought I could stand to lose half a stone from my rear end. Everything about the moment – his tight, tense breathing, his half-closed eyes, his warm lips pressing against my neck as he coiled my hair into a knot around his fist – said he didn’t give a shit. He wanted me. He made me feel desired, and nothing had ever turned me on so much in my entire life.

  ‘Are you sure there’s no one around?’ I whispered as I watched my pink flower float away towards the waterfall. I barely recognized my own voice when I was with him. I barely recognized myself when I was with him.

  ‘Do you really care?’ he asked, one hand disappearing into my bikini bottoms.

  ‘No.’ I breathed in and clung to him, my lips on his lips, my thighs on his thighs, and my knees very close to giving way. ‘Just don’t stop.’

  And he didn’t.

  ‘So, are you excited to get to work tomorrow?’ Nick asked afterwards. I basked in the afternoon sunlight and the warm afterglow of ridiculous sex, stretched out on a beach towel like a happy copper-haired walrus. I’d managed to keep my bikini about my person, but my T-shirt, soaked through, was drying on a large, flat rock across the way, along with all of Nick’s clothes. ‘Are you dying to take some pictures? Are you desperate to put some six-foot mutant in a five-thousand-quid dress and tell her how
to pout for half an hour?’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ I moaned, burying my head in the sand. Literally. ‘Are you excited to meet the elusive Bertie Bennett?’

  ‘After everything we’ve put up with so far?’ Nick lazily traced figures of eight around my bare lower back. ‘I can’t wait. If it actually happens, it’s either going to be one of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever done, or he’s going to be one of those absolute bastards who won’t say a word.’

  ‘Isn’t that hard?’ I kept my eyes closed and tried to concentrate on asking sensible questions. I had a very hard time keeping my wits about me immediately after sexytimes. ‘When people don’t want to talk to you?’

  ‘Is it hard when people don’t want you to take their picture?’ he bounced the question back.

  ‘That’s never happened to me,’ I replied. Brilliant, another thing I hadn’t thought to worry about until now. Just add it to the list.

  ‘Lucky you,’ Nick said, sitting up and rummaging through the picnic basket. ‘You must be a better photographer than I am a writer.’

  I hoped he was right. I worried he was not.

  ‘When you came to Hawaii the first time,’ I asked, rubbing my finger and thumb over a big green leaf that hung right above my head, ‘with your girlfriend …’

  ‘Yeah?’ He pulled out a Tupperware box of pineapple, frowned and put it back, rifling around for something else.

  ‘Was it for work?’ I wasn’t sure what I was trying to find out, but I figured I’d know when I heard it.

  ‘No, we were on holiday,’ he answered, placing a bottle of water in the sand beside me and twisting off the cap. ‘She lived in LA, I’d been working in Australia for a few months, we met here. It’s in the middle.’

  It all sounded so jet-set and romantic to me. Three years ago I had decided I was going to get over Charlie and fall in love with an accountant from Wimbledon, but after three dates, the thought of forty minutes on the District line was enough to dampen his ardour. Not quite Romeo & Juliet.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. I couldn’t imagine Nick sending sweet text messages or whispering sweet nothings down the phone to his long-distance American lover, but I wanted to know more. I needed all the details so that I could accurately obsess about it later. And possibly Google-stalk the shit out of his ex. ‘With the two of you?’

  ‘Nothing exciting.’ He nudged the water towards me. I took the bottle and sipped. ‘I loved her more than she loved me. It happens.’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ I agreed, the familiar stab of pain and betrayal threatening to ruin a perfectly shagtastic afternoon. ‘So she’s still in LA?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ he shrugged. I stole a look at him, at the droplets of water in his hair, the crinkles around his blue eyes as he squinted at me. Eurgh. It was like seeing him again for the first time. ‘Don’t see a lot of point in keeping tabs on someone who didn’t give a shit about me.’

  I nodded, making a mental note to stop checking Charlie’s Facebook page every night before bed. And when I woke up. And whenever I looked at my phone. The phone call. He missed me. No, he missed his best friend.

  ‘Was she your last girlfriend?’ I wondered how many questions I could get away with before he clammed up. I shifted slightly on my towel, tugging at my bikini bottoms. I wasn’t sure, but I thought my bum might be burning, and that couldn’t be a good look.

  ‘Why?’ He pulled sunscreen out of the picnic basket and squirted it directly onto my backside. Impressive mind-reading techniques. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I’m just asking,’ I replied, defensive, realizing that it totally mattered. ‘Was she?’

  ‘She was.’ As he leaned over me I felt his shadow block the sun overhead and shivered, very, very slightly. ‘After her, I realized I’m not cut out to do the girlfriend thing. Any more searching questions?’

  ‘I’m not the professional question asker,’ I said. ‘As we’ve already established. I’m just curious.’

  ‘About me?’ He took the bottle of water back and sipped thoughtfully. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I just think it’s weird that we’re, you know, doing this –’ I felt myself blushing as I spoke ? ‘and we hardly know each other.’

  ‘What is there to know that you don’t already know?’ Nick shrugged. ‘What do you need? Middle name? Parents’ occupations? Blood type? You don’t need to see someone’s birth certificate to enjoy having sex with them, Vanessa.’

  ‘You’re not curious to know more about me?’ I asked, trying not to let his answer sting. It was just sex. He’d made that very clear. We’d both made that very clear. ‘I mean, in general. I don’t have my birth certificate on me.’

  ‘I find the more you get to know about a person, the more disappointed you end up,’ he replied. ‘Right now, I like you, you like me, we’re having a good time. A very good time. I say we leave it at that before someone finds out something they don’t want to know.’

  I nodded, but really he was just making me want to ask more questions. This was just bravado ? it had to be. No one was so incredibly nonchalant about these things. And he was so full of contradictions. One minute he was putting flowers behind my ear, telling me he wanted to share his special place with me, and the next he wasn’t ‘cut out to do the girlfriend thing’? Mixed messages, anyone?

  ‘I just feel like I should know more about you,’ I said, trying to sound as flippant as possible. ‘Since this keeps happening.’

  ‘Should is a terrible word,’ he muttered, running a finger across my collarbone. ‘Never do something just because you think you should.’

  ‘What about doing something because you know you shouldn’t?’ I asked, the last four days flashing in front of me, my skin burning in the wake of his hands.

  He was quiet for a moment, his expression reflective before it transformed with a wolfish grin. ‘I only do the things that I shouldn’t. Like you.’

  Now it was my turn to be quiet. I knew I wasn’t playing fair, but it was one thing for me to choose to have a fling and quite another to have your chosen lover rub the fact that he had no emotional interest in you in the slightest right in your face.

  ‘What was the last thing you did that you shouldn’t have?’ Nick asked, lying back down beside me, allowing the sun to cover my body again in a warm glow. He looked like he belonged there in paradise. And that only served to remind me that I didn’t. ‘Aside from me.’

  ‘What makes you think I count you?’ I pulled the leaf from the tree and watched it snap back. I refused to look at him. I didn’t want him to know I was upset. ‘What makes you think this is a big fat tick in the mistake column? Maybe I think it’s a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Oh, I’m definitely a mistake.’ His voice took on a shade of self-importance and arrogance that I didn’t especially enjoy. I’d heard it before and it didn’t suit him. ‘I’m just a really fun one.’

  ‘You’re adorable,’ I replied. ‘Do you genuinely feel better about yourself when the women you’re sleeping with think you’re a complete tosspot?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Nick looked at me closely. ‘You haven’t answered my question. What’s the last thing you did that you shouldn’t have?’

  I took a deep breath and turned onto my side so that I could see him properly. His handsome face and solid, tanned body were so close, the warmth radiating from his skin was hotter than the sun overhead, but I couldn’t quite make out his features ? the bright mid-afternoon light silhouetted him against the waterfall.

  ‘The last thing I did that I shouldn’t have done was sleep with my best friend,’ I said, quickly and loudly. ‘I should not have done that.’

  ‘Best friend?’ He perked up immediately. ‘Female?’

  ‘Male.’ I gave him my best wry smile. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you have slept with him?’ he asked, not a trace of jealousy or concern on his face. ‘Was he in love with you?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head and stared at my fingern
ails.

  ‘Were you in love with him?’

  Staring at my nails, I realized I should have given myself a manicure. Vanessa would never go out with nails like this. I imagined Paige was tweeting about the state of my cuticles at that very second.

  ‘Oh, you were.’ He leaned forward and pushed my hair out of my face. ‘Are you still?’

  I looked up but I couldn’t look him in the eyes. Instead I focused on the tiny patch of grey that was starting on his temple.

  ‘Are you still in love with him?’ he asked again, more softly this time, looking directly into my eyes.

  ‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ I said, shaking my hair out of his hands. ‘He doesn’t love me.’

  ‘Oh, now I get it ? you’ve never been in love before. You’re an emotional virgin.’ Nick made a clucking noise and rolled his eyes at me. ‘Or worse, you’re an emotional eunuch and you’ve cut off your own balls. Which is it?’

  ‘Neither, knobhead.’ Sometimes he said the most ridiculous things. The most ridiculous, accurate and hurtful things. ‘I have feelings. I’ve been in love.’

  I had. I knew I had. So why did the words sound hollow even to me?

  ‘Why did you sleep with him then?’ He looked away for a moment before leaning back on his elbows and looking back at me with professional interest on his face, the muscles in his arms bulging just enough to make me want to give them a gentle squeeze. ‘Did you think it would make him feel differently about you?’

  ‘I thought he did feel differently,’ I replied, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘This is weird, talking about this with you. Do you work out?’

  ‘I run a lot, and no it isn’t,’ he replied without missing a beat. ‘So you slept with him thinking it would make him fall in love with you when presumably you’ve known him for years and he hasn’t shown any interest before?’

  I gave him a sharp, stern glare. ‘Your point being?’

  ‘You’re not the first.’ He cocked his head to one side and gave me a standard-issue condescending smile. ‘You won’t be the last. Have you talked to him? Asked him why it happened? I’m assuming you didn’t march up to him in a bikini on the beach in Hawaii and stick your tongue down his throat.’