Gone (7 page)

It’s just a surf lesson. There can’t be anything wrong with that can there?

Joshua

Surfing Lesson No 1

I’m only too aware of how surreal this situation is as I walk along the warm sand with one of my hands holding hers. I keep casting my eyes in her direction. I can’t really stop myself. I’m checking she is actually there and I haven’t finally lost my last remaining shred of sanity. She is creeping from a nine to a nine and a half. She doesn’t seem to notice my glance, so I take the opportunity to absorb the sight of the sun on her skin as much as I can. It glows like shafts of harvest corn dipped in warm honey.

For the first time in a long time I want to do more than just graze my lips against another shoulder.

I can’t though.

While she is technically not a holiday maker and therefore hasn’t fallen in my ‘Not to be Approached’ criteria, I know she is not staying. And if she is not staying I know we will never do more than walk down a beach holding hands. I don’t do goodbyes of any description.

Last night as we sat on the moonlight flooded beach we told each other everything, but at the same time nothing. She is eighteen, to my twenty. Her family have moved here so her sister can have a life not in the middle of London.

The girl who looks like she is made of the sun is leaving in two weeks to go to university. But that’s not all I found out. Without knowing it, she hinted at all the stuff she doesn’t want anyone to know.  As we sat on the dark sand I found all the answers to the things she wasn’t telling me. They were hiding in every moment of silence that hung between us in the night air. She is lonely, frustrated, confused, all of these things and something else. There is something else there. It’s in the way she holds her body, and it’s in the way her fingers absentmindedly graze over the bangles adorning her wrists.

Something, or someone.

Something that she thinks defines her. She does not want anyone to know it. She does not want me to know it. And to be honest I’m not sure if I want to know either. Well at least I thought I didn’t until we reached her gate last night, and instead of giving her a good bye wave I stepped right into her space, holding myself back from kissing her and asked instead if she would like a surf lesson.

Why?

It nearly killed me standing outside the gate to Bridge Cottage last night, especially, as I found myself stepping right into this stranger’s space just like I would have done in times gone past. But everything about it was different. Instead of the yielding warmth and comfort I used to know, I was met with this fiery resistance. Resistance I am not used to. Something about it made me feel challenged so I didn’t walk away. I asked if she would like a surf lesson. Not quite what I was aiming for.

This morning when I woke up I wanted to cancel. I so wanted to cancel. I wanted to go back to surfing, staring, lying – my normal day. But I also knew I wanted to feel that resistance again. I wanted to feel something, anything other than nothing. So instead of cancelling I drove to Bridge Cottage and knocked on the door and walked through it like I had never crossed the threshold before. Like I didn’t know every inch of the place or the history that it has.

She is not a holiday maker. She is a cryptic challenge.

I wonder if she was a holiday maker whether I still would have broken my rule for her. As I watch her settle on the beach, peeling off her cut-offs and stepping those long legs out of a scrap of denim, I can’t help but question whether I would have offered a surf lesson regardless of her holiday status.

What are you doing Josh?

Clothing removed she spins to face me. “Do I get a wetsuit,” she asks hands on hips.

“Nope.”

“You’re kidding right? That water is going to be freezing.”

“No kidding.”

“Fuck.”

“I don’t think fucking has got anything to do with it. But whatever you want.”

She eyes me suspiciously trying to work out if I’m joking or not. I can’t help myself. I take a step closer. One step over the sand and one step closer to her.

Bex has already managed to cover herself in sand just taking off her shorts. Tentatively, because I haven’t really touched anyone for months, I raise a hand and brush the grains off her shoulder. My fingers enjoy their cautious stroke across her sun warmed skin more than I thought they would. My thumb wants to slide along the groove of her collarbone and try to find the pulse I saw beat there yesterday, but I hold my hand still. My mind can’t be stopped and it teeters on the edge of a gutter as I remember the first time I saw her when she was sliding a hand under the strap of her bikini removing stray sand. The memory causes an instant reaction, a spike of adrenaline courses through me which I haven’t felt for a long time. Taking a step back, I make a show of sorting the boards out, running my hands over them checking for any dinks that might need attention. Sadly neither of them do, so I have to turn my eyes back to her. She has her back to the sun which glows behind her like a halo, making her features hide in darkness. For one crazy instant I wonder if maybe this girl has been sent to rescue me, but then I remember that she is leaving and I can’t be rescued.

“So anyway, you stand on the board like this.” I jump on my board to demonstrate.

“You’re joking, you don’t expect me to stand?”

I laugh at her horrified expression. “
No I don’t expect you to stand. Come on let’s just wade out and sit on them. That’s a good start.”

She looks like that might not be a good start at all.

“Scared?” I ask.

She bristles and bends down to grab her board which she struggles to pick up swinging it this way and that. I jump out of the way as it comes towards my knees. I know from experience that a surf board to the knees hurts real bad.

“Nope. You?” She challenges me straight back. Her face is still in darkness but I am sure she is glaring at me.

Yes. But not of surfing.

“Not at all.” I try to send her an encouraging smile as we head down the beach towards the sea, but it’s hard to be encouraging when I have no idea what I am doing. I just bob my head a bit at her instead.

The sea itself proves to be a problem. Bex spends ten minutes just getting one toe in the water. In the end I get bored of laughing and waiting and swim my board out into the waves.

Eventually, after we have missed at least five good waves, she joins me.

“This is quite hard,” she puffs catching up. She is flat on her board using her arms like paddles, she looks like a five year old learning to swim at the local pool.

I bite down the laugh that bubbles inside me. She’s doing it all wrong, but I reckon she has a right old temper and I’m not going to be the one to piss her off so I keep my corrections to myself. I can teach her properly tomorrow.

Tomorrow? ? ?

“Turn the board around so your back is to the tide,” I explain.

She stops paddling with her arms, allowing her forehead to smack on the board. Her body rests flat on the board and I can’t help but notice the dip in the curve of her lower back, just above the edge of her wet bikini bottoms. I grip my own board tighter in response.

Bex raises her head and catches me perving. Thankfully she is too busy grumbling to call me on it. “You’re kidding right? It has taken me ten minutes to get it in this direction.”

“Come here.” I grab one of her hands pulling her towards me and then edge the board around with her on it.

My need to laugh intensifies about tenfold. So does a crazy, unreasonable need to kiss her.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see a reasonable swell behind us. Determined not to freak her out so she falls off and I have to dive to the bottom of the ocean to rescue her, I keep my voice level. “Start paddling towards shore, Bex, now.”

“Rebecca.”

“Bex, just start bloody paddling.”

“Rebec. . .” It’s too late. She hasn’t made distance to ensure she rides the wave and isn’t knocked off balance by the swell shifting the board from underneath. I am much stronger than her and it barely makes my board move, but she tips in slow motion straight into the water. We aren’t that far out. I’m sure she can put her feet down and stand up but she doesn’t. I can’t see her for a whole five seconds, and in those moments I am off my own board and reaching down into the water to catch hold of her.

She comes up coughing, spluttering and completely covered in sand, and I’m not talking about a little bit of sand. She is caked in the stuff.

“My nose,” she cries.

That’s it, I can’t hold in the laugh any longer. I grab her up next to me, my fingers tight on her elbows so I can hold her firmly beside me, as she clutches her stinging nose.

“It’s good for the sinuses.”

“
I don’t have anything wrong with my sinuses.”

“Well now you won’t.”

Bex glares at me from under sand encrusted hair. “I want to go home.”

“Rubbish. Let’s get you cleaned up and head back to the beach.” I start to cup my hands and fill them with water to splash over her.

“Are you flipping kidding?” She has her hands on her hips again and just looks crazy sexy. Officially she is a ten. There is no doubt in my mind.

“How else do you plan to get it off?”

She hesitates for a moment before offering me a shrug. “Okay make it quick. I’m freezing!”

So I do. I start to gently tip the water over her and she helps wash it off with her fingers as well. I try very hard not to let my fingers graze with too much intent along her skin. We all know sand shouldn’t be rubbed, but it’s kind of tempting now. I slide my fingers along, and despite the chill of the sea she still feels warm to touch. Warmer than I have felt in a long time. I can almost feel the life pumping inside her. I want to use the flat of my palm to smooth along the length of her limbs, but I reckon that comes under groping so I stop myself and instead take another fractional step closer as I inspect her goose-bumped skin.

The freckles, made of more colours than I can count, and the pale alabaster tone underneath, makes her skin unlike any I have ever known. She really is like the sun.

The girl made of the sun. My girl made of the sun.
What?

“Turn around,” I instruct, my throat in serious need of clearing.

She does, tilting her chin down onto her chest so I can wash the sand off the back of her neck. I am so distracted by the long curve of her neck that I don’t see the massive wave coming towards us. This time we are both down. Momentarily we are suspended under the water, our eyes meeting in the murky depths of sand and seaweed. Bex’s fingers reach for mine and I link mine through them as I find my footing and pull her up alongside me. This time she is much closer. Her skin is mere millimeters from mine and I am about to slide my fingers down along her arm when my nose starts to sting with the fury of hell.

“Shit my nose.” I clamp my hand over my face.

“It’s good for your sinuses.” She is clutching her own nose mirroring my action and we both start to laugh. Bex’s eyes widen as she recognizes the sound of laughter coming from her mouth. I want to take another step closer, but I am already as close as I can get. The next move would be skin on skin.

“Shall we go to the shower?” I ask my voice so tight I practically croak the words out.

“There is a bloody shower, and I have let you paw your grubby mitts over me for the last five minutes?”

Moving so fast she doesn’t see it coming, I hook my foot out around her ankle and she lands back in the water. “There’s a shower, race you.” I laugh as she comes up coughing, spluttering and glaring.

It isn’t a race really. By the time she makes it back out of the sea with her board I am standing there holding her towel grinning at her. Fun on the beach! Who knew Joshua Adams was going to have fun on the beach again? Not me, that’s for sure.

“I am beginning to think you are very un-chivalrous,” she says shivering as the air rushes against her damp skin causing the fair hair on her arms stand on end.

“Here let me wrap you in a towel, my fair lady.” I mock a low sweeping bow which makes her crack a smile, and wrap the towel and for a moment my arms around her.

“Warmer?” My voice is low again. What is this? Yesterday it was painting and drinking. Today it’s laughing and cuddling.

She raises her eyes towards mine and I see them for the first time in the sun. I would never be able to paint them, they are a deep honey brown with flecks of amber in them. They remind me of one of the amber necklaces that Aunt May always wears.

“Yeah I am.” She bites her lip a little and we both stand and stare.

This situation is so far out of my comfort zone. I don’t do this – romantic dalliances on the beach. I don’t stand with my arms wrapped tight around a girl who I know is going to be leaving shortly.

Picking up the boards, managing both of them under one arm, I link my fingers back through hers, as we turn towards our stuff. I don’t have a clear plan in place, but it involves standing under the shower and then lying on the sand next to this strange girl who is making me behave in ways I never thought I would again. In the back of my mind I’m thinking, that if in the space of one morning she has managed to make me laugh, touch her, graze my lips against her, fall to the bottom of the ocean and cuddle her, what on earth could she get me to do by tonight. Part of me wants to find out. The other half wants to run home and slam the door on the strange developments taking place around me.