‘You’re in one of my stories,’ he says with an awkward chuckle. ‘It’s okay, I know.’
‘Our genres are just apples and oranges,’ I insist. ‘People who read my books want a happy ever after. People who read the Edge of Eden books want—ʼ
‘A happy ending,’ he jokes.
‘Exactly,’ I reply.
Freddie shuffles closer to me.
‘Okay, so a character is going to make a move, what would he do? Would he move close to you like this?’ Freddie places his face next to my ear. ‘Maybe find a reason to whisper to you, just to get closer?’
I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. Every inch of me is waiting with bated breath, to see what Freddie does next. I feel the tip of his nose brush against my cheek and it sends such a strong shockwave through my body, I jump to my feet.
‘Oh, okay, wow,’ I babble. ‘That’s, erm, really good thinking. Good idea for a scene. You know what, I’m going to go write it right now, while it’s fresh in my head.’
‘Oh, right now?’
‘Right now.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want some dessert?’
‘Sweet enough,’ I reply, inwardly cringing. I hate it when people say things like that.
‘Okay, if you need to write then don’t let me stop you. I’ll see you for more Mr & Mrs Valentine Island later?’
‘Not if I see you first,’ I reply. Another cringe. ‘Yes, you will see me later – I’ll see you later.’
I just need to stop talking.
‘Okay, bye,’ I say with a wave. An actual bloody wave, to say goodbye to someone a few feet away from me.
I hurry back towards the villa, jet-propelled by embarrassment.
That felt uncomfortably close to the dream I had about him last night. I know he’s just trying to inspire me but I don’t need to write, I need to take a cold shower. And learn how to look him in the eye again, before it’s time for the next round of the competition.
25
Physical education was not my strongest subject at school. In fact, the only record I set during PE was for the most periods in one year, because I had an awful lot of notes to excuse me from taking part, all citing my menstrual cycle as the reason. If my PE teacher had cared at all about her job, she probably would’ve noticed that I almost always had my period or some kind of muscle strain – although muscle strain from what, I have no idea, because I avoided exercise at all costs.
Regrettably my passion for physical fitness (or lack thereof) has followed me into adulthood, and other than the occasional half-hearted trip to the gym whenever I start developing writer’s butt (a fatter arse than usual) I’ve done well to avoid almost all types of physical activity. This has left me low-key unfit, in a way that would only hold me back if I wanted to play a sport or lift something heavy, but it’s never really mattered… until tonight, because tonight apparently things are going to get physical.
We’re all hanging around at the beach bar, waiting for the competition to begin. I don’t know what it is yet, only that it’s a physical thing. I’m really hoping Freddie can carry me, because I’m going to be useless.
Eva is on top form tonight. She’s so sickly and full-on, which is probably why we weren’t that close. She’s kind of like a cross between a hippy and a toddler, with this blank whimsy about her that I’m almost certain she puts on because she thinks it makes her seem cute. She’ll dance around on the spot, like a zombified, flossing eight-year-old boy who has spent too much time on Fortnite, but even when she’s standing still she’s got this sort of sway to her. It’s as if her limbs are so weightless they just float off in all directions. She has a similar manner with her lips – if the competition tonight involved talking as much as you could, they would take one look at her and hand her a cheque.
‘Oh, my God, can you imagine if Freddie Bianchi bought me a drink?’ she says, by way of a hint. ‘It would be the weirdest thing.’
Hmm. Would it be weirder than being on another man’s honeymoon with him? I’m not so sure.
Freddie picks up the hint she’s dropped.
‘Lila, shall I dash to the bar and grab the four of us a drink? There’s time, right?’
‘Sure,’ I reply, reassuring him with a smile.
I’m sure that most of the questions he asks me are not as they appear at face value. I don’t think he’s asking my permission to go to the bar, I think he’s asking if I mind if he buys Daniel and Eva a drink. I don’t actually mind – or, at least, acting as if I don’t mind makes it seem as if I don’t mind, which makes me look better than if I did mind… What a ridiculous mess of a thought.
‘Oh, my gosh, I’ll come with you,’ she says, bouncing on the spot, almost popping out of the sides of her halter-neck top.
‘Okay, sure.’ Freddie laughs, averting his eyes.
Eva quickly fiddles with her straps before following him to the bar. For every one of Freddie’s steps, Eva takes about four to keep up with him.
‘Try not to shag him,’ I say quietly, solely for Daniel’s benefit. I turn to face him. ‘I’m sure it’s like muscle memory for that girl.’
‘Christ, leave her alone, Lila,’ Daniel snaps at me. ‘In fact, leave us both alone.’
It makes me feel sick to my stomach, having to play nice with them. If it weren’t for the prize money, I would be doing my best to keep as far away from them as possible.
‘Are you kidding me? I didn’t invite you here. I didn’t ask to hang around with you. Eva is the one following me around like a pigeon, eyeing up my chips. She’s all over Freddie and you’re an idiot if you can’t see that.’
Am I an idiot, for not realising something was going on with Daniel and Eva? I honestly didn’t even think they liked each other all that much. I suppose that was a marked effort, to throw me off.
‘You’re paranoid,’ he tells me.
‘Is it any wonder?’ I ask. ‘After what you did to me? And if Eva thinks you’re not going to do the same to her, well, she’s an idiot too.’
‘You’re just as bad as I am,’ Daniel snaps.
‘Oh, this ought to be good,’ I utter. I can feel a surge of the sassiness that accompanies my temper surging through my veins. My fight or flight reflex always tends to favour ‘fight’ although my weapon of choice is always my wit. Well, I call it wit, but my zingy one-liners can quickly turn into the kind of chat you’d expect from an angry teenager in a park who has had one too many alcopops. ‘How am I as bad as either of you?’
‘You moved on – on the day of our wedding.’
I roll my eyes theatrically. The hypocrisy is overwhelming.
‘You moved on before our wedding day,’ I remind him. ‘You were cheating on me in the run-up to our wedding – and on our wedding day – and then you’ve got the gall to show up here with her, on our honeymoon! When you realised I was here, why not just go home, instead of continuing your weird little fling right under my nose, rubbing it in my face?’
‘And you’re not rubbing Freddie in my face?’ he replies.
‘Careful, Daniel, you sound jealous,’ I reply. ‘Freddie and I were already together before you got here.’
‘You’re clearly only with him because he’s famous, because you think it will upset me,’ he says.
‘For your information, I had no idea who he was when I met him.’
‘You had no idea who he was? Everyone knows who Freddie Bianchi is.’
‘No, they don’t,’ I reply. ‘You certainly don’t. You know nothing about celebrity culture. You thought Armie Hammer was a toothpaste.’
‘So you would have just moved on with any old person as fast, then?’ he asks.
‘I moved on when it was appropriate to move on.’
I know that I didn’t technically move on, on our wedding day – and I still haven’t. I’m still so angry and so obsessed with the two of them, wondering how they’re spending their days here together and feeling angry that Eva has just assumed my life, and that Da
niel hasn’t only let her, he’s facilitated the whole thing with intent.
‘You could still be respectful of the fact that I’m next door,’ he fumes. ‘I heard the two of you at it last night – all night long, obviously for my benefit.’
It takes me a couple of seconds to figure out what the hell he’s talking about. It makes sense though – if I could hear Ali and Max from one side of the wall, he and Eva will have been able to hear from the other.
So Daniel thinks it was me screaming, howling and banging on the walls… well, I’m not about to correct him.
‘I wasn’t doing anything for your benefit last night,’ I insist – not technically a lie, I’m just letting him wander down the wrong path.
‘That’s rubbish,’ he replies. ‘I’ve never heard you make noises like that.’
‘Well, then, I guess perhaps Freddie just knows what he’s doing more than you did,’ I say. ‘Did you ever think of that?’
Before we have chance to continue, Freddie and Eva arrive back. Freddie is carrying a tray of drinks. He gestures towards my usual porn star martini.
‘Did they let you make it?’ I ask him.
‘No such luck, sorry,’ he replies. ‘The staff here are so funny about the customers trying to do their jobs for them.’
I giggle, which makes Daniel seethe. His face is almost as red as Eva’s bottle-dye job.
‘Gosh, so warm tonight,’ Eva says, changing the subject.
I think one of the reasons she’s making me so angry is because she isn’t acting as if she’s stolen my man, she’s acting as if we’re on a double date. As far as Eva is concerned, she’s just on a lovely holiday with her boyfriend, her friend and her friend’s new boyfriend. Nobody likes an atmosphere, and I wouldn’t accept her apology if she offered me one, but she’s acting as if everything is fine.
I wonder if I would feel better if she apologised. I suppose, in a way, even if I didn’t want to accept her apology, the fact that she offered one up would at least show that she knew she had done something wrong and that she felt guilty about it. If Ali had done this to me – my best friend of, oh, I don’t know, however many years doesn’t make us sound old – would I be so willing to throw my friendship away? Probably not, but, then again, a true friend like Ali would never do this.
I don’t think I can forgive Daniel either. Four years are a lot to throw away, but he didn’t just have some drunken one-nighter that he regrets. Even if they did and it lasted, what, seven minutes if we’re going on Daniel’s average endurance, then that’s seven minutes to realise you’re making a mistake. Set yourself a timer for seven minutes, and spend that time imagining doing something awful to someone you love. Seven minutes is actually quite a significant amount of time to think about the same thing. It seems to me though that Daniel and Eva have been at it for a long time, which means multiple bursts of seven minutes and everything that happened in between. All time that could be spent rethinking or regretting. He can’t have given either of those things a second thought or he would have stopped – or at the very least, finished with me to be with her.
I’ve thought about it a lot – it’s almost all I can think about – and, no matter which angle I come at it from, I just cannot wrap my head around the magnitude of what they have done – and continue to do. Why bring her on our honeymoon? Why stay, when they realised I was here? They really, really don’t care about anyone but themselves. Why would I want to forgive and forget with people like that? He’s a shitty boyfriend and she’s a shitty friend.
Matteo and Zoey burst onto the stage to the tune of Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Physical’. They’re wearing San Valentino vests with matching shorts, as well as sweatbands on every part of their bodies that can accommodate sweatbands. They’re doing some kind of choreographed, exaggerated version of a jog, perfectly in time with the beat of the music. I’m not sure this is completely necessary but, even if it were, it goes on for about two minutes longer than it ought to.
‘Good evening and welcome to Mr & Mrs Valentine Island,’ Zoey bellows into her microphone. ‘All of our wonderful couples are back and ready for tonight’s round of the competition and tonight we are getting physical!’
It’s amazing, how big a crowd Mr & Mrs Valentine Island pulls. Every seat is taken and every person is cheering excitedly. If I were here on my honeymoon, I’m not sure how into this I would be, watching other couples potentially making fools of themselves. Freddie and I don’t exactly have anything to lose – it’s not as if our relationship will take a knock if he doesn’t know when my birthday is. If I were doing all of this with my actual significant other, though, I’d be terrified. Daniel and I couldn’t even put together Ikea furniture without falling out, and we weren’t competing against anyone. As a keen gamer Daniel is very competitive and, even though this isn’t FIFA, I’m worried we’re going to see that competitive side of him tonight.
It’s warm tonight. I know, we’re in southern Italy, but this is the warmest night we’ve had yet. It’s muggy – a word that sounds so awful it accurately represents how it feels. The air feels thick and hard to take in, which only adds to that warm, suffocating, begging-for-a-breeze, just-want-to-jump-in-the-sea feeling. Of course, it had to be this sweltering on the night when we’re ‘getting physical’.
‘Tonight will test our couples’ staying power,’ Zoey says, the suggestion in her voice inciting ‘woos’ from the crowd. I hear one especially loud man shout out ‘oioi’ – he sounds as if he’s from my neck of the woods. It’s comforting, to hear a little bit of home.
A couple of hotel staff members lead us all out onto the dance floor in front of the stage, which is clear tonight in preparation for whatever the hell is going to happen. It worries me that we’re all out here on the floor at the same time. I worry about what they’re going to get us to do. God, I hope it doesn’t involve dancing. I’m definitely more can’t can’t than cancan. In fact, the last time I tried to dance in public a man thought I was choking and tried to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on me.
Zoey announces that this round will test our physical strength (I don’t have any), our strength as a couple (we’re not one, I hardly know the guy), and our stubbornness – yes, finally, a quality (not sure it’s a quality) I have. It’s amazing how stubborn and petty I can be when I’m annoyed. Daniel is also the kind of person who likes to have the last word, so our arguments would be fun. To be fair, we never really had that many arguments and I always thought that was testament to how strong we were as a couple, which I guess we weren’t. Looking at it from the outside, perhaps he never cared about me enough to fight for anything.
‘So, our lovely couples will decide who is going to be the strength in their relationship, and who is going to be the moral support,’ Zoey continues. ‘We’re all about equal opportunities here at Valentine Island, so it’s up to you who does what, but the aim of the game is for the strongest person to pick their partner up and hold them for as long as they can. Ladies, you can lift your fellas if you’d prefer – although we’ve got some nice, strong-looking boys out there tonight.’
I notice her eyes linger on Freddie for a moment. It makes me just the tiniest bit jealous, for some reason. Silly really because – you know what I’m going to say, so all together now – he isn’t my real boyfriend.
‘Now, you can hold your partner in any way you like,’ Zoey explains. ‘Anyone who lets go of their partner, whether it be by accident or on purpose, will be eliminated. First place will get the most points, followed by second, third – et cetera. So, are you ready?’
It doesn’t seem as if we’re getting any time to discuss strategy; we’re just expected to go on her whistle. It’s been a little awkward with Freddie since earlier. When he knocked on my door to walk me here, Ali walked with us on her way to linger around the bar where Max works. Then, when we got here, Eva and Daniel were straight over to us.
And now, without so much as an air-clearing chat (I was so awkward earlier, he must’ve noticed) Fre
ddie is going to be literally holding me.
‘Okay, I’ll just pick you up in front of me, wrap your legs around my waist and your arms around my neck, got it?’
‘Are you sure that’s the best way?’ I ask, but as the whistle blows and it’s time to go, I do exactly as Freddie says.
In a split second, I’m in his arms, clinging onto his neck, my legs locked around his waist. It all happens in a heartbeat; as I move into position I feel my dress roll up my thighs and sit pretty around my waist. I know, without looking, that my arse is exposed – thank God I put knickers on!
‘Is that okay?’ I ask Freddie. ‘Shit, I think everyone can see my knickers.’
‘Well, I can’t see, so not everyone can,’ he jokingly reassures me. ‘At least you have knickers on.’
I do… but they’re massive. I’m sure that should be better, because bigger knickers equal more coverage, but they’re so unsexy that it might even be more embarrassing than if I didn’t have any on at all.
‘We’ve got this in the bag. I can hold this position all night,’ Freddie tells me.
‘That’ll be your Edge of Eden training,’ I reply.
‘You mean from the gym, to get the physique Edward is supposed to have, or from filming sex scenes for hours and hours at a time?’
‘All right, show-off.’ I laugh. ‘Does it matter which?’
‘I suppose not,’ he replies.
I glance over at Daniel and Eva. Daniel might not be all that strong, but Eva is basically weightless. I, on the other hand, wish I hadn’t eaten so much while I’ve been here. I’m already much taller than her, with a bigger frame, so I’m bound to be heavier, even without the carb-binge I’ve been on recently. Everyone indulges on holiday though, right? It’s not usually a consideration, that you’ll need to be light for a competition.
Honeymoon for One Page 17
