What If?

by Shari Low

  Jess’s face had a look of sheer horror and she was just about to embark on her full Petrocelli mitigation speech when she noticed a smile flickering across Kate’s lips. Carol’s shoulders started to shake and within seconds we were collapsed in a cacophony of laughter and relief. We even woke up Sock Man.

  We stayed up until dawn, drinking and exhausting our repertoire of chart hits from the previous decade. At 6 a.m., we concluded with a rousing rendition of ‘A Kind Of Magic’, before slumping to sleep where we sat. We’d already given up on the idea of allocating beds (ten people in a flat designed for two just doesn’t work) and decided that wherever we could clear a floor space, that’s where we would sleep. I can’t remember who, but at some point, someone butchered Paul Young’s hit and the song of the night became Wherever I Lay My Arse, That’s My Home.

  The Barnsley guys, we surmised in our drunken state, were both harmless and entertaining. Dave was the guitar player, 5’8”, with a cute grin and a wicked line in jokes. Brian and Barry were brothers, who spoke in synchronisation – one brain with extra arms and legs. Ritchie was the heart-throb – tall, dark and devilishly handsome, with a body that had seen one or two dumb-bells in its time. And as for Sock Man, he didn’t so much as open his eyes all night so we decided that from then on he would officially be called, well, Sock Man.

  The first three days were pretty much a repetition of the first, only with more participants. The guys assumed brotherly roles, getting us drinks at the beach and warding off any unwanted advances by claiming to be brothers/boyfriends/husbands depending on the situation. Carol, however, decided that she wanted to get intimate with Ritchie’s abdominals, so they alone embarked on a bit of incest, but that apart it was all very platonic. On day four, everything changed.

  It started fairly inauspiciously with a long lazy day at the beach, lots of Ambre Solaire, and the odd game of beach volleyball between visits to the bar for cocktails. We returned to the apartment at six, to prepare for yet another night in Benidorm’s high spots. And when I say high spots, I mean anywhere that sold alcohol and had music that was louder than Concorde. We had developed a very efficient rota system for the bathroom. The boys would go first, and while they were showering, we would have a happy hour on the balcony. When they were done, they would clear out to the pub, leaving us to get ready and meet them later. All very civilised, if it were not for the inevitable clutter, water fights and general mayhem which inevitably ensued.

  Unusually, I showered, dressed and made-up fairly quickly that night, having come to the conclusion that it was too hot to fart around and it wouldn’t matter if you had a face like a sunburned arse, in this town you were still guaranteed male attention.

  By the time we reached the Scotsman, the guys were on a table singing ‘High Ho Silver Lining’, so we took the opportunity to steal their seats. A bad move as they proceeded to sit on our knees until cramp forced us to dump them unceremoniously on the floor.

  At around eleven o’clock, I was feeling decidedly shaky on my stilettos when a tall blond guy walked in, followed by a dark-haired bloke. The blond shouted a greeting to Sarah. I vaguely remembered him as Graham, the guy that she’d been fraternising with the night before, after his great line in chat won over both Sarah and the approval of our self-appointed Barnsley bodyguards. He made his way over to our table, while his friend fought his way to the bar. Through the crowd, I could just make out the top of his head as he waited to be served.

  Graham took up position on Sarah’s knees just as his mate turned round and started to make his way towards us. My heart stopped. Within seconds, I required oxygen. I was just about to search for a brown paper bag to hyperventilate into, when his eyes caught mine. They were so blue that, had this been in the nineties, I would have sworn they were coloured contact lenses, and they were framed with eyelashes that Max Factor would have killed for.

  He was about twenty-one, had jet-black hair, dark skin and the jawline of an American soap actor. He was stunning. His eyes held mine while he covered what seemed like the mile and a half to our table. He put the drinks down, still staring. A smile crossed his lips, revealing teeth that I wanted to tap to make sure they were real. My heart thundered so loudly that I was sure it was drowning out the ridiculous ‘Shudupa Ya Face’, that was blaring from the speakers. He stared a bit longer, then slowly, in a soft Scottish accent said, ‘Are we leaving?’

  My brain screamed, searching for a witty reply that would have the others clutching their sides, but my power of thought had deserted me.

  ‘Yes.’ Yes? Was that it? Was that all an educated, smart-mouthed female could come up with? My first encounter with love at first sight had rendered me witless.

  He put his hand out and I took it, still lost in his gaze. I followed him outside, where he turned right and started walking, saying nothing. After about a hundred yards, he stopped, put his hands on my face and kissed me slowly. I felt my legs buckle underneath me. God, what was happening?

  We kept walking, turning left, then right, until we were entering one of the big posh hotels on the seafront. We passed it every day on the way to the beach and it definitely wasn’t the kind of place that would have ten people to a suite, with a bloke in a sombrero playing guitar and a comatose drunk called Sock Man. We took the lift up to the sixth floor, then entered his room, where he turned and kissed me again. Only this time it didn’t stop.

  He unbuttoned my top, dropping it to the floor, then slid my skirt over my hips to join it.

  Meanwhile, my enthusiasm for the situation was made clear by the fact that I had somehow managed to remove his shirt and trousers. I should probably have stopped and considered whether I wanted to lose my virginity to a complete stranger, but it felt so good that nothing short of a tranquiliser dart could have stopped me. We tumbled onto the bed, kissing, groping. Before I knew what was happening, a condom appeared and then it was on and his naked body was pressed against mine.

  ‘Lift your hips,’ he whispered, nuzzling my ear.

  What did he mean? How high? Somehow this just wasn’t the time to say, ‘Excuse me, but I haven’t done this before so do you think you could possibly draw me a diagram of the exact angle of elevation which you require?’ I knew I should have paid more attention in biology when they were giving ‘The Talk’. Or maybe rewound the steamy bits in 9 ½ Weeks.

  I tilted my pelvis and he slid slowly and gradually inside. My body welcomed him eagerly. He continued to move out and in, sending glorious waves of ecstasy coursing to previously unstimulated areas of my anatomy, until eventually he came shuddering to a halt, just as a new feeling deep in my pelvic area caused an explosion I’d never felt before. So that was what all those orgasm articles in Cosmo were raving about then.

  He collapsed beside me, then turned and touched my face.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered.

  I smiled. ‘Thank you,’ I gasped, breathless. I didn’t know what else to say. My mother had always taught me that if someone gave you a compliment you should smile and thank them. I don’t think she meant that to apply after a stranger had just been intimate with your tickly bits, but then I wasn’t sure of the rules of this new game. What exactly are you supposed to say after a guy has met you, said ‘Are we leaving,’ followed by ‘Lift your hips’ and your only utterance has been a feeble ‘Yes’?

  I searched my brain for points of reference. I was sure this was when the guy rolled over and was snoring within ten seconds. Why then was his finger tracing the outline of my nipple? Now my stomach. Now my thighs. Good God, he wanted to do it again! Was this normal?

  He pulled me on top of him and without thinking I was suddenly moving, using muscles I didn’t even know I possessed.

  We made love twice more, once in the bath, and it was starting to get light when we fell asleep, me still with an inane grin on my face. So this was it. Virginity gone. After years of fumbling with my on-off ex, Mark Barwick, resisting the temptation to cross the last line, I’d had my first sexual exp
erience with a man I couldn’t have picked out in a line up only a few hours ago. It should feel so wrong, and yet it just felt perfect.

  The sun streaming in through the window woke me at ten o’clock. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, then I remembered. I started to get up when pain forced me to slump back down. My legs felt like they’d run a marathon. I stumbled to the bathroom, gathering my hastily discarded clothing as I went. I looked in the mirror. Big mistake. My face was red, my eyes looked like a road map and my hair had clearly exploded during the night. I couldn’t let him see me like this – the shock would scar him for life.

  I dressed and did the best repair job possible before surreptitiously making for the door. I had just pulled it open when he sleepily mumbled, ‘Can I see you tonight?’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied without turning round, ‘I’ll be in the Scotsman.’

  I staggered back to the apartment, praying that nobody would be awake. I quietly opened the door and was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when I saw a sea of expectant faces. The gang were indeed up and broke into a standing ovation.

  Laughing, Kate gave me a drink.

  ‘What’s this?’ I stammered.

  ‘It’s a new cocktail we invented for you. It’s called an Invaded Vagina.’

  Oh, the embarrassment. Was nothing private in this world?

  ‘But how did you know?’

  Sarah butted in. ‘Graham here,’ she said, gesticulating to my night of passion’s friend, who was sitting in the corner, ‘went back to the hotel last night, but he heard you inside, so he hotfooted it over here with a full report.’

  I was mortified. Ground open up now and swallow me please.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to say anything?’ Jess asked.

  I paused. ‘Graham,’ I said ashamedly, ‘what is your friend’s name?’

  It was difficult to hear his reply over screams of amusement and mock outrage from the others. ‘Nick,’ he said, joining the laughter. ‘Nick Russo.’

  That evening, unlike the night before, I took hours getting ready. Every outfit made me look too fat, too small, too flat chested. Every hairstyle made me look like my mum or my gran. So this was what happened then. You spent one night with a man and suddenly you morphed into an indecisive, neurotic nightmare. I kept waiting for the seeds of regret to set in, but they never did. I just couldn’t wait to see him again.

  When we got to the pub, there was no sign of him. I was glad of the crowd and the noise because at least it stopped the girls’ endless interrogation about the night before.

  It’s not that I didn’t want to tell them, I just couldn’t talk about something that I didn’t understand.

  How should I act? Should I be coy, distant, friendly, forward? Where was the bloody rulebook? In the end, I settled for terrified and anxious.

  All night I kept staring at the door. Eventually, at about ten o’clock, Graham entered. My heart leapt, then sank faster than a stone as I realised that he was alone.

  ‘Where’s Nick?’ I asked, scared of the answer.

  He shrugged and there was something uneasy in his posture that sent my alarm bells straight to screech levels. ‘I don’t know, Carly, I’m not sure if he’s coming down tonight.’

  The others looked uncomfortable now too, all the guys’ eyes immediately drawn to their feet. They must teach that in Men School – ‘When one of your fellow males is ceremoniously dumping a member of the female sex, you must immediately stare at the floor, or you’ll be stricken down by the Testosterone God.’

  I couldn’t speak. I stood up, grabbed my bag and fled, not stopping for a second lest they saw the tears that were threatening to blind me.

  After running for what seemed like miles, my brain locked in a mantra of ‘Bastard, Bastard, Bastard’, I found myself at the beach.

  This had never happened to me before. Never had any guy let me down or upset me, never mind make me cry. I had always thought that I was indestructible.

  I found an overturned dinghy on the sands and collapsed against it, facing out to sea. Why is it that at times of crisis I always see a vision of my mum lecturing me?

  ‘They’re only after one thing, you know.’

  ‘Never give in to sex because they’ll just cast you aside like yesterday’s newspaper afterwards.’

  I felt like banging my head on the dinghy, just to get rid of the sound of her voice. A coma would definitely be preferable.

  That was where he found me hours later, eyes swollen from crying, mascara ingrained into my cheeks, hair so flat that it resembled a balaclava.

  I felt a movement beside me and he sat down, put his arms around me and squeezed tight. I stared at him in dumbstruck shock.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘We were all looking for you, and Kate figured you’d be here. The others headed back to the bar when we spotted you. I promised the girls I’d bring you back later. Carol said if I didn’t, she’d remove my nuts.’

  That made me smile, but I couldn’t get any words past the massive lump that had formed in my throat.

  ‘Why did you run off?’ he went on.

  ‘I thought I’d made a horrible mistake. I thought you weren’t coming,’ I spluttered through the tears that had started again.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he smiled. ‘I just fell asleep while I was getting ready. I was a bit late, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh.’ Conversational skills were on annual leave again.

  ‘But I do think we have to talk.’

  Here it comes, I thought. The whole ‘holiday romance, it was just a bit of fun’ thing.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d never had sex before?’

  Hello again, mortification. My cheeks burned. ‘How did you find out?’ Was it that obvious? Oh, the indignity of it all.

  ‘Kate told me,’ he replied. ‘She was explaining why you did the hundred metre sprint when Graham appeared without me.’

  Oh. Relief.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly. ‘There didn’t seem to be the right moment.’

  ‘So why did you do it then?’ he persisted.

  ‘I don’t know that either. It just felt right.’

  He laughed. Laughed! I was sitting there feeling like my heart had been shredded and he was laughing. He kissed the end of my nose, then drew me in close to him, dispelling my indignation in a heartbeat.

  ‘I think I’m going to like you, Carly Cooper. Now, come on, we’ve got some catching up to do.’

  The rest of the holiday passed in uninterrupted bliss. The next morning, we went back to our apartment with all Graham’s clothes and swapped them for mine. Graham and Sarah were delighted – they were fast becoming a permanent feature.

  Nick and I were the same. We woke up together, sunbathed together, went to the pub in the evening with the rest of the gang, but still never leaving each other’s side. And we laughed. We laughed about silly, stupid things. I had fallen sombrero over espadrilles, totally and completely in love. And so had he. It was amazing. His face lit up when he saw me, we talked constantly about everything on the planet and then he made long, gorgeous love to me every night.

  If I’d stopped to think about it in any depth, I’d have acknowledged how lucky I felt. Nick Russo was the first guy I’d ever slept with and he was sweet and kind and funny, and showed no dickhead tendencies whatsoever.

  The last night finally came. My stomach had been in knots all day and I was alternating between a longing to handcuff Nick to the bed and savour every moment, and wanting to curl up in a corner and cry.

  We went out to dinner, for once without our merry band of friends.

  ‘We can’t let this end here, Cooper,’ he said as he held my hand so tightly that it felt as if he was dislocating my knuckles.

  ‘How can it not?’ I implored. ‘We live on opposite sides of the country, we can’t drive and we’re skint students.’

  The truth was, I could probably make the trip to his home in St Andrews by bus and train,
and he could travel to see me too. The distance wasn’t insurmountable, but geography and logistics weren’t the real issue here.

  You see, I adored him. This had been the most perfect two weeks of my life, I had lost my virginity to the most amazing man and I could see the future. If we tried to continue this at home, it would get lost amongst protracted separations, late night phone calls and living in different towns. Even in my sun-damaged, alcohol-poisoned, euphoric state, I knew that we were much too young for this. Eventually, we would both meet other people and it would end horribly, with tears and tantrums, recriminations and regret. I didn’t want that. I wanted to remember this forever for what it was – the best episode in my life ever.

  I tried to explain this and, eventually, his sad eyes told me that he got it.

  ‘Tell you what, Cooper, one day I’m going to come and find you. Then, we’ll get married and live in happily shagging bliss for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘You promise?’ I asked, smiling.

  ‘I promise,’ he replied, as he squeezed me tightly, then kissed me goodbye.

  I never saw Nick Russo again.

  3

  Believe – Cher

  I pour another coffee and attack a box of Marks & Spencer’s chocolate eclairs. I’m having trouble eating them because of the huge smile that’s still on my face. Nick Russo. I haven’t thought about him for years.

  It’s strange too, to think about the person that I was then: fearless, full of energy, embarking on every day like it was a great new adventure. But then, everyone is indestructible when they’re seventeen, aren’t they?

  Sure, I was sad when I returned from holiday. I spent two weeks mooning around, listening to Commodores records and crying on the shoulders of anyone who would listen. Thank God for the eighties shoulder pads.

  Then I decided that I was bored of being boring and set off in pursuit of another drama. Over the next couple of years, I would think about Nick periodically, but that soon faded as he was replaced by the next love. And the next. And the next.