Air

by Lisa Glass

  “Neither.”

  They looked confused.

  “Huh. So you’re what exactly?”

  “Cornish,” I said, feeling sure that these blokes had never even heard of Cornwall, and hoping they’d never get to see it either.

  At that moment I saw some girls approach Zeke and say something to him.

  One of them, a girl with blood-red heels, long hair and spray-on jeans, got close enough that she was practically standing on his toes.

  Inga. I hadn’t even known she was there. She must’ve left the party and changed her outfit before coming out like I should have done.

  Her friend started snapping pictures of them together.

  Zeke bowed his head, and I watched as Inga whispered something in his ear.

  I was itching to go over to them and find out what was going on, but thanks to the two jocks with the combined charisma of an armpit, I was completely cornered.

  The quarterback looked down at my shorts yet again, and said, “Super-fine outfit, but I like what’s in it even better.”

  “Look, thanks for the compliment or whatever,” I said, properly creeped out, “but I’m one-hundred-per-cent not interested in talking to you. Also, I have a boyfriend. Who is here with me.”

  “Do you see him, Troy? Cos I sure don’t!”

  They thought this was hilarious, which made me wonder if they were in fact very stoned.

  It was massively frustrating, because part of me, a big part of me, wanted to be really aggro and tell them to fuck off, but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t even that I was worried they’d turn nasty. I just couldn’t bring myself to be that rude, even to confirmed dickheads. All of which made me feel even more unhappy with the situation.

  Then garlic breath got down in my face so I couldn’t even see Zeke’s back anymore.

  “Chill. We ain’t gonna hurt you. We’re just sayin’ hey.”

  Back pressed up against the cue rack, I stood there, frozen, as garlic breath put his hand up my top.

  Suddenly my brain flashed to Daniel, and how he always said that if you were going to have to fight, it was best to get your punch in first. I inhaled, cracked my knee into garlic breath’s scrotum and elbowed Eminem-wannabe hard in the gut. Caught off guard and totally hammered, they groaned.

  My path was clear, and just as I was thinking my three tae kwon do lessons had paid off big style, I saw that Inga had her hands in Zeke’s hair, and her tongue in his mouth.

  chapter eighteen

  What. The. Hell?

  Zeke lovely loyal Zeke, whom I’d never even caught checking out anyone else was kissing another girl? The most annoying one on earth, no less? Right in front of me?

  I pushed open the fire-escape door and walked out into the humid air of the Florida night.

  Heart beating hard, all I wanted to do was get out of there.

  I couldn’t believe how fast things had turned bad. I’d just been groped and no one had seen or helped, and my boyfriend, who I was head over heels in love with, was apparently a complete shithead.

  My face was on fire with I didn’t even know what. It felt like embarrassment or shame, but that was crazy, because why would I feel like that? I’d done nothing wrong.

  And then I got it: what I felt was humiliation.

  It had happened. Exactly what Daniel, the moment he clapped eyes on Zeke, had said would happen. You know he’s gonna end up with a Barbie on his arm.

  Oh God. That made it so much worse, knowing that even an utter moron like Daniel had been right about Zeke. And it wasn’t even just him. What had my mum said about Zeke? About “butterflies”?

  “He seems great, Iris. Capable and strong. Like the sort of person who could set down on a runway in some war-torn nation and know exactly how to get to where he needs to go and get all his surfboards there without putting a single ding in one of them. Seen it all, done it all, got all the T-shirts. But sometimes, you know, these world travelers are hollow in the center. They’re looking for something, and even they don’t know what it is. But they can’t stop searching.”

  She’d had her soft face on the one she used when she really wanted to get through to me.

  “Do you see what I mean, Iris? You can’t count on them. There’s nothing holding them anywhere. They have no solid core weighing them down. They’re just butterflies flitting through the air. And who can build a life with a butterfly?”

  “Zeke is not a frigging butterfly!” I’d said. “And anyway, I’d rather be a butterfly than a worm.”

  “I think you mean a caterpillar.”

  “Whatever!”

  My mum tried to talk to me some more, but I was having none of it. Life-building sounded so old and boring anyway; it was the last thing I wanted to talk about right before I left for my big adventure.

  I clawed at the skin on my throat, feeling my nails dig into the sunburn.

  I hadn’t wanted to believe that Zeke was hollow where it counted, or that he was just like any other manwhore pro-surfer with a gaggle of girls ready and waiting on every beach. Zeke was different. He wasn’t a liar. He couldn’t be. Because if he was, everything we’d been through together was bullshit.

  I turned a corner, and at the end of the block I saw two youngish black guys walking toward me. Deep in an argument, they didn’t see me. One was waving his hands around, and the other had his head down, his mouth set in a grim line. As they came nearer, I heard the first one saying the same thing over and over: “This is not working.”

  The other guy rubbed tears out of his eyes and looked up, straight at me.

  I nodded, by which I hoped to convey an I see you’re having a bad night, I am too sort of message.

  Then I saw a girl who looked suspiciously like one of Zeke’s female friends from the beach, walking arm in arm with two other girls. I kept my gaze on the pavement and made a sharp turn off the street.

  wednesday

  chapter nineteen

  Walking between dumpsters, where a day ago I’d been snogging the face off Zeke, it occurred to me that maybe this sudden change in direction wasn’t my cleverest move. A rustle to my left made me jump, and I waited for a knife-wielding maniac to run at me. Instead a stray cat sauntered across my path, gulping some piece of edible garbage.

  The alley came out on a busy street and I exhaled. I was, however, totally lost, but I couldn’t even be bothered to load up Google Maps, because I didn’t want to be found.

  If I kept walking, I could stop thinking. But it wasn’t so easy. On the crowded night streets of Miami, couples seemed to be everywhere. Laughing as they tumbled out of hipster bars; groping each other’s asses as they waited for taxis; gazing into loved ones’ eyes as they walked, hand in hand, toward their bloody Lamborghinis.

  I’d been such an idiot. You only had to look at Zeke to figure it out.

  It all flashed through my head: the poster campaign for a Nike diver’s watch that appeared on billboards in Tokyo; the advert for a Burberry coat; the Givenchy aftershave double-page spread and the last two were both ridiculous as Zeke would never wear tweed or any kind of fragrance. You didn’t need those things on a beach, which is where he spent his life.

  But he looked the way those brands wanted their male models to look, so he was hired. They didn’t care about his surf skills or how much work he put into his fitness and stamina. Or the fact that he gave fifty percent of his contest winnings to ocean-preservation charities like Sea Shepherd and Surfers for Cetaceans. They just thought he was hot, thought his look could sell stuff for them. And they were right. His campaigns were all successful and so they kept signing him for more. But every time he came back from one of those shoots, had part of him slipped away from me?

  Yes. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Was I really that deep in denial?

  The wild child of the sea I’d fallen for was turning into someone who chatted to make-up artists as they smeared foundation over the scars on his back, who took direction from experts in posing, who knew how overhead lighting co
uld give extra definition to his abs, who went around signing the necks of strange girls just because they asked him to.

  So Zeke had been changing for a while. He had. But had he really changed into the kind of creep who’d suck the face off some girl who’d fluttered her eyelashes at him? Right in front of his girlfriend?

  My head was banging from the alcohol, and I kept my eyes on my pointless, uncomfortable shoes so I didn’t have to see any of the happy people. I walked along endless pavement, until I found my way to one of the entrances to South Beach.

  Further up the beach, I could see a couple rolling around, and the still forms of rough sleepers. But the path to the sea in front of me was completely clear.

  I took off my shoes and walked barefoot on the sand, which looked silvery gray in the moonlight. It wasn’t soft like the sand on Fistral Beach; it felt sharp and crunchy underfoot. I grabbed a handful of it and stuffed it in the inner zipped pocket of my bag. I tried to collect some sand at every beach because I knew my little cousin Cara back in Newquay would like it.

  Something about that sand gave me an intense pang of sadness. I missed home, missed Fistral, missed walking with Kelly along hedgerows pink with valerian, past brightly colored beach huts down to Tolcarne Beach, ice creams dripping on to our trainers. I missed the scent of yarrow and wild garlic floating on the sea breeze. I missed telling Kelly jokes as she practiced cartwheels; people looking, Kelly not caring a bit.

  If only I had her with me, she’d know what to do. She’d make everything OK. My mum would make me feel better too, even if she was secretly thinking, I warned you about bloody butterflies. She’d give me one whole day to wallow, and then tell me off for caring so much about a boy’s bad behavior when I should have been flashing my feminist credentials at him and telling him to sling his hook.

  Maybe I should jack it all in, I thought. The surf competitions, being a girlfriend, the big dream. All of it. Just give up. Use the money I had left to buy a ticket on the next plane back to England.

  I took my phone out of my bag and saw that it was almost one o’clock. I’d put it on to silent earlier, and my heart flipped as I saw that there were seven missed calls from Zeke and a load of text messages.

  My finger hovered, but I knew I wasn’t ready to talk to him, so I went into Contacts instead. There was someone whose voice I desperately needed to hear. I pressed Call, but the phone didn’t even ring, instead going straight to voicemail.

  “This is Kelly. I’m probably out of credit, so call me back later, m’kay.”

  “Kel, it’s me. I really need to talk.”

  It was the early morning in the UK, too early for Kelly to be up and about, so no wonder her phone was switched off, but I wished so hard that it wasn’t. For a second my finger hesitated over Daniel’s name.

  I pressed Call.

  chapter twenty

  Two rings. Three. Four.

  I moved the phone away from my ear, preparing to hang up.

  “Hello?”

  He didn’t even sound groggy. He sounded alert.

  What could I say?

  I’d cut him off completely. He was dead to me that’s what I’d told myself for months. Told myself I’d never speak to him again.

  Talk or hang up? And then I stepped over the edge of the moment.

  “It’s me.”

  “Iris?”

  “Yeah. New number sorry.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “I shouldn’t have phoned. Sorry for disturbing you.”

  “You all right?”

  “No. I’m really not.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Christ, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Miami. I was at a bar with Zeke and then I left. I’m on the beach.”

  “Wait, ain’t it like the middle of the night there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You safe?”

  “I think so. There’s people around.”

  What was he going to do, even if I wasn’t safe? Reach across an ocean and save me? But it felt good that he’d asked.

  “So why’d you ditch the Yank?”

  I sighed. He couldn’t just ask a question; he had to be a git about it.

  “I’d better go. Sorry I woke you up.”

  “D’ya want me to do something?”

  “No. Of course not . . . Like what?”

  “I dunno. Come out there.”

  “To Florida? Uh, no. Anyway, I’m leaving soon.”

  “Well, why did you ring me? Must’ve had a reason.”

  “It’s just, what do you think of Zeke?”

  I heard him exhale. Why had I said that? Asking my ex-boyfriend for an opinion on my new boyfriend was the definition of stupidity. I’d hardly get an objective response.

  “Fake as fuck.”

  “Fake?” I winced. I thought he might have gone for poseur, or pretty boy, or manwhore or something, but not fake. “Seriously? You think he’s, what, putting on some act with me?”

  “You and the world. No bloke’s like that. All that meditation and yoga and shit, and the way he does that blatantly fake smiling thing all the time. He makes out he’s so perfect, but deep down he’s just like the rest of us. Plus, I hate his fucking teeth.”

  “What’s wrong with his teeth?”

  “One: he’s got too many of ’em; and, two: they glow in the dark.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Yeah, they do, and considering the bloke’s a smoker, it’s not natural. He must get them bleached. That and his hair.”

  “He doesn’t bleach his hair or his teeth. Why do you have to be so mean all the time?”

  “Why do you have to sound so American? You’ve only been there a few months.”

  “I don’t sound American.”

  “Well, you sure as shit don’t sound Cornish. Talk normal.”

  “I am.”

  “Come home. You belong in Newquay. Not there.”

  “I can’t just come home, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”

  “Iris, get a fucking grip, woman. You need to—”

  “Bye, Daniel.”

  After hanging up, I opened Google and tapped in the search term I’d been secretly using, like a drug, since I’d left. Fistral beach webcam.

  And there it was, my home break at high tide, a glorious dawn on the horizon, perfect clean waves stacking up and a bunch of surfers already in the water.

  Someone with a yellow longboard walked right in front of the camera. My friend Caleb had a board like that. Was it him? Maybe.

  I watched as two figures kicked a ball around for a dog. The dog chased it down to the water, where wave after wave pushed on to the beach.

  At that moment I’d have given anything to be one of the surfers riding those waves. Real waves. Not the tiny green micro-waves of Miami.

  I closed down Google and promised myself that would be the last time. Looking never solved anything, and every time I gave into the urge, it got stronger.

  If I went home, I knew I’d never leave again. Traveling the world was awesome, but did it make me happier than being with my family and friends in Newquay?

  I slumped down on the sand, pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and refused to cry.

  OK, I thought, I was on a path and I couldn’t get off it until I got to the end, but this was what I’d wanted. This had been my dream.

  My phone lit up again as it received a call, but it wasn’t from Kelly or Daniel. Zeke was trying to get through.

  No. I wouldn’t pick up. Screw him.

  I stuffed my phone back into my bag and dropped it on the sand.

  Moonlight made a soft silver path on the black water, and even though it was nighttime and I knew Florida’s waters were super-sharky, visited by bulls, hammerheads and even tigers, my stupid drunken brain urged me to get in there. Submerged in water, I could be myself, I could relax.

  I waded so far into the water that my yellow shor
ts turned black.

  If only I could swim home.

  The sea had a faint tang of oil and decay, but after the heat of the bar it felt wonderful to have cool water swirling around my legs. If some sea beast was eyeing up my calves at that very second, then it was a risk I’d have to take, because no way was I getting out. I dunked my face into the water, picturing black lines of mascara staining my cheeks.

  “Just breathe,” I told myself. I’d told myself this exact thing so many times over the preceding few months that anyone listening would have thought I was asthmatic.

  Something cool moved against my leg and I jumped, but it was only a glass bottle.

  I fished it out and saw it was some kind of wine. I wondered who’d drunk it and then I thought of Chase, with his outrageous clothes and expensive champagne. Had he seen Zeke kissing that girl? Was he surprised? Maybe he knew Zeke was a player. Had he seen what happened to me?

  I looked up to the bright silver sky overhead, and tried to do the ujjayi breathing that Zeke’s yoga-teacher friend had taught me. Eventually my heart began to slow down and my brain too.

  I turned shorewards, and that’s when I saw them.

  A group of lads were walking down the beach toward me, joking around. I saw one of them bend down and pick up my bag.

  My cash and all my bank cards were in it. I couldn’t let it get nicked.

  I waded back toward shore and, when I was fifty feet away, I made eye contact with one of them.

  He looked really startled to see a person coming out of the water. Maybe he’d assumed the bag was lost, or left by someone on a suicide mission.

  “Hey there,” he said. He had a grade-two buzz cut, an eyebrow piercing and dark eyes.

  “That’s mine,” I said, pointing to the bag. My voice came out really weird; sort of posh and bossy, much like Saskia’s.

  Then my gaze went to the guy’s pocket, where something was jutting out.

  A gun.

  No, it couldn’t be a gun.

  It was totally a gun.

  I held on tightly to the glass bottle in my hand as the baby waves swirled around my ankles.