Twisted Summer

by Lucy V. Morgan

  “Let me think about it. I’m not sure I can write that letter again, Danni.”

  He was already broken, really—he just needed a little push, and I could give him that. Seduce him. Back at his little cabin, he’d wanted me so badly that I’d barely needed to smile before he pinned me, defenceless.

  My skin tingling with newfound bravery, I stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “Then I guess I’ll go back to get into bed with my girlfriend. My naked girlfriend.”

  “Good,” he retorted.

  “And if you hear any little sounds in the morning…you know the ones I’m talking about…it’s probably because she’s touching me.”

  Gabe said nothing, but he took three gulps of sea air in very quick succession.

  “Maybe you can come watch us rub sun lotion on each other tomorrow. We’ll be down here, on the beach. In our little bikinis. You’ve never seen me in one of those, huh?”

  “I’m warning you, Danni.” He swallowed again and dropped his grasp of my ass. His hands lingered lightly on my hips. “Behave yourself.”

  “Oh? So now I’m not allowed to make love with my girlfriend and then tell you all about it?”

  “Danni!” He laughed, but there was a sadness to it, like the undertow that sucks unwitting swimmers beneath the waves. “Please. You really don’t need to do this. My balls are blue enough.”

  I pouted.

  “And no, I don’t need to hear about you and Esmé.” He brushed a little kiss to my lips. “The only people I know who make love are pensioners and prissy vanilla girls with their sad sack boyfriends. We fuck, Danni.” Another kiss, his mouth open this time. His tongue warm. “You get fucked. I fuck you.”

  “I need to think about whether that’s a good idea,” I teased.

  He groaned again. “I’ve created a monster.”

  “So…so where do we go from here? What now?”

  “Well.” He tucked wind-whipped hair behind my ear. “Let me sleep on this—”

  “Looks kinda painful.”

  “Not my cock, you retard. The decision.”

  “I love it when you get all ranty.”

  “Yeah. I noticed.” He sighed. “Look, Danni. Tomorrow night, same time. If I’m here, I’m up for it, and if I’m not…well. I’m sorry.”

  He’ll be here. I had a sinking feeling those three words were about to be my mantra for the next twenty-four hours.

  “Okay. I can cope with that.”

  But I wasn’t okay, and not even the slow depth of his goodnight kiss could soothe me. Sleep wouldn’t come since he stopped sending letters, and the night stretched before me, restless and bleak.

  ***

  Excitement eviscerated everything (and turned me into an alliterative asshat).

  Esmé didn’t know what the hell to do with me. Unable to sleep, I was out of bed at seven to make pancakes, dancing around the kitchen to the radio as I went. There may have been humming. Humming without shame. When she sloped through an hour later in her shortie pyjamas, the bemused look on her face was comical.

  “Danni? Why aren’t you, like, in bed?”

  “Because I was hungry. Look.” I used the fish slice to gesture to my golden heap of pancake awesome. “I’m amazing.” Then I did a little shimmy, and pretended to fight off a hoard of ninjas with my utensil of doom.

  “Um, pixie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you…bi?”

  What the very fuck? What? Did I have uncle fucker emblazoned across my forehead in ultraviolet sperm? A shiver of panic shot down my spine. I froze.

  “You know.” Esmé frowned. “Like, bipolar.”

  “Oh.” I laughed, way too hard. “No. I’m just…in a holiday mood.”

  “Well. For future reference: holidays are for lying in ‘til lunchtime and lots of lazy sex. Okay?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Gabe said from the doorway. The blue and black wetsuit, still damp, clung to every cut line of his body. His surf-flushed cheeks turned to apples as he smiled.

  Esmé blushed hard enough to burst a blood vessel. Yesterday, I would have winced over this; today, I burst out laughing.

  “It’s okay, Esmé,” Gabe said. “I promise not to tell Danni’s mother.”

  “I think she knows what we get up to,” I said. “Whether she’d admit it or not.”

  Esmé just padded over and dropped her forehead against my shoulder with a whimper of mortification. I rubbed her back with the fish slice. From the doorway, Gabe shrugged and then shot me one of his naughty little half-smiles.

  “Do you want some pancakes?” I managed to say.

  “In a bit. Best go get changed.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you girls to it.” The floorboards creaked as he strode down the hall in bare, sandy feet.

  “Is he gone yet?” Esmé whispered.

  “The coast is clear.” I ruffled her hair as she rose. “You’re an idiot.”

  “I am not. That was completely cringeworthy.”

  “Why?” You want cringeworthy, Esmé? Try fucking your uncle and then having to keep it a secret from your girlfri—or, er, something a little less farfetched. Ahem.

  “Because I was talking about sex, and he’s…a guy.”

  I ladled another load of batter into the hot pan. The oil fizzed with delight as it hit. “Is this one of those unwritten lesbian rules that I don’t get?”

  “No, but…” She chewed a strand of hair for a second, then tossed it back out of her mouth. “All they think when they hear lesbians talk about sex is hot. We don’t like boys—we’re not supposed to get them off.” She folded her arms. “It shouldn’t be allowed.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can’t dictate to people what should turn them on.”

  She stood behind me at the stove, dropping kisses on my bare shoulder. “I don’t make love to you just so some dude can wank over it, pixie.”

  Make love. God. If she could only have heard Gabe last night—you get fucked. I fuck you—she’d be livid.

  I coughed, batting the smoke away from the pan. “And that’s why we close the door. Es.” I reached around to pat her hip. “You’re thinking about this too hard.”

  “Pfft. You just watch Taylor today. Last night, he practically twitched every time I touched you.”

  I was about to add that’s because he fancies you, but it wouldn’t have exactly supported my case.

  “Es.” I flipped a pancake with a jerk of my wrist. “Have breakfast. Have a shower. Put on something that shows off your arse for me. We’re having a nice day, whether you like it or not.”

  ***

  Welsh beaches are underrated. People forgot that Anglesey was there until Prince William and his bit of stuff moved here for his RAF placement, and then everyone pretended to know it was cool. Cool, it was most definitely not. But there was soft sand, huge old trees and sparkly waves, and for those reasons, I forgave the stripy old deckchairs and single shitty village café.

  To be honest, a few months ago, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the trees, but since Gabe and his sickening enviro-enthusiasm took a hold of me, I couldn’t escape the majesty of branches swept out against the sky. They reminded me of a warm afternoon in his cabin garden, lying naked on the grass while he—

  “Hola.” Taylor dumped his towel on the sand next to me and Esmé. He had a dark lens clip over his glasses and wore short, sporty swimming trunks.

  Esmé glanced up from her thriller novel and I saw her brows dip. “Um…hi.”

  “You girls don’t mind if I sit with you, right? ‘Cause the alternative is hiking with my mum and your mum. And we all know that would suck.”

  “It would indeed.” I glanced at Esmé, who gave a tiny, annoyed shrug. “Sit away.”

  “Cool. Thanks.” He shook out his Transformers towel and yanked a fat fantasy novel from his tatty rucksack. “Hey, we’re like the book brigade.”

  “Danni’s doesn’t count as a book,” Esmé said. “It’s too dull.”

  I pulled my beloved copy of
Why Architecture Matters back into my chest. “It’s not dull, Es. It’s all about arranging neighbourhoods and sociology and stuff. Architecture isn’t just about bricks, you know. And you love my sexy brain.”

  “I could play some music on my phone if you want,” he said. “I’ve got Kings of Leon, or Dexter’s, or the Foos.”

  “I like listening to the sea.” Esmé wriggled around, her belly flat against the sand and her chin resting in her palm.

  “Oh. Okay then.” Taylor nodded and fiddled with his glasses again. I knew he was checking out Esmé’s tits—they fell in little heaps to squash against the sand, but her purple string bikini pulled them up to a perfect angle. If he shifted around a little more, he’d probably get a hint of dark nipple.

  We fell into semi-awkward silence. The sun baked us, the breeze teased our book pages, and Taylor cleared his throat loudly way too often. I shouldn’t have been so annoyed by him, really—he came across as smug and nerdy, but he didn’t mean to. We’d been best friends when we were little, both only children of the same age. Mum and Aunt Lizzie still had photos of Taylor and me as chubby cherubs, playing in sandpits and sharing baths. There was one of us on the kitchen wall at home with our faces covered in chocolate at Easter. I don’t know what happened, but we hit our early teens and kind of just grew apart. I mean, who wants to play World of Warcraft all afternoon when you can…well. Do anything else?

  “Hey. Taylor.” Esmé hauled herself up. “There’s Gabe. You should go join him.”

  Taylor’s face fell. “I should?”

  “Yeah. You can, like, do bloke stuff. Or something.”

  I heard the drag of his surfboard over the sand. Ah, Gabe in a wetsuit: like somebody put muscle and tanned skin and cocky gorgeousness into a bowl, stirred, and stuffed it into the fabric. I loved the way the corners of his eyes crinkled in the sunshine; it lifted his whole face, and he looked just the right amount of older (I’m eighteen, so I’m probably the only one who knows what that means).

  “Didn’t he already go surfing today?” said Taylor.

  “What, there’s a limit?” I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Get him to teach you.” Esmé pinned her book to the sand as the breeze ruffled the pages again. “If he can teach Danni to surf, he can teach anybody.”

  I leaned over her, my fingers toying with her bikini top ties. “I think what Es is trying to say is that she wants some privacy to ravish me.”

  “Oh.” He coughed, hauling himself up. “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I was joking, you twit.” I grinned at him. “But yeah. Alone time. Girl time.”

  He shot me a thin-lipped, apologetic smile before trawling off toward Gabe, who’d already put his surfboard against the rocks and was checking out the waves.

  “Nice save, pixie.” Esmé rolled over and rested on her elbows. “He creeps me out.”

  “He just thinks you’re hot.” I dropped a kiss on her arm. “Because you are.”

  She craned her neck to look back at Taylor and Gabe. “They’re not allowed to think I’m hot.”

  I laughed. “We went over this earlier.”

  She tutted, but rolled on to her side to push up against me. Snuggled together, we carried on reading, pausing occasionally to sip water.

  The best thing about sunglasses is that nobody knows what you’re looking at. This meant I could stare at Gabe as long as I liked and Esmé didn’t have to know about it. He stood propped up against his surfboard with his arms folded, chatting away to Taylor. Next to each other, it became apparent how similar their builds were; Gabe was thicker, sturdier, but when the hell did Taylor fill out like that?

  Two soft, warm hands gripped my shoulders and dragged me down to lie on my side. Esmé caught my bottom lip between her teeth and sucked gently. I mewed in surprise.

  “Fuck it,” she whispered. “I’ve had enough. Reverse psychology—let’s just give them the show they’re after, and then maybe they’ll stop staring.”

  “Oh.” Oh. We shed our sunglasses and with them, our inhibitions. If she was going to touch me like this, I’d let her think the guys stared because we were lesbians…not because Taylor wanted to screw her and Gabe wanted to screw me.

  Our kisses deepened. Esmé’s nipples grew stiff against mine, and she made soft little sighs of pleasure as I pushed my thigh up between her legs. I couldn’t see, but I knew Gabe was watching. And jealous. Maybe I should’ve felt like I was betraying Esmé, but I didn’t. I felt like I betrayed him. I’m warning you, Danni. Behave yourself. Even then, with this cute girl’s tongue in my mouth and her feathery strokes over my belly, I heard the way his voice dropped to say that…and I whimpered.

  “Pixie.” She panted warm air against my collarbone. “I need to stop.”

  “Aww. And we were performing so well.”

  “It’s too much.”

  I kissed her again. “I’ll make it up to you later, you big attention whore.”

  “Shush, you.”

  “Oh, crap.” I peeled myself away from her, sitting up. “They’re coming over.”

  “What?” She glanced around and groaned. “They’d best not be after joining in!”

  Turned out Gabe had a you’re-in-trouble stare just like Mum’s. Creepy. To anyone else, he was just squinting under the bright sun, but I knew that look. How much had I pissed him off? He’d still be there waiting for me tonight, right…?

  “Not surfing?” said Esmé.

  “Waves are a bit rubbish. We thought we’d come see what you were up to.” Gabe glanced at me. “If that’s okay.” He plonked himself down on Taylor’s towel, his carrier bag landing beside him in a crunch of glass-on-glass. “I brought goodies.”

  Taylor followed him down to the sand, grinning. “He brought beer.”

  “You were going to surf drunk?” I said, incredulous. And slightly worried. After last night, I knew he was unhappy, but—

  “I was not.” He pouted. “Well. One never hurts.”

  Taylor dug around in the bag and pulled out bottles of cider. “You girls want?”

  Esmé swallowed as if to voice her disapproval. She was such a goody two-shoes sometimes. I knew I shouldn’t, but the bottles were damp with cold, and it was so frickin’ warm…

  “Esmé will have one,” Gabe said, reaching for the bottle opener. “Won’t you?”

  “I—uh—” She didn’t want to refuse him. Him and his annoyingly useful charm. “Why not?”

  Taylor took the opener and twisted lids off for all of us. We sat in the sun with the cool glass bottles against our foreheads. The chilled fizz of the cider coated my tongue, sweet and fresh and heady. Taylor must have relaxed a bit because he only looked at Esmé’s chest once, and that was when I brushed the sand off her left breast. I didn’t even think, it was just reflexive—but then Gabe’s behave-yourself glare returned in a flash of jealous warning, and I recoiled into my towel.

  “This is more like it, eh?” said Taylor.

  “I suppose my book was getting a bit abusive of the third person narrative.” Esmé nudged the paperback now splayed on the sand. “Crappy plot, too.”

  Taylor choked on his cider. Esmé purring third person narrative nearly melted him into a sticky, wasp-seducing puddle of boy fudge. Baha.

  “You like that stuff?” he said, awed.

  “You mean books?”

  “I mean, English. Literature. Criticism, pulling things apart and getting the ideas and just—” He clasped his hands together as if trying to smother an invisible fairy.

  “He means he’s a book geek. And apparently so are you,” I said.

  “Oh.” Esmé shrugged. “A bit, maybe.” She wouldn’t give him the pleasure of any more words than she had to. I’d have laughed if it didn’t feel mean.

  “Taylor would choose books over girlfriends,” I teased. “In fact I think he did, once.”

  “I was eleven!” he protested.

  Gabe laughed, deep and throaty. “Tell me it wasn’t for a copy of The Hardy Boys.”

&nbs
p; “Like I’d read that steaming heap. We were here, actually. On holiday. I was talking to this girl I’d met, and we were—” He did quotation marks with his fingers, “—going out. We were just chatting and stuff—”

  “And holding hands,” I supplied.

  “And holding hands.” Taylor half-smiled. “Anyway, we were on this rock, standing up to watch these birds make a pattern in the sky or something cheesy like that. We lost our balance and she went head-first into the sea.”

  Esmé frowned. “Gosh. You got her out, right?”

  “I dropped Animal Farm into the water at the same time. I had about five seconds to choose, and…” He paused, sighing with shame. “I went after the book.”

  We split into factions immediately: Esmé with her open mouth, and her disgust that mirrored Taylor’s; Gabe and I, trying to stem our dirty chuckles.

  “That’s legendary,” said Gabe, clutching his wet-suited self.

  “It’s horrible!” Esmé cried.

  I shook my head. “You weren’t there. It was hilarious. And the water wasn’t deep or anything—she was okay.”

  Taylor took another gulp of his drink to avoid Esmé’s accusing eyes. “She did cry. Only time I ever made a girl cry, and it was over a book.”

  “I’ve never made a girl cry,” said Esmé, sharing a secret little smile with me.

  I’d done it to her. I stood her up not long ago, left her hanging on the end of an empty Facebook conversation because a certain someone called to say that he couldn’t let me go. Someone like—

  Gabe cleared his throat. “Oh, I’ve done it. Here as well. Just like Tay.”

  “Go on then,” said Taylor. “Can’t be worse than what I did.”

  “Well.” He readjusted himself, sitting cross-legged, and the glare of the sun fused around his profile to cast a fuzzy glow. “Back then, Mum and Dad used to come up in the weeks before Easter because it was cheaper. Definitely wasn’t beach weather, so they took us looking for crabs and plants and stuff—we’d be here in our wellies and knitted jumpers.”

  “Sexy,” said Taylor.