“You didn’t look half bad yourself. Running on the beach, I mean.”
She kept staring straight ahead, at the horizon.
“Well, I’m not half bad,” I said. “So what are you going to write in your note, tell me.”
She laughed. “You go first!”
“I was thinking something along the lines of: ‘Never go to bed angry.’ It’s what my mum told my sister when she was fighting with her husband. But then I thought the better advice would be ‘go to bed angry and have make-up sex immediately.’”
She laughed. “Oh my God you should be a talk show host. Let’s Look at Love with Luke! on BBC Twelve.”
“Oh right well what were you going to write? Your favorite line from a Katy Perry song I’d bet.”
“I mean how could I pick just one favorite line from a Katy Perry song—that’s impossible.”
“What about: ‘Congratulations on not having to use condoms.’”
“’Try not to murder each other.’”
“’Stay hydrated.’”
“’Take your vitamins.’”
“Maybe we should just write down a quote from a romantic comedy and be done with it.”
“No way,” she said, no longer smiling. “Romantic comedies are a lie."
"Is that so?"
"Don't watch 'em, won't quote 'em."
"Really? You don't watch romantic comedies?"
"Especially not the ones from the Nineties. Way too sweet."
"How dare they?" I could use this to my advantage, I thought. "No rom coms from the Nineteen Nineties, eh?"
She stuck her finger down her throat and made a gagging sound. I could tell she regretted doing that, thinking she’d done something crass, but she was adorable.
I'm just going to say it. I need to say it, to see how she reacts, and then if she runs away screaming I can explain to her that it was a joke.
After a moment, I cleared my throat, angled myself towards her a bit more, and forced myself to stutter: “Sorry, sorry. I just, ehm, well, this is a very stupid question and... particularly in view of our recent shell-shopping excursion, but I just wondered, by any chance, ehm, eh, I mean obviously not because I’m just some git who’s only slept with nine people, but I-I just wondered...” She's not running away. She’s smiling. She's buying this. Good Lord is she actually falling for this rubbish Hugh Grant bit? He's ridiculous, why do women like him? I went on rambling and stuttering. “Ehh. I really feel, ehh, in short, to recap it slightly in a clearer version, uh, in the words of David Cassidy in fact, while he was still with The Partridge Family, ‘I think I love you,’ and eh, I-I just wondered if by any chance you wouldn't like to... Eh... Eh... No, no, no of course not... I'm an idiot, he's not... Excellent, excellent, fantastic, lovely to see you, sorry to disturb... Better get on...”
She was positively beaming at me. "That was very romantic," she said.
I think that's what Andie MacDowell said in the film. “Well, I thought it over a lot, you know, I wanted to get it just right.”
She covered her face and laughed, shaking her head. She was blushing. “That was one of my mom’s favorites. She made me watch Four Weddings and a Funeral about twenty times before I implemented my rule. Your impression was spot on! Even more charming than Hugh Grant, if I may say so.”
“I knew it was impossible you hadn’t seen any romantic comedies.”
“I didn’t say I hadn’t seen any, I said I don’t watch them.” She was really fidgeting and blushing, she couldn’t look at me anymore. “In case you're wondering, I also do not watch reality television or competition shows.”
“Not even cooking shows?”
“Food is a necessity it is not a game. Cupcakes should not induce stress, they are stress relievers.”
“But what about educational food porn cooking shows?”
“I don't have cable, but that sounds really good to me.”
“So what do you watch?”
She stared out at the water. “My budget. My weight. My language. Where I'm going...” She slapped her hand to her forehead. “Oh my God I'm so boring! I was too busy working to notice how boring I am!”
I laughed. “You never relax, do you?”
“I just did—I relaxed the shit out of myself!” She covered her mouth. “You misheard me—I am a lady!” She half-turned towards me. “Wait, do you relax? I mean, normally.”
“On the weekends, of course.”
She seemed to be genuinely surprised by this. “Really? You work hard and you play hard?”
“I work hard and I enjoy my weekends,” I said, but what I wanted to say was: I wish I could enjoy my weekends with you.
“Really?”
“Yes, why don't you?”
She looked down at the sand. “I don't know anymore. If I could feel like this every weekend, I would.”
I would love to make you feel like this every weekend.
She finally looked at me again, as though she knew exactly what I was thinking. It felt like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. Instead, she suddenly wrote something down on the piece of paper, folded the paper up and slid it inside the shell. She smirked at me. “I beat you,” she said.
“I didn’t realize it was a race.”
She stood up and stretched her arms in the air, taking in a deep breath, staring out at the ocean. I tried my best not to stare at her legs. “I’m going to go dip my toes in the water,” she declared. “You may use my paper and pen. No peeking at mine. When I come back you better be done with your present.”
“You’re on,” I said. “I may not have finished first, but I will finish strong.”
She kicked off her sandals and dragged her feet through the sand, away from me. I watched her go. I watched her step into the ocean without hesitating. She took five steps out, stood still, bent down to let her fingers dance along the surface of the water.
I knew what I wanted to write. I’d known for a while.
Chapter 12
Avery
I managed to avoid Luke and everyone else for most of the day on Saturday, the day of Bucket and Ingrid’s sunset beach wedding. Saturdays are the day when I usually catch up on my magazine reading—The Economist, Forbes, Wired, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Inc, Fast Company and The New Yorker. I also go online to browse Bustle, Instagram and the BBC World News—I am nothing if not well-rounded. As it was the weekend, nobody could tell me not to read. Of course, when I say “read,” I mean that I stared at the same sentence for half an hour while thinking about Luke and wondering if he found our little beach/seashell interlude as wonderful as I did. So wonderful that I had to tell him I would take dinner in my room that night, claiming that I needed to catch up on work. It wasn’t a lie. It was a lot of work keeping myself from ripping his clothes off and gathering up the courage to tell him I had been lying to him about my relationship status for months, simply because I didn’t want him to think I spent hours home alone thinking about him on weekends while he was off gallivanting with glamorous European women in Milan or whatever.
I was on my second tiny bottle of wine (I had swiped four of them from the kitchen when the chef was out shopping), I had my no make-up make-up on, I had on my fuchsia-colored maxi dress, and it was a half an hour before sunset when I’d realized it was my niece’s birthday and I hadn’t called her yet.
I clicked the FaceTime icon on my laptop and fully expected my sister to text me the words “YOU ARE DEAD TO US,” but the video call started connecting right away.
“I’m the worst aunt in the world I’m so sorry!”
All I could see was the blur of the floor as Jackie ran towards her “office” while yelling out “It’s Aunt Avery she says ‘happy birthday’ but she has an emergency I’ll be right back!” After hearing the sound of the bathroom door closing, Jackie took a moment to catch her breath before holding up her phone and looking at me. “The party started forty minutes ago and I want everyone to go home.”
“That’s how I’ve felt at li
terally every party I’ve ever been to. I’m so sorry I haven’t called yet.”
“It’s fine, she’s still so in love with Mr. Bunny you could disappear until Christmas and she wouldn’t notice.”
“Thanks!”
“Soooo? Did you spoon again last night? What’s going on over there? Tell me everything.”
“Oh um, you know, we had a nice little walk on the beach yesterday evening and just kind of chatted and got a long really well, and, I don’t know, I’ve been busy so I guess I’ll see him in a little bit at the wedding or whatever. What kind of cake did you get for Franny?”
“You are killing me.”
I opened up a third tiny bottle of wine. “What?! What do you want from me? I basically took him hostage two nights ago while under the influence of a controlled substance, I’m trying to play it cool.”
“So you haven’t told him that you’re single yet.”
I shrugged. “It’s never the right moment.”
“And you haven’t been straightforward with him about your attraction.”
“I mean, it’s not really my style, you know. How would I even do that?”
“Here’s what you do,” she said. “You walk right up to him, all pretty-like, you look him in the eyes and you say: Oy. Fancy a fuck?”
I spat out my wine. “What is wrong with you?”
“I’m not in the Bahamas, that’s what’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with you?” She held up her phone so she could look directly into the camera. “Seriously, Ave. What is wrong with you?”
I didn’t laugh or have a funny comeback, because my sister wasn’t laughing or smiling. She was completely serious. And I didn’t know how to answer that question at the moment.
She looked away, took a deep breath, and then held the camera closer to her face. “Hey,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just scared. And you don’t have to be. Just tell him how you feel, kid. People all over the world do it all the time, and it doesn’t kill them. Usually.”
My eyes were watery. It was ridiculous. Now my mascara was running. Fantastic. Thanks, Sis!
“I love you,” she said. “Go.” She ended the call.
I picked up my phone, and wrote Luke a text.
Luke
I was about to knock on Avery’s door when I received a text from her.
Avery Davis: Hey sailor. Wanna walk down to the beach together? If you aren’t already there?
I knocked on the door. “It’s me. You ready to head on down?”
“How did you get here so fast?!” she called out. “Comin’!”
I waited for about one minute, but she didn’t come to the door. I knocked again. “Sorry, did you say you’re ‘coming’ or did you say ‘come in?’”
“Door’s unlocked,” she said. “Come in.”
I opened the door. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, in a beautiful pink dress, polishing off a tiny bottle of wine, and staring at me.
“You look nice,” I said. Brilliant. Some real James Bond dialogue there.
“Shut the door,” she said.
I shut the door. What happened next happened so quickly, I could barely process it at the time. She carefully placed the empty little wine bottle on the floor, stood up, took several steps towards me, grabbed me, and kissed me. She said: “I don’t have a boyfriend anymore.” She kissed me again, and this time I kissed her back. She pulled away again. “I mean, I lied about having a boyfriend. I’m single and I have a career schedule that I’m trying to stick to and I’ve been so afraid of falling for you so I lied about having a boyfriend.” She kissed me again and then pulled away. “I mean, Mr. Potter is real. He’s a personal massager.” You’re dating a massage therapist??? I must have been staring at her with a confused look on my face, imagining a live-in masseur, because she continued. “It’s a vibrator.”
“Oh,” was all I could say.
“Well, that wasn’t so hard. My sister was right. I should have told you that months ago.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Forget I said anything. That was stupid. We better get to the wedding.” She wiped her lipstick from my lips.
And then she stared at me, her eyes on fire. I placed my hands on either side of her face, and took her in, in a way that I couldn’t before. She was so gorgeous. She reached up and moved my thumb into her mouth, sucked on it, slowly, closing her eyes and savoring it, then looking up at me.
That was it.
I couldn’t restrain myself anymore. My hands went to her ass, I pulled her up and she wrapped her legs around my waist while I carried her to the sofa. “Tonight is about Bucket and Ingrid!” she said.
“Yes and I think they’d both want us to do this.” I sat myself down, she hiked up her dress and straddled me, hastily unbuttoned the top few buttons of my shirt while I held her breasts and squeezed them, kissing the smooth bare skin that had been taunting me for three days.
“So do I, oh shit, I want this.”
“I’ve wanted this for so long.” She wasn’t wearing anything under the top of her dress. I wanted to put my mouth on her hard nipples, I wanted to kiss her all over, but this wasn’t the right time. Or was it? My fingers started to pull the straps of her dress down off her shoulders.
“Wait. We can’t do this. I don’t want things to change between us.” Her hands found my behind. “Oh my God, you’re in such good shape.”
“You’re so beautiful.”
“Talk about work—how are the day to day operational mechanics looking?” She squeezed.
“We’ve done an amazing job of cultural integration between the two organizations, in all functional areas.” I licked her neck.
“Yes. Shit!”
“God, I want you, I can’t wait.” I started to unbuckle my belt—I could no longer think straight.
“We can’t let them start without us,” she whispered.
“They haven’t started yet it’s fine.”
“I can’t be late to my client’s wedding,” she said, while bearing down on me and rocking her pelvis back and forth.
I held tight around her hips. “He’s my client too—this will only take a minute.”
She pulled back to look at me, and said, as her hand reached down, “I don’t want to take a minute.”
I groaned. I was so hard. She made a noise that I’d like to think meant she was pleasantly surprised by what she found there. When my hands slid up the outside of her thighs, she sighed, and when my fingers found her warm, wet panties—we both froze as we heard a knock on the door.
“Miss Avery?” It was Samson. “The ceremony is about to begin, if you’d like to join us on the beach, please.” He hesitated, then said: “If you know of Mr. Luke’s whereabouts, please ask him to join us too.”
Avery covered her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “I’ll let him know—we’ll be right there! I mean I’ll be right there and so will he, separately!”
“Very good, Miss.” I could tell Samson was smiling. He knew that I was there with her, he was no fool.
She quickly buttoned up my shirt while I ensured that her luscious breasts were securely tucked away inside the top of her beautiful dress.
“We still have to work together,” she said, disappearing to the restroom and returning with a damp face cloth with which to wipe her lipstick off of my face.
“I know, we’re so lucky,” I said.
She laughed. “You know what I mean.” She tidied up her own face.
“I am quite capable of being discreet,” I assured her, while walking around the room, taking deep breaths and thinking about my grandmother’s country garden, in an attempt to rid myself of some pretty glaring physical evidence of the rather hasty work we had just done together.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have found a better time to—”
“Do not apologize for that. To be continued.”
“Should I go out first?”
“Certainly, yes, go ahead.”
“Okay. So
rry.”
“Don’t—”
“I know but I didn’t mean to get you all—”
“See you down there!” I said. “Be right behind you.”
“Okay.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, checked herself in the mirror again and went out the door.
As soon as she’d gone I started laughing. “What the hell just happened?” What had she just told me? Something about her dating a vibrator? One of our clients was about to get married and we were groping each other like teenagers in the backseat of a car. I had to get it together. She’d probably lost all respect for me already. Now she thought I was just some repressed horny git who couldn’t keep it in his pants once an attractive woman showed any interest in him. What is she doing to me?
I heard a Van Morrison song playing from the speakers on the patio and knew I was about to do yet another Hugh Grant imitation as I arrived late to a wedding.
Avery
I had barely caught my breath and found a spot on the sand amongst less than ten people, when I saw Luke appear, looking dashing and unfazed, just as “Into the Mystic” started fading away and Bucket and Ingrid joined hands and faced Samson.
It really was a casual ceremony—simple and perfect. There were Tiki torches, candles in hurricane lanterns and string lights, designating a special ceremony area, and an altar of bamboo, bougainvillea and palm fronds, where Samson and Bucket and Ingrid stood, with the ocean and sunset as a backdrop. The guests—myself, Luke, Dao, the maid and chef, as well as a good-looking man and woman that I did not know but who looked very familiar to me—all stood around like we were at a cocktail party and watched. I couldn’t look at Luke, and I’m quite certain that he had no intention of making eye contact with me. He stood about ten feet away, chatting quietly with the chef, who had handed him a bottle of beer. I myself was sipping on the fancy rum and coconut concoction that Dao had insisted I drink.
Apparently Samson was an ordained minister, on top of being a chauffeur, Jurassic Park enthusiast and closet ladies man. He thanked us all for being here, thanked Bucket and Ingrid for the honor of marrying them, told a beautiful and charming story about the first wedding he’d ever been to, about some Bahamanian wedding traditions, what led him to getting ordained, and then told us that Bucket and Ingrid had “written” their own vows.
The Flirtation Page 10
