Gone (9 page)

I flush instantly, which is really bloody annoying. “What are you implying?”

She picks up her pen again. “Nothing.”

Clearly she does not need anything from the art shop. Bollocks. “I’m going to go buy a sausage roll.”

Emily keeps her gaze focused on her sketch. “Have fun, Bex.” She starts to giggle that annoying flower fairy laugh she owns.

“It’s not what you think.”
Sort of.

I attempt to walk calmly to the garden gate, but when I am ten steps away I break into a run.

“Sure sure,” she shouts back. Who knew her voice could get that loud.

I make a point of going to the bakers first and purchasing a sausage roll – seventy pence! How cheap is that!  And then I start to loiter on the small high street.

The fact hits me that I know nothing about Joshua at all. Apart from the fact he works at the Art Shop that his aunt owns and he looks like he is made with the light of the moon and the depths of the sea. I don’t know what he would be doing if not at the art shop.

Maybe he even has a girlfriend, but I’d like to think the random hand-holding and lip grazing that took place yesterday counts against this theory. But I know nothing about dating so perhaps that’s how it’s done. And to be fair to him I haven’t asked him if he has one. Why would I? We are just hanging out, well we were until my parents frightened him off with their crazy Gestapo BBQ.

Maybe he is just super friendly to all newcomers to town. Maybe he gives everyone a surf lesson and then slides his hands firmly over their skin when they come up from a trip to the bottom of the ocean.

I remember what his dickhead friend said yesterday at the beach about him trying to forget something and I realise that Josh may not have a girlfriend right now, but he may possibly be trying to forget one. Does he want to forget though?

I am aware that my street cred rating I once used to own in London goes down the pan as I sneak my way across the road and try to peer into the shop window. Damn it, the sun is reflecting on the glass and obscuring my view. I know I may have been spotted so I straighten my shoulders which allows my string vest top to fall down on one side and expose an expanse of skin, and jingle the bell on my way into the shop. There is no music on, so I instantly recognise that he is probably not going to be here, a fact which I find crushingly disappointing.
What the fuck is wrong with me?

Glancing about the shop, my eyes once again absorb the pictures hanging from every available space of wall. Dark hair and eyes, mixed with smooth limbs. Limbs that the artist knew well, very, very well.

Joshua painted them.

The realisation smacks me over my head and I am frozen to the spot staring at them. Changing my focus I try to read something in them. Anything other than pure love and devotion, which is how I read them the first time I saw them, when they made my eyes sting with unwanted tears. They make tears sting again now, but only because they still read like perfect poetry to me and the thought burns inside my brain.

I shake it away. Who gives a crap?
I am leaving in a handful of days, does it matter? Why am I over thinking this anyway?

“Can I help,” a voice sing songs. I watch as a young woman walks through the back door with a cup of something steaming in her hand.

I glance between her and the paintings and the similarity is impossible to ignore. The woman in front of me has a sheet of glossy jet black hair and dark almond shaped eyes that are replicated about thirty times around the shop.

Blank brain syndrome.

After appraising me up and down, she casts her gaze towards a canvas behind the till which is covered in an orange themed rainbow.

She flicks her eyes over me again. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Um, nope. I don’t think so.”

“Well yes or no?”

“That would be a no.”

Spinning, I dash out of the jangly door before I can open my mouth and ask if she is the girl in the pictures. And if she is, why did Joshua lean up against me along our garden wall and sweep his thumb across my lips in a completely erotic stomach churning manner.

I am marching back along the limited High Street when I hear someone calling “Bex.” It’s a man and I know my dad would never make the mistake of calling me that, not that he would probably bother to call after me in the first place. It can only be one person, the pinch in my lower stomach as I move my feet faster in the opposite direction confirms my guess.

Power walking in flip-flops is near on impossible and I don’t get more than a few paces before the boy made of the moon and sea catches hold of my elbow and spins me round to face him.

Joshua leans down and gazes at me, the greens deep and calm. His lips have a slight curve and I find myself focused on them. I lick my own lips in response.

“Where are y
ou trying to run to?” He grazes his hand down my arm stopping at my wrist, which his fingers loosely slip around. The entire trip his hand makes down my arm makes my skin burn like it’s caught on fire. I drag my hand away from his and the heat that generates from the touch.

“I wasn’t running?”

“Attempting to?”

“If I was running you wouldn’t have caught me.”

Joshua throws his head back and laughs. I don’t want to laugh, I want to ask who that girl is and why the hell she is working in his shop surrounded by paintings of herself.

There is no way to ask that question without sounding like a crazy so I lock it inside me instead.

Joshua runs his hand along my wrist again, his thumb against my pulse as he waits for me to come up with something to say, which I can’t.  I can’t pull away either. I am just frozen there, with my hand in his, words stuck inside me and my feet unable to move.

“You’re not jangling.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not jangling.”
He lifts my hand and motions his head a fraction towards the wrist he is holding.

I stare at my wrists which are not adorned with their usual fifty three bangled statement. I feel my lungs empty and then wait for them to inhale but they don’t. I just stand there empty.

“Rebecca, will you just learn to behave and get in the damn car.”

“Bex?” His voice pulls me back to the present and I gaze up into his green calm eyes.

I have no words, all I can think is ‘I forgot them.’ I forgot my fifty three sins. And I know I forgot them because from the moment I woke up the only thing I could think of was Joshua. I start to feel a burning rage build up inside me.

“Bex?” Joshua moves his body closer to mine but my lungs still won’t take air, not even to breathe in his sea, sun and mint s
cent.

“I’
ve gotta go.” I don’t stop to discuss further. I yank my hand from his and start to pace away as fast as my stupid flip-flops will allow. I am going to burn them as soon as I get home, well just as soon as I have my bangles on.

I know he is still behind me as I push through the gate and head around the back of the cottage.

“Hey.” Emily starts to smile when she sees me but the smile falters on her lips as she watches me rush past her in the house.

“Hey, Em,” Joshua greets her.

“What’s with her?”

“Bangles.”

“Oh,” is all I hear her reply. I am in the cottage away from them and taking the stairs two at a time. I crash into my room and dash for the dresser, grabbing the bangles off the side.

My lungs start to burn and a sob builds in my throat as I start to count them on. I have to do it individually. Fifty three reasons to know I am bad.

My eyes are closed but I hear the door give a small squeak as I assume Joshua walks in to my room. What must he think? And I was worried about him thinking I was crazy earlier?

What does it matter? I am quite clearly crazy.

Finally I get to fifty three and lean on the dresser as I catch my breath and try to bring my emotions under control. I don’t like to show weakness and it’s fair to say Joshua has just seen me at my most vulnerable.

I open my eyes and look for him in the mirror. He is lying on my bed, his hands linked up under his head, a steady cool green gaze resting on me. I turn to face him but he does not say anything. He just continues to watch me. I let out a deep, slow breath as the quality of the air in my room becomes heavier, denser almost, charged with an emotion that I don’
t recognise.

Sitting up Joshua moves onto his knees before shifting across the bed towards me. My lungs start to feel tight again but in a completely different way.

He runs a hand along the bangles. “What are the bangles for, Rebecca?”

He just called me Rebecca?
That sounds surprisingly wrong.

“They are so I never forget something.”

The green gaze warms my cheeks and my breathing starts to hitch unnaturally fast, heart attack fast, as I watch him edge himself even closer.

“Can you tell me what?”

I so wish I could. I wish I could I speak the words to share the burden in my heart.

“No.”

Joshua thinks about this for a moment, weighing up my secrets in his mind, then he offers a small shrug.

Holding my breath I watch him step up from the bed and move himself into my space. My focus is on his mouth which is surrounded by an unshaven scruff. My lungs have that inhaling, exhaling problem again and I stand there suspended in the moment waiting for him to say something; waiting for him to speak and ask me about the dark secrets I have hidden inside, ask me again about the bangles that lock my mistakes into my soul.

“I’m going to kiss you now, try not to hit me.”

He’s going to what?

I don’t have time to think anything else, because before I can react or move, or even speak, he slides one of his hands up into my hair weaving his fingers into my loose bun as he moves his lips towards mine.

The kiss is so sweet and slow, his lips tantalisingly warm and firm. All at once I can smell the moon, sea and mint scent that I discovered yesterday. It fills my head until I feel like I am swimming in it, until I feel like I am tingling all over with the sensation of his warm lips teasing mine and the mint smell swirling around me.

I should move away, but I don’t. I move closer, pressing against him and breathing him in as I allow his tongue to slip into my mouth and entwine with mine.

This isn’t how kissing normally is. I don’t normally have a problem with dead legs when I kiss. But then it’s been a while since I tried it sober.

I run my hand up his back and along his shoulders feeling strength and solidness beneath my fingertips. Impulsively I move my body until there is no space between us. He trails a hand down my face and throat feeling his way with warm dry fingers to my shoulder. I don’t want the hand to stop. I want it to carry on exploring. It does stop though and his lips pull fractionally away from mine.

“It’s just as I thought.” His voice is a low murmur next to my ear.

“What is?” I don’t even recognise my own tone. It’s not one I have ever heard come from my mouth before. It sounds deep and wanton and all things dangerously good.

“You. You taste like the sun.”

The boy who looks like he’s made of the moon and sea thinks I taste like the sun. What does that even mean?

I am about to say something in response. I am about to ask that if he thinks that I am one thing, and I think he is the opposite whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, when my bedroom door flies open and I look instead at my dad standing on the other side.

Dad stands with his mouth hanging open and whilst we aren’t locking lips, Joshua still has his body pressed up tight against my own, one hand still firmly entwined in my hair.

“Uh,” I say.

Joshua, tries to take a step back but his legs are against the bed, so instead of creating space between us all he manages to do is lose his balance and pull me on top of him as he lands on the mattress.

I wait for my dad to explode, I am expecting it. But instead he opens and closes his mouth a few times before pulling himself together. “There is lunch on the table, if you can manage to bear the company, Bex.” He walks away from us, but then pauses at the door. “Josh, you’re more than welcome to join us if you wish.” He offers a smile, but I can’t help thinking it is directed at Joshua not me. A little pinch of disappointment settles in my stomach that the first friendly emotion my dad has shown around me in months is directed at the stranger by my side rather than me.

I can’t stop myself. “It’s Rebecca,” I shout after him as he walks out the door.

As soon as I turn my focus back onto Joshua I realise that I am still lying on top of him. That’s not good. Well, it’s not all bad either, but I shouldn’t be rolling around on my mattress with anyone right now, especially not a dreadlocked, super fit boy with green eyes that read my face like his are right now.

“Do you need me to go?”

I pretend to think for a moment, not quite able to move myself off him. His hands slide down my back and along the curve of my spine.

“I am pretty sure I am going to get a bollocking.”