It Started With A Kiss (6 page)

Stumbling to her feet and tripping over the
cords from the Play Station as she went, Georgie ran through the
open doors and around the side of the pool. Tears streamed down her
cheeks as she gasped for air between sobs. She leant her head
against the wall of the pool house as she tried to squeeze the
tears away. What had she done? She’d never be able to face them
now, not when everyone had seen her making a spectacle of
herself.

“
Georgie?”

Nate’s soft hand was on her cheek. His face
leaned close, studying the pitiful look in her eyes. “Are you
okay?”

Georgie wrenched her head away. “What do you
think?”

She didn’t mean it to sound horrid but
seriously, she was balling her eyes out in the middle of someone’s
backyard, in front of her entire social group. Couldn’t he have
come up with something better than that?

“
I didn’t kiss
her.”

Georgie turned to face Nate. He looked very
serious, more serious than she’d ever seen him. Well, except for
the time they got called in to see the Principal after they got
caught putting cling wrap on the toilet seats on April Fools’ Day.
He knew his dad would throw a mental.

“
Why?”

“
I didn’t want to. I want
to kiss you. I’ve always wanted to kiss you. I think you’re the
prettiest girl in the world.”

Nate put a thumb to Georgie’s tears, smearing
them away. He offered her a sleeve on which to blow her nose but
she declined, because it took friendship to a level of grossness
even she wasn’t comfortable with. Instead, she gave a loud sniff
and a limp smile as he wound his arms around her waist and drew her
to him.

“
You made a bit of a scene
back there,” he said.

“
I’ll never be able to face
them again. Everyone will laugh at me.”

“
I won’t laugh. And who
cares what they think? Kyle still has his
Mighty Max
’s in a line on the shelf
in his room and Michael’s mum makes him wear a singlet under his
school shirt in winter. We’ve all got our thing.”

“
And my thing is behaving
like a fool?”

Nate gave a smile. “You’re not a fool. Nobody
thinks that and if they did, I’d punch them out.”

“
That’s very
chivalrous.”

“
I’m just that kinda guy.”
Nate wound his arms tighter. Georgie could feel his heart hammering
in his chest. Or was it hers? No, hers was in her
throat.

“
Why won’t you let me kiss
you? Don’t you like me?”

“
I love you, Nate. You’re
my best friend but if we kiss everything will change. We’ll be,
like, going out. We might end up hating each other. Lots of people
end up hating each other.”

“
I could never hate you,”
he said.

“
You don’t know
that.”

“
Yes, I do. We love each
other, we always have. Besides, I know you want me. You looked like
you were going to thump Jessica with the Play Station
controls.”

“
I was actually going for
the bottle. More damage,” Georgie confessed.

“
So you admit it? You were
jealous!”

Pulling back, Georgie gasped in mock horror.
“I was not! I was saving you. If you got stuck in her boobs, you’d
suffocate. You don’t even like her. How you could kiss someone you
don’t even like is beyond me.”

“
Maybe I do like her. Maybe
all this time I’ve been putting on an act?”

Anger swelled in Georgie’s chest. “You don’t
like her. I know you don’t. You like me. Just the same as I like
you.”

And to prove it, she reached up on her
tiptoes, took Nate’s face between her hands and pressed her mouth
to his. The shock of her action took them both by surprise.

“
Are you sure about this?”
Nate asked, trying to pull away and finding the nape of her neck
instead.

“
Surer than anything,”
Georgie replied, though thought was becoming increasingly difficult
with his lips racing over her skin.

Nate held Georgie tight and twisting her
around, leant her against the wall of the pool house, his body
covering hers with such pressure, she could barely get air into her
lungs. His lips descended on her, his tongue searched deep inside
her mouth until it met with hers. He kissed her and kissed her and
Georgie wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

“
Nate. Stop for a second,”
she gasped, as his hands slid up and down her sides in mad
abandon.

A loud groan vibrated on
the skin of her earlobe. “
What
?”

“
Promise me this isn’t
going to change anything.”

Nate stopped. “Nothing will ever change. It’s
always gonna be you and me, Georgie. Just now it’ll be in a
different way.”

Chapter 7

Glancing down at her watch and hurriedly
handing some cash to the taxi driver, Georgie stepped out of the
car, realizing she’d arrived at the dock with only seconds to
spare. Her afternoon with Nate had put her seriously behind but she
didn’t mind. It had been worth every minute to see him again.

The rest of the group was
already onboard, the boys wearing eye-patches and pirate hats and
the girls, bandanas and golden-hooped earrings. A number of clichéd
pirate terms were being bandied about as plastic cutlasses were
brandished in the air and schooners of ale clinked, which only
meant one thing: it was going to be one of
those
parties.

“
You’re late,” Tara chided,
handing Georgie a red bandana with a skull and crossbones printed
on the front, and an extremely long plastic sword. Georgie looped
the bandana round her hair and tied it in a knot. She shoved the
sword into her belt and adjusted her peasant top. She felt like
Keira Knightly, only slightly fatter and hugely more
ridiculous.

“
No, I’m not. The boat’s
still here.”

Tara shook her head and directed Georgie up
the gangplank and onto the deck. “Always with the smart comments.
You’ll never change, Birdie.”

“
That’s why you like me.
Now where’s the bar? I’m dying for a drink and I have some news to
tell you. After you tell me why we’re all dressed as pirates for a
coming home party, that is.”

“
Oh, like, duh, it’s
International Talk Like a Pirate
Day
. We’re killing two birds with one
stone.”

Tara pointed to a spot at the stern of the
ship and the girls made their way towards it. Despite the fact that
this was a private booking, Tara had managed to fill the back end
of the huge ship with people. Georgie had never laid eyes on half
of them, but that was nothing new. Tara collected friends like
Imelda Marcos had collected shoes. And any number of them could
have been Jim, her boyfriend’s, mates.

“
So, what’s so important
that it almost made you miss the boat?” Tara asked, once they were
set up with coconut shells filled with some type of rum
concoction.

“
You’ll never guess who I
had coffee with today.”

“
Bruno Mars.”

“
Uh. No. Do you think I’d
be this calm if I’d had coffee with Bruno Mars?” The girls shared a
liking for the dark haired singer. His voice did it for Georgie.
Tara was enamored with his dimples.

“
To state the obvious, you
don’t look calm at all. You look like you’re about to explode. That
pirate girl dress is rather fetching by the way. Very wench-ish.
You could totally get some action in that.”

Georgie ignored her. There was only one kind
of action she wanted now and it had nothing to do with cutlasses
and pantaloons. “I saw Nate.”

“
Nate Adams, Nate?” Mid sip
of her coconut cocktail, Tara began to choke. Georgie gave her a
slap on the back.

“
The one and only. He was
jogging along the foreshore. I practically ran into
him.”

“
Well, I’ll be. Fancy that.
And how is he?”

Georgie cast her mind back to earlier in the
day. “He looks well. He’s very handsome.”

“
Of course, he’s handsome.
He’d have given Leonardo DiCaprio a run for his money when we were
young. Don’t you remember how all the girls used to call him Romeo
in the last year of school?”

A frown passed over
Georgie’s face. “I thought that was because of me. You know,
Romeo and Juliet
,
star-crossed lovers and all that.”

“
God, no. Jessica gave him
the name after we watched the film in English. How could you have
forgetten?”

“
Because I’ve been trying
to block her from my memory since Year Nine.”

“
So, tell me all about it.
No, wait! Let me get another drink first. I have to be fully
focused for this.”

Georgie wondered at the correlation between
alcohol and being focused but she refrained from asking. When Tara
returned with fresh drinks for them both, she began her story.

“
I was out for my jog and I
stepped in dog poo and as I was wiping it off I saw him running
towards me.”

A sigh doleful escaped Tara’s lips. “It’s
just like in a movie. Go on.”

“
It wasn’t that romantic.
He didn’t even recognize me at first.”

“
That was because of your
hair, I suppose. I’m buggered if I can pick you out in a crowd. I
keep expecting that surfer girl to walk through the door, the one
with the messy strands always falling from her ponytail. Not the
coiffed beauty we get today.”

“
I’m not
coiffed.”

“
Yes, you are. Since you
came back from Sydney, you’re all hipster with your indie clothes
and vintage handbags. I swear on my mother’s golf clubs that girl
sitting next to us at lunch the other day was drooling over your
shoes. Drooling! It’s like you got an overdose of café culture or
something. Not that it’s a bad thing. But you do look a lot
different.”

Her appearance
had
changed, Georgie
supposed, but didn’t that come with growing up? There was a time
when you were too old to be prancing around in overalls and Doc
Martins and as those elements had disappeared, so had a lot of
other things. It had years since Georgie had been surfing. What
with the move to Melbourne — where nobody in their right mind would
surf without an arctic thickness wetsuit — and then the social life
in Sydney, her former life as a surfer girl had been swept away,
too.

“
I can’t remember the last
time I hit the waves,” Georgie thought aloud.

“
Maybe you could go with
Nate. I bet he still gets in a tube or two before breakfast. Are
you seeing him again?”

Georgie had no doubt he did. Nate’s body had
the trademark physique of a surfer. It had been one of the first
things she’d noticed today. Not that she’d been eyeing him off or
anything. It was mere curiosity.

“
I don’t think his
girlfriend would be happy about that,” Georgie replied. “She was
giving me daggers as it was.”

“
He took you for coffee
with his girlfriend? The absolute cheek.”

So Georgie went on to explain all that had
happened, from her dip in the drink to the fact that Nate carried a
photo of them around in his wallet. When she finally drew breath,
she discovered that Tara was peering at her in a very odd
fashion.

“
You’re still in love with
him. After all these years.”

“
I’m not.”

“
You are. It’s in your
eyes. God, this is so romantic. That’s why you wouldn’t marry that
Matt fellow. It was nothing to do with him being the reincarnation
of Casanova; it was because you still love Nate. Matt’s affair just
made it easier for you to end it.”

Georgie opened her mouth to deny it but,
seriously, what was the point? She knew Tara was telling the
truth.

*****

Later on that evening, as the sun was
setting, and the ship made its way back to the harbor, Georgie
stood on the bow, her sword anchored to her side, watching the
waves. Down in the water, a pod of dolphins leapt along beside the
boat, playing chasings and a couple of small craft, filled with
fishermen, called out pirate obscenities as they passed, completely
unnoticed by Georgie.

Georgie was pensive. Seeing
Nate earlier on had dragged up memories, ones she had tried for so
long to forget. If she were Kate Winslet in
Titanic,
and
her Leo was here with his arms outstretched and his body
leaning into hers, everything would be perfect. As long as they
didn’t hit an iceberg, of course. Georgie had always hated the end
of that movie. Jack should have lived to run away with Rose. Just
like she should have run away with Nate when she had the
opportunity. But it was no use thinking about the past. What was
done was done; she may as well get over it. Nate had a girlfriend,
and even though Perth was a very small place, she’d probably never
see him again.

As the crew tied up the boat, Georgie went
below to gather her things and prepare to disembark. It had been a
fun night despite her melancholy mood now and she was keen to move
on to the next stage of the evening, a dinner at a restaurant
overlooking the river. She wanted to shake the blues away, to get
back to being fun Georgie, not this stick in the mud no-fun
one.