The First Last Kiss (25 page)

•  Hot. So I’m shallow, shoot me

•  Exciting career (What goes well with a photographer? Roadie? No they’re always old, sweaty and overweight. Music producer? Maybe. Artist? No needs to be a job that’s . . .)

•  Well paid. So I’m shallow, shoot me (again)

•  Well read. I don’t want to date no idiot innit

•  Cultured

•  Cook? Because I can’t. And I don’t want to starve

•  Nice family? (Not all that imp. But would do my head in if they were as dull as mine)

•  Hot. ryan Cooper hot

God, Ryan Cooper’s hot.

Stop it, Molly. Stop.

‘And what about you,’ he says. ‘Who are you here with?’

‘Just a couple of girlfriends

‘Oh yeah,’ he teases. ‘The
girls
in Ibiza, eh? Anyone I know?’

A friend from uni, and Casey . . . ’ I notice Ryan twitch a little when I mention her name.

‘Oh you’re here with Alex aren’t you, I take it things didn’t end that well between them last year.’

He nods. ‘Yeah, I think he thought they were just having a casual thing, but she got serious and it freaked him out.’

Sounds about right. ‘I wasn’t around when they broke up, but I know Casey was pretty upset about it,’ I say as I paddle. ‘She reckons he dumped her for no reason. Do you think we should try and make sure that they don’t know the other is here?’

‘Nah,’ Ryan says, rubbing his hand over his face and through his hair, the sunlight catching on his watch and making it sparkle. ‘We’re grown-ups. I don’t want us lads running out of bars as you all come in. Casey and Alex have seen each other around Leigh since. I’m sure they’ll be cool.’

‘I forgot what a small town it is,’ I say wryly, leaning forward on my lilo and paddling more to get momentum. ‘Everyone always knows everyone else’s business. It’s part of the reason why I left.’

‘And part of the reason why I stayed,’ Ryan laughs. ‘I like knowing everyone in the town, I like that people care about my family, help out if we’re in trouble or remember me from school. I like that my mates all still live round the corner from me.’ He pauses. ‘And I especially like that I can get my washing done by my mum whenever I want!’

I laugh and splash him. ‘Found it hard washing your own pants in Australia, did you, without your mum around to do it for you?’

Ryan lies forward on his lilo and smiles cheekily. ‘Not really, I don’t wear them.’

I try not to blush. ‘I’m amazed you came back,’ I say instead. ‘It must have been so hard.’

‘Not really,’ he smiles again. ‘I didn’t go in the end.’

I look at him for signs that he’s kidding, or is at least embarrassed by this admission, but he’s just grinning into the sun, soaking up the rays like a superhero who uses it as his source of power. How could he not have gone? What an opportunity wasted. There must have been a big reason.

‘Oh, that’s such a shame,’ I say sympathetically. ‘Did something happen?’ I pause, waiting for him to tell me about an amazing job opportunity, then realize it could have been something more serious like a family illness, a heart attack or cancer or something, or maybe it was that football injury again. Poor guy.

Ryan glances across at me and shakes his head. ‘Nah, I just decided not to go. I knew I’d miss my family and my mates too much so I just hung round Leigh for the summer. It was brilliant. I trained the sailing cadets and became coach for the under-14 local football team. Did you know I got a job as a teacher back home, too?’

I shake my head.

He gave up a summer in Australia to stay in Leigh? What is this guy on?

‘Where?’

Ryan grins. ‘Thorpe Hall.’

My mouth drops open as he mimes straightening a tie. ‘They couldn’t resist employing a former star pupil. I start in September. Hey – does your mum still work there?’

I nod silently, still trying to digest each statement as it comes.

Ryan laughs and touches my knee with his hand. ‘She’ll be my colleague now, how weird is that?’

Really weird.

‘Yeah,’ he continues, ‘I’ll have to stop myself going into the sixth-form common room instead of the staffroom at lunchtime. Luckily as I’m a PE teacher I don’t reckon I’ll get caught up in too much teacher politics – and I’m planning to be as much a mate to the students as a teacher. I can’t wait.’

I widen my eyes and nod, still in disbelief that Ryan Cooper is actually going to be a
teacher
.

‘God, this is weird,’ I say, swiftly changing the subject. ‘I mean fancy bumping into each other here of all places!’

Suddenly a thought occurs to me. ‘Hey, do you think Casey and Alex set this up. You know, us both being here, in Ibiza?’

‘Why would they do that?’ he frowns.

‘Well, Casey has always been obsessed with getting me and you together for some reason, I’ve no idea why . . . ’ I am sure I’m blushing. ‘I think she had visions of a cosy foursome when she and Alex were still a couple.’

‘That’s crazy,’ Ryan replies. ‘We barely know each other.’

He’s right. We’ve only met a handful of times over the past few years. But despite this, seeing him would always stir up something unexplainable inside me. Not just lust but something more, it was like he could see inside me.

The day we first went for a coffee and I told him how I felt about my parents, told him my innermost secrets, shared our dreams and our fears, I felt he knew me better than almost anyone else. Despite all the years that have passed, when he looks at me as he’s doing now, it still feels exactly the same. I feel like I’m fifteen years old again; I feel like a teenager. A teenager in . . . love.

I look away, desperate to get back to the girls. All of a sudden I feel out of my depth, but the golden, sun-kissed beach and bay might as well be the moon, they look so far away.

I start splashing my hands desperately, like a dog.

‘We’re not getting anywhere like this,’ I say, looking at the stretch of sea before us.

‘Aren’t we?’ Ryan replies sliding into the water. He pauses and raises an eyebrow. ‘Then maybe we should change direction . . . ’

He swims over to me, one powerful arm rising out of the water after the other, and he puts one hand on the pillow of my lilo.

‘Lie down, Molly,’ he says softly.

‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ I joke, wobbling a little.

He rolls his eyes, but a smile creeps out. ‘Just do what I say, will you?’

I comply. I am aware as I lean forward, that his gaze lingers longer than entirely necessary on my pale chest as I lie down on my even paler stomach. I don’t complain. Instead I find myself saying, ‘You won’t let go, will you?’

‘Never,’ he answers. There’s a prolonged pause as we look at each other. ‘Are you ready?’ he says, and I nod. Then he turns and with one strong, lean arm he swims and pulls me along and I’m no longer drifting alone in the middle of a great, vast ocean.

The Judas Kiss

Have you ever wanted a kiss so badly that you felt you couldn’t bear the not knowing how it’d feel any longer? Have you spent hours imagining the moment as it will happen; that delicious slowing down of time and the shortening of breath as the space between you lessens, giddy with anticipation and lack of oxygen and desire and expectation? Have you imagined the feel of that person’s lips, their tongue, their breath mingling with yours?

Have you then found yourself in that exact situation only to discover that the anticipation was way better than the act itself? That it was the
not
kissing that was so intoxicating in the first place?

And then have you ever come to the conclusion that turning a silly fantasy into a reality was the single biggest mistake of your life?

FF>> 11/12/2004 19.07 p.m.>

‘Wooohooooo!’

A loud whoop reverberates around the restaurant as Christie stands up, party hat slightly skew-whiff on her otherwise perfectly coiffed head. She’s grinning widely, lip gloss shining like one of the brightly coloured baubles that adorn the restaurant’s tree. The entire editorial staff of
Viva
have descended upon The Gaucho Grill, an Argentinian steak restaurant that is tucked away in a basement on a little side street off Piccadilly, for our Christmas lunch. The restaurant is a vegetarian’s worst nightmare – and a Christmas traditionalist’s (there’s not a turkey to be seen – apart from several jokes in the crackers that could definitely be categorized as such). The seats are covered in cowhide and large slabs of steak have been served to each and every one of us, along with creamy mash, thick-cut chips, plump grilled tomatoes and mushrooms on skewers. Endless empty bottles of wine – an excellent Sauvignon from the Norton region that Christie picked, and an even better Malbec, chosen by Seb – are strewn over the long table, along with discarded crackers, and party hats. Dessert has been picked over and Seb and his deputy, Dominic, are even puffing on cigars whilst the rest of us have moved on to Caipirinhas. Seb had made a point of explaining each brand to Dom, and shown him exactly what to do whilst talking passionately about his travels to South America. He’d expertly cut the end off the Cohiba cigars he’d chosen for them both and lit them, then handed one to Dom who managed to cough and splutter his way through a couple of puffs, trying to regain some semblance of cool by proceeding to just hold and not smoke it for the next ten minutes, whilst Seb expertly puffed, chatted, joked, bantered and blew it out like a cigar connoisseur. Not that I was watching him or anything. Oh, who am I kidding. I haven’t
stopped
watching him, or thinking about him, or imagining what it would be like to kiss him since that day in Vinopolis two months ago. I have tried to focus on Ryan and our relationship, tried to tie the strands of it back together again to work out if I am just having some sort of mid-twenties crisis (it’s an official condition, we did a feature on it in last month’s issue). But still I am drawn to him.

Only Casey knows about my doubts. She’s listened and advised when I’ve called her in the middle of the night at the club, or woken her up with my woes. I feel awful that I am even talking about it with her. It’s like I’ve betrayed Ryan just by expressing my doubts. Part of me wonders what I’m waiting for, if I was that certain, surely I’d just go? But he’s the only person that I’ve ever loved and, in person, he’s my perfect fit. It’s just on paper that things go wrong. I even wrote a list the other night when he was sleeping peacefully next to me, one arm thrown possessively over my body.

Reasons Ryan and I aren’t compatible

He likes sport, I like culture

He likes staying in, I like going out

He likes cooking, I like drinking

I like travelling he likes . . . going home

I’d ripped up the list feeling like I’d just betrayed Ryan. I got out of bed and called Casey immediately, knowing that she’d still be up, to ask her what she thought.

‘I dunno, Moll,’ she’d said gently. ‘I always thought you and Ryan were meant to be. But maybe you weren’t meant to be forever?’

I haven’t been able to get that sentence out of my head since.

The waitress brings over three ice buckets now and positions them along the table as Christie grins beatifically at us all while I neck my cocktail.

‘Being a typical American wallflower, I know I’m not often prone to making speeches . . . ’ she begins, and we all laugh. Christie loves the sound of her own voice but at least she understands irony. ‘But I thought I’d give it a try. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to you all for your incredible hard work over the past year.
Viva
’s success has been unprecedented.’

‘Wooohooo!’ we all cheer again as the waitress begins pouring the champagne. Christie pauses, waiting for her to finish so she can focus on the rest of the speech.

‘But that isn’t the only reason I wanted to say a few words today.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘As I’m sure you’ve all been aware, there have been quite a few closed-door meetings recently . . . ’ There is a murmur of nervous laughter from us all, an acknowledgement that we all knew something was afoot. But we know from her wide smile that this is anything but bad news. ‘The MD of Brooks Publishing has decided that in order to secure
Viva
’s future, we need to keep transforming ourselves. Websites and blogs are becoming a crucial part of the industry. Consumers want more of an instant hit – so the technical team are in the process of developing a website for
Viva
that will launch at the same time as a weekly magazine format in March. We’ve been working on the dummy for the past two months and it’s been approved. As of January,
Viva
will be a weekly magazine.’

Christie laughs at the sight of approximately thirty jaws hitting the table. I glance across at Seb and he winks at me knowledgeably, clearly he was in on this secret before the rest of us. I smile and look back at Christie, trying to ignore the increased beats per minute of my heart. He looks strangely at home in these surroundings, smoking a cigar like he was born to do it, whilst reclined on a cowhide seat, cigar smoke weaving sexily into the darkness, like a young Matt Dillon.

I try not to but I can’t help a nonchalant second glance back, and when I do he just stares at me intently, the shadows dancing over his face making his eyes look even more intense and hooded. He rubs his hand across his chin and smiles lazily. I smile back.

Christie is still talking and I focus again on her, knowing that this is really important to my job, my future.

‘Aside from the new magazine format, Brooks are throwing everything at this online launch to make us the go-to website for young women in the UK.’ She pauses and looks down the table at us all. ‘Obviously this will mean more work for you all – with not much reward at first. Until we employ an online team the content will all be coming from you. Who better than the award-winning
Viva
team to bring your knowledge, your creativity and your inspiration to the website!’