Twisted Summer (14 page)

Gabe’s hands worked their way along my back. “Did you really think I’d abandoned you?”

“You stopped calling and texting and writing. It was like suddenly, we never happened.”

“I still thought about you every minute of every fucking day.” He dropped his cool forehead to rest against mine. “I just wised up and decided to do what was best for both of us.”

Without thinking, I moved my hips gently against his, rubbing against the bulge in his strained shorts.

“Baby,” he murmured. “Don’t.”

“You’re going to Canada because of me,” I said, cautious. “You’re just running away like you did to Devon to get away from the family.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, stop it! Act your fucking age!”

His mouth fell on mine like smack, bang, crackle, pop. Pear cider kisses—I missed these, missed his curious tongue and the will of his forceful hands. His lips had been curved around bottles of the stuff all night long, and mine…mine had been on Esmé.

“Were you with her?” he said, panting. “Tonight?”

“Yeah.” Please don’t let him hate me.

“You know, when you were staying with me, the thought of you fucking a girl was kind of hot,” he confessed. “Now that I’ve met her, I…Christ. I never expected to be jealous.”

“But you are?”

“
Yeah.” He kissed me again, ravenous. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely girl…but I was sitting there in the kitchen and all I could think was, can’t she
tell?
”

Despite everything, I beamed up at him. These horrible things I felt, he’d been feeling them too. I worried that we barely knew each other, that it hadn’t been long enough, that everything we felt was somehow false—but no. He was right: we had an amazing connection.

“She doesn’t know a thing,” I whispered. “Well. She could tell I was upset about something, but I made up some stuff about you making me uncertain about my uni choices.”

“Ah, Danni. I know I told you to stay with her but you can’t keep telling her lies.”

“I know it’s not fair. I’m just…I’m waiting until we go to uni. Until she sees this different life she could have. It’ll soften the blow, right? So yeah. Waiting.” I kissed his throat. “Unless somebody gives me a reason not to.”

“I wish I could. I can’t.”

“So how come you’re still trying to push your cock into me?” I grinned. He was unbelievably hard. “Maybe I should take care of you.” I’d read an unholy number of blowjob tutorials since I last saw him and had fantasised endlessly about putting them to good use. I went to kneel, but he caught me.

“No. Not here—”

“But I can? We can be together this week, really?”

“I…” He put a hand over his eyes. “I need to think about it.”

“You don’t want me?”

“Of course I do. But come on—we’ve already done all this once. You really want to go through it again?”

“Yes.” The word just crashed out. “Let me make some memories with you. Please. I need them.” In a fit of lust and hope, I tried dragging his hand down between my thighs, but he groaned and tugged it away. We couldn’t say the other l-word—if he even felt it, that was—and lust would have to do. Hope blurred its edges, made its knife-edge blunt and sweet.

“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).