Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
Ash
The lodge and its surrounds were so breathtakingly gorgeous that I momentarily forgot how awful it had been getting here and with whom I’d come here. This is exactly what Sebastian had pictured in his treatment. I’d never seen a landscape like this before, never seen so many massive boulders rising up out of the ground. Some balanced on each other in shapes that were hard to imagine had been created naturally. It looked as if giants had once roamed this land and made these enormous granite boulder sculptures themselves. And their colors! Rust-colored boulders stood vertically out of green foliage made even greener by the contrasting colors. And as for the light!
The natural light was magnificent, the way it caught the boulders, highlighting slivers of them, as if someone had run a bright orange highlighter over parts of them. These rocks looked as if they had been standing here, presiding over this land, since the very dawn of time itself.
I rushed over to my bag and pulled my camera out. I looked at my watch. The sun was lower in the sky and the light was changing from cool, to warm. It drenched the fluffy tops of the wild grasses in a golden glow, shining through the branches of the iconic acacias, casting puddles of bronze and orange on the floor. I fiddled with the settings on my camera and Max/Logan/whoever was forgotten as I became swept up in all the things I loved most: light, shadows, and the interplay between them. The way in which when light falls across an object, it totally transforms it. The way it enhances drama, creates a sense of mystery, and the way it decides to show us things, sometimes whole things, and sometimes only tiny parts of things. It reveals to us what it wants to show. It is the great conductor of all we see and don’t see.
I took out my shot list and started working my way through it, taking notes as I went and filming the shots as I saw them playing out. Doing them from various angles and sides, trying to work out how best to tell this story using the light and camera moves. A lot of time must have passed while I’d been busy, because the light changed completely and soon it was twilight and I could no longer work. As I started walking back to the villa, reality crashed in again. I’d been able to keep it at bay with my work, but now it was back and I realized a few things: I was here in a remote place with my ex-boyfriend who had a different name and was rumored to be a sex god, and who had held a sick bag open for me— mortifying. I was desperate to tell my friends what had happened, but even more desperate to pee.
It felt as if the outside of the villa flowed effortlessly into the inside. Everything was a rich, rust color, like the boulders themselves. Natural woods and materials had been used in all the furnishings and decorating. Old tree branches were the banisters of the stairs and the chandeliers were made from untreated leather and grasses. In every corner, the outside had been brought in, feathers and small rocks in bowls on the table, interesting twigs in vases and woven baskets and rugs. The place was also huge and I realized I didn’t know where to go.
“Hi,” I said when I found someone.
“Welcome,” the man replied. “I didn’t introduce myself to you earlier—you looked busy. I’m William, I’ll be your host and ranger while you’re here. Anything you need, just ask.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind. Where’s my room?”
“Let me show you where you’ll be staying.” William picked up my gear and walked towards one of the two staircases. “So this villa has four rooms, and you are definitely staying in the nicest one.”
“Ooh, thanks. I’m excited.”
“It’s our pleasure to have you staying with us. We’re very excited that an advert is being shot at our lodge.”
I smiled at the man. If he knew how that process really worked, from pre-production to post, he would probably not think it was as exciting as he did.
“And this is your room.” He opened the doors with the kind of flourish that the room deserved, because it was possibly the most incredible room I’d ever been in before. It wasn’t the ridiculously comfortable fourposter bed made of tree branches, or the massive balcony with views for days, it wasn’t even the fact that the couches were the kind you could sink into and live in for the rest of your life—it was all about the bath.
“Dinner will be at seven thirty,” the man said somewhere behind me. I almost didn’t hear him, as I stood and stared at the bath, imagining the imminent and very delicious full-body submersion. It was a freestanding copper bath, but that wasn’t what made this maybe one of the best baths on the planet. What made it amazing, was the view from it. From inside the bath, you could see out across the national park, the rugged terrain of acacias and boulders all drenched in the orange of the setting sun. It was perched at the end of the room, and with the balcony doors open like this it seemed as if it was outside, floating on the edge of the world. I turned on the taps and headed to the toilet for the long put-off pee.
Ash: Hey guys, I’m safe and landed in Zimbabwe. I’m at the lodge. Omg it is gorgeous—we should definitely do a friend weekend here.
Before I could even start the message in which I explained to them what was going on, they started flooding me with requests for pictures and questions about the flight and weather. I didn’t let that distract me as I focused on typing the message, while simultaneously having the longest pee of my life.
Ash: I don’t even know how to start or what to say, because never in a million years did I think I would ever be writing this to anyone. So, I met Max at the airport, only it’s not Max at all. In fact, Max is actually none other than the sex hex himself, Logan. He says he changed his name nine years ago when his parents got divorced, because his father was also Logan McAdamsom—which I believe. But the thing is, I have been speaking to Maximillian Adam for almost a month and this entire time it was Logan. This whole thing is so bizarre! I’m away with my ex-boyfriend who cursed me and then disappeared, but also away with some guy called Maximillian Adam who looks nothing like the boy I used to know, and is some wildly successful businessman who lived in Greece and now looks like a fucking Greek god himself and I actually hate that he is so good-looking. So there you have it. What do you have to say about that?
There was a moment of silence as they read the message. I took the opportunity to take in a long, slow, deep breath because I knew we were about to plunge into chaos. Sarah was of course the first one who replied.
Sarah: AND YOU GUYS WERE FLIRTING WITH EACH OTHER !!!
Ash: I KNOW !
Ash: I feel sick to my stomach.
Yo: Wait, back up, I’m confused. What exactly are you saying?
Charlie: What she’s saying is that she has just been cast in her very own real, like, theatre of the fucking absurd.
Ash: Absurd is right!
Sarah: What the actual F!
Sarah: Max is actually Logan?
Sarah: And now you are away with him???
Sarah: This is insane.
Ash: I know.
Charlie: God, are you okay, Ash? I think I would be freaking out.
Melusi: Who’s freaking out? What’s going on?
Ash: Max is Logan. My ex-boyfriend. And I am away with him.
Melusi: I’m confused. Looks like I need to go back and read the whole conversation.
Ash: Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know whether I’m more shocked, or angry.
Sarah: I would be so pissed that he lied to me this entire time.
Ash: He said he only found out two days ago when I sent my ID to him.
Sarah: Do you believe him?
Ash: I do actually.
Melusi: WHAT THE FUCK !
Yo: Welcome to the convo.
Melusi: This is crazy.
Melusi: What’s he like now? What does he look like?
Ash: Oh my God, he is gorgeous. Which I obviously hate. He looks nothing like he used to. I only recognized him by his eyes. He’s still as tall as he was, obviously, but he’s filled out with muscles everywhere. His hair is longer, he has a beard, but a really sexy one, and he seems so confident and self-assured.
Melusi: God, don’t you hate it when that happens. Your ex turns out hot!
Charlie: It’s the worst. And so inconvenient, given the bizarre circumstances.
Yo: Wait . . . you guys are missing something here.
Yo: Something HUGE !
Yo: So all those stories we heard about Max, were actually about Logan?
Charlie: God. Yes. I didn’t think of that.
Sarah: How could you have forgotten the squirting orgasms?
Ash: I find that so hard to believe, given my experience with him. Those stories could not be about him, could they?
Sarah: It’s been thirteen years—if he’s changed so much in other ways, maybe he’s changed in the bedroom too!
Ash: This is the man who blew air on my vagina!
Russ: Whoa! I just joined this and the first word I see is vagina.
Melusi: I suggest going back to the beginning of this conversation! Trust me. You’re going to need to.
Sarah: I can’t believe it. We were just talking about him the other night. We never talk about him and now here he is!
Ash: It’s so bizarre.
Yo: Or . . .
Ash: What? Why are there dots there?
I waited for a response that was not coming. I started to get a strange little feeling inside.
Ash: WHAT ?
Yo: You remember what that psychic said. She said go back to the source to undo the curse.
Ash: Please don’t say another word.
Yo: You’re at the source! And how bizarre is it that we were all teasing you about having sex with Max to break the curse, and now Max turns out to be Logan and Logan is the source! It’s like the entire universe is in retrograde or something. Because something very weird is going on.
Russ: WHAT THE HELL !
Charlie: Welcome to the convo.
Russ: This is insane!
Ash: But what’s more insane is Yo thinking this actually all means something deep and spiritual.
Charlie: Maybe it does.
Ash: Not you too.
Melusi: I’m also leaning towards the universe here.
Yo: You need to have sex with him!
Ash: WHAT !
Ash: Stop it. Immediately.
Melusi: I’m leaning towards sex too.
Frank: Who’s having sex?
Melusi: Go back and read the convo!!
Sarah: I’m kind of agreeing with everyone here.
Ash: Nope. No! And this is the last thing I want to say on this matter.
Ash: If Logan was the last man on this planet, I would not have sex with him. I am not having sex with Logan McAdamson! End of story!
Melusi: What about having sex with Maximillian Adam?
Ash: Same goes for him.
Ash: In fact, same goes for every man on the planet. Because I am on a dating detox! Which everyone seems to forget.
Yo: I thought you quit that.
Sarah: Me too?
Ash: That was before I found out Max was Logan. So as of now the detox is still very much detoxing! And now I am going to bath!
Frank: What the FUCK ?
I tossed my phone on the bed, lay down and looked at the ceiling. I tried to relax, but the incessant beeping from the WhatsApp group was going insane. I decided to mute it for a few hours, but not before seeing one of the messages on the screen.
Melusi: Well, let’s hope he realizes this time that it’s suck, not blow.
They were clearly still discussing the prospect of me having sex with him, even in my absence. God, we shared everything. I’d once been to a therapist to try to deal with all the trauma from my childhood, and she’d asked me what support system I had now, and to describe it. After I had, she’d proceeded to tell me that it was clear we were all co-dependent and we needed to set more boundaries with each other, because it wasn’t healthy and . . . I’d stopped going to her that day.
Sure, we were total oversharers, but when you study something so creative and personal together, like film, you develop very deep bonds. Trust me. Staying in a tiny caravan with five other students and having to all sleep together under one blanket to keep warm because you’re shooting your extremely low-budget student film in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere means that oversharing stops being a thing. But my friends were very wrong about one thing. I was not going to be having sex with Logan, Max, whatever he was. The detox was very firmly in place .
I needed this dating detox, a serious one . No men, no sex, nothing even vaguely flirty and romantic. It always ended badly: if it wasn’t men saying crude things to me in cinemas, or ending dates before they’d even started, it was things like me being bitten on the hand by a troop of fire ants (because in college I’d thought it a good idea to have sex with this gorgeous entomology student that I’d fancied for a whole two semesters in their lab, and while up on the counter, my legs wrapped around him, raring to go, I’d accidentally put my hand into the ant enclosure). And maybe worst of all, worse than all those things, it was me flirting with a guy who I’d really felt a connection with only to find out that he was none other than my ex-boyfriend. The same person who’d shattered me as a human so badly that it had taken me forever to put myself back together again! And who may or may not have cast an actual sex curse on me. And who may or may not own bloody llamas.