Chapter 40
CHAPTER 40
Ash
But I did feel like an idiot. I was standing in front of him wearing red underwear with shaved lady parts I knew would start itching in a few days’ time.
“Nothing happened?” I asked.
He shook his head. “There’s no way I could do anything with someone else, especially when you’re standing there looking like that.”
“Like what?”
He looked me up and down and despite the fact I think I hated him a little bit right now, I shivered.
“Like a goddess in red lace,” he said.
“Aaargh!” I pulled my hands out of his grip and took a step back. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are we doing this? There has been this weird, constant, push-pull sexual vibe between us, even before we saw each other, via email even, and it’s making my head spin and making me wear red lacy things. God, I let you . . . that , in a broom closet full of spiderwebs. You know I pulled spiderwebs out of my hair last night?”
“We clearly have some unfinished business,” he said.
“Sex?”
“Sex.” He repeated it like a fact. Some irrefutable fact. Sex! We were meant to have sex! Fact!
He walked away from me contemplatively, and then sat on my bed. The image of him sitting on my bed made me want to sit down next to him, or on top of him . I fought that urge.
“Well, that’s no longer an option. That is totally off the cards now.”
He looked up at me and smiled, sexy and—
“Oh no!” I pointed at him. “You better stop all that.”
“Stop what?” He acted innocent now.
“Oh, please. You drip sex. Sex oozes from your pores. Your entire DNA is sex and sexiness and steamy flirting. Your smiles, your whispers, your come-hither eyes.”
“You think I have come-hither eyes?” He deliberately turned his gaze on me, and like laser beams of come-hitherness, they melted me.
“You are doing it now.” I folded my arms. “But it is not going to work. I’m back on a detox.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I relapsed. Had a little cheat meal, and now I’m back on track.”
He laughed. “I’ve never heard myself being referred to as a cheat meal. But fair enough.” He stood up slowly and put his hands on his hips. “Far be it from me to keep you from your health goals. I would never want to derail that.”
“You wouldn’t?” Hang on. Was I a little disappointed by that?
“No. I respect your detox, Ash.”
“Oh. Oh.” I looked at him, surprised. “You’re not going to try and talk me out of it?”
“No.”
“Not like all the other times you’ve tried to talk me out of it?”
He straightened up and suddenly looked serious. “I haven’t talked you out of anything this whole time. I would never do that. Never push you into anything you weren’t sure you wanted. The ball has been in your court. It’s always your choice.”
“No, it’s—” But as I said it, I realized it was true. I’d been the one that ran to his room, the one that had asked him to touch me, the one that had wanted to kiss him in the jacuzzi.
“So nothing happened?” I asked again.
“Absolutely nothing.”
I stared at him. He was telling the truth. I knew him so well. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter now, since, detox.”
“It’s good that you are prioritizing your health, Ash,” he said.
I fanned myself. It was hot in this room and in my body. “I just need a moment that’s not all sexually charged and tense and full of things that are potentially dangerous and life-threatening.” I felt like saying that he felt dangerous and life-threatening. Maybe more so than a snake, even. There was anti-venom for a bite, but I didn’t think there was any anti-venom for Max’s bite. Once he’d sunk his teeth into you, emotionally and physically—my nipple tingled at the thought of his teeth—you were done. Addicted. No cure. No anti-venom.
“You know what we need,” he said, stepping towards me. “Dinner. A non-romantic dinner. Where we just eat food and talk about shit that has nothing to do with sex. A dinner without red lacy underwear, even though it really is very beautiful.” He smiled, but it wasn’t dripping with lust this time.
“Thanks.” I looked down at my underwear and then closed my gown, I hadn’t realized it was still open. “I spent way too much money on it.”
“You probably make bucketloads of money anyway, what with you being the country’s best cinematographer.”
“Hardly,” I said, but felt my cheeks blush.
“That’s not what I read. And I’ve read just about every single article written about you. Quite an impressive list of awards too, I must say.”
“Thank you,” I said again, and then smiled to myself. “I like winning awards.”
He laughed. “I don’t doubt that. I still have some work to do today, so this evening let’s have a casual and totally non-romantic dinner?”
I nodded at him. “Sure.”
“And I’ll just forget about the whole pink-fish thing.”
“Please—that would be great.”
“Done. Already forgotten. See you soon.” He walked up to me and kissed me on the forehead. My heart skipped a beat at the familiarity of it all. A familiarity that was still there after thirteen years.
He pulled away from the kiss quickly. “Sorry, that wasn’t—I wasn’t coming on to you. It just happened.”
“You used to do that all the time.”
“Must be muscle memory or something. Sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay. It was . . . nice.”
He smiled at me before exiting my room and leaving me all alone. I touched my forehead. The kiss had felt sweet and comforting. Just like it had felt all those years ago.
“See you this evening,” he said.
I was back in my usual clothes. Shorts and T-shirt on, cotton briefs and a cotton trainer bra. The kind that was actually meant for teenage girls, but—given I was basically a teenage girl in that area—I wore them too. I walked up onto the deck, not the bottom one, but the very top one, the one that was entirely open to the sky. I found Max sitting on a lounger, looking relaxed and casual as well.
“Feeling more comfortable?” he asked.
“Much.”
He pulled a lounger towards him and patted it. “Come sit here. You need to see this.”
I walked over and climbed on.
“Lower it like mine and look up.”
I did what he said. “Wow! I’ve never seen the moon look so big and close before.”
“It’s pretty cool.”
“What’s for dinner? I’m starved.”
“I asked the chef to make something quick and easy, a burger, toasted sandwich and French fries. I’ve had enough of fancy gourmet food, anyway.”
“Me too,” I said, still looking at the moon.
We stayed like that for a while and then he spoke. “So, tell me, what have you been up to these last thirteen years. We sort of touched on it, but not really. And I want to know everything.”
I turned on the lounger and faced him, resting my head on my hand, propped up by my elbow.
“Well, as you know, I was going to study accounting.”
“I always thought that was way too normal and boring for you.”
“You were right.” I smiled at him, amazed by how the awkwardness and weirdness of before was gone. “I ditched it after a year and then one day walked into this film lecture by total accident, and that was it for me. Got my honors, four years specializing in cinematography. I was lucky enough to work under some really good DOP s early on, and then managed to work my way up pretty quickly.”
“Did you meet all your friends at film school? The ones you seem to message all the time?”
“You noticed that?”
“Hard not to.”
“A psychologist called us co-dependent once.”
“No.” He feigned shock. “Not at all.”
“So what if we have a very active WhatsApp group and overshare every aspect of our lives with each other?”
He laughed. “I think it’s great you have so many friends. And you and Sarah still seem as thick as thieves.”
“Maybe even thicker than thieves.”
“I’m glad you have a support system,” he said meaningfully—the implication was that, of course, it was my only support system.
“Me too. And you?”
“I have a few friends, but because I travelled so much, they’re scattered around the world, so I don’t get to see them often.”
“That sucks.”
He shrugged. “I keep in touch with them, though.”
“And why Greece?” I asked.
“Have you been there?”
I shook my head and he smiled at me. “You should. You would love it. It’s obviously gorgeous, but the people and the vibe are what makes it so special. I felt at home there for some reason.”
“Do you want to go back?”
An expression washed over his face with something that resembled sadness. “My mother needs me. And I don’t know how much longer she’ll be here, mentally.”
“I’m really sorry about your mom, and the divorce. I would never have suspected that. They always seemed so happy.”
“It was a total shock to all of us and she hasn’t really been the same since that, and a part of me blames him for what’s happening now. I mean, logically I know that divorce can’t cause dementia, but stress and heartbreak certainly doesn’t help.”
“How bad is she?” I asked.
“She’s in and out of reality, but the doctor has warned that at some point she will completely lose touch and will have no more lucid moments.”
“That’s awful. What do you do when she’s not lucid?”
“The doctors told me to play along with whatever delusion she’s having, so I do.”
“Have you considered putting her into a place where—”
“No.” He cut me off adamantly. “I don’t want to put her in a home, so I’ll be here for the foreseeable future.”
“Sounds like you don’t really like it here?”
“Not at all. I actually love where I live, I’m really enjoying work and I see a lot of other business opportunities I think I want to get involved in.”
“Like what?”
“Well, as you know, tourism is booming here. I think I can create something very appealing for my exiting international market. I’ve seen a house in Camps Bay I’m thinking of buying, staffing up and then renting out to clients. I’ve also seen one in the winelands.”
“Camps Bay and the winelands! You must have made some money over the years.”
He smiled. “I’ve worked hard. You live in Camps Bay too, though.”
“Not the part that only foreign money can afford. I’m further up the hill. A little way back from the mansions.”
“So tell me more about cinematography. I only know a little. I know more about directing. Did you not want to do that?”
I smiled; this was one of my all-time favorite topics. “I sort of realized pretty quickly that being a director has less to do with actually shooting film, and more to do with managing actors and people. And I didn’t want that—I just wanted to focus on the pictures. I’m the one who gets to really look at things and find the beauty in it all, and then figure out how to translate that to the film. That’s much more rewarding and interesting to me than the actual performance, although you could say that the light is also a performer, and that’s the one I like working with.”
“And Sebastian, I’ve heard such weird stories about him. What’s it like working with him?”
“It’s actually great—I get him. And I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for him. He sort of discovered me when I was only twenty-five and saw something in me that I didn’t even know was there. And he’s ‘latched on to me like a marsupial’, as he says, and refuses to work with anyone else.”
“Wise choice he made there.”
“He lets me do what I want, too. Even this trip, usually a director would come to this, but he wants me to go out and ‘find the magic’ without him influencing me. He really trusts me. I’m lucky—it’s basically a dream job.”
“I’m sure he’s lucky too.”
“He is, and he does tell me that, in his own special way. He’s a total genius, and I guess that comes with a little crazy too.”
And so we carried on talking like this. Sharing stories from our lives with each other, things we had missed out on in the last thirteen years. I told him all about my life, my friends. And the more we talked, the more I relaxed into it. We laughed like old times, and the conversation flowed again. I was so glad we’d packed the weird sex thing away and were back to being, well, what we were: exes with a history who were catching up now like old friends.
But friends who also found each other incredibly attractive and who had a sexual chemistry that bubbled under the surface. Even now when there was nothing sexual about the moment, it was still there. Like a soft whisper in the distance that you could almost hear.