6. Caleb
Caleb
I held her hand as we walked over the beach, away from Puffin Bay towards the less populated areas where the beaches were wild, requiring a walk to get to them and facilities were limited. The tide was out meaning we could scramble over rocks to the next beach and from there, take the coastal path to Elderwood Sound, a place that wasn’t a true sound in the geographical sense, but named for the sounds of the trees and the tide, and the fact that there were elder trees scattered around. The tide was less ferocious here, the coastline naturally creating a bay that, for most of the time, showed off dry sand, with the sea rarely coming all the way in. It was one of my favourites and I’d been here with Zoey many times before. From here, we’d cut through farmers' fields to a track that ran through a small woodland to a neolithic site, large stone slabs that’d once been a village. It was eerie, too still and the centre of it barren of any growth, and it fascinated the fuck out of Zoey.
Our fingers were interlaced, which was different. The last time I’d held her hand like this it had been over a decade ago and I’d just made her come for the last time. I didn’t know if she remembered that, how I’d held her hands down while she came on my mouth, fingers interlaced with hers.
If she did, she didn’t say, but she held onto my hand as we cut across the sand, the daylight the same as it had been this morning, before her world was shaken up once again.
“Is this practice?” She held my hand up higher.
“Yes. We’re used to hugging as friends but we need to look more than that. Maybe we should have a night in Manchester too, but we need to be convincing.” The friend zone had remained in place since the weekend when she’d given me her virginity. There’d been a few references to it afterwards, neither of us forgetting what’d happened. I suppose that was why we rarely gave much detail about boyfriends and girlfriends that we’d had, apart from after Zoey had slept with someone for the first time and vaguely mentioned how he’d not measured up to the standards first set.
That’d blown up my ego some.
“I feel like I should be hurt that the idea of pretending to be my boyfriend is so difficult.” She pulled me to a stop. “Is me being your girlfriend so hard to imagine?”
I wanted to set her straight then. No, the problem is it’s too easy to imagine. Touching you is like second nature. Kissing you feels like something we should spend every day doing. Holding you in my arms so everyone knows you’re mine – including Peter fucking Cash – is exactly what I want to do every time we’re out together.
“It really isn’t. But it might feel awkward because we’ve been just friends for so long.” I pulled her into my arms.
“It didn’t feel awkward the last time we stepped out of the friend zone.” Her arms went around my neck. “We know we can go back to being just friends as well. We’ve done it before.”
Hardly, but she didn’t need to know that. Every autumn and spring, I waited for her to return to Puffin Bay like an abandoned dog waiting for his owner. Any girlfriend I had drifted away in the weeks before I expected Zoey, either put off because they weren’t happy with my friendship with her or threatened by it. They never said that, just that it wasn’t working out as I couldn’t give them any commitment beyond the next date, which was true and I knew it was unfair on them.
No one said anything. Amelie bemoaned the fact she’d only just learned the name of one girlfriend before the next came along, and it was just accepted in Puffin Bay that I played the field because I always had.
“We have.” Her hair blew wildly around her head with the wind, her face make-up free, making her look younger. “You’re worried we’ll cross a different line?”
“It’ll be public understanding that we’re together. If you move here, it’ll make it awkward for any relationships we have. You know that too.” I still held her, even though there was no one to see.
I’d held her before on this beach, many times, but never this close. I hated the idea that there was someone who intended to cause her physical harm and was causing her emotional harm. If I could get my hands on the person going by the name Peter Cash, I would, and the end wouldn’t be pretty.
“I know. I had boyfriends who didn’t cope well knowing that you were my friend. You know that too. But if I’m going to be serious with someone and they’re worth my time, they’ll learn to deal with it.” Her fingers weaved through my hair, pulling on threads, pressing on my scalp in a way that made me want to lie down and let her touch me however she wanted. “We don’t have to do this if it’s going to be a problem. I’d rather get different advice if pretending we’re a thing is going to spoil future stuff.”
“I’m fine with it, Zoey, I just wanted to make sure you were.”
I got that smile, her amused one that made me think I was missing something.
“Want to practice a kiss?” There was mirth in her eyes.
“I’m pretty good at kissing. You may remember.” My hands held her low on her waist, the curve of her backside just under where I could feel. Her curves were fuller than when we were teenagers; we’d both filled out, but I’d never been more aware of it than now.
“But we might not be good at kissing each other anymore. It might be awkward. We don’t want an awkward kiss when there’s someone watching who’ll report back. If Peter Cash thinks I’m pretending he’s going to get even more angry.”
I wasn’t sure about her argument, and I was pretty sure I was being played by her for some reason, but I leaned my head down anyway, letting her meet me more than halfway.
She pressed her lips to mine, her hands light on the back of my head. For a moment it was awkward, a pause where I second guessed what I was about to do because this was crossing a long-enforced boundary. I’d come back from kissing her when I was eighteen. I wasn’t so sure it was going to be as easy now, and it hadn’t been easy back then.
When the kiss started, the world stopped. She tasted sweet and her lips were soft, but this was different than all those years ago when she was hesitant, maybe a little shy. She demanded more, our mouths opening and the kiss deepening at her insistence, and I wasn’t going to stop her. My heart raced, singing a victory song and something inside me settled.
Something else was waking up.
“Wow.” Zoey moved back. “I don’t think making a kiss look real’s going to be a problem. I felt that in places I shouldn’t.”
I didn’t smile. “We should be convincing then.” I looked at the sky, always a good distraction technique. “My guess is that it’s going to rain in half an hour or so, so if you want to spook yourself out, we need to get a move on.”
“Fair enough. You don’t think we need more practice then?”
We didn’t, but I would’ve taken it. “I think we’ll be just fine.”
“Then loosen up and pretend that you’re madly in love with me, just while we walk across the beach.” She entwined her fingers with mine again, walking closer this time. “I think you’re right, it’s going to rain.”
The heavens opened just as we got to the site, thick, ballooned drops of rain hammering down and splashing over us and everything else. It was one of those deluges that came in from nowhere and proceeded to spend itself just as quick, the sort of downpour that a boat might find itself in trouble with. I was on call, the knowledge of which had me retreat into a dry enclave in the trees next to the site, the leaves underneath my feet dry and crispy. There I could check my phone to see if I’d missed anything.
“All okay?” Zoey followed me in, aware I could be called out. She’d caught more of the rain than I had, some of her curls that’d escaped her hood stuck to her face.
“All quiet on the Menai front. We’ll head back as soon as this eases up.” I threw an arm around her and pulled her closer, exactly the same thing I’d usually do. “Remember when we sheltered here before?”
“About five years ago? I think we were here for about two hours.” She leaned against me, her back against my front, her head tucked under my chin. “My phone died. It was bliss.”
“That’s why you want to move here, don’t you?”
“Because I like getting caught in rainstorms?” A roll of thunder disagreed with it being a rainstorm.
“Because you have an excuse to get away from everything.” I checked my phone again, holding it in front of us so I could keep my arms around her. “I need to check in with Gully.”
“Is he still worried about everyone every time it thunders?” Zoey knew Gully’s story. His friend and wife’s sister, Ivy, had died in a thunderstorm when she was on the island. She’d been a daredevil and was high on endorphins after finishing writing a book, so she’d taken her motorbike for a ride along the coastal path, which wasn’t ideal. Her bike had skidded over the edge known as Lovers Heights, and she hadn’t made it.
Thunderstorms bothered Gully still, which we all knew because he didn’t do much quietly, so we all knew to check in with him so he knew we were safe. I figured now it was more of an excuse to check in for all sorts of reasons, but none of us questioned it.
“Still. Always will be. Rory’s cute with him when it thunders and she’s with him. She sits on his knee until it stops and tries to reassure him.” I slipped my phone back in my jacket pocket. The rain was still battering down, casting the old stones under a dark afternoon light.
“I could do with that now. This place is spookier than normal.” She turned round to face me, still wrapped in my arms. “Will you feel better if we lay some rules around pretending to be a couple?”
“Like what?”
“We don’t sleep together or follow through on the touching. We don’t sleep in the same bed again. I don’t know. I know we’ll still be friends afterwards.” She lay her head against the top of my chest.
“I don’t think we need rules. We’ll sleep in the same bed if we stay over in Manchester because having separate rooms or a twin would get out somehow. Especially if this fuckwit hacks into places.” We both knew that if we went out in Manchester someone at least would take a photo and it’d be on social media immediately. Peter Cash would know where we were – he’d have alerts set for any mention of Zoey’s name on the internet and probably mine now.
“Okay. We can build a pillow wall.”
“You won’t do that. You’re a cuddler and you hate sleeping in strange beds by yourself.” I was one of the few people who knew she had a teddy bear in her luggage that she held onto in bed when she was sleeping on her own. “How is Monty?”
“Due a good wash. He’s in the suitcase I haven’t unpacked yet. You’re right, a pillow wall wouldn’t work, but that’s because you’d burrow through it to spoon me like you were this morning.”
I’d wondered if she’d bring that up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You weren’t aware of your huge erection this morning? It was pressing into my arse.” Her grin was wide, her words almost hushed by the weight of the rain.
“A bit of morning wood’s perfectly normal.”
“Okay. I accept your excuse.”
She shouldn’t. A bit of morning wood was perfectly normal, but this morning it had been more than that. My cock hadn’t got the message that this was just a friendship and the word ‘just’ was insufficient. Friendship was what was important here; I just had to keep repeating that to myself.
“When do you want to go to Manchester?” I needed to change the direction of this conversation, although the rain was starting to ease off.
“Next weekend? I’ve sent a photo from us in spring for my PR team to publish on socials. They’re going to put it up tomorrow. Today was the statement about taking a backseat from performing or recording any new material. People will put two and two together and think I’m giving it up for you, or we’re pregnant or something more dramatic.”
“Let them make whatever number they want. Come on, I think we should head back to the flat before this starts again. It looks like it’s set for the night. Then I probably need to speak to my dad about how much his phone’s going to blow up.”
My dad was in the Puffin Inn when we got back, going through emails on his mobile phone. Zoey headed upstairs to the flat to get changed; I decided a pint was in order to break the news to my father that he wasn’t about to get a daughter-in-law.
“You in here for the night?” I asked. Amelie was nowhere around, probably because she was with the Callaghans.
My dad nodded, accepting the pint of IPA made by the Holland brothers’ brewery with a grin that made him look even more like me. I knew that in twenty years I’d look like he did now, the similarities between us becoming more obvious as I got older.
“Just so you’re aware, Zoey is now my fake girlfriend.” I sat down next to him. The pub was about half full with locals, most of the tourists gone for the season now. It’d get busy at tea-time, especially with the weather like this, before people headed back home for Saturday night TV.
My dad half raised an eyebrow. “Want to spell that out?”
I gave him the background with Peter Cash and the photo taken in the sofa showroom. “So there’ll be a few photos that make it look like we’re together. We’re not. Feel free to pass that onto Clover and Fleur so the rest of Puffin Bay knows that.” When I was growing up, Mavis had been the one to spread any news. She’d passed away the same year as my great grandad, a year when Puffin Bay lost two of its main characters. They both lived on in different ways.
“I’ll tell Amelie. You sure it’s fake?” My dad wasn’t one to mince his words and despite not knowing him until I was fourteen years old, he knew me better than anyone, apart from maybe Zoey.
“No. I’m not sure.” I sipped a mouthful of my IPA. “But can we not talk about it?”
“Amelie said Zoey’s thinking of living here permanently.” He wasn’t going to drop it.
“She is. But it could be because she’s burnt out and wants to escape. A statement’s gone out today to say she’s no longer planning to perform or record after this last contracted album, but she hasn’t put a timeframe on it. That could change when this shit with Peter Cash is sorted.”
“Well, as they say, the meaning is in the waiting.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Think about it.”
I shook my head at him, unamused at his current craze for speaking in riddles. I wasn’t always sure how Amelie tolerated him given that his main occupation was to find new ways to make her swear at him.
“You need to stop trying to sound more intelligent than you actually are.”
He grinned at me. “You’ll work it out. What are the plans while Zoey’s here? She’s staying with you in the flat?”
“Yeah. Thank you.” Alys passed me a pint. “I guess we’re just winging it. We’ll go to a few places where people will want photos of her and make it look like we’re a couple. Provoke this dickhead.”
My dad’s face shadowed. “Do you think it’s a good idea for her to get a bodyguard – one that’s not you?”
“She has one – a discreet one anyway. Roe’s sorted it out for her, or the firm he works for has.” I knew of a bit of what Roe’s second job involved. He worked as a coder as his main job, designing apps for companies or the odd one that he made for himself and then sold, but on the side he was a white hat, a good hacker. His cousin’s husband, Killian, owned a security and cyber security business with his brother, Nick, and Roe consulted for them, which was how he put it. I’d done some work for Killian and Nick when I’d been at university and wanted some extra cash, penetration testing when it wasn’t the online stuff, which sounded dirtier than it was. I’d been sent into businesses at their physical site to see if I could breach the security they’d set up – labs being the main ones where their owners wanted to check that their security was infallible. It’d been fun and an interesting way to earn extra cash while I’d been studying for my PhD, and a completely different world to my marine one.
“Good. Try not to get involved.” My dad side-eyed me. “At least pretend to try.”
I wasn’t sure what sort of involved he was referring to.
“Were you surprised I never moved away from Puffin Bay?” It was an odd question judging by my dad’s surprised look.
“No. Not really.”
“Why?”
He took a drink of his beer and continued studying me. “You were at home as soon as you came here. I think it was just where you were meant to be. I did wonder if you’d want to go to a university in a bigger city for a few months, but I wasn’t surprised when you stayed.”
“I wanted to study here even before you came here to build the hotel.” My dad ended up in Puffin Bay when he came on business to project manage the opening of the big hotel half a mile away. He’d met Amelie and stayed, giving up a bachelor lifestyle that he’d been soldered to because of the woman who was now my step-mum. “Don’t think I moved here for you – it was the fish.”
He grinned, not buying any of my bullshit. “Yeah, okay. Why are you asking? Are you thinking about moving away now?”
We’d had this conversation before.
“No.” I shook my head, emphasising my point. “I think I need to buy my own place and stop living like a student.”
“I’d agree. I can offer you a competitive loan rate.” He nodded at Finn Holland who’d just entered the pub with a crate of gin.
Money hadn’t ever really been a problem for my dad. His parents hadn’t been short, and he’d started making money from just after leaving school, taking risky investments that’d paid off and grafting his backside off, a self-confessed workaholic. I hadn’t known him until I was fourteen, the product of a brief relationship and my mother hadn’t thought to tell him that she was pregnant. She had swallowed her pride when I was diagnosed with a condition that meant I needed a livertransplant, tracking him down and explaining he had a son.
He hadn’t flinched when he first saw me, and there hadn’t been any of the expected awkwardness. We’d gotten on from the start, talking about football, sport, what was in the news and just life in general. It’d been like I’d known him forever and it’d stayed that way since. He and my mum had gotten along okay, I knew he’d helped her out financially when she’d followed me to Puffin Bay, bringing my little sister with her and settling in a tiny cottage that she was still in, my sister now away at university in Manchester. My dad had paid her tuition fees, just like he’d paid mine, even though he had no obligation to.
I was lucky. He was a decent bloke.
“I’ll take you up on it.” I wasn’t stupid enough to say no, even though it was kind of a handout because the interest rate would probably be buying him and Amelie a meal once a month, more of an excuse to spend time together because he didn’t need the money. He would’ve just bought me a house if I’d asked, but there’d been an unspoken agreement years ago that he’d let me make my own way.
“Should think so. If I tell Amelie you’re looking to move out, she’ll start packing for you.” He cleared the rest of his pint and stared at the empty glass. “She’ll also start planning a wedding when I tell her about yours and Zoey’s fake relationship.”
I groaned, knowing full well that would be exactly what would happen.
October, Twelve Years Ago
We had forty-five minutes until the car arrived to pick Zoey up and we were still in my bed, tucked around each other, undressed and neither of us making any move to suggest that we were going to move anytime soon.
She’d packed, not that she’d brought much with her, and everything was ready to go, to head back to London and the commitments she had in the next week. I had an essay due for college, and a shift at the Puffin Inn after my seminars. The essay would have to be done tomorrow, on the last minute, because there had been no way I was prepared to sacrifice being in bed with Zoey last night and the early hours of this morning.
We’d spent Sunday morning practicing, as she put it, her confidence growing as we got to know each other in a different way than we had before. Then we’d taken a shower together, another first for her, before a long walk to one of the nearby villages for Sunday lunch because I wanted a break from Puffin Bay and to not worry about someone recognising the look on my face when I was looking at Zoey.
We shouldn’t have done it.
I shouldn’t have agreed to it.
I knew both of those things when she’d asked and still I’d said yes and I didn’t regret it even though I was well aware that I’d self-inflicted a wound to my chest that I wasn’t sure would ever heal.
“I wish I could stay.” She turned over in my arms, too soft and too relaxed to be leaving in forty-something minutes.
“I wish you could stay, but then it’d be even harder when you leave.”
Her eyes widened; surprise etched there. “I would’ve thought you’d be desperate for me to go and then you can meet up with one of the hundreds of girls who’ve been messaging you since Friday.”
She’d found it hilarious that three girls I knew from college were sending flirty texts. I was nice back, never responding quickly, because I had no intentions of anything happening with them, but I didn’t want to just ignore them.
“I’d rather you were staying.”
“I wish I was staying too.” Her arms tightened around me, her skin pressing against mine.
We didn’t have time for anymore ‘practicing’ as she’d called it. The clock was running down and this would be the last time I saw her for a few months, unless something changed in her schedule.
I kissed her, a simple kiss that didn’t ask for anything else. “What would happen if you stayed?”
“I’d probably be sued for not fulfilling my contractual obligations.” She rolled her eyes. “And I’d probably claw out the eyes of any girl who kept flirty texting you.”
Her words were an injection of warmth in my chest.
“That’d make for some good headlines.”
Her laugh was soft, her head burying under my chin as we lay there, the seconds ticking down.
“Shouldn’t you get a shower and get ready for your lift? I know how long it takes you.”
“That’s libel, Caleb. I’ll shower later. All I need to do is pull my clothes on.” She pressed a kiss against my chest. “I don’t want to wash you off yet.”
I knew what she meant.
“You’ll have to at some point.”
“I know. I’ll deal with that later. What time are you in lectures?” She still had hold of me.
“Ten. Monday’s an easy day but I haven’t done that essay.” Which I wouldn’t regret, even when I had a thousand words left and was working past midnight.
“I feel bad for distracting you.”
“You should feel worse when you don’t distract me.” I shifted us slightly, knowing that one of us needed to make a move.
“I won’t feel bad then when I phone you when you’re busy.”
“That’s my favourite time for you to call me.” We sounded like something more than friends and it’d felt so easy to be that. For me, anyway. “Any regrets?”
“Only that I can’t stay longer.”
“If you stayed, would you want this to carry on?” My hand was on her hip, fingers resting on the curve of her arse, memorising how she felt, like I had the last thirty hours.
“Yes, but only if it could last until we were older than Mavis and the world had had its way with us.”
We did get out of bed. I made her a quick breakfast and a hot chocolate and ignored the bear pit of dread that formed in my stomach at the prospect of watching her leave.
I didn’t torture myself by not watching her leave. I stood there as she was driven off, my chest hollow and what remained of my heart heavy, understanding that there was no way, now that Zoey had shed the baggage she’d been scared to show anyone else, she’d ever be mine for more than a few brief days.
Our lives were too different.
Science geeks didn’t get the cool chicks.