15. Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Katherine
M y list of things I want to do while I’m here is off to a great start.
Surf lessons.
Between Ella and me both working down at the shop, we haven’t actually spent all that much time together. So, this is a nice thing for us to do together, a way for me to feel closer to her.
The actual concept of surfing is maybe not as great. After my first lesson with Ella, it’s safe to say I’m not exactly a natural but I’ve got a bit of time to get a grasp on the fundamentals, so I don’t feel too defeated when I only manage to stand up on the board with Ella’s help, twice .
I’m not exactly the most coordinated person on the planet, I’m much more content being sat in one place, behind a desk writing. It’s not like you can fall into the unpredictable ocean when your butt is on a chair. I’m in control there.
“I think that’s probably enough for today, love,” Ella says, sitting down beside me.
“Was I that bad?” I laugh, making her laugh too. “I’m taking that as a yes.”
I’m trying this new thing where I’m letting myself be bad things. Being perfect at things has been a staple part of my personality since I was a kid. And I remember when Dad died thinking that if I could be perfect at college, be at the top of all my classes, that everything would feel better. They didn’t. And it was exhausting, always trying to be great, never doing anything I didn’t think I'd be perfect at first try.
We sit for a minute, just looking out at the afternoon sea as my body screams at me. I'm sure I haven’t done this much physical exercise since Bella and I did a hot yoga class two years ago.
A group of kids, maybe eleven or twelve years old, with surfboards under their arms, run along the beach and jump in the sea without any hesitation.
Oh, to be that age again, you have no idea of the world then; kids say what they mean, and mean what they say and don’t hold back, they don’t run from their problems. Everything is unknown and exciting instead of terrifying.
Following after the kids, with a grin only the Cheshire cat could compete with, is the blonde hair maniac I’ve been doing my best to not be anywhere near.
Apart from his strange behaviour with my coffee order last week, we’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding each other. I even convinced Gregg to swap a couple of shifts to give me even more time to completely erase the events from the night at the bar from my mind.
For the most part, not being near him is working pretty well to forget all about the kiss. It’s been like remembering a distant dream, every time it resurfaces, I’m blanking on little parts more and more, and now it’s so far away from my mind, it’s like it never happened. And that’s where I am now. Until I look at him for longer than I should. Then I remember the feeling of his lips on mine and how soft they were, how it felt to be in his arms. I remember the feeling of his fingers digging into my hips. And the moan he let out when my body moulded into his.
“Ella.” I wait for her to look back in my direction before I say anything else. “Did you ever want to find your soulmate?” I ask her, realizing I’ve never seen her with a partner and that I’ve never asked her before. I guess it had never really crossed my mind. All I know is she seemed so happy however she was living her life.
Her eyebrows come together as she looks at me. “Me? I guess not really.” She looks back over in the direction of the sea as if maybe it’ll give her the right words to say. “I moved here when I was only eighteen, on a whim and a wish that I could surf for a living. The idea of love didn’t even cross my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I've dated and had my fair share of relationships.” She smiles at me and I believe she has a happy life but there’s a little something in her voice that tells me it crosses her mind now and again. My mind floats to the way Gregg looks at her sometimes.
I can’t help myself even though I’m worried I might be about to cross a line somewhere. “And what about now?”
“Now?” She thinks about it for a minute and an even bigger smile creeps onto her face. “Kat, I got to have the one thing I dreamed of my whole life, a career I thought was too far away for me to grab and now I get to share that knowledge with other people who want to feel the same thing I got to.”
“And what’s that?”
“Free.”
Someone walking along the beach stops and starts talking to Ella before I can ask her anything else but god does it make my brain swirl thinking about it.
I think about that for the rest of the day and evening and still when I’m lying in bed that night looking up at the ceiling.
Have I ever felt that?
Free?
Best friends tell each other everything right? And, well, in the two months I’ve been here, I haven’t had a problem with telling Bella anything and everything that’s been going on. We’ve always been like that, sharing every little thing that happens to us.
Except every time I’ve talked to her the last couple of weeks, I just can’t bring myself to tell her about the kiss. It’s no big deal and means absolutely nothing to either me or James. Yet every time the conversation turns to me or how my search is going, my throat goes dry and I just can’t tell her.
I’m not sure what I’m worried about. Bella would never judge me for anything, if anything I have this feeling that maybe she’d be proud or something. Yet, it just sits on the tip of my tongue every time.
In fairness, I haven’t actually told anyone, and considering Maddie still looks at me like I’ve got one head, I’m guessing he hasn’t either which makes it easier. I mean I don’t even know what to say. James kissed me in a dark corner of a bar after his friend flirted with me, I think he was flirting with me, anyway I didn’t exactly push him off me and may have kissed him back, and oh yes, it was maybe the best kiss of my whole life.
Yeah, for some reason, I’m not too sure that’s the best way to put it, but it’s what happened. The last bit is still confusing me a lot. I’ve kissed my fair share of guys in my time. Horrible drunk sloppy kisses, passionate and full of passion kisses, kisses that you did when you were fourteen that were the most embarrassing of your life, but James was different. It wasn’t sloppy or drunk, at least not on his part, it was passionate but not full of love, full of something else .
Thinking about it gives me butterflies and sweaty palms in a non-anxiety way and I find my mind floating back to that dark corner in the bar whenever I start daydreaming.
The possibility that maybe it was because I was so mad at him at that moment has crossed my mind and it’s the thing that makes the most sense. Passion can come from more places than just love, I passionately can’t stand the guy so that could be a thing. Hates kisses, that’s a new one to add to the list.
“God, and then the spawn of Satan took the camera. Kat, you still there?” Bella's voice brings me back to the room, eyes watering from me staring out my doors into the garden.
“Yeah, sorry, I'm still here.” I can hear the distance in my own voice as I say it, because really I’m not in this conversation, I’m back in that bar trying to make sense of it.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been going on about work for like ten minutes.” A little laugh slips from her voice and it’s even further away than I am. “Tell me what’s going on with you?”
What’s going on with me?
“Oh, well, you know, um, just the usual.”
“Okay, that was a strangely vague answer, even for you.” The girl can sniff out deception like a bloodhound. Me, I’m like a wet napkin at this point, secrets eat at me like termites. When I was sixteen I drank one beer at a party and managed to keep it from my mom for a total of twelve hours, and eight of those hours were only because she was on shift at the hospital. The fact I haven’t already told her is what I can only call a miracle, or the different time zones.
I feel it rising in me like that beer did five minutes after I drank it. “James kissed me,” I tell her knowing I need to tell her, someone, before the termites eat my insides.
Silence .
I check my phone to make sure I haven’t been disconnected from her but the phone screen shows I’m still on the line with her.
“Bella?”
Silence.
Maybe she passed out?
“I’m so sorry, I’m just processing that information.” I wait for another second. “WHAT!”
I have to peel my phone away from my ear before I’m left with a damaged eardrum, I keep it away from my face while she says a few things in Spanish that I only half understand. That only tends to happen when she’s really annoyed or shocked or sometimes super excited. Okay, actually it happens a lot. At this moment, I’m not too sure which one she is.
“Okay,” she finally says and I rest the phone back on my ear. “When did this happen? How did this happen? Was it good?” Her questions all seem to come at once and I’m unprepared for every one of them.
“Okay, lets try one question at a time, please?” I ask as I flop down in one of the chairs on the patio outside my room, lucky that Ella is at the shop so I don’t have to worry about her overhearing this conversation.
“The most important one, was it good?” The smile on her face carries across oceans and right through my phone. She damn well knows the answer, because lets face it, if it was terrible I wouldn’t have been worried to tell her. I would have called her right away to laugh about it.
“Great.” It comes out as a whisper, my very being is in pain to even admit it, I’m basically humiliated by how it made me feel.
“I’m sorry, Katherine, but I’m going to need a little more detail.”
I’m not happy at all admitting this but I know if I keep the details to a minimum she will only keep poking at me until I tell her and I honestly don’t want to talk about it for any longer then I have too. “It was the best kiss I’ve ever had, are you happy? ”
“Even better than that New Year’s kiss with Benny?” Oh, Christ, how could I have forgotten the great New Year’s kiss of 2019? Nothing ever happened with Benny apart from that beautiful kiss, of course my stone didn’t glow so he wasn’t the one.
I think it over for probably less then a second because the world hates me and I know the answer. “Yes.”
“Jesus, boy kisses as good as he looks. Okay, second, when?”
“Like a week or so ago.”
“A WEEK!”
“Jesus, Bella… eardrums,” I say pulling the phone away from my face.
“I need all the details so I can forget that my best friend kept this from me for a whole week.”
“I went to a bar with Maddie and some other girls, he turned up and the usual back and forth, then his friend was flirting or whatever.”
“He was so jealous.”
“Anyway,” I move past that quickly, because the thought had crossed my mind later that night when I was still drunk but what would he be jealous of? “He pulled me over to a corner and started going on about how people like me just think they do whatever they want and then we kissed.”
“Angry kissing?” she quizzes.
“Had to be, because I don’t know what else it was.” It has to be that, because if it’s anything else, that only makes it worse and oh so very much confusing.
“And how do you feel about it?”
“Feel about what?” Out of all the questions she could have asked, I didn’t think that would be one. “I don’t know, weird, I guess. And a little confused, so confused. Not just by him, but by me. I didn’t push him off. If anything, I kept that kiss going for way longer than necessary. ”
“Oh, baby,” she says in the motherly tone she has, the one that makes me feel a little safer and like she’s about to solve all my problems.
“I know.” I pull the phone away from my ear when I feel it buzzing and see my mom's picture flash across the screen. “My mom is calling, can I talk later?”
“Of course, but I want to FaceTime later, I miss you.”
“Sounds good, miss you more.” I hang up with Bella quickly before I miss my mom’s call. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, my beautiful girl, are you busy?”