Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
JESSE
C lara’s version of the itinerary had today listed as ‘Becky’s walking nerd stuff’, so I inferred that today was going to be the day that we were walking a lot.
It turned out to be a history-specific walking tour of the nearest town, and Becky had been very much in her element and floating on cloud nine since we left the villa.
I, however, was trying to stop myself from shouting at Drew to fuck off.
Ever since we had set off on this tour, Drew had been trying to get Clara’s attention. On more than one occasion, Samuel physically pulled him away to get him involved in whatever conversation he was having with Danielle and Gavin. It only lasted a few minutes before he drifted back over to us and tried again. Each time, he became increasingly annoyed that she was ignoring him.
Ninety minutes in, Becky declared that we had a fifteen-minute break, and I saw the joy on Drew’s face that this might be his chance to get her to pay attention to him now that she didn’t have an excuse not to pay attention to him.
So did she, because she pulled me over to a shaded patch of pavement and turned her back to Drew. He stuttered to a stop and pulled his phone out.
“I didn’t anticipate it would be a million degrees when I got dressed. I can’t stay in this top,” she said as she slipped her bag off her shoulder and handed it to me before peeling her top off and tucking an edge into the waistband of her skirt. I could see Drew was no longer looking at his phone. Instead, he was staring at Clara. His eyes were slowly dragging up her body. I wanted to do something to halt his eyes, but short of covering her with a blanket, there wasn’t much I could do. When his eyes reached her head, Drew realised that I was staring at him, and he immediately looked back down at his phone.
Feeling smug, I looked back at Clara. She had her back to me now. Her arms raised as she gathered her hair up into a ponytail. I got drawn in by the bunching of her shoulder muscles and the nape of her neck and didn’t realise she was talking to me until she said my name in a way that suggested she had said it more than once.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I asked.
Her laugh was a low husky sound as she pulled her hair through a hair tie. “I asked if you could apply some sunscreen to my back. There is some in my bag.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.”
Her sunscreen was at the top of the bag, and I slung it over my shoulder before I squeezed some lotion into my hands. The familiar scent of coconut enveloped us as I warmed the lotion in my palms. It didn’t matter, she still flinched when I started rubbing it onto her shoulders.
“Are your shoulders always this tense?” I asked as my hands swept up her upper back. My thumb kept coming back to a knot at the base of her shoulder blade. The more I pressed into it, the looser it became.
“I was born with tight shoulders. I don’t remember my life without that lovely little knot that you keep prodding at.”
I needed to move on from trying to melt the tension out of her shoulders and cover the rest of her back. I added more lotion to my hands and moved down. As I rubbed along her spine, she jumped away from my touch.
“I forgot to warn you about that. Something about that one spot makes my body have a mind of its own.”
A month ago, that sentence would have washed over me, and I wouldn’t have given it any further thought. But a lot had changed in a month, so as her words settled over me, my imagination started running wild with all the other places I might be able to find on her body that would make her lose control like that.
Over and over again.
I made quick but thorough work of covering the rest of her back with sunscreen.
“All done,” I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded.
She turned around, took the sunscreen from me and started applying it to the front of her body.
“I know I called it her nerd stuff, but I forgot how nerdy Becky could get about all this history stuff,” she said as she lotioned her arms.
I averted my gaze from Clara, and it snagged on Drew, who was back to staring at his ex-girlfriend, then to Becky. Even from here, I could feel her joy at being in this environment.
“What is it about history for her?” I asked, looking back at Clara. And then the floor when I saw that she was covering her chest with sunscreen.
“It started because her first human crush was Indiana Jones, and she wanted to follow in his footsteps so that they could cross paths. Then she realised that Indiana Jones wasn’t real, and she didn’t want to actively fuck with things that could potentially curse her, so archaeology was out. But she also realised that it was very possible to just study ancient civilisations endlessly, and the rest is history. Pun intended. Romans are her thing, so it wasn’t unintentional that she chose to get married in a place that was very close to so many towns with Romanesque features. She refused to do it anywhere else.”
“Where did Gavin want to get married?”
“At home in the Hamptons. But Xander was still going to be the one to foot the bill because ‘tradition’, and he refused to pay for a wedding that one of his princesses wasn’t one hundred per cent behind, so here we are.”
“Xander drives a hard bargain,” I laughed.
“He didn’t make his millions by being a gentle bargainer,” she said.
I had only ever known Xander and Darren as the owners of a restaurant half an hour from where Clara and I lived. Vivi’s. Darren got to name the restaurant and paid homage to his wife, and in exchange, Xander got to name the signature cocktail. Juliette’s dagger. A cocktail that was just as lethal as a Long Island Iced Tea.
Clara and I would work from there sometimes, and the vibe was always just right. Xander was so chill as a person that it was hard to believe there was ever a time he was ruthless and cutthroat. But, according to Clara, he’d made an app that the tech bros loved and made it so coveted that companies were clamouring to own it for themselves. Eventually, he decided to sell, and it went for millions. He effectively retired from the tech industry and built something new with Darren.
“Standing his ground worked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Becky look so happy.”
She capped the sunscreen and held it out to me. “You probably won’t. We should catch up. Knowing her, there will be some kind of quiz later, and we don’t want to miss out on crucial information about an aqueduct or something.”
I put her sunscreen back in her bag and slung it back over my shoulder. Clara watched me as I settled the strap securely on me, like she wanted to protest. She didn’t and instead took hold of my hand and walked us back to the rest of the group.
We settled in next to Rachel, our hands still entwined, just as the tour guide started talking again.
I could feel the weight of Drew’s eyes on our joined hands.