Chapter 12
Twelve
never rush putting on a wetsuit
Dylan
Tiny? In what world am I tiny? I’m still turning the nickname over in my head while I attempt to get into my wetsuit in the changing room before coasteering.
Apparently Pembrokeshire’s known for it, so I signed up for it the second I could, despite knowing nothing more about it than
David’s description of it as ‘an obstacle course along the coast’.
I’m the last of the group to get changed, and I’m making good progress on my wetsuit until our instructor calls out from the
other side of the curtain, ‘Safety briefing is going to start in five minutes!’
At the thought of missing the briefing, my movements turn more frantic, and in a panic I tug the zip so hard it catches. I
pull again, harder this time, and it stops moving entirely. I try once more, but it doesn’t budge even a millimetre.
No, no, no.
A lull sweeps over the room as people file outside, and I pull back the curtain to see who can help in my defeat.
There’s only Arun by the door and Max on a bench in the middle of the room, hair flopping into his eyes as he scrolls his phone with a furrowed brow, wetsuit slick against his body in a way that really shouldn’t be allowed.
When his eyes meet mine, the frown disappears, replaced by a quirk of his eyebrow. ‘I hope you’re not going to make us late,
Dylan.’ An audacious suggestion from the man who lost his GoPro amongst the mess of his belongings earlier and would’ve been
late if I hadn’t helped him find it. ‘This is what you get for letting everyone go ahead of you.’
‘Someone had to be the last to get changed.’
‘Do you do that a lot?’ he asks. ‘Think other people’s needs are more important than your own?’
‘I don’t—I just—’ My heart thuds, and he watches me far too intently. I remember the rapidly ticking clock and clear my throat
as I gesture behind me. ‘My zip’s stuck.’
He sets his phone on the bench and slowly gets to his feet with a languid grin. It doesn’t make his sour mood earlier any
easier to understand. ‘And would you like me to help you?’
‘Please.’
He strides towards me, commanding space, shrinking the entire room simply by moving through it, making it feel like there’s
not enough oxygen to go around. Making me feel, despite my best attempts to ignore it, like I might be at his mercy.
The curtain kisses my back, and I realise I’ve unknowingly taken a step backwards, so I turn in the doorway and watch him
in the mirror as he carefully tugs at my wetsuit.
‘I’m usually pulling zips in the opposite direction,’ he says in a low voice, breath warm against my neck. His fingertips
graze the small of my back, where my swimming costume dips and exposes my skin, and I don’t acknowledge the goosebumps he
leaves behind, and he doesn’t either. But then he stops what he’s doing, fingers lightly pressed against my spine, and he
meets my eye in the mirror. ‘Sorry for being short with you earlier in the dining hall when you were trying to check up on
me. I’m on edge at the moment, but that’s not your fault.’
His apology catches me off guard. It’s not the first time someone’s taken their stress out on me; my mum, my ex, even Tahlia.
But it is the first time in a long while that someone’s said sorry for it, so I say, ‘We all have our moments.’ A pause, and then, ‘Can
I do anything to help?’
He shakes his head and drops his gaze, and I watch his face in the mirror. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this expression.
Sometimes, if I catch him while he’s in a daydream, there’s something haunted there. It makes me wonder what could give someone
like him eyes that sad.
‘You don’t need to worry about me, Tiny. You take care of other people’s emotions enough as it is.’ I go to protest, but he
continues, ‘I’ll be fine. Just need to keep busy.’ Then he returns to pulling the zip, and he seems back to normal. ‘This
works as a distraction.’
‘Happy to oblige,’ I say quietly, inordinately conscious of the brush of his fingers on my back, the heat of his touch searing
my skin, of the way it’s so easy to let myself be pliant in his hold.
The outlandish suggestion he made to me while we were canoeing pops into my head for the tenth, eleventh, hundredth time.
It’s always loudest when we’re doing an activity, and, without fail, he’s impossibly competent at it from the start. Doesn’t
matter if it’s abseiling or learning to tie sailing knots, my little Neanderthal brain asks, What else could he be good at?
The proposition roars in my brain again now, with him this close.
After a few more wiggles of the zip, he lets out a frustrated grunt, and it jolts me out of my haze. ‘Jesus, what have you
even done here?’
‘If you can’t do it, it’s okay. I’ll ask someone else to try.’
I pull away, but his hands find my hips and tug me back to him so abruptly that my entire back meets his front for one hyperaware
second, and a searing hot liquid feeling floods my insides. He releases my hips immediately, fingers expertly returning to
where the zip is caught on my swimsuit, but I still feel the phantom press of his body against mine. I don’t need the mirror
to know the colour my cheeks have turned, and I’m glad the wetsuit hides how that same colour no doubt spills down my heaving
chest, past my swimsuit’s neckline.
Finally, Max makes a triumphant noise, and one warm hand cups my nape to keep hair out of the way of the zip he pulls smoothly up the length of my back. His thumb skims the spot where my jaw meets my ear, right where my heartbeat races.
‘I don’t back down from a challenge, Dylan,’ he murmurs, releasing his hold on my hair. ‘Something worth remembering.’
He steps away and I clear my throat, shaking out the frisson that just darted down my spine. ‘Thank you. Do you want to put
anything in my locker?’
‘Oh, he definitely wants to put something of his in your locker,’ Jude says drily from the doorway, hands braced against the sides, wetsuit hanging around her waist
to reveal a tiny red bikini top. It feels a lot like she’s just walked in on something scandalous, and I’m trying to convince
myself it wasn’t. ‘Are you two coming? Everyone needs to be life-jacketed up for the briefing.’
When I scan the rack of life jackets on the outside wall, my stomach sinks. I reluctantly take an orange one off its hook,
the ‘small’ printed on the back taunting me. It’s going to look like I’m wearing a child’s jacket.
Right as Max is about to shrug on what looks like the final, larger red jacket, he freezes and holds it in my direction. ‘Take
mine.’
I step backwards out of his reach. ‘You need it.’
He narrows his eyes and directs them at Bertie and Arun a few metres away; Arun just about to snap the clasps on his red life
vest. ‘Hey Arun. How tall are you?’
‘Six-two,’ he replies, straightening his bony posture. He’s at least five inches shorter than me so is definitely not six foot two, but I’m not about to call him out on it.
Apparently, Max is unwilling to afford him the same courtesy, because he says breezily, ‘No you’re not. We’re swapping jackets.
Give yours to Dylan.’ He grabs mine from my hand before I have a chance to protest and moves over to Arun, waiting for him
to pass the red jacket over. Once they’ve done the exchange, Max claps Arun on the shoulder so hard he almost stumbles. ‘Thanks
mate. You look better in orange, anyway.’
‘You’re such a bitch,’ Jude says through a laugh.
‘I know,’ Max replies smoothly, handing me the stolen red vest like he didn’t just throw his weight around for it.
‘Thank you, but I would’ve been fine with the small.’ I thread my arms through the holes and add under my breath, ‘Or, I don’t
know, drowned, maybe.’
‘No need for that.’ He folds his arms, amusement in his eyes as he watches me snap the buckles together.
We walk over to where the rest of the group is waiting, and I say, ‘You just . . . You shouldn’t do things like that. Not
if it puts someone else out.’
‘Shouldn’t I?’ He covers his yawn with a fist. ‘Look, it was as much for me as it was for you. Do you think I want your passive-aggressive
grumbling all afternoon?’
‘I’m not passive-aggressive,’ I bite out, my final buckle clicking into place.
‘Well, you’re certainly not active aggressive.’
‘Sometimes, you make me want to be,’ I say, so quietly I don’t even know if he heard.
The instructor starts talking, but before I can pay attention, Max drops his mouth to my ear and murmurs, ‘You say that like
it’s a bad thing.’
‘Do you think Max is okay?’ I ask Jude’s back, ocean spray stinging my cheeks as I carefully step on to an algae-slicked boulder.
Turns out, clambering along the Welsh coastline is a lot more labour-intensive than I expected.
‘Seems pretty normal to me,’ she replies easily, hopping from one rock to another, surprisingly nimble.
She clearly thinks Max is fine, and he told me so too, in the changing room, but I can’t help thinking about him saying he was on edge.
He’s taking even more risks today than usual–moving quickly, never paying attention to his footing, ignoring when our instructor tells us to go the longer way along the rocks and taking reckless shortcuts instead.
It feels intentional, and it’s putting me on edge.
We reach a channel, where the only way to get to the rocks on the other side is to swim, and, of course, Max is the first
to jump into the freezing Atlantic.
From then on, we’re in the water a lot. Sometimes just to our ankles, other times fully submerging when there’s no path via
the rocks.
All I can do is follow every rule and instruction to the letter. Bertie hangs back with me, offering me his hand when, to
be honest, I don’t really need it, but it’s a nice thing to do, so I let him. He films it every time, though, and I’m not
sure how to feel about that.
Up ahead, there’s a particularly wide stretch of water to swim across, and he leaves me to jump in. I make sure I’m in the
water for as little time as possible and quickly swim across to the rocks on the other side, waiting for everyone else to
get out too.
Toby helps Jude climb out, and after he drops her hand and walks away to sit on a boulder, she fans herself dramatically and
mouths, ‘He loves me.’
I snicker, but my smile drops when there’s a shriek from the water.
Arun flails, yelling, ‘Shark! There’s a shark!’
Bertie races past Arun in the commotion, swimming as fast as he can to us on the rocks, blonde hair plastered to his face
as he puts his arms out for us to pull him up.
Max, however, immediately tears through the water to a still-floundering Arun, and panic grips me, knotting my stomach. He
grabs Arun by the life jacket and shoves him towards us. But when I think Max is done, he turns and swims back to where Arun was, like he’s daring the danger to find him. Those twists in my stomach tighten, and my nails press sharply into my palms. What is he doing?
But then he lets out a laugh that cuts through the tense air. ‘That’s a fucking seal.’
I follow the point of his finger, and sure enough, a few metres from him, a dark-grey head pokes out of the water, curious
eyes watching. We all let out a synchronised relieved breath.
‘Yeah, obviously it’s a seal, I saw that,’ Bertie mutters, panting with exertion. ‘I was just done swimming.’
Everyone watches the seal with various cameras out, but it’s Max’s expression as he swims, keeping a respectful distance from
it, that holds my attention. His smile’s wide, his eyes are bright. Innocent, for once.
The seal soon swims away and our instructor shouts, ‘Okay, enough excitement. Let’s keep going–we’ve still got a lot of ground
to cover. Follow me closely.’
‘I’ve heard seals are really aggressive,’ Arun says, brow furrowed, as he walks past. ‘Right?’
‘The most aggressive,’ Fiona replies, patting him on the shoulder.
Max finally pulls himself out of the water, and now he’s at the back of the group, it’s even clearer that he’s antsy. We pause
more often, and every time we do, he huffs, eyes darting around, fists clenching and unclenching.
‘Why are they being so slow?’ He easily steps over a wide gap between rocks.
‘Not everyone has long legs.’
‘If I ran the world, I’d ban short people,’ he says. ‘You’re safe, Tiny, don’t worry.’
‘I don’t know if anyone would be safe in a world run by you.’
He lets out a short laugh. ‘Valid.’
‘Please be careful,’ I say instinctively, the words coming out on a breath as he chooses an unnecessarily difficult path for the
umpteenth time. ‘That rock looks unstable.’
He sends me a grin, but there’s none of that joy from earlier. It’s blank. It’s unnerving. The rock wobbles under his feet and he keeps moving along, calling out, ‘Me and that rock have something in common.’