Chapter 32 #3
‘She probably thinks I’m another guy,’ she said, with a hollow laugh. ‘Her friend would get quite the surprise when you turned up with me.’
‘Oh, I never thought of that.’ Luca laughed. ‘But maybe her friend’s a lesbian. She might think it was her lucky night!’ He turned on the tap. ‘Anyway, I presumed you wouldn’t want to go. I said we were going to bed early.’
‘Just because I’m having an early night it doesn’t mean you have to,’ she said. ‘If you want to go to the pub…’
‘Not particularly.’
She knew she was being unfair, acting so possessively. There was nothing to stop him going to the pub with Aideen, letting her take him back to her caravan…
‘Or,’ she said, sliding a hand up under his T-shirt to the warm skin of his back, ‘you could stay here with me. We could go skinny-dipping.’
‘Claire…’
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him softly, coaxingly, and he almost responded, but then he was pushing her away gently. ‘I thought you were tired,’ he said.
‘I’m having an adrenalin rush.’ She tried to kiss him again, but he held her off.
‘Claire, stop.’
‘Why? I thought you wanted to go skinny-dipping.’ As soon as he released her, she reached for him again. ‘Or we could just stay here,’ she said, toying with the drawstring of his shorts.
‘Stop,’ he said firmly, stilling her hand with his. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘I came here to be with you, okay? You don’t have to take your clothes off to make me stay. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Sorry.’ She hung her head, tears stinging her eyes. She let out a long, heaving breath. ‘I’m going to bed. We can leave that till morning.’ She nodded to the plates piled in the sink.
‘I’ll do it,’ Luca said. ‘See you in the morning.’ He kissed her on the forehead – a brief, chaste kiss that made Claire want to scream in frustration – and turned back to the sink.
Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea, Luca thought, as he washed up. And to a fucking caravan, of all things! He’d find it hard to keep his distance from Claire on the Serengeti Plain, but squashed together in a caravan…
He really wanted to kiss her. He was aching to take her to bed.
Turning her down just now had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, especially when he could see in her face how hurt and rejected she’d felt.
But she was vulnerable right now. She was sad and maybe a bit lonely, and he couldn’t take advantage.
Besides, she would probably regret it later.
Then things would be awkward and they wouldn’t be friends any more.
It wasn’t worth risking losing her. Sex was easy – he could get his rocks off with anyone.
But he didn’t have another friend like Claire.
He heard voices and laughter outside, and turned to see a group of teenagers walking past, dressed up for a night out in jeans and sparkly tops. Maybe he needed to get laid. He should go to the pub, hook up with that girl and get Claire out of his system once and for all.
In her bedroom Claire lay awake, listening to Luca moving around outside, anxiously waiting for the click of the door or the noise of the shower, any sound that would tell her he was going out.
She couldn’t relax until she knew if he would go to the pub or not.
She turned on her laptop to check her emails.
There was one from Emma in her NiceGirl account:
Hi,
Sorry to hear about your family crisis. Hope it wasn’t too serious, and that everything’s okay now.
Anyway – gossip. We were all at a friend’s birthday last week, including Mark’s ex, Sophie.
(I don’t know if you follow her on Twitter – @Soph?).
Anyway, she’s still carrying the most ginormous torch for Mark, but he’s with someone else now, and she came out all guns blazing, making it really obvious she wanted him back.
And when Sophie wants something… well, let’s just say she’d give the Terminator a run for his money.
Anyway, long story short, things got a bit messy and she was all over Twitter the next day hinting that something had happened between them. Mark swears it didn’t. So it’s all very he said/she said. Sophie can play dirty, and I’m more inclined to believe Mark.
Luckily I don’t think Mark’s new girlfriend is on Twitter, so she may have missed the whole thing. Mark asked us to delete all the tweets relating to it – I obviously missed one. Oops!
So, that’s all the gossip. It’s probably nothing, and I shouldn’t even be telling you. But I guess it’s okay since you don’t know any of the people involved – except Mark, of course.
He tells me you’re going to stop writing the blog…
The rest of the email was publishing talk.
When she had finished reading it, Claire shut down her laptop and sank back against the pillow.
So something had happened between Mark and Sophie at Patrick’s party – or maybe not.
And Claire found she didn’t care either way.
The numbness was back. She heard Luca going into the other bedroom, the door closing behind him with a soft click.
She turned off the light and settled down.