Chapter 27
27
We have another charter in a couple of days, so the captain gives us the day off and I’m so relieved.
I can’t deal with Adam right now.
I just want to stop thinking about all of it.
Pretend, at least for a little while, that none of it ever happened.
‘What do you want to do?’ Berry asks me, curled up against my side, her fingers drifting slowly back and forth over my ribs.
‘This.’
‘We can’t spend the whole day in bed. ’
‘We totally can.’
‘Everyone will wonder where we are. What we’re doing. ’
I hook my leg over hers.
‘They won’t. They’re all too busy with their own shit. ’
Berry walks her fingers up my inner thigh.
‘So you don’t want to get off? ’
‘Yes.’
‘The boat?’
‘No.’
She dips her head and kisses the tip of my shoulder.
‘I want to go to the beach.’
‘Which beach?’
‘A tiny one. Where no one knows us. Where we can lie in the sun and then swim in the sea and drink cocktails and not think about work at all.’
‘That sounds like a plan. But not yet.’
She squeaks as I roll on top of her and I kiss her to keep her quiet.
The beach is not far from the marina, but it’s small and there’s hardly anyone around.
We buy drinks, sandwiches, watermelon and crisps from a snack bar at the top of the steps and find a space between some rocks to throw our towels down.
‘This is good, right?’ Berry says, stretching her arms wide and staring out at the glittering blue-green ocean.
‘It’s perfect.’
I slide my hands around her waist and I’m leaning in to kiss the back of her neck when she tips forward, her arms still wide, and shouts, ‘I’m the queen of the world. ’
I lie on my stomach on my towel and Berry straddles me.
I hear the snick of a cap and then she’s smoothing suncream over my shoulders and back.
‘What is it you call this?’ she asks.
‘Hmm?’ I try to turn to look at her but it’s too bright and also she’s sitting on me.
‘Sunscreen. You call it something weird, right?’
‘Suncream.’
She snorts.
‘That’s it. “Would you like some suncream on your strawberries?”’
‘Wow, that is one of the worst English accents I’ve ever heard. ’
‘You’ll have to teach me. ’
Her hands move down my sides and I gasp as her fingertips graze the sides of my breasts.
‘I dreamt about this,’ I tell her.
‘About what?’
‘You, sitting on me. Putting suncream on my back.’
‘Oh yeah? Was it hot?’
I curl up a little so my forehead’s resting on the towel.
‘Extremely.’
‘I can’t believe you had a dirty dream about me!
And we were being sun safe. ’
‘I’m very responsible. ’
‘Oh, I know. Did I do this?’
She smooths the suncream up my thighs and I gasp into the towel.
‘Actually I think you did.’
‘Wow. Dream me was very thorough. Turn over.’
She lifts up onto her knees and I roll over underneath her.
‘Want me to do your front?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I tell her.
‘Not in public.’
She grins down at me, her hair falling down around her face, blue sky bright behind her.
I reach a hand aro Berry groans as und the back of her neck and pull her down on top of me.
We talk and read and turn over and over in the sun like rotisserie chickens and then, when the heat becomes unbearable, we tuck our stuff behind a rock and walk out into the water.
We swim out towards a buoy and I remember that day in Forqqmentor.
It seems like so long ago now.
I barely knew her at all.
We tread water, beaming at each other from behind our sunglasses.
‘You know what you could do,’ Berry says, turning in a circle.
‘What?’ I turn too.
Blue water as far as I can see.
And then the beach, the rocks, the buildings behind.
‘The thing you haven’t done. ’
She grins.
‘There are so many things I haven’t done. ’
‘We could tick one off the list right now.’
She waggles her eyebrows and I realise what she’s thinking of.
‘Skinny dipping? No!’
‘No one’s looking,’ Berry says.
‘And even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to see anything under the water. ’
There’s a man swimming front crawl across the bay further out towards the buoy.
There’s a group of people who look to be in their sixties, treading water and talking and laughing, but they’re not close by and, Berry’s right, they’re not paying any attention to us.
‘We could just take our bikinis off,’ Berry says.
I stare at her. ‘And if we drop them?’
‘We won’t drop them. ’
She stares at me as if in challenge, mouth quirking at the corners.
I look back at the beach.
Tourists lying on sunloungers.
Children digging with bright plastic spades.
A toddler sitting at the edge of the water, filling a yellow bucket and dumping it out again while an adult squats next to them, filming them on their phone.
I kick my feet to stay afloat as I reach around and undo the clasp at the back of my top, letting the straps drop down my arms. The water rushing over my bare breasts immediately feels amazing, better than I expected.
‘Feels good, right?’ Berry says.
Without me noticing, she’s taken off her top too and pulled the strap over her head so it’s dangling down her back.
She swims a few strokes further out and I follow her.
The water feels different on my bare skin and it doesn’t make sense because I’ve had water on my skin before, but this feels sort of silky, as if it’s fabric running over me, not liquid.
‘Ready for the bottoms?’ Berry asks, treading water again.
I pull mine down carefully, making sure to keep tight hold the whole time.
The last thing I want is to have to walk back to the beach naked from the waist down.
Once I’ve hooked them off my feet, I slip my hand through and hold on tight.
Berry ducks down under the water and then pops up closer to me.
‘So what do you think?’
Obviously, I’ve seen Berry topless before.
But much like the water feels different like this, seeing her topless here feels different.
Wildly hot. Have I been staring at her tits this whole time?
When I look at her, she’s grinning at me, biting the corner of her mouth, which means, yes, I have been staring at her tits this whole time.
‘Shut up,’ I say, even though she hasn’t spoken.
‘Yours look great too,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘I get why people like this. It feels really free.’
‘Right? You get used to it fast too. I went to this nudist beach once and at first most people are a little shy.’ She curls over herself, hiding her chest with her forearms. ‘But then you realise no one cares and it’s just bodies.
People were running, playing frisbee.
There’s like a concession stand there and I put a cover up on but when I got there, other people were standing around naked, drinking beer, eating pizza, just having regular conversations with boobs and dicks dangling. ’
She grins. ‘It was so cool.’
‘When Alfie was little he hated wearing clothes,’ I tell her, smiling as I remember.
‘He used to take them off as soon as he got a chance. Like, in shops. I’d be trying to choose cereal or something and I’d hear a gasp or a laugh and I’d look and he’d stripped off.
He’d be standing there in his nappy and shoes and socks. ’
‘He sounds awesome.’
‘He is. We finally convinced him that he had to wear clothes in public, which just meant he never did in private. We’d get home and before the door was even shut he’d be naked. ’
‘I could go for that. Especially in this heat.’
I picture myself in an apartment.
White. Big windows. Filmy curtains billowing in the breeze.
And Berry. Naked. All the time.
I lean back and relax.
And let myself float.