Cecilia - Nine
Siena pressed a wine glass into my hand just as the music shifted into something heavier with bass, the kind that rolled through your ribs.
The fire pit crackled nearby, laughter curling into the salt air, and someone was handing out marshmallows with skewers.
My glass was already half-full. I didn’t remember if it was from the bottle Theo gave me earlier or a new one we’d opened once we got back to the party.
It didn’t matter. The wine was chilled, the night was warm, and for a few minutes, I just let it be what it was.
Siena bumped her shoulder against mine. “Come on, Ce. Let’s not do the brooding-on-the-beach thing.”
“I’m not brooding,” I said, smiling slightly.
“You have your thinking face on. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m allowed to think.”
“Sure, but not tonight. We’re on the French Riviera. We agreed.” She pointed her glass at me like she was making a toast. “No regrets. No dramas. Just tan lines and terrible decisions.”
I laughed. “You said no boys with man buns and an acoustic guitar. That’s not the same thing.”
“Close enough. ”
Before I could answer, a group of people pulled us into their circle by the fire.
They were dancing wildly in the sand, singing to a song none of us really knew the lyrics to.
One of the guys handed Siena a daisy chain made out of wildflowers, and she placed it dramatically on her head like a crown.
Someone spun me around by the wrist, and I laughed so hard I nearly dropped my glass.
We danced barefoot with strangers who might have been Swedish or Dutch or maybe just really sunburnt British guys pretending they weren’t. The air was thick with summer and wine and something else I didn’t want to name.
It wasn’t until I caught my breath that I saw him.
Theo.
He was standing near the edge of the crowd, watching. A bottle of beer in one hand, his other tucked into his pocket. He wasn’t smiling. Not really. But there was something in his face I couldn’t read.
For a second, our eyes met.
He looked away first.
And maybe that should’ve been the end of it. Maybe that should’ve made it easier to forget what it felt like when his hand brushed mine. But the truth was, I could still feel it. The weight of it. The warmth.
He had a girlfriend and he was just a friend. We had always been just friends.
Well, except for that one kiss.
We were both smiling. That kind of smile you give when you’re tipsy and young and everything feels both weightless and full of meaning .
His hand slid up my neck, fingers brushing into my hair. He tucked a strand behind my ear and let his hand linger there, cradling my jaw like I was something delicate. His thumb ran along the edge of it, just under my cheek.
"You’re sure?" he asked, voice low, breath warm against my mouth.
I could feel my heart tripping over itself as I nodded. And then he leaned in—
"Cece!" Siena’s laugh rang out behind me, jolting me back.
She was twirling in the sand with one of the guys from earlier, flower crown still intact, a beer held dangerously high. “You’re missing the best part!”
I blinked. The memory broke like a wave and retreated back into the tide. I turned just in time to see Theo starting to walk away, his shoulders tense and head slightly down.
I stood. I didn’t even think about it.
I needed answers.
Because we had kissed, once, and I had never asked him why he let it mean nothing.
Or why I had let it. Back then, I’d brushed it off — told him I was mortified about the night before, and he’d nodded, said okay, and nothing else.
But I had meant the part where I fell over in front of him after our first kiss. Not the kiss itself.
That part I hadn’t wanted to forget. That kiss had meant something to me and we hadn’t talked about it.
I stepped away from the fire, away from the music and the laughter and the people still spinning in the sand. I started moving toward him.
And then someone moved in front of me .
“Hi.”
It took a second to recognise her.
Natalie.
She smiled gently. Her eyes flicked to the wine glass in my hand, then back to my face. She looked calm. Unbothered. Almost kind.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.
She stepped closer, the hem of her linen trousers brushing against her ankles.
The fire behind us cast flickering gold along the edges of her face, softening the lines that might have looked sharper in daylight.
Her voice was calm, her posture relaxed — too relaxed.
Like she’d already made peace with whatever she was about to say.
I shifted the weight of my glass between both hands, not trusting myself to speak first. “Hey.”
“I’m not trying to cause anything,” she said after a pause, lifting her palm slightly, as if waving away the tension between us. “I just... I saw the way he looked at you.”
I blinked. My pulse quickened — not because I agreed, but because it wasn’t the kind of thing you could just throw out in the middle of a beach party. “We’re just friends. Nothing’s happened.”
“I know,” she said softly. “Theo’s not the kind of person who would cheat. He never has been.”
Her words hung between us like a challenge I hadn’t asked for. I wasn’t sure if I felt accused or relieved.
“I’m not... I wouldn’t... It’s not like that,” I stammered, realising too late that I sounded exactly like someone trying to deny something they hadn’t yet figured out .
“I didn’t say it was.” Her tone was neutral, but her eyes lingered on me like she could see further than I wanted her to.
A breeze passed through, cooler than the last. It picked up the edge of my dress and made the flames behind us dance. I tried not to fidget, but everything inside me was restless.
“Then what are you trying to say?”
She glanced away, toward the surf. Her mouth opened, then closed again, like she was sifting through the consequences of her next sentence. “I heard him talking to Nate the other night.”
My grip on the glass tightened. “What?”
She shook her head slightly. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it does,” I pressed. “What was he saying?”
Her silence stretched, full of hesitation. And I hated how badly I wanted to know.
“I’ve just come out of a relationship,” I said quickly, filling the space with something — anything. “This isn’t anything. We’re just catching up. We haven’t seen each other in six years—”
Natalie cut in gently, but with more certainty than I expected. “Do you know we’ve been together for just over a year?”
I looked at her properly then. There was no bite in her voice. No jealousy. Just quiet devastation, polished into acceptance.
“This trip was supposed to be our last chance. A way to reset. Fix what wasn’t working. ”
I stood there, frozen, unsure whether to offer sympathy or stay silent. The wine in my hand suddenly tasted sour.
“I think, deep down, we both knew it wasn’t going to work,” she continued, her voice softer now. “But tonight... seeing you two together. Seeing him.”
She looked me in the eye, and I felt it — the weight of her truth, pressed between us.
“He looks at you like you hung the stars in the sky.”
My breath caught.
I looked away, down at the glass in my hand where condensation had begun to pool around the top of the stem. “That’s just Theo’s face.”
Natalie gave a small, bittersweet smile. “No. That’s Theo’s face when he’s with you.”
The wind shifted. From the party behind us came another burst of music, someone shouting Siena’s name through laughter. The noise felt distant. Like it belonged to a different version of me, from half an hour ago.
I stared at the fire, at the way the flames leaned in the wind and then pulled back, always moving. “Do you want a drink?” I asked, offering her my glass. It was the only peace offering I had.
She raised an eyebrow, surprised, then gave a small, wry laugh and took it. She brought it to her lips and took a long gulp.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she handed it back. “God,” she said with a laugh that wasn’t quite bitter, “I can’t even hate you. Or be angry at you.”
She looked at me again — really looked — and her voice dropped just slightly. “You’re nice. And you don’t even realise how he feels about you.”
With that final thought, she gave me another small smile and turned around. I watched Natalie walk away, her silhouette softening with each step until she disappeared into the crowd. My fingers still gripped the bottle loosely, her words echoing louder than the music.
He looks at you like you hung the stars in the sky.
I turned back toward the party, my heartbeat a dull thud in my ears.
Siena caught my eye almost instantly. She was barefoot now, dancing near the fire with a ring of strangers.
Her hair had slipped out of its braid and was haloed by the flames.
She held her arms up to the sky and spun like no one was watching — like she was the very definition of freedom.
I smiled. Or tried to.
She spotted me and jogged over, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the circle. “Where’ve you been? Come dance!”
And I did.
We danced. We spun. We laughed when some guy named Hugo tried to teach us salsa and almost tripped over his own feet.
We made friends with a group of local girls who complimented our dresses and poured us cheap rosé into plastic cups.
For a while, I let myself float in it. Pretend I wasn’t still thinking about Theo.
About the way he touched my wrist. About the look Natalie saw — the one I’d refused to name.
At some point, Siena leaned close and shouted over the music, “You good? ”
I nodded. “Better now.”
Later, we collapsed onto a threadbare picnic blanket someone had spread out. My feet were sore. My cheeks ached from smiling. I had no idea what time it was.
Siena passed me a shared bottle of wine and flopped back beside me. “God, this is the best night ever. Can we just live like this?”
I laughed, then let my head fall to the side to look at her.
“I think I might be in trouble.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Why?”
I exhaled a big sigh in response and immediately she knew what I was talking about, or rather who I was talking about.
“Theo,” she stated and his name fell softly onto the sand between us. “Why is he trouble?” she asked.
I hesitated. Swallowed. “Because I didn’t think I wanted this, especially not so soon. And now I don’t know how to stop.”
I let my head fall back, half on the blanket and half on the sand. Siena clasped her hand into my own briefly, giving it a small squeeze of reassurance and then letting it go.
“Remember what we said?” she smiled at me and I couldn’t help the smile that appeared on my face.
“Nothing is complicated when you’re in the sun,” we said in unison, letting out a giggle like school children at our silly line we’d made up on the plane over.
“Come on, we should head back,” Siena said as she hoisted herself up and offered me a hand to help me up too .
We linked arms, both carrying our shoes in our free hands and begun the short walk back to the street to hail a taxi to our apartment. The distant sound of laughter and music faded into the wind, the further we got from the beach, but still the sand lingered between our toes as we walked.
And the image of Theo with his hand around Natalie still burned in my mind because as much as I had wanted to emphasise the word ‘friends,’ it was suddenly the last word I wanted to use to describe us.