Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
JESSE
T he drive on the way back to the villa was quiet.
If I was with anyone else, I would have been worried that this silence was driven by the fact that we almost kissed, and things were about to get weird.
But I knew Clara.
This wasn’t a freaking out silence, this was the kind of silence that she needed when she wanted to figure something out.
At least, this wasn’t a freaking-out silence for her. I was freaking out a little because Clara and I had almost kissed .
She was the first to break the silence. “I don’t wear white anymore. Wait, let me back up. Barcelona.” She twisted in her seat to look at me.
“Wait, what?!” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as my eyes flicked to her. She was twisting the hem of her dress around her fingers.
“The secret that two days ago I said you would never discover. You can have it if you want it.”
“I only want it if you feel comfortable enough to give it to me. But whatever it is, it’s safe with me.”
“What do I get in return?” she asked slowly, a teasing lilt to her words. Her fingers stilled on the hem of her dress.
“I just fed your Scottish play addiction, does that not count?” I joked.
I hadn’t meant to adopt her superstition, but clearly, I had because it hadn’t even occurred to me to call the play by its name as I’d already used it twice.
“I can pay you back for that. But somehow, despite three years of friendship, I don’t know a single embarrassing thing about you. And look, you don’t have to give me anything if you don’t want to, but I’m going to tell you this anyway?—”
“I fell off the stage in my Year 6 play. I misjudged where the edge of the stage was, and I fell off. They had to end the show early because I had to go to the hospital. We were only fifteen minutes in.” The story flowed from me easily. There probably wasn’t much I wouldn’t give this woman if she asked for it.
“Did you break anything?” She sounded so concerned about an incident that happened nineteen years ago, it was sweet.
“I sprained an ankle. I was actually grateful I had a valid reason to spend most of the summer before big school at home, resting.”
“Speaking of summers before massive educational changes, the one before uni, my parents took me to Barcelona. It was a ‘congrats you made it through school’ present. This boy was staying in the same hotel, and we talked a lot that first week. It was all very friendly. Actually, it was all more than friendly for him because as we headed into the second week, he asked me out. I was completely oblivious to the fact that he had spent eight days flirting with me. My parents found that hilarious because they knew what he was doing, and they were waiting for me to catch on.
“Anyway, I said yes to this really cute boy because I didn’t want to go to uni never having been on a date. Shit, I’d never been kissed by that point either. It felt like it would be a good experience. I let Mum pick my outfit, and she settled on this white dress that I think I hated, but she said I looked pretty. So, we’re in the Gothic Quarter, and there is this beast of a water fountain there.”
“Another one of your obsessions,” I interjected. I didn’t say it for clarification, it was just a thing I knew to be true about her.
“Exactly! After an early dinner, I suggested we go on a walk so I could see said water fountain at dusk—the best time to see anything. So, we’re walking, and it’s great, and I’m starting to understand why people lose their minds and spend their whole life trying to put love and romance into words.”
I started to feel something close to jealousy lick through me. “None of this sounds embarrassing.”
She prodded my thigh, a cool fingertip against warm flesh. I had no business being even remotely turned on by that, but I was. “I was getting to it. We came to a stop, and I was appreciating the damn fountain and then he got this look in his eyes and I realised he was going in for a kiss. He was getting closer and closer, and then his eyes closed, and his mouth gaped open, and I panicked. Turns out, I was closer to the edge of the fountain than I thought, so as I twisted out of the way, I fell in.”
I snorted. At least when I had leaned in earlier, she was going to meet me halfway.
“I got out of there pretty quickly, but I was wearing white, and my whole dress went see-through. I gave both my date and whoever happened to be hanging around that night an eyeful of both my nipples and my lacy knickers. I couldn’t think of anything else except that I needed to cover my nipples. Then this jacket materialised over my shoulders. I thought it was this guy being sweet, but then realised the jacket smelled like my dad. They were on a pre-date walk and witnessed me falling into the fountain. When I looked around for my date, he had disappeared. Didn’t check if I was okay or say goodbye. It was like he never existed. Dad bought me an ice cream bigger than my head, and the guy ghosted me for his final two days. I haven’t worn white or left the house without a bra since.”
“He sounds like an asshole.” My anger at this random idiot thankfully overrode the part of my brain that wanted to focus on see-through dresses and lacy knickers.
“No, wait! I forgot the best part. There were a bunch of us around the same age at the hotel we were at, and most of them were boys. I don’t know what the hell he told them, but whenever one of these boys walked past me, they whispered ‘weird nips’ at me. I had a complex about them for years.”
There went my attempt to not think about her nipples. “They’re probably not that weird,” I managed to choke out.
“No, they’re not. Turns out they’re really sensitive, which was an interesting discovery to make.”
She threw that out so casually, like she didn’t just plant a hundred ideas into my head, making me want to pull the car over.
“The older I get, the more I think that it is super annoying that I freaked out, and he wasn’t my first kiss. It would be a much better story to tell of the experience than the one I have, which was in an alley with someone who kept calling me Clarice.”
“Mine was with a girl called Angie. We were fifteen. It was at someone’s birthday party, and it was wet.”
She laughed. “A glowing review of your kissing ability.”
“I’ve been told I am a fine kisser since then.” I needed to get away from talking about kissing. “You know, as embarrassing stories go, that wasn’t that bad.”
“My number one embarrassing story is the time I spent all day cooking a meal in preparation for proposing to my boyfriend, and then he broke up with me. But you already knew that one.” My hand reached out and rested on her knee for a moment.
“I had to live with my ex-girlfriend for seven months after we broke up.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it felt right. It also didn’t sting the way it used to when I thought about the fact that I wasn’t someone’s first choice, even though I gave them all I had.
“How did that happen?” The same concern that she had for me falling off the stage was back.
“I woke up one day and realised she had a better relationship with one of my friends than with me. They just got on better, you know? I felt like they were more on each other’s wavelengths. I knew she would be happier with him and when I spoke to her about it, she agreed. So, I let her go, romantically. Thankfully, we were still friendly because we still had nine months on the lease and my friend didn’t want to move in and I didn’t want to find a new place because we’d only been there three months. So yeah we lived together.”
“Was that not weird?”
“It was at first, but then it was just like any other flatmate situation. I did once come home from a family holiday and caught them doing number seventeen, the spread eagle.”
I phrased it that way intentionally, knowing that she would like it. I was rewarded with a cackle. It was a laugh I had never heard before. I wanted her to make it again and again.
“Was that seriously the set-up?”
“Yeah, it was. They were very apologetic about it, but I did then have to live with them following that. So, double embarrassing. I win.”
“I think the jury might still be out on that. Wait, are they still together?”
“As far as I know, yeah. Over those seven months they realised they could live together and still love each other so he moved in and I went and moved in across the hall from you. Wins all around.”
I turned the car onto the road that led to the villa, my eyes drifting to Clara. Her eyes were closed now. Her head tilted back against the headrest. She was taking slow, deep breaths. My hand went out and landed on her thigh. Moments later, her hand covered mine, the initial coldness a welcome feeling.