Chapter Nineteen
Jamie
As they passed the same peeling paint of the pier for the fourth time, Maya turned to her. “I think it’s time you admit you’re lost.”
Jamie drummed her finger against the steering wheel, finishing the chorus to an Erasure song before answering, “I’m not lost. It’s around here somewhere.”
The journey had gone fast, a combination of her speedy driving, the surprisingly quiet motorway, and Maya’s DJ skills—even if she was using her playlists. But despite arriving ten minutes ago, and there being places to park close to the arcades and the walkway to the beach, she’d carried on driving. There was a free place to park she’d found online that apparently all the locals used.
A fat seagull nosedived off a lamppost, expertly pinching a handful of chips out of an old lady’s paper cone. She thrust her fist after the bird, spilling more chips as she did so, and a flock of birds swarmed her feet.
“There! That’s it!” Her shout cut through the music. She pulled in behind a run-down red brick building which, judging from the limp sign hanging from the top, used to be a bakery of some sort. The place was deserted, the windows washed out, and the majority of the bays were empty. It was a little strange, even Jamie would admit, but she wasn’t worried.
“You sure you can park here?” Maya asked, eyeing the “No Parking” sign sprayed onto the brickwork in white paint.
“According to the Free Parking England Facebook group, we can.”
Maya laughed. “I still can’t believe you’re a member of that.”
“You can thank me later when we use the money we would’ve spent on the parking on something hot and sugary instead.” She gripped the car handle and flashed Maya a grin. “Ready, Skip?”
Without waiting for an answer, she exited the car, slamming the door behind her.
Maya followed, the wind immediately whipping her long hair around her face. “Jesus.” She shrugged on a navy puffer coat, zipping it up to her neck. “Isn’t it supposed to be sunny at the beach?”
“We’re still in England…and it is December.” Jamie pulled a large rucksack from the boot of the car and flung it over her shoulder. She tugged a navy beanie over her head, tucking her stray hairs underneath it. “Hardly the Caribbean Sea, but it’s all we’ve got.”
She held her hand out. Maya slipped her fingers into hers, and she hauled her off towards the pier.
Turns out December might not have been the best time to visit the seaside. Almost everything was closed. They did manage to find one arcade open towards the end of the pier, the musty smell bringing back memories of Jamie’s childhood. The old, wacky carpets, flashing lights and cacophony of clashing sounds from the machines rekindled that childlike excitement within her—something she’d never really lost.
Maya beat her at two games of air hockey, then Jamie whooped her arse at basketball hoops. They both sucked at the strange alien shooting game, dying in the early levels. It probably didn’t help that they’d spent the time making fun of the developer’s choice to give the female characters abnormally wide hips and breasts.
“And the NPCs never do anything, either,” Jamie said, with a shake of her head. “They must map them to just run in useless circles. It’s so frustrating.”
“Sounds like a nerd alert is coming on,” Maya teased.
They drifted through the arcade, eyeing the games with mild interest. By this point, they’d already been around once, but it was just fun being in Maya’s presence. Even food shopping with Maya would be fun.
Jamie hated losing, but Maya loved beating her. Seeing her smile was almost worth all the shit she gave her, and Jamie didn’t mind half as much as she pretended. She guessed it was small payback for all those games when she was a Harrier.
“You’ve done it now. The inner nerd is going to come out.” She laughed, turning to face Maya. “Did you know that even though women make up pretty much half of video game players, games still include twice as much male dialogue as female dialogue—sometimes even when there are female protagonists?” She leaned back on a two-pence slot machine and shook her head. “Some games don’t even pass the Bechdel test.”
“The Bechdel test?”
“It’s a test to see if a work features at least two female characters who have a conversation about anything other than a man.”
“Jesus.”
“And that’s not even getting started on the over-sexualisation stuff.”
Maya nodded. “Like the famous raider of the tombs?”
“Exactly. The tits on her defied science altogether. And do you know, she started off as a man? Then they switched and were like, ‘Let’s just put some huge, pointy bazookas on her. That’ll fix it.’” Jamie felt Maya’s stare. “What?”
Maya took a step closer, a sheepish grin stretching across her face. “You’re extremely cute when you nerd out.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow, her focus dropping to Maya’s mouth. “Is that so? In that case, I should probably tell you about Bechdel’s comic strip. The longest running queer—”
Maya captured her lips in a kiss, her hands wrapping around Jamie and pulling their bodies together. They fell back against the glass, the whirring and dinging of the machines pinging around them.
A sharp wolf-whistle erupted from behind, and they jumped apart. Maya looked about ready to open her mouth, to tell whoever the noise belonged to to mind their own business, but instead of a prepubescent teenage boy, there was an elderly woman hunched over a glitter-covered walking stick. Her grey hair was slicked back, and she wore an ankle-length camouflage coat draped around her shoulders.
Was this the whistler?
She waved her sparkly walking stick in a gesture of respect and disappeared behind a slot machine.
Jamie turned to Maya, pinching her eyebrows together. “What was that about?”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe she just loves the gays.” She leaned back on the glass again, looking in the direction of the mystery woman with awe. “I want a sparkly walking stick like that when I’m older.”
“Oh my god!” Maya lurched forward, slamming her hands on the glass and making Jamie jump. “We have to get this for Grandpa.”
Jamie peered round to find what Maya was pointing at. “The Trotter van?” A tacky metal pin from the show Only Fools and Horses rested on the bed of copper coins in the machine.
“Yeah, he loves that show.”
Jamie tried not to focus on the fact that Maya still hadn’t introduced her to her family yet. Not since they’d…been doing whatever they were doing, anyway. She supposed she shouldn’t take it to heart—Jamie hadn’t introduced Maya to hers either, but that was with good reason. What was Maya’s excuse?
She hated all the rules of casual dating. The unwritten law of being cool and collected. She just liked to be herself, unfiltered. When she couldn’t be, a strange feeling descended on her. She pushed that feeling away, focusing instead on the pin and how excited it made Maya.
“Let’s win it for Grandpa then,” she said.
They spent the next hour feeding pennies into the slots, trying to edge the little van to the end of the drop. They’d definitely spent more money than the little novelty thing was worth, but Jamie didn’t complain; she was as focused on winning the pin as Maya was.
When it eventually tumbled over the edge with a waterfall of two-pence pieces, the two of them cheered so loudly, the sound cut through all the arcade noise. Jamie picked Maya up, twirling her around the dingy carpet.
She put her down, stupid smiles on both their faces, and Maya bent to scoop up the winnings. It felt like they’d just won the lottery.
If the lottery was a prize worth no more than ￡2.50.
But, still, they’d won, and that counted for something.
Jamie threaded her fingers through Maya’s. “You hungry?”
They left the arcade and bought some chips—Jamie drowning hers in vinegar—then she led them down the steps and onto the beach. They slipped off their shoes and socks to walk barefoot across the sand as the deep blue waves lapped against the shore. Gulls cawed above them, the fresh salty air calling them closer to the sea. She chose a spot away from the few dog-walkers and produced a blanket from inside her rucksack, laying it on the sand. Collapsing onto it, she kicked grains all over the red fabric. How she’d already managed to get sand everywhere was beyond her. She glanced at Maya, expecting a comment, but she just laughed, taking a seat beside her.
They sat quietly for a few minutes, eating their chips and looking out at the sea. Jamie couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.
But the darkening sky confirmed the day was coming to its end. That thought sunk low into her stomach, taking hold. She glanced at Maya and found a faraway look on her face.
“Where’d you go?” Jamie asked. “What were you thinking about?”
Maya watched a seagull dip and dive over the waves and let out a sigh. “About how I don’t want this day to end.”
Jamie smiled at that and popped another chip into her mouth. “That’s funny. I was just thinking the same. But I’m glad we did this,” she said, once she’d finished chewing. “It’s nice to get away.” She rested her empty cone beside her and blew out a breath. “It’d be great if we could just bubble ourselves off, wouldn’t it? Make time stop for a moment. Stay in this infinite loop.”
“Arcades, chips, and the sea? What more could we want?”
“Exactly.” She turned to Maya, grinning. “Plus, a couple more of those kisses wouldn’t go amiss.”
“You’d be lucky, vinegar breath.”
Jamie cracked into laughter. “What an insult. That cuts deep. What’s worse, though, are those chips of yours. They look as dry as breadsticks.”
“You clearly have an unhealthy obsession with vinegar.”
She shrugged. “There are worse things to be addicted to. I’ll take it.”
Maya paused, the waves crashing in the distance. “Is that why you don’t drink?”
She shrugged again. “Nah. I just don’t like it. There’s not really a story there. Just personal preference. ”
“That’s fair enough.”
“What about you?”
The directness of her question seemed to catch Maya off-guard. “What? Why do I drink?”
“Yeah.”
Maya was quiet for a while, watching the waves sweep over the shore. Most of the beach had emptied now, apart from the gulls searching for any leftovers. “I guess I used to drink to forget.”
The ring of truth in her statement sounded sharp in the quiet, cool air around them.
“I thought whenever things got too much, it…helped,” she went on. “I don’t think it really did, though. It just made things worse.”
“What did you want to forget?” Jamie asked quietly.
“Everything.” Maya stopped eating her chips and propped the half-full cone between her legs. “Grandpa, my mother, this feeling that life is just constantly running away from me.” She swallowed. “Carly.”
That was the girl Leah had mentioned. Hearing another woman’s name leave Maya’s lips made Jamie’s heart plummet. But Maya didn’t open up often, and she wanted to be there for her. She reached her hand out to graze hers. “You wanna tell me about her?”
“She was my best friend. I thought we had something, but I don’t think she ever felt the same. It’s different now… Honestly, I think we just outgrew each other.”
Hearing Maya admit things were over with the pretty blonde electrified her, and she nodded, relief coating her head-to-toe. Jamie tried her hardest to swallow the smile threatening to stretch across her face. “It happens. It sucks, but yeah, it happens.”
Maya hummed, traced her fingers over Jamie’s skin. “What about you?” she asked. “What do you want to forget?”
Jamie should’ve been expecting the question to come back at her, but hearing the words came as a shock. She wanted to open up about what a terrible year she’d had, and why she’d left the Harriers, but finding the place to start was difficult. Jamie had tried, she really had, but Maya had so much going on with her own family, it felt wrong to bombard her with her own problems. The words just wouldn’t come out.
But Maya had been honest with her, and she wanted to return the favour. She owed her that and doubted she was going to get a better opportunity than the present. She chewed her lip and let out a short sigh. “Well—”
A blur of white bombed them from the sky, and they both screamed. Chips flew into the air, and a high-pitched squawk ripped through Jamie’s eardrums.
“What the fuck?”
They ducked, feathers and potatoes at war, until the seagull screeched, carrying away its cone prize onto the pier.
They both looked on with astonishment, as the reality of being robbed by a seagull settled in. Then they erupted in laughter, falling back on the blanket. Sand had got everywhere. In Jamie’s hair, her shoes, even her mouth, but she didn’t care. She lay on the blanket, and Maya joined her; her belly ached as the two of them tried to regain their breath.
It had been a perfect day. The idea of this trip had been for them both to get away from their problems for a while—to forget. She could hardly put a dampener on it now, could she?
Then she had an idea. The perfect way to get your brain to forget everything. She jumped up, sprinkling more sand everywhere. “Come on,” she announced.
Maya frowned. “What? No. I don’t want to go yet.”
“No, not that.” A grin pulled at her mouth. “Time to go swimming.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Jamie bent to rummage in her rucksack and pulled out two blue-striped towels. She tugged Maya up by the hand, her grin getting wider. “Come on, Skip. You know how good cold-water immersion is for the body. I quizzed you on it earlier. Increased blood flow and decreased metabolic activity—plus all the endorphins.”
“That might be true, but diving into a freezing cold English sea does not sound appealing right now.” Despite her reservations, she let Jamie pull her down the beach. “I haven’t got anything to swim in.”
Jamie just raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t either.”
Maya’s mouth quirked.
“I thought that might get your attention.”
Maya cursed as they got closer to the waves, the sand dampening under foot. They paused at the water’s edge, robbing seagulls circling above, taunting them. She let out a groan, but that only encouraged Jamie more.
She dropped Maya’s hand to pull her jumper and T-shirt over her head. A quick glance around confirmed the seafront was empty, save for a few faceless silhouettes in the distance, but that did little to calm her thundering heart. It wasn’t the first time she’d skinny-dipped, but doing it with Maya was a whole different type of thrill.
Her eyes met Maya’s in a challenge. “Come on, Skip. Don’t tell me you’re scared?”
Maya’s eyes narrowed, and she huffed out a sigh. “Fuck it.” She unzipped her coat, then removed her jumper and T-shirt. The wind chill immediately nipped at her skin, rippling goosebumps everywhere. Jamie’s belly fluttered. Her eyes were drawn to Maya’s perfect stomach, then her nipples as they pushed through the fabric of her bra.
“And the rest,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“You too.”
She nodded, holding Maya’s gaze before tearing her bra over her head and stepping out of her boxer briefs.
Fuck, that is cold.
Maya cursed Jamie—then herself, for following her instructions. Jamie just grinned, utterly ecstatic that she’d convinced her to strip completely bare on this random beach on the east coast of England. Their eyes met, and she grabbed Maya’s hand, heart flying higher than the birds in the sky above them.
They screamed together, then charged straight into the cold sea.