Chapter 27
My day of aesthetic torture finally came to an end.
I’d sent Philly photos throughout the horrific ordeal, of my nails being done and my hair highlighted, and then some selfies as I modelled several pairs of revolting-looking sunglasses.
She’d found it wildly amusing, my ‘Cinderella moment’.
I, however, didn’t see the humour in it.
The day had dragged on at a glacial pace, and by the time I got back to the hotel, it was already five o’clock.
The shopping had been on another island, over an hour’s boat ride away.
An entire day wasted on hair and nails, and who knew it took so long to put false lashes on!
And people did this voluntarily? Insanity. Of the highest order.
But as I walked through the hotel lobby draped in my newly acquired tight white dress, gold sandals and large designer sunglasses, something suddenly became glaringly obvious to me.
People treated you differently when you looked like this.
Heads turned. Several men glanced up at me and smiled.
The women took notice too. Two staff members greeted me with a cheerful ‘Good afternoon, ma’am.
Is there anything I can do to help you?’ Their politeness was jarring, because none of them had spoken to me like that since I’d been here.
Even the gardeners cutting the hedges stopped working and created a path for me to pass, picking the leaves off the floor as I went – God forbid my sandal touch any kind of organic matter.
It was as if I was walking a red carpet, and the absurdity of the situation suddenly became all too clear.
I’d had to squeeze myself into a second-skin dress, be polished, glossed, highlighted, fake-lashed and varnished to be seen in a different light.
Looking like this made me more valuable in some way, more worthy of eye contact, leaf-free paths, smiles and courtesy.
Sad, really.
I turned onto the now very familiar path that led to my villa, and just as I was about to turn the last corner—
‘Cam!’ I’d nearly slammed straight into him. ‘What the hell are you doing? You can’t just emerge from the bushes like that.’
‘Li . . .’ He stared at me.
‘Li . . . what?’
‘I . . . I . . .’ It looked like he was trying to talk, but no sounds were coming out of his now very open mouth.
‘What the hell, Cam?’ I clicked my fingers in front of his face, which seemed to do the trick, because he finally closed his mouth.
But that was when I became aware of what his eyes were doing.
They were wide, deer-in-the-headlights wide, and he looked shocked as he dragged them over me: head to toe, head to toe and back up again.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know I look like a clown. Okay! You can just say it. But in my defence, this is—’
‘No!’ The word came out fast and firm.
‘No what?’ I asked when several seconds had passed and he still hadn’t managed to get a full coherent sentence to pass his lips.
He blinked. Or did he have something in his eye? I hadn’t seen him blink like that before. And then his eyes did another full scan of my body. ‘You look . . . I mean . . .’
I crossed my arms and leaned away from him, finally understanding what was going on here. ‘Seriously? Seriously, Cam?’
He blinked more rapidly, like he was trying to send me a Morse code message.
‘Not you too, Cam. What is this? I go blonder, slap on some nail polish and a dress like this’ – I pulled at the dress, which was sticking to my body – ‘and suddenly you’re . . . what, rapid-blinking?’
He seemed to suddenly snap out of the rapid-blink haze, quickly shaking his head and raising his hands.
‘You’re right. That was very . . . uh . .
.’ He was clearly struggling for words, and I was about to give him a few choice ones, like pathetic, perhaps misogynistic or .
. . I don’t know, disappointing. But he spoke again before I could.
‘Actually no,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to apologise for my reaction. It would be impossible not to react like this . . . Just look at you.’
I felt something happen in the pit of my stomach. So he only saw me in that way when I was dressed like this. Did that mean that when I was my normal self, he reacted differently? How did I want him to react? Why did I suddenly care? And why was my brain going round and round with Cam thoughts and—
‘Nah,’ he said suddenly, bringing my Cam carousel to a stop.
‘Nah what?’
‘I’m over it.’
‘Over what?’
‘Over this whole new look you have going on.’ He gestured up and down my body. ‘I think I was just caught up in the initial shock of it all.’
That feeling in my stomach was back. Please don’t tell me this meant that I actually did care what he thought about the way I looked? And if it did, I wanted none of that showing. So I threw my shoulders back and set off down the path again. ‘Good, I’m glad you’re not looking at me like that and—’
‘I prefer you the way you normally are.’ His words caused my feet to stop working, despite me wanting them to. ‘You always look good, no matter what you wear.’
‘Really?’ I turned around and eyed him suspiciously.
‘Yes. You could wear a hessian sack and still look amazing.’
‘Oh please!’ I chuckled, waiting for the punchline.
The witty, sarcastic one that would annihilate all the words he’d just spoken, which would then cause me to snap back with something equally sarcastic and biting about the way he looked, which would cause him to do the same, and so on and so forth.
I raised my brows at him. ‘And?’
‘And what?’
I rolled my eyes, as if he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. ‘What, I’d look amazing if the hessian sack was over my head, or I’d look good in my own clothes if hobo chic was a thing, or . . . I don’t know, Cam, I’m running out of lame jabs that you could possibly throw at me.’
But he didn’t smile, and he didn’t throw any jabs. Instead, he took a step forward, which made me want to step back but also forward at the same time.
‘No jab. No sarcastic dig, witty banter, teasing, mocking . . . Just facts, Lizzy. Just facts.’ And then he took another step closer.
I hesitated for a moment before I did the only thing I knew how to do in moments like this: I turned and walked away from him, straight back to my villa.
I could hear his footsteps behind me the entire time, like my little shadow.
I was grateful that he had decided to drop our previous conversation, though.
We walked in silence for a while, until he decided to break it.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Well what?’
‘You coming for an evening dip?’
‘Nope,’ I said quickly.
‘You’ll regret it if you don’t. Cools you right down, very refreshing.’
I turned and looked at the sea, and then back at Cam.
It did look inviting. I was hot and sweaty and my day had not been the most enjoyable, and that blue water did look like it could wash a lot of that away.
A sweat bead dislodged itself from my hairline and trickled down my nose, as if my body was telling me what to do, demanding I cool it down.
‘Okay, fine, I’m coming,’ I said, wondering whether this was something I was going to regret.
Ten minutes later, I was on the beach, fluffy towel over my shoulder.
Why were hotel towels always so much better than home towels?
The setting sun was causing the sea to look like molten gold, and then there was Cam, bobbing in the water with only his shoulders sticking out.
The last of the sun suddenly decided to conspire against me, shining a traitorous golden beam down on him, accentuating the lines of his muscular shoulders.
I rolled my eyes. Yup, definitely going to regret this.
The sand was still warm under my feet, and it pushed between my toes as I walked.
I stopped when I reached the water’s edge and looked down at the waves lapping against my neon-yellow toenails.
I rolled my eyes again. But the water was cool, so refreshing.
As if sensing my presence, Cam turned around and looked at me.
Our eyes locked, and then slowly he started to stand up.
Now I went for an eye-roll hat-trick, because seriously . . . seriously?
What kind of sick sense of humour did the gods of genetics have when they created this man rising up in front of me now? And why, oh why, did this man also have to move in slow motion whenever his clothes were off?
The water cascaded down his body in little rivulets that slipped between the grooves of his muscles.
Cue eye-roll number four. It zigzagged around the sculpted shapes as if it had been the very thing that had made them, like stones carved by a river over millennia.
Even the sound of it falling back down into the sea was exaggerated, like one of those maddeningly soothing ASMR videos. For heaven’s sake!
The whole thing was ridiculous. Did he know what he looked like right now?
Of course he did. That smug smile on his face as he emerged from the water like a merman god told me everything I needed to know.
He knew exactly what he looked like and what he was doing.
Cam had never lacked self-confidence. It was something he had in abundance.
Why did such a deeply aggravating, infuriating, maddening man have to be so ridiculously good-looking?
It felt grossly unfair. He walked towards me, his abs emerging from the water, then the tops of his hips, and then . . .