Chapter 27 #2
‘Whoa!’ I held my hand up in front of my face, shielding my eyes from what was happening down south.
This was the male version of a wet T-shirt contest and his itty-bitty pair of white underpants left nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to the imagination now.
No, scratch that – they left so little to the imagination that even if I hadn’t already seen his dick, I’d still know whether he was circumcised.
(He was, by the way.) And wow, was that fact glaringly obvious right now.
It was all, so, so obviously . . . lengthy, and girthy, and, and . . .
Cam followed my gaze downward. ‘Like what you see?’
‘Don’t you ever put that thing away?’ I said. I wasn’t about to join him in the water with that situation happening.
‘You could just stop looking,’ he suggested, making no attempt to hide it.
‘It’s hard not to look, Cam, when it’s so . . . so . . .’ I waved my arm in the general direction.
‘So what?’ He smiled.
‘You’re enjoying this far too much,’ I snapped back.
‘Go on, so what?’
Big, really kind of hot to look at, sort of begging to be touched . . .
I shook my head, hoping to physically fling those thoughts from it.
‘Why don’t you swim in trunks, like a normal person, rather than tight white underwear that goes completely transparent in the water?’
‘I haven’t brought all my clothes from the boat yet. I’ve been pretty busy today, you know.’
‘Just get back under the water or I’m not coming in.’
‘Fine, fine,’ he said. He started to slink back down, and the situation of a moment ago thankfully disappeared.
He looked at me expectantly, and that was when it hit me: to get in, I’d have to take off this dress.
Which meant standing in front of him in one of those ridiculous string bikinis Philly had convinced me to buy.
Not going to happen. It was one thing using it on the beach in a power play, but another thing entirely undressing here in such a quiet, intimate setting.
‘Turn around,’ I said quickly.
‘Why?’
‘I want to take my dress off, and I don’t want you staring at me like that.’
He burst out laughing. ‘Lizzy, you gave me, not to mention half of the Seychelles, a strip show the other day. Honestly, I almost thought of throwing some change at you.’
I folded my arms across my chest and gave him my best if-looks-could-kill glare. ‘That is wildly offensive. And for the record, I wasn’t stripping. I was just trying to—’
‘Get back at me,’ he interjected with an irritating and knowing smile plastered across his face.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cam, just turn around!
’ I huffed. I didn’t want to admit that he was right.
He knew exactly what I’d been trying to do, he always knew, and he would have done it back again too if he could have.
That was the thing about the two of us. Neither would ever let the other win.
It was this unspoken rule that had locked us into a war that had raged on for years.
Zero end in sight, it seemed, even after all this time apart.
But finally he turned around, and when he did, I yanked the dress off and dropped it to the sand, then rushed into the water as quickly as I could. I waded in knee-deep, then waist-deep – and then I sank fully into the water.
‘Can I turn around yet?’ Cam asked, his tone far too calm and casual to be trusted.
‘If you must.’ I’d made sure to keep a good space between us.
But as he turned, I realised with horror that the crystal-clear water was completely see-through and now also acting like a giant magnification device, which it really, really didn’t need to!
Cam glanced down into the water, first at me, then at himself.
‘At least we tried.’ He was smiling again. Always with the stupid smiles.
‘Well, it’s the first and the last time we try anything like this,’ I said. ‘After this job, we’ll never have to see each other again, thank God.’
‘Never?’
‘I’m sure you can’t wait to get rid of me either.’
‘Believe it or not, I’m actually quite enjoying this,’ he said, then he turned and started swimming deeper into the water. ‘And I think you are too.’
‘I am not enjoying this, Cam!’ I yelled after him.
‘Whatever.’ He tossed the word out lazily as he swam out further.
‘I can assure you,’ I started swimming after him, ‘I am not in any way, shape or form enjoying it.’
‘I think you are, Lizzy. Secretly I think you’re loving it. I think you’ve missed me.’
‘Oh my God,’ I half shouted. ‘Firstly, I have not missed you. And secondly, I’m not enjoying this. At all. I hate it. Why on earth would I miss you when you and I are just—’
‘Just what?’ He turned around quickly, sending droplets flying through the air.
‘Sworn enemies,’ I snapped. ‘Competitors.’
‘We’re not in college any more. We’re not competing with each other.’
I stood up and folded my arms, and the water sloshed around me. ‘We kind of are. Otherwise we wouldn’t have landed up trapped in a cupboard together, you in a chokehold and me—’
‘Dangling upside down from my body.’
‘Yes. That,’ I said flatly. I did not need reminding.
‘Former competitors turned teammates – my, how things have changed,’ Cam said.
‘Teammates? I would hardly call us a team. In fact, I would call this a very temporary alliance at best.’
He chuckled, and it pissed me off.
‘Stop laughing. That’s your problem – you’re always laughing. You never take anything seriously, you turn everything into a joke.’
‘I took us seriously,’ he said.
‘There was no us. How many times do I have to say it?’
‘There was an us, Lizzy. For years – whether we admitted it out loud or not – there was an us. And then for six hours there was definitely an us. Because what happened that night was very, very real. Maybe the most real thing that’s ever happened to me.’
His words hung in the air between us, and he looked at me as if he was expecting me to add to them.
I turned and swam deeper into the water.
I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to talk about the us that may or may not have existed for those years.
Or the us that absolutely had existed for one fleeting moment, six hours to be exact, until it had all shattered and burned.
‘That’s in the past,’ I said.
‘But at least you now know I didn’t cheat. Kind of tragic, don’t you think? Ending because of a misunderstanding.’
‘I didn’t say I believed you,’ I said, thinking back to his eyes and the tone of his voice on the dance floor, when for the first time, I might almost have believed him. Maybe.
‘But you don’t totally disbelieve me either.’
I nodded ever so slightly, but didn’t turn my face. Instead I looked out over the water, which was sitting by my collarbones now.
‘Why did you do it? Why did you even bother getting the map?’
I heard the water move behind me, felt the ripples lapping against my back and neck. Cam moved closer and I didn’t move away. He stopped next to me, our shoulders almost touching as we both faced the sea in front of us.
‘Because I knew I wasn’t going to beat you if I didn’t cheat. That’s how good you were, Lizzy. That’s how good you are.’
‘But you did beat me, and you said you didn’t cheat?’
‘I know. So fucking ironic, isn’t it? I didn’t need the map.
But I thought I did. And that one stupid decision changed everything.
’ He looked up at the sky as if trying to find something specific up there.
‘If I hadn’t done that, maybe . . . well, who knows what would’ve happened that morning.
’ His voice dipped low now, as if he was talking to himself.
‘We would have definitely gone for breakfast. I would’ve watched you eat five stacks of pancakes, ten sausages and half a pig’s worth of bacon, and then we would have gone back to my place, and that’s where you would have stayed. With me.’
I ignored that totally. ‘You know what the worst part of it was? The most unforgivable?’
I heard a massive sigh. ‘Who gave it to me. I’ve thought about it so many times over the years.’
‘The one person who wanted to see me fail. The one person who resented the fact I’d made it that far, the one person . . . All that time he’d been waiting for me to slip up and fail, and you gave it to him.’
‘I know. I know.’ In my periphery I could see he’d hung his head.
‘He came to me the day before and thrust it into my hand, saying nothing. I opened it – only for a second, I swear – and when I realised what it was, I put it away. I won’t lie, though, I did stay awake all night thinking about whether I should use it.
The worst part was that when he came up to me afterwards to congratulate me on my win, he winked at me. ’
I felt my blood boil and my skin itched with the injustice of it all.
‘If it makes you feel any better, he only thought I’d beaten you because I’d cheated. That’s how good he knew you were, better than he could ever be, and he resented you for that. If you think about it, it’s the ultimate compliment.’
‘Funny, it doesn’t feel like one.’
‘I should have thrown it straight back in his face the second I knew what it was. I probably should have gone to someone higher up and reported him. And I definitely shouldn’t have lain awake all night wondering if I should cheat you out of everything I knew you wanted.
And I’m so, so sorry for that. You have no idea how sorry I am. ’
So many emotions were running through me in that moment, I hardly knew which one to grab hold of.
‘You’re my idol, Lizzy.’
‘What?’ I turned and stared at him.
He laughed. ‘No, that came out wrong. I don’t have a shrine of you that I bow down to each morning.
I just mean . . .’ He turned to face me now, and those feelings inside me that I really, really didn’t like feeling started spinning around at tornado speed.
‘I admire you and respect you more than anyone I’ve ever known, even now, six years later. ’
I shook my head. ‘You’re wrong, though, Cam.’
‘Wrong about what?’