Chapter 11
FLAVIA
This morning’s sunrise is as spectacular as last night’s sunset.
It feels like a huge privilege to see it develop, in shades of purple and orange, gradually illuminating the vast plains beneath.
Along with the sun, everything else out here is waking up, including me: I was so tired when I got out of bed but now I’m almost fizzing with excitement for the day ahead.
We’re doing a bush walk before a late breakfast, after which we’ll go out in the jeep again.
Twenty-four hours ago, I’d have been petrified about the walk.
But now I’m thinking that, rationally, we wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t safe.
Plus, our guides are experienced. And, also, Dominic’s right next to me, and, weirdly, I have this sense that if Dominic’s there I’ll always be safe.
He’s just so… big, and solid, and sensible.
But not in a boring way. I glance up at him and see that he was already looking at me.
‘You okay?’ he whispers.
‘Yes. Thanks to you, I’ve gone fully rational.’
He leans his head closer to mine, and says, ‘Don’t go too rational. You’re perfect the way you are.’
I feel his breath against my cheek as he speaks, and his words are so lovely that it’s almost like they’ve physically caressed me.
‘Thank you,’ I manage to say, around a sudden lump in my throat. ‘You aren’t too bad yourself exactly the way you are.’
Somehow, his right hand finds my left hand, or maybe mine finds his, I’m not sure, but whichever way round it feels as though our hands were designed to fit together, and we begin to walk along with our fingers linked.
I love the handholding. Last night, I wondered if something might happen in the room together.
I wanted something to happen. I wanted a meaningless holiday fling to begin.
I had high hopes when Dominic suggested we share the bed, but – despite the way he’d been looking at me – it turned out that he clearly didn’t want anything to happen between us.
He put such an enormous pile of cushions down the middle of the bed we were practically in separate rooms, so I just gave in to my extreme tiredness and went straight to sleep.
He squeezes my hand and I return the squeeze and smile. Maybe this is as far as a holiday fling between us will go. I’ll be a little sexually frustrated if that turns out to be the case, I have to admit, but whatever. This is still lovely. As is Dominic.
It’s so odd. We seem to have so little in common. But, as it turns out, that doesn’t stop me loving his company.
‘Do you have time for hobbies?’ he suddenly asks me as we head out of the lodge’s grounds. Maybe his thoughts were running in the same direction as mine.
‘I love doing things,’ I tell him. ‘And I always have more I want to do. I don’t think I’d ever be bored.
Like, if I had extra time there’s so much more I’d do.
I’ve just joined a local netball club, which is training once a week and there are matches at the weekend.
And I’ve been trying to cook one completely new dish a fortnight.
And I knit scarves. A lot of scarves. And soft toys for the kids of family and friends. ’
‘That all sounds great.’ Dominic’s voice has changed, almost as though he’s feeling emotional about something. ‘Knitting. Do you have pictures of the scarves and toys?’
‘I actually do, and later, when we have time, I’ll show you, and you’ll regret asking the question, because there are a lot, and you’ll run out of platitudinal compliments very quickly.’
Dominic laughs. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
‘What about you? Hobbies?’
We’re following a track now, and we’re still lightly holding hands, which I’m loving.
‘I run quite a lot,’ he says, ‘probably four times a week. I go to the gym a lot less than I’d like but just enough to make my membership worthwhile. And I play five-a-side football once a week. And unlike you I don’t have that many ideas about else I’d do if I stopped work.’
‘I feel like you’d find stuff,’ I say confidently.
‘You just have to be open-minded about trying stuff and then almost anything can be interesting. After Jed and I separated—’ weird that I don’t mind referring to the split ‘—and I moved back home I felt a little adrift. I feel like you could have a similar feeling of lack of purpose and far too much time on your hands if you stopped work. I just said yes to absolutely everything, and both got busier quickly and enjoyed a lot of stuff I wouldn’t have expected to ever do.
I think spontaneity is a very good thing sometimes. ’
‘That’s wise,’ he says slowly.
I laugh. ‘It really isn’t.’
‘No, it is.’ He grips my hand more tightly for a moment, and I look up at him.
He makes a small movement in my direction, which actually makes me wonder whether he’s briefly tempted maybe to kiss me. I would definitely welcome that kiss.
But then he pulls his eyes away and looks over my head into the distance, and says, ‘This scenery. Stunning.’
‘Yeah,’ I agree.
And then we stop talking about ourselves and just watch and wonder.
We see springbok and impala and the trails of bigger animals.
And then, next to a watering hole, we see elephants.
They’re so majestic, we’re all completely awestruck, everyone mute.
When one of them suddenly turns and sprays water from its trunk in our direction, catching me right in the face, it’s an incredible moment of communing with nature at its best.
And it’s all made so much better – if that were possible – because I’m sharing it with Dominic.
And the others, of course, some of whom I’m already sure I’ll stay in touch with for a long time.
But especially Dominic. Every time something amazing happens, he’s right there beside me, reacting with the exact same awe that I experience.
Maybe we aren’t so opposite after all.
‘Ideal for the busy woman,’ he says after I’m sprayed by the elephant. ‘No need for a shower today now.’ Objectively that is not at all witty; it’s just very mild Dad-style humour at best. But maybe it’s Dominic’s delivery. Or something. Because it really tickles me.
He smiles at my giggles, and again I have the sense that maybe, if the others weren’t here, he’d be tempted to kiss me.
I really, really wish he would. My temptation levels – despite the fact that we’re on possibly the best walk of my life and I should be thinking only about that – are high. I’m remembering last night again. I think if he’d even twitched in my direction, I’d have launched myself at him.
My attention (or ninety per cent of it, anyway; I just cannot help being a little bit conscious of Dominic at all times) is diverted by our guide to three impala in the distance and I make a conscious effort to listen hard to what he says while watching the animals’ impossibly graceful run on their spindly legs.
When we’re told that it’s time to return for breakfast, I think we all feel that we could have carried on walking around the bush forever; it’s been amazing.
‘Breakfast will be ready in twenty-five minutes,’ Maxim, ever precise, informs us once we’re back in the lodge. ‘Time for you to freshen up or just relax. And then, of course, once you’re done with breakfast, we’ll head back out into the bush.’
Dominic and I – without discussing it – both head back towards our room.
‘I’m soooo tired.’ I’d like to crawl straight back into bed for a nap, but that would be a little weird in front of Dominic, so instead I flop down onto the sofa that was temporarily my bed last night.
‘That was a very early start,’ Dominic agrees. He comes and sits down on the other sofa.
I smile at him, and then stretch. I see him watch me and then swallow, hard. And, suddenly, I’m a lot less tired than I was.
I feel so close to Dominic right now, the way he’s helped me with my fears, how nice it is talking to him, laughing with him (even when we are apparently the only two people in the world who would find our conversation funny), experiencing this wonderful trip together.
And I really want him to kiss me.
He’s definitely thinking about it. I see him watching my mouth, and then my body, his eyes travelling slowly down. He’s fully focused, like he’s almost devouring me from a distance.
I sit up a little straighter, and moisten my lips with the tip of my tongue.
Dominic just watches me, leaning back on his sofa, hands in pockets, long legs stretched out in front of him.
I shift slightly forward towards the edge of the sofa and bite my lip.
Dominic makes a small, deep sound in the back of his throat.
And suddenly, I realise something. Despite his reputation as a serial heartbreaker, Dominic is, I think a very decent person.
And we have been forced to share a bedroom, which means that if he made a move on me, and I didn’t want him to, I could then feel very uncomfortable for the rest of the trip.
I don’t think Dominic is going to allow himself to go further than holding my hand. I think he has been tempted to kiss me.
I think I’m going to be very frustrated by the end of this trip.
Unless…
I don’t usually take the initiative with men, but Dominic’s made me feel braver full stop.
I uncurl my legs slowly and stand up. Dominic’s still leaning back on his sofa, watching me intently.
I move towards him. He continues to watch me, a small muscle in his jaw working but otherwise immobile.
Partly amazed at myself – I don’t think I’ve ever put myself out there like this before with anyone I wasn’t already in a relationship with, for fear of rejection – and partly absolutely certain that there’s no other course of action right now that I could possibly take, I climb slowly and carefully onto Dominic’s lap, straddling him.
His eyes are fixed on me the entire time, and he’s breathing a little harder.
‘Flavia,’ he says.
‘Dominic.’ I kind of like that we have this thing that we exchange names.
‘I…’ He groans as I shift a little against him. He’s definitely responding to that.
I place my hands on his shoulders and then run them round the back of his neck.
‘You?’ I ask.
‘Are you sure this is wise?’
I let go of his neck immediately, suddenly horrified at myself.
Consent should obviously go both ways. Fuck.
What was I thinking? Just throwing myself at him like that.
Making it almost impossible for him to say no.
How utterly stupid of me. In the same way that he shouldn’t make things uncomfortable for me, I shouldn’t make them uncomfortable for him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, beginning to clamber off, almost falling onto the floor in my haste.
He grasps my wrist.
‘Don’t apologise,’ he says hoarsely. ‘Please don’t think that I don’t – really quite desperately – want this.’
‘Really?’ My voice has gone pathetically small from the humiliation of rejection.
‘Of course I do.’
I’m not meeting his eye now.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he continues. ‘And funny. And kind. And did I mention incredibly sexy? Anyone who wouldn’t want… this… with you is frankly crazy.’
My eyes fly back to his face, to see that he’s still gazing at me with that intensity he was showing before, but now there’s also concern in his expression.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeat. ‘I shouldn’t have put you in this position.’
‘Do. Not. Apologise,’ he almost growls. And then he lifts me so that I’m back on his lap. Hands on my hips, he adjusts me so that I’m against him, and then he leans his head up to meet mine and brushes his lips against mine.
I think I moan a little, I’m not sure, and then he mutters something unintelligible deep in his throat, before sliding one arm round my waist and pushing his other hand into my hair and kissing me hard, urgently, passionately.
My hands are gripping his shoulders, and his are holding me tight against him, and I can’t tell where my heartbeat ends and his begins, but I do know that all my senses, all my nerve ends, are on fire.
When he pulls his head away, I’m bereft.
I move to kiss him – emboldened again – but he shakes his head.
‘We shouldn’t,’ he says. ‘Mistake. That’s what I meant to say before. That we shouldn’t, not that I don’t want to. Because I think you can tell that I really, really want to.’
‘We already have kissed,’ I point out, feeling like suddenly it’s me who’s the rational voice of sanity, not him.
I don’t care why he thinks it’s a mistake, I just want to point out that if it is a mistake, we’ve already just made it, so we might as well capitalise on it.
‘So, really, it won’t make any difference if we kiss a little more.
Like… it’s kissing at all that’s the big thing.
Once we’ve kissed once, it really doesn’t matter if we kiss for a bit longer.
’ I lean towards him and nip his lower lip very gently with my teeth and he groans, hesitates for a moment, and then very suddenly uses his hands on my hips again to adjust me hard on his lap, before pulling me in again with one hand to kiss me properly again.
We kiss and kiss and kiss. It’s amazing.
But it isn’t enough. I love feeling the hard planes of Dominic’s chest through the fabric of his T-shirt but I want to feel his skin against my hands, feel even more connection. I push my hands up under his T-shirt and he groans.
‘Maybe a mistake,’ he says again. ‘I don’t think mutual no-strings really exists.’
‘Mmm,’ I say. ‘It totally can exist.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Very, very sure,’ I say, and then gasp as he lifts my own top.
A few deliciously filled minutes later, he carries me over to the bed and we put it to the exact use it must have been made for, and it’s truly spectacular.