Chapter 12
DOMINIC
We’re woken after what must have been a very short sleep by a loud banging on the door. I have my arms full of soft, naked, warm Flavia and I cannot imagine a better place to be in this moment.
Although… as I wake up fully and gather my wits, I think how incredibly stupid to have jeopardised all sorts of things including our fledgeling friendship by sleeping together. However good it was.
And also… someone’s saying something outside. It’s Judith.
‘Sorry. I missed that?’ I call.
‘We’re setting off in the jeeps in just under ten minutes,’ she says.
Bugger. Bugger. We’ve obviously missed breakfast.
‘Coming.’ I look at the deeply asleep Flavia and wonder how she’s going to wake up and have a shower within ten minutes.
‘Flavia,’ I say quite loudly into her ear. Her arm rises a little and kind of bats at me and then she snuggles back into her pillows.
‘Time to go,’ I say, even more loudly.
Even though we should not be in bed together at all, I allow myself to kiss the base of her neck, as she partially opens her eyes, very slowly, looking adorably confused, before I repeat, ‘We’re setting off on the safari in basically five minutes.’
‘Mmmph.’ She flails her limbs a little, lifts her head, and then flops it back down onto the pillow, eyes closed.
Watching her, adoring her as she does that, I feel something shift inside me. Something that should not, in fact, have shifted. It’s uncomfortable and a little alarming.
I don’t have time to think about that, though; we need to go.
I kiss her cheek, very tenderly, because I can’t help myself, and then say, ‘We have to get up.’
And she repeats, ‘Mmmph.’
Resisting the urge to kiss her again, because time is ticking fast, I say, ‘Okay, you’re really going to have to haul yourself out of bed. We have to be in the jeep in five minutes. Don’t make me play “Dance Monkey” again.’
Flavia swears, thrashes her limbs around again for a bit, and then suddenly sits up and shakes her head, and says, ‘Oh. My. Goodness. Today is going to kill me. I need to sleep.’
And then she lies back down on the pillow and I just watch her, in full adoring-fool mode, until I suddenly realise that I’ve gone mad in more ways than one, and one of those ways is that we’re going to hold the entire safari up.
‘Up now,’ I holler in her ear.
Two minutes later, I’ve had the fastest shower known to man and am brushing my teeth with my eyes closed so that I can’t see Flavia in the shower behind me and get tempted to do anything else that we shouldn’t.
And only four minutes after that, we make it out of the room and to the lodge entrance.
‘I’ve never got ready so fast in my life.’ Flavia still has a wide-eyed, zombie-like, partially asleep look.
‘I’m a miracle worker,’ I say.
‘I know.’ She shoots me the naughtiest, most suggestive look, and I blink, suddenly very uncomfortably turned on again, just as Maxim entirely gratuitously – he knows very well who we all are and can easily count to twelve – holds a clipboard up and ticks our names off.
‘I brought you both some bagels and ham,’ Judith whispers as we join her and Mike in our jeep.
‘Oh my goodness, thank you.’ Flavia hugs her. ‘You’re an actual angel. I’m ravenous.’ And then she does another of those suggestive looks, just for me, and I’m blinking again.
We spend the rest of the day on the safari, with packed lunches provided by the lodge, and it’s as good as yesterday, even better in fact.
We travel further through the yellow grasses from the lodge, we get incredibly lucky with big five sightings, and we’ve bonded as a group in a way it never occurred to me would happen.
And, also, I’m riding high on having had – extremely surprisingly – hands down the best sex I’ve ever had (other than with Flavia that first time all those years ago).
And maybe I’m a little delirious from lack of sleep.
When we get back onto the bus for the return to Cape Town, it feels entirely natural to be sitting next to Flavia.
Better than natural: I’m pleased to be sitting next to her (notwithstanding the fact that we really shouldn’t have had sex).
It’s bizarre thinking back to how much she annoyed me on the flight.
I can’t really remember why I was being so intolerantly uptight about a little bit of mess and chatting.
We slot straight into our positions – Flavia with the window seat and me with the aisle one.
Flavia turns to me and says, ‘I love the way the road slices through the landscape. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the scenery on the way back,’ before falling asleep within literal seconds of our setting off.
I don’t expect to fall asleep easily myself, and reason that I should maybe spend some of the journey thinking about whether the two of us should talk about what happened this morning, or just essentially pretend it never happened – maybe our very brief conversation at the beginning was enough – only to wake up back in Cape Town outside the hotel.
I have my arms full of gorgeous, sleepy Flavia and I find myself cuddling her hard into me and kissing her cheek, before I realise that we must have moved together in our sleep and think what am I doing.
I carefully release her and gently nudge her awake.
Her eyes are unfocused initially. When she wakes properly and sees me, she gives me one of her just-for-me smiles, which I feel in the stomach like a sucker punch. It’s impossible not to return the smile.
As a result, we’re the last off the bus, because I’ve just been sitting there inanely smiling at Flavia.
Maxim sends us straight up to our rooms, with instructions to hurry back down within forty-five minutes for drinks here at the hotel before we head to the beach for a New Year’s Eve barbecue, or braai.
We travel up in the lift with Mike who, to my relief, doesn’t seem to have noticed anything new between Flavia and me, and, until we part outside his door, monologues on the subject of South African wine, requiring no input from either of us.
Once we’re inside our room, I purposely act in a very unromantic, business-like way.
‘You first in the bathroom?’ I ask.
Flavia considers for a moment, before suggesting, ‘Maybe you first? And then I can just take the rest of the time we have left. So I don’t feel guilty for taking ages and leaving you with no time.’
‘What if I take ages and leave you with no time?’
‘Then you will be forced to spend the evening with a woman who looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards and isn’t very pleased about it and blames you and will be plotting dire revenge the whole time.’
I laugh and wonder whether this entirely trivial conversation means that we aren’t going to discuss this morning.
I think I should probably show Flavia by my actions that I didn’t expect it to be more than one no-strings thing, and – obviously – discuss it if she would like to.
(Selfishly I hope she doesn’t; I can’t imagine either of us would find such a conversation fully comfortable.)
‘You know what?’ Flavia says. And walks across the room to me, her hips swaying, causing me in the space of about five seconds to entirely lose the ability to do anything other than stare.
‘What?’ I croak.
‘Maybe it would be quicker if we shared the bathroom like we did this morning.’
‘Oh.’ My voice is still a croak, and – now that she’s standing only inches away from me, with her head tilted to one side, hands clasped in front of her, doing her smile – I can barely remember my own name, let alone think rationally about anything else.
‘And…’ she continues, ‘if anything should happen, it isn’t going to matter, is it? I mean… if we’ve done it once, it isn’t going to make any difference to anything afterwards if we do it again, is it?’
‘Er, what?’ Still a croak.
‘Shower?’ She looks at me as if she can’t understand how anyone can be so slow. ‘Come on.’
I am unable to do anything except follow her into the bathroom.
‘On second thoughts,’ she says, ‘I’ll go first.’
And then, right in front of me, she slowly takes her top off, and then her shorts, and then turns round for me to undo her bra, her arms raised to hold her masses of hair out of the way.
My brain vaguely tells me that this might be unwise, but my hands aren’t listening, and I reach for the fastening.
And then, of course, I follow her as fast as I can into the shower.
* * *
When we emerge, we both dress hurriedly, and I help Flavia zip herself into her dress, which feels unnervingly couply.
I think I need to reiterate – in as un-crass a manner as possible – that I do not do relationships (especially with Flavia) and that this is just for now.
I’ll say it tomorrow, though. There’s no point ruining this evening.
New Year’s Eve in Cape Town should be amazing.
‘I just need to send my mum a couple of messages,’ Flavia says when she’s finished putting lipstick on.
As I watch her tuck the lipstick into a sequinned evening bag, I feel something inside me clench. She’s wonderful. Adorable. She deserves the best. I’ll definitely talk to her tomorrow. Just in case she didn’t mean it when she said this was all no-strings, and might be reading more into things.
So for now, I just say, ‘Yeah, I should check my messages too.’
There’s actually one from Flavia’s brother Vinny:
Mate, this is a bit of a weird one. I want to talk but I’m not sure whether it’s okay to phone you. Are you with Flavia?
I panic for a moment that he’s messaged me to tell me that something bad’s happened to their mum and that I’m going to have to impart bad news to Flavia, and then I look over at her and think it can’t be that bad, because she’s looking pretty normal now and I can’t believe she wouldn’t have heard something.
Especially since she just said she was going to text her mum.
So I stop panicking and tell Vinny:
Yes, am with Flavia.
He’s straight back with:
Okay then… Gonna have to write it.
And then he types for a very, very long time. Eventually, after genuinely minutes have passed (Flavia is still busy on her phone), his message arrives:
Basically… as I said… it’s a weird one. Mum hosted a lot of family last night.
She had a few glasses of champagne and got a little talkative.
Again, mate, sorry, this IS a weird one and I don’t want to be offensive in any way but you’ll understand that family has to come first. So Mum said…
hard to describe and apologies… but basically she and your mum thought it would be nice to engineer you and Flavia getting together.
In Mum’s words, both their grandmother-to-be biological clocks are ticking.
So that’s why they organised getting the two of you together on your Cape Town trip.
They fixed the raffle (as in they didn’t actually sell any tickets to anyone else).
So mate. To the point. Knowing you as I do, in the nicest possible way, I think that you two getting together would not be the best thing for Flavia.
She’s had a shitty year – Dad’s passing and her marriage break-up – and she doesn’t need – again in the nicest possible way – a meaningless hookup OR – obviously a lot worse – what she thinks is something longer term – with someone who famously does not commit.
So. Yeah. Sorry. You’re a very good friend, love you dearly, you know all of that.
But when it comes down to it I love my sister more.
So… not to be too much of an arse, or assume too much, but just saying if it DID cross your mind…
I’d say best not to go there. And if anything HAS happened I’d say write it off to New Year’s and walk away now.
Other than that, Happy New Year and see you for a kickaround and a pint soon.
I look at Flavia, smiling at something on her screen, and suddenly my mind is crowded with images of her – us – this morning, and just now in the shower.
I really, really, really like her, I realise all of a sudden. I really do. Very, very much. But finding someone attractive is not enough.
Vinny’s right. I wreck relationships. I never want to hurt Flavia. Or ruin things between our families and upset her mother. But mainly I don’t want to hurt Flavia.
Yeah. This is not going anywhere else. Because at some point it would stop and Flavia could get hurt, unless she really, really means the no-strings sex thing.
I look more closely at her. She’s holding her phone, kind of staring at it. If you had to guess, you’d say she’d just read a message that had slightly stunned her.
Did Vinny text her too?
And if he did, should we discuss it? Or just… pretend nothing ever happened today?
I really don’t know. I half wish we’d been a lot more sensible and half really cannot regret an experience as out-of-this-world fantastic as that.
Flavia obviously senses me looking at her and glances up at me.
I give her a half-smile and she does the same to me in return.
Then we just remain, looking at each other, half smiling, half not-smiling.
Talking about what happened and what should never happen again is not a conversation that I want to have.
But also… we have a long flight ahead of us tomorrow night, presumably sitting next to each other, and our families live in the same small village and Flavia now lives in the UK again so we will presumably bump into each other from time to time.
I ignore the shaft of misery I feel at the sudden image I have of bumping into her at some point in the future when she’s remarried and has a couple of little kids and I…
just keep on having failed short relationships.
We should say something, clear the air. Draw a line, establish that this really was just… just a no-strings holiday thing.
I open my mouth to begin, and then I close it again.
I can’t say anything now. There’s no point making the rest of our stay uncomfortable.