Chapter 14
DOMINIC
Seize the day. Be spontaneous. Live life.
Now that I’ve committed to this, I’m doing it. I unbutton my shirt, take it off and then fold it and place it several feet back from the edge of the water, on a rock, so that there should be no possibility of it getting wet.
Flavia lifts her eyebrows again, and I say, ‘Okay, no, I’m sorry, there’s seizing the day and there’s being stupid. I am not walking back to the hotel naked, so I want my clothes to be dry.’
‘You do actually make a fair point,’ she says thoughtfully, before reaching behind her to unbutton her dress. She wriggles out of it, before walking over to the rock in her underwear and placing the dress on top of my shirt.
She looks gorgeous. Better than gorgeous.
Possibly the sexiest sight I’ve ever seen.
And, oh my God, she’s unhooking her bra now and taking it off.
And, yes, I’ve seen her naked. Obviously.
Quite a lot today. We had a shower together earlier.
But we were busy at that point, having sex.
This feels much more… intimate in a way.
Then we were caught up in the heat of the moment and I didn’t have time to just look, and appreciate.
Now, she’s undressed in front of me in a way that indicates that she fully trusts me.
I mean, very few people will undress in front of just anyone, and going by our conversation about strippers a couple of days ago, Flavia is not one of those people.
She places her bra on top of her dress and then stands and looks at me with her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowed.
‘Are you having second thoughts?’ she asks.
‘No.’ I don’t really want to tell her that I was distracted by looking at her. Really distracted.
‘Good,’ she says, and places a thumb inside the band of her pants, before beginning to remove them.
I should really catch up. I take my trousers off, before realising that this is actually now really embarrassing, because it’s quite obvious right now how much my body likes hers.
I do the only thing I can do at this point, which is whip my boxers off, chuck them generally in the direction of the rock, and sprint towards the water.
Once I’m waist-height in the water, I turn round, to see Flavia, naked, running towards the water herself. I honestly can’t imagine anything that I would more enjoy seeing.
‘It’s cold,’ she shrieks as the water reaches her knees. ‘How is that possible?’
‘Coward,’ I say, as she slows her walk right down.
‘I am a coward,’ she agrees. ‘It’s freezing.’
‘It isn’t that cold, and also you’ll warm up as soon as you’re in properly.’
When she joins me, I really want to take her in my arms. I also, though, think that, now we’re doing this, we should do it properly, and actually swim.
‘Swim to that rock?’ I suggest, pointing a little way along from us, parallel to the beach. I swim quite a lot but I don’t know how strong a swimmer Flavia is, and I also don’t know the currents here, so I think we should be sensible and stay close to the shore.
Flavia nods and strikes out in a very strong front crawl, and I mentally bollock myself for having assumed that someone who doesn’t like running might not be a great swimmer.
It’s magical swimming naked in the moonlight. Truly glorious.
‘Everyone should do this,’ I say when we’ve reached the rock and are holding on to it.
‘Are you saying I was right?’
I move my hold on the rock so that I have one arm either side of her, and kiss her full on the mouth.
‘I’m beginning to think you’re always right,’ I tell her between deep, passionate kisses.
‘Mmm.’ She wriggles, and I groan, and lift her, and then somehow her legs are round my waist, and then, obviously, because it was always going to happen, we make messy, chaotic, outdoor love.
And, God, I think, when we’re lying on the rock in each other’s arms, still gasping, for me that was making love. It wasn’t just having sex.
I think I fell in love with Flavia all those years ago, and I think I still love her.
And because I love her… I need to think what’s right for her, not me.
She’s shivering, I notice.
‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘You’re getting cold. Let’s go and join the party again, warm up.’
I’m going to allow myself the rest of tonight before I think properly about what I should do. I do actually know, I suppose, and I don’t want to acknowledge it now to myself.
We swim back, side by side, and with every stroke we do together, I realise more and more how much I love her.
When you love someone, you have to put what’s right for them ahead of what might make you happy in the short term. I need to remember that.
* * *
When we get back to the beach, we discover that the tide has come in a little while we were in the sea, and my idea of leaving our clothes on a rock was a very good one. Except…
‘Dominic.’ Flavia’s pointing and trying not to laugh.
My trunks are floating away from us. Oh, yes. I just chucked them and ran.
‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘So much for spontaneity.’
‘You’re a novice. You’ll learn how to do it right.’ Flavia is properly giggling now.
We’re still in the water.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I’m going for it. I’m suddenly feeling a lot less brave about the whole naked thing.
’ She sprints out of the water and, with her back to the crowds, which gives me an excellent full-frontal view, she shakes herself and then pulls her pants onto her wet body, before putting her bra on and reaching for her dress.
I’m still in the water, now holding my sodden trunks.
‘Are you going wet pants on or off?’ Flavia asks.
‘I have literally never gone commando before,’ I say. ‘And I really don’t want to start.’
‘Looks like you’re going to have a super-wet bottom then.’ Flavia starts giggling again. ‘Or, wear your wet pants and your shirt, and just carry your trousers.’ She gestures towards the group. ‘There’s a lot of undressing going on. And a lot of people wearing some properly outrageous outfits.’
And that’s what I do.
When, hands linked, me with my trousers over my shoulder, we rejoin the main group, they’re all doing the conga. We join in at the end, with me holding on to Flavia’s hips, and it is of course a lot of fun.
The conga goes on for a long time – these people are very focused congo-ers – but eventually, as all congas do, it breaks up as the music changes, and then everyone starts dancing wherever they are at that point.
Flavia and I dance together for I don’t know how long. Through ballads, high tempo, Latin, rap, you name it, we just dance and dance, sometimes laughing (Gangnam together is a lot of fun), sometimes in each other’s arms.
Eventually, Flavia begins to yawn and I suggest that we return to the hotel, and we begin to weave our way back along the beach.
Our conversation as we walk is mundane, comfortable stuff – about the views, the architecture that we see, comments on things that happened with our dinner and other people during the evening – the kind of chat people who know each other very well, and are very at ease with each other, have.
As we walk, I purposely push away any thoughts about the night ahead. I think – I imagine – we will spend the night very much together.
I think… I might be falling irrevocably in love with Flavia.
And I know that I am not the right person for her. Maybe no-one is right now: she’s had a huge year and maybe she needs a break from relationships. Maybe she was very serious when she said that this was just about no-strings sex.
I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it tonight.
We begin kissing in the lift, and nearly fall out of the doors when they open on our floor. We kiss all the way along the corridor until we stumble into our room and over to the bed, where we make glorious, glorious love.
I love her. And I don’t want to hurt her.
* * *
I’m woken in the morning by the sun streaming right onto our pillows because we didn’t close the curtains last night.
Flavia is sound, sound asleep, in her very Flavia way, spooned in my arms amid a lot of bed linen chaos.
I move slightly, because her (beautiful) curls are tickling my chin. She stirs and then resumes her sleep.
I allow myself to just lie there, hugging her into me. Her softness feels as though it was made exactly to match my body; she fits perfectly against me.
I really want to kiss her awake, but, also, it’s only 8 a.m. and we can’t have gone to sleep until well after five and don’t need to be up for a while, and she’s a woman who definitely likes her sleep, so it would be selfish.
And, actually, it’s very nice just lying like this.
A little later, I reawaken, to the noise of a ringing phone, and realise that I must – very unusually – have gone back to sleep.
We both do a bit of arm flailing trying to locate the phone. I get there first, mainly because I wake up a lot faster than Flavia does.
It’s Maxim calling us on our room phone to let us know that checkout is in half an hour and that we’ve missed breakfast.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Flavia sits bolt upright – which I very much enjoy because she is stark naked and seems to have forgotten that fact – before noticing the nakedness and grabbing sheets and pulling them around herself.
‘Half an hour is not long. We’re going to struggle to have two showers and get packed and out of here. ’
‘Obvious solution,’ I point out.
‘You’re right.’ One of her gorgeous smiles begins to spread across her face. She drops her sheets, and gets languidly out of bed, before strolling completely naked across the room to the bathroom.
I am there with her very quickly.
We do not make it down to the foyer within half an hour, but we do make it out of our room within just over forty-five minutes, which frankly is a miracle, given what we did in the shower (again).
As we leave the room, we hear the sound of a little commotion coming from just inside Mike’s room, and then Judith emerges.
‘Oh!’ she gasps as she walks slap bang into me.
‘Good morning,’ I say.
‘Judith!’ says Flavia.
‘Hello, good morning, I was just checking that Mike had packed everything.’ And then she literally runs in the direction of the lift and dives inside it.
‘Would you say Judith is wearing the same dress that she wore last night?’ I whisper to Flavia. I don’t tend to check out women’s clothing that much but her dress is very bright orange and yellow in foot-large squares, which makes a bigger impression on you than most clothing.
‘Definitely.’ Flavia giggles and then says, ‘Although…’
‘Yeah, who are we to comment,’ I agree.
‘But…’ Flavia pauses and then obviously thinks better of what she was going to say. I’m guessing that’s because her observation might have been applicable to us too.
I’m not sure I want to know her thoughts right now. I need to work out my own first.
We say nothing else and just carry on wheeling our cases towards the lift.
When the doors close behind us, I’m struck by the thought that this is the beginning of the end of our trip.
I turn to Flavia just as she also turns towards me, and suddenly we’re kissing again, like there’s no tomorrow.
Maybe that’s because there is no tomorrow for us.