Page 59 of Girls Just Want to Have Sun

My voice echoes off the cave walls as I float with my ears submerged, listening to the vibrations of sea life humming through the water. I do believe I’m being in and of the moment. My busy mind is cleared of thought as I focus on each breath, my chest swelling before I exhale slowly. I am calm. I am thankful. I am going to try and be more accepting. I must not harbour this resentment of how my motherless life has turned out, as it will only hold me back.

A niggling feeling gnaws at my serenity as thoughts of the gig later this evening and performing to the Benidorm festival crowd flood into my mind. Nancy has not been backwards in coming forward. The main thing is to keep her happy. I will make sure to impress. I have yet to get a playlist and backing tracks together, never mind quickly learning some of Ed Sheeran’s hits. It will take some time to sort out and do a run-through. Nerves get the better of me just thinking about Matteo coming to hear me and me making a mess of it.

As though he has read my thoughts, he pops up right next to me, causing me to suddenly lose my stride, my arms flapping. Matteo grabs me firmly by the life jacket. We stare at each other for a few moments.

‘Sorry to startle you like that. Fish whispering or whatever it was you were doing,’ he says.

‘Vocal warm-ups,’ I splutter, focusing on the light bouncing off the sea, the rocks, anywhere but his glistening skin as droplets of water drip tantalisingly down his neck. ‘I was doing vocal warm-ups for tonight.’

I brace myself for an eye roll.He doesn’t need any further proof that I’m mental.

‘Why? What were you doing?’ I ask.

Swimming, Connie. He was swimming.

‘I was looking for lonely, bitter women with the ability to cope adequately,’ he says. ‘I hear the caves are full of them.’

Cheeky fecker.

Matteo laughs, raking his gaze from my eyes slowly down to my lips, which, as if on command, part ever so slightly. Suddenly there is an unmistakable charged current flying between us. I must give him a signal of some sort because he leans towards me and then thinks better of it and stops. We are mere centimetres apart.

‘You are very cheeky. You should be punished,’ I purr, sounding like a dominatrix.

Where is this coming from? I should hop on a plane to Amsterdam. I could make a fortune.

His eyebrows raise a fraction. He likes it. Time feels as though it is standing still. Our mouths are hovering dangerously close together and the air between us is crackling with unresolved sexual tension, as far as I’m concerned anyway. He may well be thinking of doing his taxes, getting a puppy or whathe’s going to have for tea. When it comes to men, especially this man, I’m lost at sea, quite literally.

He does not move a muscle, so neither do I. I briefly worry if the attraction is all one-sided. As he tilts his head, I can see his mind racing to make sense of me. He’s clearly unsure. It could be an opportunity for this strong, independent woman to take the lead. I should lean in and place a salty kiss gently on his lips, but I can’t. The rejection would be crushing. Snippets of all the times I’ve humiliated myself in front of him sap my confidence. Matteo will have to make the first move. My eyes drill into his, willing him to do it.

Just as I think he’s about to move in, I hear my name being called.

‘Cenicienta!’ Nacho is bobbing in the water just outside the cave. ‘Cenicienta, come! Come! We go back to shore now.’

‘Your date is calling for you, Cinderella,’ Matteo says. ‘The name suits you,’ he says before he swims away from me, slicing through the water like he’s part dolphin.

Date? Why would he think…Oh.

I swim over to the jet ski. Matteo hauls me up onto it and straight into the driver’s seat. I immediately twist round.

‘There’s no date. We’re not on a date,’ I say. My heaving chest causes the life jacket to swell. My boobs are almost touching my chin. ‘There have been no dates. It’s very, very platonic. Nacho is like my brother.’

‘Oh?’

‘Like my newly discovered, foreign, given-up-for-adoption brother. And this excursion would be like meeting for the first time. Or a second time, if the first was arranged by the agency and we met for coffee. Then we decided to meet again and do something more fun.’

There’s something very wrong with me.

Matteo’s eyes give nothing away in the face of such madness. Maybe he has come across my kind before.

‘So, he’s like the brother you never knew you had?’

‘Yes.’

As if that makes any sense.

My whole body grows tense as he leans in to cover my hands with his, the muscles on his arms rippling every time he pulls the grips on the handles towards him. I lean back ever so slightly, pressing against him. I feel the length of his body against mine and experience pangs of wild, out-of-control lust.

It is almost like I’m dreaming this whole thing. In fact, I might be. It is bizarre, after all, isn’t it? It’s not like my dull, boring, grey life has suddenly become a fairy tale in full Disney technicolour, with an evil queen and handsome princes fighting for my attention, in some beautiful far-off land…

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