Page 33 of Enemies to Lovers

Adonis seems pleased that my humour translates. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘They’ll bring it to us.’

We cross over the small road that we arrived on, to the sand of the beach, where there’s a handful of tables set up under sun-brollies, all the seats facing the water. We sit, and the food comes quickly: meat seasoned to perfection, stuffed into fresh and fluffy pitta bread. It’s served with tomatoes, onions, fried potatoes and the zingiest tzatziki I’ve ever tasted. We have tiny thimbles of chilled white wine, and I’ve got no idea what we talk about. We don’t, really. Adonis alternates between watching the boats out on the sea-line and watching me eat, which I do with abandon. It’s in my blood not to care about eating daintily or withholding my enthusiasm: I go for it, deep-throating the deliciousness with unladylike gusto. I suppose I should be trying a bit harder to be good company, but I can tell Adonis doesn’t need that from me. It’s funny how little we say to each other – how neither of us feels the need to fill the silence.

I lick sauce from my fingers and use a napkin to get at some runaway oil down my elbow. Side-by-side we sit, and if there’s one thing I keep coming back to on the trip, it’s how consistently amazing I feel by the water.Thisis holiday: great food, a great view, a little lunchtime wine. And yes, a handsome man (with a man-bun … I still can’t fully get past that).

When we’re done and our plates are cleared, Adonis asks if I want to go to the waterfall, and I’m so chilled, so sated, sohappy, that there’s only one response.

‘Hell, yeah!’ I tell him, in the style I imagine Holiday Flo most suits, and this time it’s me who takeshishand.

The waterfall is even further down the coastal path, and it is beautiful – magical, even – hidden through a jumble of forest that suddenly gives way to a huge clearing, with a waterfall that’s about ten feet high and seems to come from the sky somehow, surrounded by bundles of rock that have been smoothed by the passage of time. There’s nobody else there. We are alone.

‘Here,’ says Adonis, steering me towards a rock big enough and flat enough for two people to spread out comfortably, where he pulls out the wine left over from lunch and two plastic cups, and we ‘Cheers’ and settle into the show that Mother Nature is putting on.

‘I can’t believe you get to live here,’ I tell him. ‘This is so peaceful.’

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘But of course nobody enjoys where they are from.’

‘They don’t?’ I reply, before I recognise the truth in what he says.

‘I’d like to leave here,’ he tells me. ‘Work in Athens,or maybe Lisbon. I have heard many good things about Lisbon from my cousin who is there.’

‘Well, if that’s what you want, I am sure you’ll make it happen,’ I tell him. ‘May the odds be ever in your favour.’

He smiles. ‘And what do you want, Flo?’ he asks, leaning in slightly.

‘I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘Inner peace?’

‘You don’t have inner peace?’

‘Absolutely zero,’ I say, and then, ‘Whoa. Actually, that’s the most honest thing I’ve said out loud in ages. You make it easy to tell the truth.’

He nods. ‘You don’t have people to tell the truth to?’ he asks.

I shake my head. ‘Not really,’ I say. ‘I had a … thing, a while back. A breakdown, really. And once you lose it like that, people are always looking for signs that you’re going to lose it again. So you kind of … stop saying things that are too honest. Don’t want to scare anyone.’

‘What happened?’ he asks, and the way he looks at me – the way I am here, now – I suddenlyyearnto unburden myself, to say everything that’s been building up in me, so that I don’t have to be weighed down by it any more.

‘Everything?’ I offer, after a beat. ‘I was doing my PhD, and by the second year I was … paralysed with dread, totally overwhelmed. And one morning I just couldn’t go into the library. I couldn’t physically get myfeet to move, it was like a net blocking me from getting to the door and … I had to go home. And I got back to my flat and locked myself in my room, and I cried and cried and cried. And once that happened, I couldn’t stop. I was on the verge of tears at every moment of every day. I lived and breathed inferiority. I felt ugly – I covered my mirror in my room with a scarf, so I didn’t have to see myself. I was convinced people were talking about me, gossiping whenever I left the room about what a terrible person I am, so I stopped going out, to spare people the drama of having to be near me. And it all made me feel so stupid and immature. I kept thinking: why can’t I be like everyone else – all those girls who were more like grown women, sophisticated and moving through life with such certainty and ease.

‘I just got so defeated by … life. I stopped being able to meet deadlines or appointments. Time stopped being normal: minutes felt like hours, but whole days could go by and I wouldn’t even have realised. By the time the uni called my parents, I was already pretty bad. They took me to the doctor and he diagnosed burnout, but it wasn’t that. I kept getting worse and eventually I had to be hospitalised, where they sedated me and let me rest, and then I was allowed back to uni under the supervision of a therapist, who helped me remember how to put one foot in front of the other, you know? Take it one day at a time?’

‘And what about now?’ Adonis asks. ‘How are you now?’

I take a deep breath. ‘It’s so funny,’ I say. ‘In England we’re always asking people how they are, but I don’t think anyone ever answers honestly.’

‘You can be honest with me,’ Adonis says.

‘I’m … better. I spend a lot of time reading, because things feel safe in books. I don’t feel very brave. My family teases me for going back to university to teach, but I have no idea how to branch out and do anything different, you know? I have this sort of … good-girl syndrome, where I want to be liked and approved of. And I know it’s a fruitless endeavour, but I still try. And if I can’t be a good girl, I just do nothing. Because I don’t want to fuck up. And rejection – oh my god, rejection is a big thing for me. If I get even a whiff of it, I struggle so much. I mean, I’m better than I was, but … it takes a lot for me not to spiral. I feel like I have to work twenty times harder than the average person to keep neutral, if that makes sense.’

‘I think you’re brave,’ Adonis says. ‘It sounds like you won’t believe me, but … you are not alone.’

‘Thank you,’ I tell him. I can’t believe I’ve given him such a monologue. I’m grateful to be able to put all these feelings somewhere. I’ve been carrying them for so long that I’m tired. They’re heavy. And boring, too. I’m sick of being so selfish, so concerned with my own self. ‘You’re a good listener,’ I say. ‘Thank you. I’m sure you thought I might be better company than this.’

‘You are wonderful company,’ he tells me. ‘Please, don’t worry.’

I decide to believe him. At the very least, maybe I’m making him feel better about his life.

‘Do you bring many girls here?’ I ask him. I don’t know where it comes from – but the way he’s drinking his wine, laid out on the rock, he looks so very much at ease, like he’s here all the time.

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