Page 5 of Enemies to Lovers

‘Stick left,’ I tell him, quite bossily, to be honest. But I figure it’s like commanding a dog: it’s all in the tone. You have to act like you’re in control. ‘And I’ll stick right.’

Jamie flares his nostrils. ‘Always calling the shots, aren’t you?’ he says.

I narrow my eyes. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Let’s just play,’ he mutters.

Away we go again: I clobber the ball and get us a point. Jamie gets us another. I get us one more, and now we’re back even with the boys. Ha! Takethat, Jamie! But I can tell it has annoyed Jamie that I’m actually any good, and he starts playing the whole court again, pushing me to one side, and a couple of times we almost collide. I refuse to speak to him again – if he’s not interested in team sports, why bloody suggest one? – so instead I get aggressive with the ball, flying this wayand that, flinging myself towards it, so Jamie can’t get it. That’ll show him. I can be an ignorant asshat too.

However. My flinging and flying are how my bikini top ends up pinging over my head, so that yes, we score, but also my tits are on full show to my entire family, because I’ve decided to do some sort of mid-air yoga in the semi-nude, purely to prove my unspoken point.

‘Oh my god!’ cry Laurie and Alex as I land, apparently trying to decide who is more grossed out.

‘Florence, your—’ my father yells, as Kate starts squealing with hysterical laughter.

I hold my arm across my boobs (they’re just boobs!) and look confusedly to see where my top has gone. I don’t think I could do that trick again if I tried. I’m confronted with Jamie’s broad, hot frame, inches from me, sweat on his tanned, furrowed brow, eyes dark with evident disgust for what he’s borne witness to.

‘And Laurie callsmea show-off,’ he says, handing me his T-shirt. ‘Put this on.’ He looks over my head like he can’t even bear to hold eye-contact. His words are quiet but firm.

Standing this close, looking at him eye-to-eye in this way, something jolts through me. I can’t tell if it’s defiance or frustration that he’s even here, but it makes my throat go dry and my mouth flop open as I think of something cutting to say. I wasn’t going to speak to him, but my jaw drops at Jamie’s attitude and I take a breath to tell him where to go – before Laurie yells, ‘Flo! Fucking put it on.’

It snaps me to, and I do so. The T-shirt smells like cedar and musk, and Ihatethat I notice.

Before I can figure it out, Jamie commands, ‘Let’s play!’

He claps his hands, his focus dead ahead, like a director keeping a movie set on-track. Alex throws the ball into the air and Jamie lunges for it. And, just like that, I cease to exist once again.

3

I sleep in late because it took ages for me to nod off last night, even after a long day of travel and our profanely early start. I was too buzzed after the volleyball game, too wired. After we won, in a fit of glory I turned round to give Jamie a high-five, but he’d already crossed the net to Laurie and Alex to give them shit, as if the victory was his alone and I was nothing.

‘Told you I’d win,’ he’d laughed at them.

‘Yeah, fair play,’ Laurie had agreed.

Kate had found my bikini top and so I took off his T-shirt not long afterwards, gently folded it and left it on top of his rucksack, without a word. I wasn’t about to say thank you, only for that to be ignored, too. Does Jamie seriously not realise that I’m the reason we won?

All I could think about, after I sneaked away to my room up in the eaves, was that if Jamie is going to be on this holiday, I’m going to have to stoptryingto ignore him and engage in some sort of level of earthly being that means Iactuallyignore him. He’s going to be around for the rest of my life, I imagine, so I need to move on from my abject humiliation and arrive at cool, calm and detached.

I have led you on. I am not good for you. Please forgive me, and let’s not speak of this again …

Those words haunt me, but by god I have heeded them. Iwon’tever speak of them again.

I’m pulled from a painful walk down a horrid Christmas memory lane by my phone vibrating. I turn over in bed to reach for it. It’s Hope.

Hope

Morning, gorgeous! Please find attached, for your consideration, THIS gem of a German find from last night

A photo of a blond-haired muscle-man, asleep, comes through.

Me

I see the souvenirs continue to stack up in scores

Hope

You’d better not be slut-shaming

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