Page 71 of Enemies to Lovers

‘Flo,’ she implores. ‘Didsomething happen at Christmas?’

‘No,’ I tell her, because it’s more or less the truth. ‘No more than an almost.’

‘But something is happening now?’

I shake my head. ‘Kind of,’ I end up saying, and as soon as the words leave my lips, Kate launches on them.

‘Really!’ she squeals. And Jamie is no idiot: he’s going to know full well we’re talking about him. I wish he’d come and rescue me from this Spanish Inquisition, but he’s probably giving us a wide berth so that I canconvince Kate to keep our secret, like I promised she would.

‘Ssssh!’ I tell her. ‘Jesus, look. Just promise me you won’t tell Laurie, okay? Jamie is really worried he’ll be mad, and although I personally think Laurie can go screw himself, Jamie actually cares what Laurie thinks and doesn’t want to jeopardise their friendship, or whatever.’

Kate furrows her brow. ‘But … if this is happening, Laurie is going to find out eventually? You have my word I won’t say anything, because I understand it’s none of my business, but starting a relationship in secret doesn’t seem smart to me. At least not if the secret goes on for too long. And you don’t want Laurie finding out by walking in on you, like I did …’

‘No, no, no,’ I wave an arm about, batting away her commentary. ‘It’s not that deep. There’s no “relationship”.’ I put air-quotes around that, with my two bunny ears. I can tell Kate isn’t impressed. Maybe I’ve misread her. I thought she’d find it exciting, and exotic. She looks concerned.

‘He travels the world for a living, I live in Scotland. He’s Laurie’s best friend – there’s no future or whatever … We both know that.’

I bite my lip. I can’t believe she’s managing to get all of this out of me.

‘We hooked up,’ I tell her. ‘Finally. Yesterday. After the bar. And I want it to happen again, and it’s all quitea relief, because my dislike of Jamie – or whatever it was – took too much effort to maintain. But it won’t happen again after this holiday. Okay? That’s why Laurie doesn’t need to know. It’s a short-term fling that means, in the long term, we’ll be able to actually get on, because we’ve got it out of our systems.’

Kate laughs. ‘The plan is to shag each other, so that you eventually don’t want to shag any more?’

I don’t know what to say to that. It sounded better in my head.

‘Just … don’t tell Laurie. You promised, okay?’

‘I did,’ Kate tells me. ‘You’re going to have hot sex with hot Jamie, and in a few days you’ll forget it ever happened.’

‘Exactly,’ I nod.

‘Flo?’ Kate says, after a while.

‘Yes?’

‘You’re living in a dream world. You know that, don’t you?’

I float away from her, not dignifying the comment with a response. Does she mean that we won’t stop shagging? Or that I’m dreaming to think Laurie won’t find out?

Either way, she’s wrong.

17

Dad asks me to go for a walk before dinner, because he says we’ve had no one-on-one time all holiday and I’m his favourite.

‘Dad,’ I say with a smile, ‘I know you say that to all of us.’

He chuckles and gives a shrug. ‘It’s true, though,’ he counters, somehow both proving my point and still upholding the integrity of the statement. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘let’s go and do a few laps of the beach. Make the most of this magical twilight hour, shall we?’

He’s not wrong about it being magical. Not only is the sky swirling shades of pink and orange, but it’s like the air has been infused with the same somehow. Everything feels softer at this hour, more delicate. When the heat subsides and the air settles, it makes me want to whisper to preserve whatever delightful thing is happening.

‘Okay, sold,’ I say, putting down my empty beer bottle and taking one last handful of crisps. I haven’t been the first one down to pre-dinner drinks all holiday, and I’m glad I am tonight. I’ve made a decision to trust that Kate won’t tell Laurie anything, and anotherdecision to believe I deserve this little holiday … thing. Fling! Non-fling? Whatever Jamie and I are and have, or don’t have, it’s making me happy. I can’t remember when I last felt this way, to be honest.

Dad and I meander down the winding steps and onto the sand, turning left towards the end of the bay, where the water edges out to the sand and we’re blocked off by a massive rock formation. We talk about what they saw at the ruins that day, and that Kate and I caught up, once I’d woken up. Jamie is not mentioned in any capacity, and I certainly will not bring him up. It’s easy to be with Dad. He’s amazing, too – as accomplished and competent and able as Mum is. But as much as I hate to admit it, he’s a man, so I don’t compare myself with him (and come up short) in the way I do with Mum. The friction is taken out of the relationship then.

‘You seem to be enjoying this trip anyway,’ Dad says, as we stand at the edge of the sea and let the water lap up onto our bare toes. He picks up a stone and skims it over the water.

‘I think we all are, aren’t we?’ I reply, picking up a stone of my own. It skims twice and then plops into the sea. Dad skims another one and it glides once, twice, three times, then a fourth, before succumbing to the same fate.

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