Page 8 of Enemies to Lovers

She clasps my shoulder as she stands up and then disappears, leaving me and Jamie annoyingly alone. Jamie leans over for the jug of water, thick fingers reaching for the handle, wrapping themselves around it in a flush simple movement, like he owns the place, and I watch from under my eyelashes, horrified. I want to find a reason to leave. I don’t want to be here with him, all wet from the pool, gulping down water with his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down noisily. He runs a hand through his hair as I sit mute, looking at my lap, and he puts on his sunglasses. They’re bright red andsquare-framed. They look ridiculous. So, what, he spends a few months a year on the seven seas and now he thinks he’s some chic European?

I can’t do this. The floor suddenly feels too warm, the air even stiffer. Everything is closing in. I can’t sit here, as Mum gets back and starts clucking over Jamie’s wellness routines and the sun grows fiercer. I just can’t do it.

I’m saved by my phone lighting up, Hope’s name on the screen.

Hope

Well, that was a fun morning! What you up to? Do you want to talk about J***e being there?

Me

Lol, thanks for redacting his name. He’s like the-man-who-shall-not-be-named

Hope

We can name him if you want, but personally I don’t think he deserves it

Me

He doesn’t. Although! I am ignoring him in a very mature, grown-up way

Hope

Oh, yes, theMATUREignoring. I’ve heard of that!

I glance up at Jamie, who, beneath his sunnies, is musing at the far edge of the table, like he’s enjoying the awkwardness, like he’s seeing who will break first. It’s psychopathic.

Me

What are your plans today? Send more pictures!

I don’t know what I’d do without Hope. It helps, so much, to have somebody in my life who has been through what I’ve been through, who has seen their own personal hell and figured out how to navigate it. We went through a phase of calling people who hadn’t had breakdowns ‘normies’, which we haven’t done in ages … But seated beside Jamie, I feel he’s as much of a normie as there is. The word comes to me easily. And since he’s a normie, I cannot let him have a hold on me. I’ve come too far for that. I haven’t weathered a personal hell just to let a man who didn’t know a good thing when he could have had it bug me any longer.

I push back my chair to scurry away. But as I’m about to declare that I’m going upstairs to get changed, Jamie says, ‘It was very generous of your parents to invite me.’

I freeze at being addressed directly, half standing,half seated, like I’ve got tummy ache or need a poo. What am I supposed to say back? Agree with him falsely, or say I’m happy he’s here …? I can’t lie. I’ve never been able to, even as a kid. Plus, it’s unnerving that he doesn’t sound his usual hostile self.

My phone vibrates again. It’s a photo of Hope’s laptop screen, a picture ofBlueyplaying on it. It’s one of our favourite episodes, where Bingo has weird dreams and both the kids are up in the night and don’t let their cartoon parents get much sleep. By the time I turn my attention away from my phone, Mum is coming back with the coffee. Jamie is looking at me, watching me look at my phone. I think he’s spied theBlueyphoto – more for his ‘Flo Is Not Worth It’ evidence bag. I find myself murmuring an odd noise to excuse myself, a gurgled ‘Mmmmnhyansosokk’, before hot-footing it back up to my room, seeking solace in my phone.

Me

Jamie being here is painful! I need someBluey!

I have led you on, I remember, as I burn in shame, collapsing onto my bed.I am not good for you. Please forgive me, and let’s not speak of this again …

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

I manage to sneak off down to the beach without having to re-join Mum and Jamie at the breakfast table, where they’ve graduated to playing a game of cards. I alreadycaught a glimpse of Dad and Alex by the hire car, unloading a plethora of floating devices shaped like wildlife and several water guns, as predicted. As I hear Mum whooping triumphantly, presumably because she’s trumped Jamie, I snake my way down the winding steps from the house to the beach, a sweep of curved paradise with hardly anybody on it.

I can see some hazy dots of people at the far end, but other than that I have the place to myself. Me, the book-I-won’t-actually-read and my beach towel, printed with a Penguin Classics cover ofA Room of One’s Own, get settled in the shade of a big tree with a perfect view of the horizon. Staring at the sea, I think about my chat with Mum – about pausing instead of misstepping, and coming home instead of going straight into teaching full-time. Most people would kill for a chance to pause, no matter how old they are. Look at Hope, hopping on a train to Interrail around Europe and maybe even beyond, if the mood takes her. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do next, she simply wants to heal and live life (her grandmother left her a substantial amount in her will, which I suppose helps). Folk take jobs they don’t really want as a way to pay the rent and keep building a life. What does it say about me that I’d look a gift horse in the mouth? But the truth is that I don’t know what I want to do with my life. Laurie is right – what I do is very …niche.My PhD explored representations of the ocean in early modern English literature – ironically, working on the idea that it canmirror risk and possibility. I say ‘ironic’ because I don’t do much risk-taking. The teaching was a way to earn money to pay for the PhD, and then they asked me to stay, so I said yes, just like that.

I don’t know how other people do it, how they choose what to do with their lives. Is it because there are two types of people in the world, ambitious and not ambitious – and I am not? And if I’m ‘not ambitious’, does that make me lazy? Surely there are different types of ambition: I might not want to wear power-suits and work in a skyscraper, nor do I really think I want to be a stay-at-home mum whilst my partner wears a power-suit and works in a skyscraper. Can a person be ambitious for peace? For serenity? That’s all I want. I only seem able to get it if I take a little white pill every morning and stick to the same routines, day in and day out.

When Mum said a pause can be better than a misstep, what I heard was:I know you’re scared.

Is it that obvious?

Why isn’t everybody else confused about the life they should build, like I am? I fish my phone out of my bag and text my lifeline.

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