Page 103 of Hot to Go

‘I’m here with Lucy. She had work. I tagged along…’ she mumbles.

‘I’m here with Max, we went to a beer festival…’

‘Room 912.’

‘Room 922,’ I say, pointing down the hall.

And we stand there thinking of all the beaches, the hotels, the airplanes and schools and places that you can bump intoand meet people and for some reason, we keep bumping into each other like this. We keep dancing this dance where we end up back in the middle of the room together. Or outside a room, stealing her chips. I can feel a tear forming in the corner of my eye as I know that this is the moment to keep her, to make this something, something that lasts. To tell her how very deeply I feel about her.

She stands there, jogging on the spot and I realise I’m letting all the warm air out of her room.

‘You’re cold.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Do you know what could warm you up?’ I say.

She blushes, a knowing smile on her face.

I put my hands up in the air. ‘Un café?’

And we laugh before she catches my eye and that energy that hits is both familiar, it glows, it sparks and for one moment, it feels like it could light up the entire hallway, this hotel, the entire city.

‘I’d like that very much. Could I maybe put some clothes on this time?’ she says.

I shake my head. ‘You look fine.’

‘Says you all covered up…in your robe…’ she says, trying not to laugh.

‘Would it help if I showed you my nipples?’ I say pulling it open.

And she laughs. Hi, I’m Charlie. Let’s try this again.

EPILOGUE

Six months later

Charlie

It’s too hot for this. It’s that sort of energy-sapping humidity where the air is thick and molten. The sort of heat where it hurts to even eat. All you want to do is drink and put your mouth under a slushy machine, to hell with the brain freeze. I toy with the olives using a toothpick, watching as a lady next to us seems to have brought her own table fan. Can we rob her? We should have sat inside. Damn us thinking we needed to lap up the sunshine.

‘It’s too hot,’ Suzie tells me, returning to the table.

‘Why are you wet?’ I ask her.

‘I splashed some water on my face. I look like I’m sweating, don’t I?’

‘Like a very nervous tapas eater.’

‘Who should have talced her bra.’

‘That’s a super sexy image,’ I say, grinning. I exhale slowlyas she sits down on the bench next to me and gently kisses my shoulder.

I pick up the last olive and put it in her mouth, my finger slowly trailing on her lip. ‘Yum.’ She takes a chunk of bread and dips it in the last of the oil. I very much like summer Suzie. It could be because that’s how I first met her, but there is something very relaxed about her when the sun comes out to play. Her smile seems brighter, she always has a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses perched on her head, and well, she’s always wearing less and that makes me very excitable.

‘Did you know that it is a well-known fact that no one actually knows where tapas actually came from?’ I tell her, finishing the last of the patatas bravas. ‘There are legends and rumours – the famous one is that back in the thirteenth century, the peasants were getting too drunk and rowdy so the king decreed that all drink should be sold with a plate of food.’

She smiles. I guess once a teacher, always a teacher.

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