Page 27 of Hot to Go

Charlie

‘Hola, me llamo Carlos,’ I say into the mirror, unconvincingly. Max watches from the balcony and laughs.

‘¿Dónde está la biblioteca, Carlos?’

‘Up your arse, I believe.’

Max laughs as he bites into a croissant he stole from the breakfast buffet. He’s better now and I’d like to thinkit was my story of having found a naked woman at the beach that brought him back from the dead. A beautiful naked French woman. But then, like I always do, I complicated the situation by telling her my name was Carlos and now I’m about to have brunch with her whole family. She didn’t really go into who would be at the villa. Just the cousins? There could be dozens of them. Europeans usually have very large families.

‘So explain to me the moped?’ Max asks, as he packs his bag. Today, like the adult teenagers they are, the stags are off to a water park to bomb it down the slides. I’ve been given a bye as long as I join them for dinner afterwards in Magaluf at an all-you-can-eat ribs and steak place.

‘I need to keep up the pretence that I’m Spanish. If I show up in a taxi or hire car, it will look suss,’ I explain.

‘Instead you’ll just look like a pizza delivery boy,’ he jokes.

I scrunch my face at the insult and he watches as I try to style my hair. In this heat, it doesn’t seem to be playing ball. I also don’t know what look I’m going for. I take off my T-shirt and try a white linen short-sleeved number.

‘How fit was she?’

‘She was very pretty.’ I sigh. Her eyes were bright, the sort that looked sweet, kind but alive. Given how much I saw of her, I keep going back to her eyes, a kiss on the cheek, feeling the warmth of her breath against my skin.

‘Charlie boy has a crush.’

‘Piss off. Make sure you pack your sunscreen and some arm bands,’ I retort.

‘Make sure you pack some johnnies,’ he jokes.

I throw a T-shirt at him, but there was something there last night that I can’t quite get out of my mind. I’ve been rational and put it down to being on holiday, the unique way in which we met, the heat, the different location…But last night, did I think about what it would be like to kiss her? I did. I may have thought about more. That’s not me at all. Charlie is sensible,he’s respectful, he’s never had sex on the beach before because one of his pet peeves when he was little was washing sand out of his trunks. But I guess you can meet someone and the spark can be strong, they fill some space in your mind, and then they are all you can think about, your mind wandering to what could happen…I look at myself in the mirror. Aurelie. All I can see is her wearing my T-shirt, stood on the rocks, seawater dripping off the edges of her hair, the curve of her lower thighs. Stop it, Charlie. Get a grip. You don’t even know her last name.

In theory, I had different visions of the moped and how I might look arriving at the villa on it. I thought about a few buttons undone, sunglasses on, riding along a coastal road, the sun on my face, looking really fucking sexy. Instead, I realise all that hair styling was for nothing. I will have helmet hair, I’m sweating balls and Spanish drivers are a mix of lawless angry Mallorcans and hire car drivers trying to remember to drive on the right side of the road. And goats. No one told me there would be goats.

So by the time I arrive at the massive wooden gates of this villa, I’m wondering if I should just turn around. Anxiety is already high with the very vague plans we’ve made and I’m not sure if any illusions that I planted yesterday of being a cool and capable Mallorcan are now evaporating with the giant sweat patch that is my back. I hover over my scooter as I look down at the map on my phone. Is this it? I peer through the slats in the gate. This is not a party palace hotel by the beach, this is a sophisticated villa and it’s huge. I mean, she is French. She was likely to be far too classy for some bar on the beach specialising in fishbowl cocktails. The gate suddenly slides back and I stand there, desperately trying to tousle my hair.

‘Are you Carlos?’ a woman says as she approaches me,dressed head to toe in white. Shit, not cousins. It’s a cult. She lowers her sunglasses. ‘Je m’appelle Emma. Enchantée.’

‘Enchanté,’ I reply politely. ‘Is Aurelie here? You must be one of her cousins?’

‘I am,’ she says, scanning my outfit, smiling broadly.

‘This place is incroyable. Are you renting? Do you own it?’

Emma pauses as I crane my neck to the roof admiring the stone architecture, peering around to see the azure calm of the pool.

‘It belongs to Aurelie’s father’s family. He is in champagne,’ a voice interrupts.

I recognise this cousin from last night – Beth – but today she wears a vest top and patterned trousers. She comes over to greet me. ‘We are French, we do the double kiss,’ she tells me, putting a hand to my shoulder. She looks at me, scanning my face. ‘This may sound strange, but have we met before this?’

‘Before last night?’ I ask her.

‘You just look like someone I may have met, possibly? I’m terrible with names,’ she says.

I shake my head. Is she suspicious? She knows, doesn’t she? Have I not made my accent thick enough?

‘AURELIE!’ The moment is interrupted by a shrill voice inside the villa. We all turn to look at it. ‘THE SEAMAN IS HERE!’ a voice booms from inside. My eyes open widely as I wipe sweat from my brow. I am thewhat?

Emma closes her eyes. ‘You’ll have to forgive my sister. She has a terrible command of the English language.’

Lucy – the one who wrestled me to the ground – suddenly appears on the drive, her eyes on the moped. She skips excitedly along the hot stone towards me.

---