Page 60 of Head First
I falter. I cross and uncross my legs. Hugh looks down at his feet. I know what I have to say, but I don’t want to say it. I know I can’t keep letting this play out. It won’t end up going anywhere, and it’s distracting me from what I need to focus on. I think of Millie. I think of Millie undergoing surgery, of all the things she has to go through while I get to lounge around on a boat.
‘I don’t,’ I force out. ‘I don’t feel the same way.’ Hugh’s face starts to crumple, and I bolt. Hurting him was bad enough, I can’t take watching it. I duck out of the room and into the bathroom, where I can cry in peace.
‘Millie?’ Pippa knocks softly on the bathroom door a couple minutes later. ‘Is that you in there? I’m so sorry but I really need the loo.’
I squeeze myself out of the bathroom and let Pippa inside. She takes one look at my red eyes and says, ‘Oh no.’
I sniffle.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ she says, ducking into the bathroom, ‘I’ll be right back.’
Pippa leads me to her room with the energy of a mom dealing with her high school daughter’s first crisis. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she says, offering up her bed. Her room is hardly bigger than ours but sports a double bed instead of twin bunks. I can tell which corner is Pippa’s instantly, due to the array of brightly coloured scarf-like clothing items spilling out from a suitcase. ‘I told Andrew we needed the room. Girl emergency.’
I feel a surge of gratitude towards both of them.
‘Tell me everything,’ Pippa commands, perching on the edge of the bed next to me.
I do.
Chapter 23
One dive (and one day trip) left
It takes me over an hour to explain to Pippa everything that’s taken place over the past two weeks. Although fifteen minutes of it consisted strictly of Pippa gasping dramatically at everything I said.
Andrew only pops his head in once to ask if we need wine, to which Pippa responds, ‘I trained you so well,’ before she calls after him ‘and yes please! See if they have rosé!’
My sister finding out she had the BRCA gene? Pippa gasped with such a deep breath she practically choked.
Revealing that Millie asked me to go on her behalf and that I wasn’t really Millie, I was Andi, her non-marine-biologist younger sister? Pippa launched herself off the bed in disbelief.
Once wine was in hand, our conversation took a detour when I tried to explain to Pippa who Millie really was. When I told her about the time Millie tried to prank our mother by updating her phone to autocorrect all her texts to my dad with salacious phrases, Pippa giggled so hard she got hiccups.
The mixture of her laughter and the wine lifted my spirits, and I got off the bed to recreate Natalie’s interaction with me at the airport, which I completed by using one of Pippa’s bikini tops as a stand-in for Natalie’s glamorous scarf.
‘She’s like a movie star,’ Pippa sighed, ‘you’d actually quite like her.’
‘She’s going to out me!’
Pippa gripped her rosé tightly. ‘She wouldn’t dare.’
Hugh having a promotion riding on menotfinding the fish I am looking for? Pippa sat back and furrowed her brow in anger.
‘But there’s one more thing,’ I said. ‘We kind of like . . .’ I trailed off, but Pippa looked at me knowingly.
‘You got some,’ she gasped. ‘In thesetinyrooms?’
‘Well, technicallywedidn’t, but I did.’ I squealed, downing another gulp of my wine.
‘Tell me everything,’ she demanded.
I didn’t give her all the details, but I gave enough for her jaw to drop open, especially when I described the toe-curling bits. ‘Pippa, he was amazing.’
‘God bless whoever taught him how to do that,’ she said, lifting her hands in a prayer gesture towards the ceiling.
I didn’t need to explain how much I’ve fallen for Hugh – Pippa knows. But I did explain why I couldn’t bring myself to be honest with him – his past, and our argument, how much it killed me to have to tell him I didn’t feel the same way. That I couldn’t bear to betray Millie.
When I said, ‘I know it’s crazy to feel like this about someone after three days,’ Pippa fell straight back onto her pillows and said, ‘This is like something in a film,’ in such a heartfelt voice I thought she was going to start crying.
