Authors: Charlotte Oliver
He popped his own prawn into his mouth and raised his eyebrows at me as if to tell me I should do the same. Dutifully, unthinkingly, I did.
I could feel Sharon smirking with satisfaction, but at least I wasn’t behaving like a stunned antelope anymore.
Oh, but they were good. Delicious. I motored through them, forgetting I’d ever hesitated. After Declan and Sharon were reabsorbed in one another, and the others had started talking amongst themselves once more, Tam nudged me again.
I glanced at him, thinking he’d done it by accident, since he was still looking at his plate.
Then he said something, but I didn’t quite catch it.
“You what?”
“I said, you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“What do you mean?”
He still wasn’t looking at me. “You’re fine the way you are. You’re lovely the way you are.”
Was I hearing him right?
“If he ever made you feel otherwise, it was him that had something wrong with him. Not you.”
Then he wiped his mouth with a paper serviette and got up to get another drink, as if nothing had happened.
I looked around. No-one else had heard him: I felt punch-drunk with confusion and pleasure. Or maybe I just felt drunk—it could have been that.
After we practically licked the pot clean, Declan, pleased with our performance, cleared the table with Sharon’s help. Then, after a little break, during which we knocked back a modest number of shots, it was time for dessert: passionfruit and key lime tart. Coconut biscuit base. No meringue; no cream: such fripperies would have been heresy on a thing so perfect.
We lapsed into a pre-verbal state where words no longer mattered.
“Uuuuugggnnnnhhhh,” Randy bellowed between mouthfuls.
“Mmmmrrrrgghhhhh,” said Michelle.
Sairi just sort of panted a bit, and looked all flushed and post-coital.
Peter inhaled his slice and then demanded another, in a very assertive, not-at-all-like-Peter way.
Declan fed Sharon, who fed Declan, and they batted their eyelashes at one another provocatively throughout.
I ate mine silently, with the meditative attention usually associated with Himalayan yogis.
By then, I was feeling incredibly sloshed. Much more sloshed than I was supposed to feel. Yes, I’d had three beers and two shots, but surely I wouldn’t be
slurring
, would I? Not usually? This was weird. I’d had plenty of practice drinking in the last week.
Hmmm.
“Are you feeling drunk?” I whispered to Tam, who kept lying back in his seat with his eyes closed between mouthfuls of pudding.
He didn’t respond, so I poked him in the ribs. But as I touched him, something curious happened.
I felt a shimmer of something. Butterflies in my stomach?
I poked him again.
Yes. Butterflies.
I poked him again. “Stop it,” he said, smiling languidly from behind closed eyes.
“Do you feel that?”
“What?”
“Do you get that—that fluttery thing?” I didn’t want to say ‘butterflies’.
Why not?
I wondered. Distantly, I was aware that ‘to have butterflies’ had some sort of sexy connotation. Didn’t it?
Why can’t I think properly?
“Fluttery thing? What, like butterflies?” He was smiling now, lazily, lifting his head briefly to spoon in some more pudding. Then he leaned back again. “Mmmm. I do. Butterflies.”
I looked around. Declan and Sharon were snogging. I sniggered, my eyes heavy and dreamy. Sairi was giggling inanely, whispering in Peter’s ear and then in Michelle’s, pointing at Randy, who was staring, transfixed, at the reed ceiling that shaded the patio.
There was music playing somewhere. I could feel it pulsating through the ground, up into our legs. The sun was hot—hotter than I’d ever felt—so hot I felt I might go mad. But I was happy. Happiness was bubbling inside me, effervescent as champagne, light as air, beautiful.
“Oh, shit,” I said, out loud, realising.
“What?” Tam asked, absently. He had been humming to the music, tipping his chair onto its back legs, smiling to himself. His body had become lissom, supple, as relaxed as a cat stretched out in the sun.
I started giggling. This was funny.
Naughty Declan. Naughty, mischievous little woodsprite. Naughty little leprechaun!
Part of my frontal lobe (the part that was still functioning) pointed out that he’d have chinned me if I’d said that last bit out loud.
I giggled more at that. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Tam, Tam, Tam Tam Tam, Tam—oh, shit. You won’t believe it. You won’t believe what’s happening . . .” I felt the butterflies dance furiously through me with each tug I gave on his sleeve.
Then he also realised, and sat bolt upright for a moment. “Oh, fuck.”
Then we giggled together, until our faces screwed up in mirth and tears began to course down our faces. Every time we tried to talk, or looked at each other, we could only laugh more. Every time one reached out to steady itself on the other, the butterflies happened, and we fell onto one another all over again, knowing what the other was thinking, lame with laughter.
Eventually Tam managed to get some words out. “Declan, you dirty bastard!”
We laughed again for a minute or ten. When we looked up, Declan was standing over us, swaying a little, with an expression like thunder. “What did you say?”
Tam looked stricken, but he couldn’t keep the smile from his face. “I didn’t mean it like that—I—I—” And then we were off again. It was Sharon’s lipstick all over his face that did it for me. I can’t vouch for Tam, of course.
Declan still looked cross, but something was dawning on him. We watched him through tears of laughter as he realised. “Sharon—Shazza love—where’d you put the mushrooms?”
Sharon had lit a cigarette and was deep in what appeared to be an extremely grave conversation with Michelle. Tam and I, helpless, were gasping for air, begging for a moment’s peace.
“What?” she snapped, annoyed at being interrupted.
“The mushrooms, you doze. Where’d you put the shrooms? Not in the fridge?”
The penny dropped.
Sharon went white with shock.
“Oh no,” she breathed, “how many did you use?”
“I don’t know!” Declan was gesticulating wildly, clearly panicked. “As many as looked right!”
Tam and I were practically scrambling around on the floor by that stage, useless shadows of our former selves.
“Wait,” Michelle asked, unsteady on her feet as she rose. “What do you mean? What are you two on about?”
“Magic mushrooms. In the prawns.” Declan raked his hand violently through his hair, his eyes wide. “Loads of them.”
“Oh,
no
,” Michelle groaned. “How long do we have?”
That’s the last thing I remember before hitting a semi-blank period. The rest of the day exists only in the briefest of outlines, the broadest of impressions.
I remember getting into the pool—first in my clothes, then in my bikini. Of course that was going to happen. I think we may have tried to play Marco Polo, but I’m sure that ended in dreadful confusion.
I know Randy got into his sarong again, as was traditional. Then Clara came in, presumably for the afternoon cleaning shift, and muttered to herself as she cleared up the patio table and Declan’s cooking mess. Peter fluttered around her, apologising, but unable to make much of a contribution.
We played cards.
Then it got dark, and someone decided that the right thing to do when you’ve accidentally got off your head on psilocybin is to go to a nightclub.
When my mind found its footing again, I found I was dancing, and the whole night was filled with music. A sweet-smelling night, cigar smoke and frangipani, hot and sultry, and when my eyes found their focus, I lifted them to the source of the soft breeze that cooled me. We were indoors—not outdoors, as had first occurred to me—but the wide sash windows of the room had been thrown open and the night air was flowing freely across the crowded dance floor.
The music, soft flamenco punctuated with the soulful croon of a man’s voice, crying out with love and loneliness, wove between the slowly swaying bodies that surrounded us. And we, too, were swaying; we. I wasn’t dancing alone. I didn’t even have to wonder who I was dancing with. I knew that scent, and the robust shape of the muscles in his chest, before I even looked up.
The night was as dark and soft as black velvet, and his form was beset with shadows, but there was Tam—a version of him that was at once strange and familiar. The v-shape of his hips and shoulders. His height. The dark gold of his hair. Smooth collarbone, Adam’s apple, broad, beautiful hands.
When our eyes met, it was clear we had been gazing deeply at each other for most of the night.
Something had happened.
I tried to force my mind backwards, into the recent past, hoping to learn how we’d ended up wrapped against each other without a trace of self-consciousness. Only snatches of memory surfaced: we hadn’t been here—wherever
here
was—the whole night, that much I could discern.
But I lost interest in that train of thought very quickly. It felt so good to dance with him—to be nearly skin-to-skin with him. My back was arched and my hips pressed against him, and his arms held me tightly. I could feel the shape of my own body: somehow, I now had curves. I carried the rose-and-air scent of someone beautiful. I was no longer myself.
When the music swayed, so did we, and when it throbbed he pulled me closer to him, stoking the low fire that was burning in the pit of my belly. It was delicious. I didn’t know where we were, or what we were doing there, but I knew I didn’t want it to end.
We didn’t speak; words would cloud things. All we needed was the music, and to be wrapped into one another like this. I felt as if the whole universe was contained in the space between us, in the sounds that filled our heads. We, this body of dancers who moved as one, were caught in a paradise more beautiful, more ecstatic than we had dared to imagine; to stop dancing would be impossible.
I stared into Tam’s face without a hint of embarrassment. What is it about music, good music, that tears down every wall? And he was looking at me with the same frankness, the same closeness, as if we’d always known each other and had nothing to hide.
We danced for eternity in that magic circle of happiness.
There’s something wrong with this picture
, said the voice of Reason, faintly, as the effects of the evening slowly began to wear off.
I’m not completely certain what, just yet.
You’re back!
replied a few other voices.
We’ve been having the most marvellous time without you for the last couple of hours. Do let’s keep it up.
“Ava,” Tam murmured, and I was brought back into the present moment with a little thrill –his lips had brushed gently against the shell of my ear as he spoke.
The music stopped and the floor was emptying as couples returned to the little cabaret tables, complete with guttering red candles stuck in old Spanish wine bottles, that encircled us. A shock of heat shot up through the small of my back, as I suddenly became acutely conscious of his hands against me. He was still holding me tightly against him, as if I’d long ago submitted my body to him and he was confident of his ownership.
Much as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to feel insulted.
“Y-yes?” I stammered, remembering that he had addressed me.
“Do you want another drink?”
He was smiling a low smouldering smile, one that made me feel frightened, but also made me flush with involuntary pleasure.
We’ve looked at one another like this before,
I thought;
we’ve been doing it all night.
“OK,” I replied.
When he dropped his hands from my body, I lost my balance and lurched dangerously backwards—only then did I realise I was still under the influence to some extent. Tam caught me by the forearm without batting an eyelid.
“Sorry,” I said, “thanks,” and I went hot again at the wry half-smile that he gave me. We sat down at one of the rickety little tables, our eyes meeting over the soft pink light that the candles threw onto our faces. Once the waitress had taken our order it was just us, and I didn’t know what to say. We just stared at each other, giddy with joy.
“Tam,” I breathed, after many breathless moments, “have we been snogging the whole night?”
“No,” he replied, regarding me with a steady gaze that thrilled me for some reason, “why, would you like to?”
Another shock of heat, this time more pure adrenalin that simple lust, as I let the words sink in. Would I like to? Would I want that? And wasn’t all this moving far too quickly, in the wrong direction?
I don’t care,
I told myself, firmly.
I knew I was smiling broadly at him, and I could feel my whole body appealing, shamelessly and obviously, to him. The colour was high in my face, my pulse must have throbbed visibly in my throat, and my eyes were sparkling involuntarily—I could feel it. I didn’t even feel brazen; I felt we must have long ago crossed over that boundary.