Twisted Summer (12 page)

“Woah.” As we emerged from the woodlands and on to the pebbled beach, Esmé shielded her eyes with a hand and stared out over the expanse of foamy ocean. She was about to study oceanography at uni, and I knew the sea was kind of her sacred place. “I could stand here all day, you know.”

“Well how’s about you stand downwind, and I wait here so I can watch your skirt blow up?”

“You get more perverted every frickin’ second.” She rolled her eyes, although a smile crinkled their edges. “I promise you can look up my skirt later, okay?”

“I suppose I’ll cope.” How did this work, exactly? Esmé felt like my best friend; I still wanted to do very bad things to her. Yet I’d feel nothing but relief once we were over and I was free to chase a replacement…him. It wasn’t that she was a girl, no, nothing to do with that. But I wanted things now that only he could give me, and maybe someone a similar shape could do the same?

Esmé grabbed my hand again. “Wanna collect some shells?”

“What, like we’re seven?”

“Yeah. Like we’re seven. Then we can make daisy chains, and drink Orangina at the pub just because it’s in the grown-up bottles.”

I snorted. “It’s in the textured sex toy bottles.”

“Will you get your brain out of the gutter for a minute and come help me?”

But I’d done something dirty with a bottle more times than I should admit. It was still sealed, full of pear cider, and on the corner of the label, a scrawling hand had written
what cider webs we weave xxx

We didn’t weave anything at all anymore. We were blunt and lost and our web hung in torn strands.

“Danni!” Esmé waved from across the beach, her flip flops dangling from her free hand as the tide swept around her bare feet. The sun spilled in a yellow glow to frame her, and she was like a toffee apple in that moment, all yummy shades of gold and light brown. I’d break her heart in a few weeks…stupid, ungrateful Danni. I deserved everything I got.

“Yeah?” I called.

“Come look over here! I found a crab.”

A crab. Riveting. “One sec, baby. I’m coming.”

The sand was still wet from the afternoon rain shower, and I had to pull off my own flip flops in case I sank in. It swamped up between my toes as I squelched over to her.

“Reporting for the crustacean ecstasy tour.” I did a little mock salute.

“Oh. You’re such a meanie.”

Half an hour later, the sun sank further toward the cupped hands of the clouds and we had enough shells to fill our pockets. We decided to drop them back off at the lodge before strolling down to the pub, where we’d meet my grandparents, great uncle, aunt and cousin. Somewhere between Esmé’s elation at finding a crab and me mashing her against a rock for wet kisses, I relaxed a bit. Maybe it was the salt-sweet stench of the ocean and its warm water taste in my mouth, or the hot air on my skin, or the tide song. Or laughing with Esmé for the first time in weeks. I don’t know…something in me cracked and crawled back inside its shell. Left me lighter.

Until we emerged from the stone path and saw the car in front of our lodge.

Parked next to Mum’s waste-of-space Nissan was a muddy black Range Rover. I squeezed Esmé’s hand so hard, I nearly cut the circulation off.

“Jeez, Danni!” She yanked it away, shaking the blood back in. “You know I don’t like all that rough stuff.”

“I…that’s not what I meant.” His car. His car. HIS CAR with a stripy surfboard on the roof rack. Half of me wanted to bolt back down and throw myself into the sea, and the other half…crap. I couldn’t even bring myself to say it, but it probably belonged in a dirty story--the one where the stupid girl got her heart ripped out and stuffed back down her throat, but she was too busy sucking something else to notice.

“You okay, pixie?”

“Course I am,” I lied. With every step, we got closer to my big black hole of want and regret, and she didn’t have a clue. Not that I wanted her to, of course—if anyone found out, it would be the end for me in so many ways.

“So come on then. Help me get these shells back before they fossilise.”

I followed Esmé back up the creaking timber stairs and on to the veranda. She fumbled with her key for a second before realising the door was open, and before we even entered, I heard his laugh. It was so frickin’ deep and silly, and…oh God. I was falling all over again, the taste of his mouth surging in my mine.

“Hey.” Mum smiled from behind the kitchen counter as we filed in. “You girls been down to the beach? How’s it looking?”

“Gorgeous.” Esmé held up a flat shell with a rainbow sheen. “We got bounty, too.”

“Bounty, huh?” He folded his thick, tanned arms, his legs parted as he leaned back on the stool. He wore the same three quarter length shorts, the same surfy T-shirt in sun-bleached colours. His shaggy caramel hair was just a teensy bit longer and he’d tucked it behind his ears. Silver eyes widened at the sight of me, and he didn’t even glance down to hide it—I know mine did the same. Every bit of me ached.

“Esmé,” I croaked, “this is my Uncle Gabe.”

You have to understand that we never meant for it to happen.

We knew it was stupid. We knew it was wrong. What with me, just eighteen and eleven years younger than him; I was meant to be all head-over-heels in love with Esmé, but one look at him and my hot guydar bust a fuse. Kind of shameful, when you think about it. And he might have been estranged, but he was still part of my family, one way or another.

In fact he was estranged to me again as of August 1
^st
, when he went from delicious, forbidden and adorable to a heap of magic bastard pudding. I gave him my virginity and all he gave me were two beautiful letters…before he literally cut me in half. In just weeks, he’d begun to feel like my future but to him, I was just a break from reality, a fantasy come alive for three wet, swollen days. I felt so used.

These men, they split you into pieces and fill you with their sticky stuff, but they don’t tell you it’s really SHITTY if you try to use it as glue.

I certainly never thought Gabe would be sitting there in our holiday lodge…but there he was in all his buff, heart-breaking glory. For some reason.

WHAT REASON?

“Danni?” Mum put her coffee cup down, frowning. “Are you all right?”

“I…I’m g-good.”

“
That pleased to see me?” Gabe raised his eyebrows and attempted a smile. Badly feigned sarcasm was
so
not his strong point.

“I didn’t think you came to these sorts of things,” I managed to say.

“I don’t. But I figured it was time to make good with everybody. Especially since…”

Since he made more than
good
with me?

“…I’m moving away,” he finished.

Oh.

“Where are you moving to?” asked Esmé, all perky and interested.

Gabe looked down. Bad sign. “Canada.”

“He’s got some big shot grant at a college over there,” Mum announced. She looked almost proud.

I couldn’t stop blinking. “You’re moving to
Canada
?” Like, eleventy billion miles away Canada? Why would anyone do that? Look at the evidence: Celine Dion. Moose (half deer, half donkey. Plain stupid).

“That’s right,” he said.

“But—but Canada sucks!”

Gabe gave an apologetic shrug. “I have to go where the research takes me. It’s part of my job.”

Esmé wandered over to the freshly-stocked fridge and pulled out a bottle of orange juice. “What do you research?”

“Palaeobiology. It’s the—”

“OhmyGod!” Her face lit up; flushed cheeks, flashing white teeth. “I know about that. It’ll be part of my course. Do you lecture?”

“I do indeed.” He put his hand out to her. “You’re Esmé, right? Danni told me all about you.”

I watched my girlfriend and my ex-lover shake hands and chit-chat, and numbness spread through my limbs. All this pretence, Gabe’s casual fakery, this entire scenario—it was like a body drained of blood. Pale. Lifeless. Just like the first time I met grown-up him, a sparky ball of hate burned inside, but this time it was for a different reason: betrayal. Because Canada was exactly that.

I was meant to be on holiday in Wales—not the Twilight Zone.

“Danni?” Esmé ran cool fingers along my arm. “You ready to head up to the pub?”

“I s’pose, yeah. Just need to change my shoes.” I shot Gabe a glance. I just wanted acknowledgement, a nod, anything…but he sat so still that he blurred in my vision.

***

After that, I thought sitting opposite Gabe in the pub would be painful.

Wrong.

It was excruciating.

I’m not talking like, popping a big spot or stubbing your toe. I’m talking trying to make conversation with your grandma about school and your job and the books you last read, and trying to be all polite and happy when all the while her stepson entertains the rest of the table with his surfing stories and all you can think about is OHMYGODIHADSEXWITHHIM. And then, oh shit…he abandoned me.

Let me remind you, too, that I could not look at Gabe without seeing him naked, no matter how cool and clever his T-shirts were. Which was all his bloody fault; he made the first move. I might have been all hot for him, but I’d never been as brazen and fearless as when he leaned in to kiss me that first time.

There would never be another first time, or last time, or anything in between. As I sat there trying to be happy girlfriend Danni, the thought silently slaughtered me. So I sank further into my beat-up seat, taking refuge in the chattering fuzz of locals and holidaymakers, and the clatter and pop of glass bottles at the bar. I watched groups of teenage boys eye the bar maid, slapping each other on the back with sly winks; the couples who leaned in to hear soft words over the shouts of rowdier customers; I closed my eyes and breathed in the thick smell of frying chips and beer.

“Danni?”

I glanced up at Taylor, my preppy, Oxford-bound cousin, who performed the impressive feat of adjusting his glasses and smoothing his short hair at the same time. “Mmm?”

“You look how I feel,” he said.

“What, bored and awkward?”

He blushed. “Well…yeah, I s’pose. But I meant
on edge.”

I rolled a bat mat between my fingers. “What have
you
got to be on edge about?”

“Um. Well.” It was quick—I’d have missed it with a blink—but his watery eyes darted toward Esmé, who sat chatting to Gabe. “I dunno. Just hate family holidays.”

And he fancied my girlfriend, the jammy cock.

“You can’t possibly hate them more than me.”

“No, I do. Mum made me leave my laptop at home and everything.”

At that moment, Esmé plonked herself back next to me on the bench and Taylor lowered his eyes.

“
I like your uncle,” Esmé declared, slightly drunk. “He’s all dry and funny.
You
told me he was a dickhead.” She spoke just a bit too loudly, even over the buzz of the bar, and Gabe jerked up to eye me. The harder I blushed, the closer his lips twitched to a bemused smile.

“That’s not what I said.”

“Yeah, it is.” She grinned at Gabe, all conspiratorial. “You’re such a meanie sometimes, Danni.”

“Not all the time,” Gabe called over, still wearing that strange almost-smile.

I couldn’t bare it. I leapt up, ignored Esmé’s squeaks, and hurried to the bar where I bought a wet, cold bottle of pear cider. The first mouthful hit my throat in sweet prickles. God…I needed that.

Back at the table, I placed the bottle firmly in the centre of the bar mat and tried to catch Gabe’s eye again. Please, I thought, let him notice that I’m drinking the same as him—our drink—that I’m peeling off the label in little spirals of damp paper, just like he’d been doing for the past hour.

Yes, I watched his fingers. I’d been watching them all frickin’ evening because I couldn’t stop. But Gabe didn’t acknowledge my message in a bottle. That’s if he noticed it. I’m not sure he did.

***

Esmé knew something was up. I’d done well to fool her this long, I suppose, but now I was practically unravelling, throwing off ripples as I collapsed. When we got home that night, she closed the bedroom door, leaned back against it and folded her arms.

Here it comes, I thought. The
serious
face.

“You’re a liar, Danni Warren,” she said quietly.

I edged back, my legs touching the bed. “Um. What?”

“You keep telling me you’re okay, but you’re not, are you?”

“I…I suppose not.”

“So what is it? You going to tell me? I can help, you know.” Her serious face melted into a concerned smile. The room was dark, just floodlights casting pearly shadows through the window, and it framed her in this inky, iridescent light. “Is it something to do with your uncle? You went all funny as soon as we met him.”