Curve Ball (3 page)

But he doesn’t really believe in it. And he follows it with this:

‘Who knows? Come on, let’s go back to the boat.’

I confess I don’t want to go back to the boat with
this
Steven. I’m even more afraid of him than I was of the Terminator version. He’s too big and boisterous, even though he was already pretty enormous in those departments, and everything seems calculated to cover something over. At one point, as we’re walking through a street that looks like something out of Victorian England, he actually puts one massive arm around me and
squeezes
. He squeezes so fiercely I don’t think the Spanish Victorians would approve.

Hell,
I
don’t approve.

My heart is still hammering really hard, and I’ve no idea why.

Chapter Two

I know I should feel better about everything. And yet somehow, I feel worse. I’m used to put-downs and veiled insults, and numbing myself to all of them. I’m not in the least bit used to weirdly solicitous behaviour, of the kind he is now exhibiting.

He keeps putting his arm around me. And when he’s not putting his arm around my shoulders or my waist or disturbingly much lower than my waist, he’s saying nice things about me. Of course, most of the time he fails at the nice things – I’m fairly sure “your hair is really big today” isn’t a compliment – but the point is he’s trying. The really insane point is that Steven Stark, owner of a fart machine, is really
trying
.

And I just don’t know what to do with that. I feel like I should be nice back, but everything I think of would only make it seem as though I fancy him. You can’t tell a handsome man that his eyebrows are amazing, because the first thing he’ll do is assume you have an enormous crush on him.

Lord, I don’t want Steven to think I have an enormous crush on him.

So instead, I go with awkward silences and loads of blushing, which is probably only making everything worse. He keeps looking flummoxed, like he’s failing at complimenting me, and that’s why I don’t know how to respond.

And so he tries harder. He tries
really
hard. I’m starting to dissolve under the pressure of his impossible trying. Over dinner, he actually
strokes my hair back from my face
. Though naturally, I’m not sure that’s what he’s done, at first. It’s like with the apology – I suspect it’s just something else, masquerading as a tender sort of touch. Really, he found a spider in my hair and thought he better pluck it out.

I swear to God I almost scream – and I don’t think I do it because of the imaginary spider. I think I do it because his fingers are so massive, and suddenly they’re all over my face. He aims for somewhere around the ear area, but fails, miserably. He could probably touch France and stretch one finger over to England, so it shouldn’t be a shock.

But it is. It makes all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. For a second it’s all I can feel: the heat from his hand, the unintentional pressure of his big fingers, the feel of them sinking briefly into my hair … All of it combines to make me breathless, though I can hardly blame myself for that.

I’ve never been touched like this before. I’m not used to this kind of intimacy – not even from actual boyfriends. Certainly not from Frank. He had a very firm view of what was appropriate between life partners, including that they should always refer to themselves as life partners. Public physical contact was a complete no-no, though I guess we’re not exactly in public right now. Jason and Kimberley aren’t paying the least bit of attention to what Steven may or may not be doing, and besides – he does it far too quickly for anyone to catch.

So it doesn’t really count, on that level. It just counts on the other level Frank wasn’t a fan of: making my insides go woo-woo. He felt that any sort of woo-wooing was rather unseemly, and he had a point. I want to make a big blarting noise, the second Steven does it. And for ages afterwards I can feel the aftershock of what he’s done. My body is practically vibrating with it, in a way I definitely don’t want anyone to see.

Just pretend it never happened, I think at myself, but
myself
doesn’t want to obey.
Myself
has been starving in the desert of affection for 7,000 years, and feels like I deserve a long, long drink. In fact, I think
myself
might be about to do something very stupid – like maybe fondling his hair in return.

Would he really mind if I fondled his hair in return?

He probably wouldn’t, all things considered. I mean, what can he say? “I just played with yours but you can’t play with mine?” That seems grossly unfair, and I’ve never known Steven to be grossly unfair. He hardly ever cheats when we play Monopoly.

Though I realise that’s a flimsy reason for touching him. Too flimsy, I think. Too dangerous. No matter how weirdly intimate he gets with me, I’m never going to do the same in return. The fear of Crush Knowledge is just too great.

So rather than continue into this, I get up in a big blunder – knocking over my glass and flinging pizza into Jason’s lap as I do so. And though I know I should then say sorry for my klutziness, I don’t do that either. Instead, I talk really loudly about feeling tired and wanting to read and basically anything, anything at all to get me out of this situation.

To my eternal embarrassment, I actually think I mention needing the toilet.

But at least I get to escape. I avoid the biggest embarrassment of all: randomly throwing myself at Steven Stark because he plucked a spider out of my hair. And downstairs on my table bed it’s so much quieter and darker and cooler. The boat has a little air conditioning unit, and once I’m being blown on by it I can actually think. The heat stops making me do crazy things.

Because that’s obviously the explanation for all of this:

The terrible, terrible heat.

And me, slowly going insane.

I know why I’m in the water – I’m trying to hide from him. But I’m pretending it’s for a good, normal reason, like snorkelling. Even though I can’t snorkel. I try, I really do, but it’s a bit beyond me. All I can manage is sort of peering down into the water while my body remains as straight as an arrow, so that I look kind of like a fish hook. I’m dangling over the sea bed, with my goggles just glancing the surface of the water.

It almost works, though I know it’s not how you’re supposed to do it. You’re supposed to go further down, but whenever I try loads of water goes in my tube and by the time I’ve managed to sort that out I’m bobbing back up to the surface.

Apparently, it’s really hard to stay down – which seems like the opposite problem to the one everyone else has. Other people sink the minute they step into the water, and then have to paddle frantically to remain afloat. Whereas I appear to be so naturally buoyant I’m surprised gravity is able to hold me down. I should shoot off into the atmosphere the moment I leave the house.

All of which is embarrassing enough on its own, without Steven seeing me do it. Despite his massive size, he’s become really stealthy. He’s gotten creeping up on me down to a fine art, and this is no exception. I stop staring down at my toes and some random things that could possibly be fish, and am greeted by the sight of him, somehow suddenly in the water with me.

I didn’t even hear a splash. Possibly he’s a champion diver, and I just didn’t know it – after all, there are a ton of other things I didn’t know about him before this holiday. I didn’t know he could be sensitive, and apologetic. I hadn’t realised that he enjoys having conversations with me, or at least is getting good at pretending he does.

And most of all, I never knew that he had such a hairy chest.

Because he does. It’s utterly and completely hairy in a way I’ve never imagined before – even though I haven’t been imagining, honest to God. It’s just that in most of my totally innocent mind wanderings, his chest is usually completely smooth. As though men as muscular as he is can’t possibly have body fur.

They have to be waxed. It’s in the Mr Universe handbook.

Only Steven doesn’t abide by the Mr Universe handbook. He’s not even into his body in that way – he just enjoys doing stuff that makes him all massive, like extreme rock climbing or doing that long walk Stephen King talked about. So I’m not sure why I assumed he was down the waxing place daily, getting stripped and buffed and coated in fake tan. He’s actually pretty pale.

And very manly. Extraordinarily manly. Oh Jesus, he’s so manly I’ve lost the ability to greet him in a normal fashion. I just bob there for a long, long time, instead, thinking about his personal grooming regimen. Then, once everything’s turned weird and the silence is like a gong going off between us, the pressure to say something just overwhelms me.

I can’t speak because I didn’t speak before. I’m relying on him, but he’s not speaking either. We’re just floating around in the brilliant blue Mediterranean, staring at each other in a way that’s starting to make my face heat,
again
. The cool water should be keeping me at an even temperature, but apparently it has no control over my disobedient cheeks.

I’m so relieved when he finally breaks this bizarre tension and speaks.

Even though he says the following:

‘I’ve never seen you in a swimsuit before.’

Now I’m not only aware of this weird heaviness between us, but how bare my body is too. I thought I’d be safe because he was still sleeping when I got up, and I assumed he’d never come looking for me in the water.

But I can see now how stupid that assumption was. I based it on the old feeling of
Steven isn’t interested in me
. Instead of the new feeling of
Jesus Christ, he’s interested in me all the fucking time
. He’s so interested that he’s bobbing about a foot from me at six in the morning, and the first thing he chooses to say is about something I’m wearing.

And then he
looks
at the thing I’m wearing. He’s looking at me everywhere, in fact. His eyes feel like hands, slowly discovering my cheeks and my lips and my shoulders, in tiny sections. As though he’s somehow gone blind and needs to feel me out, despite the fact that his sight is perfectly operational.

He can see me. It’s just that I’ve never been seen like
this
, before.

This is intense. I want to tell him to stop, but he isn’t actually doing anything wrong. I can’t tell him to stop when he isn’t doing anything wrong. It will only draw attention to something that’s only in my imagination, as with the spider in my hair and the boob-looking and the feeling that I’m being crushed by a sexual tension that doesn’t actually exist.

It’s best to just keep avoiding it. Keep avoiding it. Here, look at me, avoiding it!

‘I was just snorkelling.’

‘Is that what you call the thing you were doing? Huh.’

‘Don’t insult the thing I was doing! Making a dangling hook of your body is really hard, OK? As is barely touching the water with your goggles.’

He laughs for that, and I’m grateful. Until I remember that spontaneous laughter and bantering like this has all the hallmarks of flirting. Dear God, are we flirting?

‘How are you even holding your body like that? I’m betting you have secret muscles in your boobs. I’m right, aren’t I?’

‘Dude, that’s you.
You
have boob muscles. Look at them: you could model a Wonderbra with those things. They could double for pillows.’

Yeah, this is definitely flirting. I can tell, because it’s the opposite to whatever me and Frank used to do. Once, we had a conversation about whether or not peanuts are really legumes. It seems hard to believe, now, as I fall down some internal stairs and into the mess of Steven Stark.

Did I just talk about his boob pillows?

I think I did.

‘I genuinely can’t tell if that’s a compliment, an insult, or a by-product of your manboob terror. Either way, I’m probably going to smush them against your face, now.’

‘No you’re not.’

Oh my God, I think he is.

‘Just hold still. You’ll barely feel a thing.’

‘Is that what you told your last one-night stand?’

‘OK, you’re seriously going to get it, now.’

‘No, don’t. Don’t, I take it back. I take it back!’ I say, but it’s too late. My efforts at deflecting him with semi-insults only make him more determined – as though I enraged a bull. I questioned his manliness and now he’s going to get me in a kind of headlock.

No, really. That’s what he does. He jumps on me and gets me in a headlock, like he used to do when I was 12 and deserving of noogies. I almost expect him to start knuckling my hair, even though I know this version of playground antics is not quite as innocent as it should be. I can’t really tell myself otherwise, when he’s practically humping my cheek with his gigantic chest muscles. A nipple nearly pokes me in the eye. Below the surface, our legs tangle briefly.

And then after a while he’s just kind of – hugging me. Only it’s a strange, breathless sort of hug. I can feel his chest rising and falling, and deeper down, the crazy thud of his heartbeat. Of course, I’ve no clue why it’s crazily thudding – I don’t think he wrestled with me that hard. But it’s an oddly comforting sound, either way.

It makes my own rattling heartbeat feel less insane.

‘Yeah, you like my chest now,’ he says, and then I realise what I’m doing: I’m just sort of resting on him, even though we’re both upright. And even stranger – I don’t really care all that much. He started it, anyway.

‘I did admit that your pecs are like pillows. What do you expect me to do?’

‘Nothing. I’m glad you’re doing this.’

He sounds so excruciatingly sincere for a second that I almost ask “are you really?” Before I catch myself, and throttle back. “Are you really?” is a much too timid question to go with. It sounds so full of daft hope, in my head.

I can’t do it.

But I can at least remain where I am, which is definitely progress. It’s not flinging a pizza at people, or shaking his hand as though I’m a T-Rex. And I don’t feel weird when he does some other nice thing.

‘Want me to help you snorkel?’ he asks – which is lovely of him, even if I now have to explain that the problem isn’t exactly snorkelling.

‘It’s not that I can’t do the breathing stuff. It’s the diving I have trouble with. I don’t seem to want to go down.’

‘Oh, that’s so disappointing,’ he says, and at first I don’t get it. It’s only after he’s laughed and swiftly changed the subject that my face burns and my body turns to goo – he meant the other implication of
going down
. He made a euphemistic sex joke in my presence, even though he has to know how little I’m built to cope with that.

I think I go stiff in his arms, about a second before he rushes on:

‘I mean, uh, yeah. That’s not a problem,’ he says, then in a way that suggests he can’t stop himself, ‘I’ll help you go down.’

Of course, he hesitates for a while before he goes with it. He obviously felt me get all nervous, and thought I needed a grace period. But in the end I’m kind of glad he decides to keep this euphemism stuff up. It means, at the very least, that he thinks I can take it. And maybe eventually it will start to be more fun, and light hearted – like we’re becoming friends again.