Ibiza Summer (8 page)

We both smiled and looked away, leaving the tension between us hanging in the air for a second.

‘So, what do you think of the beach then?’ he said after a few moments’ silence, his normal accent resumed.

‘It’s the most beautiful beach I’ve seen,’ I said, adding, ‘although I haven’t really been to many beaches in Ibiza.’ And when I said
‘many’, what I really meant was ‘any’.

‘I come here to think as well as run,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘when things get a bit hectic and I need time to reflect. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to be alone with your
thoughts and chill out, especially in a place as beautiful as this.’

He took a swig of his water and I wondered what he could want to reflect about, on the beach, alone. Past girlfriends maybe? Jo-Jo perhaps?

‘Have you lived in Ibiza a long time?’ I had held back asking him too many questions and by now I was desperate to know everything about him.

‘About five years. I came here on holiday and never left. Fell in love with the place on sight,’ he said, looking at me in a strange way and smiling. I couldn’t tell whether he
was teasing me or if he was actually suggesting – no, he couldn’t be. It was ridiculous to think that he’d fallen in love with
me
at first sight.

‘Really? What did your parents think about you staying?’ I asked, wishing I hadn’t, because it made me sound like I couldn’t do anything without my parents’
permission.

‘Oh, you know, they were a bit freaked out at first but once they’d been out to see me, they were cool. They fell in love with the place too. But then, that’s Ibiza. It’s
got magical properties and once you’ve been here you don’t want to leave.’

I was beginning to understand what he meant.

‘So how old were you when you first came here on holiday?’ I asked, thinking that it was a pretty clever way of finding out his age.

‘Young,’ he said, smiling a little at the memory and continuing to hold my gaze, ‘I was twenty-one.’

Now I’m not exactly great at maths, as my school report will testify, but even I could work out that this made him twenty-six years old. Oh. My. God. Twenty-six!

I didn’t know why I was so surprised. I’d guessed he was a bit older than me, maybe twenty-three at most – but twenty-six! If he thought twenty-one was young, what would he
make of me being sixteen? This was, as Willow would say, a twenty-four carat disaster (or in this case, twenty-six). So far he hadn’t guessed I was that much younger, and I felt sure he would
be put off if I told him my real age. Even if I hadn’t been sure of his reaction, I wasn’t prepared to find out, not since this was fast turning out to be the most special day of my
sixteen (almost seventeen) years on this planet so far. Why spoil it now?

‘I was pretty bored with life back in England,’ he continued, rolling over on to his side and moving in a little closer to me, causing my heart to start pounding loudly in my chest
again. I hoped he couldn’t hear it, being that close to me and all. ‘The rat-race,’ he said, ‘it’s not really me.’

‘And what is
you
?’ I asked him, our bodies almost touching now. I was looking right into his eyes and noticed they were flecked with tiny bits of brown.

He broke my gaze and looked down for a moment. I wondered if I was asking him too many questions, but I felt so comfortable around him that I couldn’t help myself.

He grabbed a handful of grapes and popped one into my mouth and then one in his own. It tasted delicious. ‘Music is me,’ he said thoughtfully, chewing on the grape. ‘Music and
friends and family and – being with people I love, I suppose.’

The mere mention of the word ‘love’ sent my head into a spin and I began to play with the beading on the ties of my bikini nervously.

We sat looking at each other for a second, neither of us saying anything. It wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but I sensed a tension, like he wanted to elaborate on what he’d just said,
but wasn’t sure whether to or not.

‘Shall we go for a swim?’ he finally said, breaking the moment. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling quite warm.’

‘That’s a great idea,’ I said and he took my hand to pull me up.

So I discovered that Rex Brown was twenty-six and originally from Aldersley Hedge, a little village just outside Manchester – which kind of accounted for the soft lilt in
his voice – and that he came to Ibiza five years ago with his friend, Steve, and a box of records and had never looked back. A few years of DJing in ‘dives’, as he had put it,
paved the way to better clubs and bigger audiences and within a couple of years, the pair of them were playing to massive crowds and had earned themselves superstar DJ status.

He was a keen swimmer, diver and runner, and worked-out at the local gym. He liked fishing – everything to do with the sea in fact, and he dreamed of owning his own boat one day. Like me,
he was an animal-lover and missed his family dog, Benjy, who he’d grown up with back home.

Even though I was reluctant to give away too much, we talked a bit about me too, and I told him all about my plans to become a vet, or at least work with animals somehow. I also mentioned my
ambition to swim with dolphins and he said he wasn’t surprised by that because I seemed like a very spiritual woman and dolphins are very spiritual creatures indeed. It felt great that
he’d used the word ‘woman’, because it made me feel mature and slightly exotic and gave me the confidence to talk some more about myself. I was terrified he’d ask me how old
I was and I kept waiting for him to bring it up but he didn’t – which was kind of a relief, but also made me feel a bit bad too, because even though I figured that not saying anything
was not exactly the same thing as lying, in my heart I knew that it probably was.

We’d been walking and talking so much that until I had mentioned the dolphins, we had clean forgotten about that swim we were supposed to be having.

‘Ladies first!’ he said, gesturing towards the glittering crystal water as we finally approached the sea.

‘Chicken!’ I laughed as I waded out up to my knees. The water was warm and clear, like a bath, so I went out a little further and broke into a swim.

He followed, swimming towards me and suddenly he was right up close to me, holding me by the waist and gently moving me up through the water.

Just his touch sent ripples of excitement through me and I couldn’t help giggling, which I hoped didn’t sound too girly and stupid.

We swam around a bit and he splashed me, sending the salty water cascading over my head, and I screamed to get away because I was worried my mascara might run as I’d forgotten to wear the
waterproof stuff, but by now I was having way too much fun to care, panda-eyes or not.

‘I’m DJing at a beach party tonight at Café Del Sol in San Antonio. Do you know it?’ he asked.

I said I’d heard of it, just to sound like I was well up on the scene, but really I had no idea where or what it was.

‘It’s one of the most famous bars in Ibiza,’ he said. ‘It’s on the beach in San Antonio, you know, not far from where you’re staying.’ I nodded,
thinking that this must be the beach that Ellie and gang had gone to today.

‘The sunset there is so amazing, and if you haven’t seen an Ibizan sunset before, well!’ he said, mock-indignant. Before I could answer I suddenly lost my footing and
momentarily slipped underwater. I began to cough violently as the salty water stung my throat.

‘You OK?’ he said, putting his hands on my shoulders and he looked so concerned that it was almost worth the embarrassment.

‘I’m fine,’ I spluttered, and realised I had lost my hairband and now my unruly mass of curls was hanging down in straggles around my face and shoulders.
How
attractive.

‘You have the most amazing hair,’ he said, staring at me.

I looked at him to see if he was being serious.

‘What, this bird’s nest?’ I said, pointing to my head. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

He stood still in the water and I realised that he could actually touch the bottom of the sea, unlike me.

‘You’re so not like all the other women I usually meet, do you know that?’ he said, looking at me, his head cocked to one side.

‘Why, do they all have straight hair then?’ I smiled, knowing I was being facetious again, but kind of enjoying the fact that we were flirting again.

‘
Touché
,’ he said, laughing, but I wasn’t sure if he was joking with me so I didn’t answer.

‘You’re so, so . . . self-deprecating – it’s very refreshing,’ he said. ‘But you shouldn’t put yourself down, you’ve no need. You’re lovely
just as you are.’

Now I
really
didn’t have a clue what he was on about.
Self-deprecating?

As much as I wanted to accept that he was attempting to pay me a compliment, the fact that he’d mentioned ‘other women’ made me wonder whether he did this kind of thing all the
time. Meet girls, whisk them off to the beach on his moped, feed them grapes and tell them they looked beautiful as he gave them the ‘you’re not like any of the other girls I
meet’ line. I mean, he was utterly stunning to look at
and
he was a DJ. Even
I
knew that this came with a bit of a reputation. He was bound to have girls flocking round him
24/7. Maybe he even had a girlfriend already? But something inside me sensed he wasn’t a player. I couldn’t be sure of course, but it was just a feeling I had when I looked into his
eyes. They say that the eyes are the window to your soul, and when I looked into his, all I could see was honesty and kindness. Despite this, all these niggling doubts had got me thinking of Jo-Jo
and I couldn’t stop myself from asking about her.

‘Did you manage to drop Jo-Jo off safely?’ I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

‘Yeah, she’s going through a rough time at the moment. Her and Steve used to be an item until recently and – well, you know how these things go. Stuff happens. They split a
week or so ago. She’s pretty cut up, so I’ve been looking after her.’

He sounded quite fond of Jo-Jo and, although I knew I didn’t have any evidence to support it, I feared that she fancied Rex and that Rex fancied her and maybe that’s why she and
Steve had split up. Perhaps it was just my wild imagination, but it certainly would account for her giving me daggers this morning in the shop.

‘So,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘are you going to come to this party tonight or what?’

‘Well, um, you know – I’d love to but I’m not sure what my, er, my friends are up to,’ I stammered, lying on my back and attempting to float so he couldn’t
see my face.

‘Bring them! They’re welcome to come.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, wishing I really could bring them, but knowing it would just be impossible now. I couldn’t run the risk of them blurting out my real age and making me look a
total idiot. ‘I’ll ask them.’

‘Good,’ he said, adding, ‘I really want you to be there.’

I didn’t mean to lie, especially since something about just being near him made me want to tell him the truth about everything I had ever known. I was too frightened he’d look at me
in horror if I told him the truth and discard me like a nectarine stone. Each moment had been too perfect to risk it all with the truth, even if I did feel I might suddenly be stuck down by freak
lightning for lying.

As I feared, we eventually got round to the whole age subject. He asked me when my birthday was, and I told him it was in a few weeks’ time, and he asked if it was a special one like my
twenty-first or something. I kind of scoffed and said, ‘Oh, no’, as if I was, like, way over the whole twenty-one thing, and he said, ‘Well, you can only be about twenty-two at
most anyway.’ I stuck my nose in the air in mock horror and told him that a
real
gentleman never asks a
real
lady her
real
age – he laughed at me a little and we
said no more about it, which only supported my theory that he really was a gentleman of the highest order.

‘Age is just a number anyway,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I don’t judge people on how
long
they’ve lived, but
how
they’ve
lived.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said, smiling at his profoundness and feeling not just a little relieved that he’d said it.

We let the sun dry our wet bodies back at the cave and watched the waves lap gently along the shore as we munched on the fruit and cheese. Afterwards, Rex did some spectacular
dives off the face of a small cliff and I watched, mesmerised, and clapped my hands excitedly as his perfectly lithe brown body hit the water, making a splash.

‘You were right,’ I said. ‘You’re an amazing diver.’

He smiled a little coyly, which made me want to kiss him.

‘Well, when you live out here, you spend so much time in the sea it all becomes second nature.’

‘Still, it was pretty impressive,’ I said, raising my eyebrows.

Afterwards, he sat down next to me closely –
really
closely – and I could smell the scent of the sea and suntan lotion on his skin. I wondered if life got any better than
this, just me and him, our bodies almost touching, listening to the sound of the sea in the distance – although I had to admit that a kiss would’ve been the icing on the cake. Then,
just as I was kind of zoning out on my own thoughts, this little butterfly came from nowhere and landed on my knee.

‘Don’t move!’ Rex whispered. And I froze as we both marvelled at its small furry body and delicate colourful wings shining in the sunlight as they gently opened and closed.

‘Buddhists believe that nothing ever truly dies,’ Rex said, transfixed by the butterfly. ‘And that death simply transports us into another state of being, like the way this
little dude was once a caterpillar, and probably something else before it.’ He smiled as we watched the butterfly’s iridescent wings gently flutter in the light breeze.

I couldn’t help but wonder, if this theory were true, then maybe, just maybe, my dad had turned into something else when he had died, and that perhaps, absurd as it was to think, he had
returned to the living world as this little butterfly that was sitting on my knee here, to give me his blessing about Rex, to say that it was OK that I had lied and that he was watching over me to
make sure I was safe and happy and not to worry about anything. I knew it was a ridiculous thing to think, but it was comforting, just for a second, to believe it.