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hannahssimblr · 9 months ago

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Chapter Twenty (Part 2)

We bike down to the beach together at the warmest part of the day, and because there are only three bicycles, one for Claire and each of her parents, Jude and I decide to share. We take a wobbly ride down the road, all cracked tarmac and chunks of loose rock as I balance on the handlebars. I feel free with the wind in my hair, and I’m reminded of the night that he took me to the abandoned church years ago, a bike ride I was almost sure for several moments that I wouldn’t survive. Jude isn’t like that anymore. He’s careful with me as though I’m something precious he’s afraid to break, and the only time he takes his hands off the handlebars is to join me as I stick both my fingers up at a car full of men who wolf whistle at Claire. We shout obscenities at them in every language we know, but I don’t think that anybody knows anything sufficiently offensive in Greek.

When the sea opens up ahead of us along the coastal road I think I might start to cry. It’s like I’m in a film. Irish waters are a different blue to this. They’re greener, murkier and foamier, beautiful in their own wild and dramatic way, but this slice of the Mediterranean is so clear that I can see the pale sand at the very bottom and a shoal of fish that swims around a small sea stack like the fluid stroke of a brush.

“Woah, don’t lean like that,” Jude warns me. “I’ll lose control and hurl us over the cliffs.” I stare ahead instead to where Claire and Shane swerve down the slope of the road and into the heart of Pissouri village, with its white brick walls and red slate roofs, where the beach opens up ahead of us like the doors of a cathedral. It’s so achingly beautiful that I could fall to my knees and pray to it.

Before I even unroll my towel I am stripping myself down to my swimming togs and running towards the sea like it’s calling me home. “Bit eager,” I hear Shane comment as I go, but I don’t care. I am straight in, head under the turquoise water, my fingers digging into the snow white sand on the seafloor and I watch the interesting shapes and colours of the diffused light until the salt stings my eyes too much and I need to come up for air.

“Jesus,” Claire is saying to me, up to her thighs and no further. “You really went for it, girl. It’s a bit cold.”

“It’s lovely,” I whip wet hair away from my face and spit salt water down my chin. I feel like my enthusiasm is a bit ferocious, considering none of the locals on the beach are swimming, but I don’t really care. I wade in until the sea laps around my chin and I have to stand all the way up on the tips of my toes to touch the bottom while Jude pulls his t-shirt off and dashes to join me. At the same moment, Shane tosses a ball at him far too hard and it flies over his head and lands somewhere close to me. “I have it,” I call out, and toss to Jude, who again, misses it, falling sideways into the water with a dramatic slap in his attempt to snatch it from the air. He surfaces glossy and sleek like a dolphin with the ball in his hand, and he tosses it to Claire who shrieks when it skims the surface and sprays cold water up her torso.

“Let me get all the way in before getting me all wet! I’m not ready.” And then Shane comes out of nowhere with an arm hooked on her waist and dunks her in like he’s baptising her in the river Jordan. I laugh until my stomach hurts, and while she’s spluttering with outrage and Shane is experiencing instant regret and profusely apologising, I think seriously about saying something soft and emotional about how happy all three of them make me and how glad I am to be here with them. I don’t have a chance to because the ball comes for me next and I have to abandon my sentimental side to catch it.

An hour later, Jude and I dry off in the sun while Shane and Claire head off on an excursion to locate some bottled water. I watch them going for ages, hand in hand, laughing and bumping off one another like they’ve just started going out, not like a couple that’s approaching their fourth year together.

“They’re so happy together lately.” I say, flipping over on my towel to get some midday heat on the backs of my legs.

“No need to sound so accusatory.” Jude chuckles.

“I’m not, it’s just an observation. They’ve been so loved up the last few weeks, it’s just a pretty stark contrast after the months on end they spent arguing in the kitchen.”

“I guess they’ve just worked it out. I’m happy for them.”

“Yeah but I’m just curious about what’s changed all of a sudden. I wish they’d just tell us.”

“Well, they will in their own time, I’m sure.” He says, and picks up the can of suncream. “Do you want me to get your back? It’s been like two hours since you last put it on.”

“God, you’re so attentive.” I say.

“Again with the accusations,” He quips, and sprays it onto the small of my back. My eyes flutter closed at the sensation of his hand on my skin. “He’s always been obsessed with her anyway,” He continues. “I’m not that surprised that he’s compromised for her, I really think he’d do anything if it meant keeping her forever.”

“You think that’s what’s happened? He’s compromised?”

“He’s finishing his degree, right? Isn’t that a compromise?”

“What if she’s compromised?”

He moves to the skin between my shoulder blades, “What would that involve?”

“Dunno,” I tug my lip thoughtfully between my teeth, “Shane just seems too happy about finishing up that course, it made him so unhappy, and he’s just so stubborn,” I peer at Jude, “Do you think you’d give up on your dreams for a girl?”

“Hm,” A line comes between his eyebrows. “Depends on what dreams and what girl.”

“What’s your dream right now?” He sprays sun cream onto my upper thighs and I move quickly to rub it in before he can.

“Work-wise?”

“Yeah.”

“You know,” He sighs and leans back into his towel with a distant look out over the sea, “I’ve been thinking more and more about getting into film after college.”

“Film?” I echo, surprised.

“Mm, like, my degree could open up some possibilities in things like props and practical effects, and honestly I really really like the sound of that. It seems like something with real purpose. I’d love all of that stuff, I’ve just been researching so much about it and watching all of these videos about the process,” He looks at me and his eyes are dancing, “You know, like the way that they make all of those specialty objects for Wes Anderson movies, I like to imagine myself doing that, I’d be so good at it. I’m so detail oriented, it just seems perfect.”

I kind of feel bad asking him my next question because he seems so thrilled by the idea of his future, but the whole point of this conversation is the ultimatum, “Would you give that up for a woman?”

“It depends if she would ask.”

“Hypothetically, she would.”

“Is this woman you?”

I pause. “I don’t think I’d ask that of you.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Yeah, okay, this woman is me then. And I’m asking you to give up your Hollywood practical effects dream and come and live with me in Tullamore and get a job in the local insurance firm.”

‘Then yeah, I would.”

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t be thrilled about it, but yeah, I mean, if that’s what you really wanted from me then I’d probably do it.”

“Wow.”

“Am I being too intense?”

“A bit.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I wouldn’t then. It’s an extreme scenario anyway, I really don’t think you’re going to move back to Tullamore and expect me to become an insurance broker.”

“No,” I agree, “I’m definitely not going to do that. There’s no art scene there anyway, unless I ran some sad art gallery in the town that sells boring paintings of sunflowers in big white jugs and cards made by kids in the local primary schools.”

“So realistically, where are you going? What’s the compromise?’

“London,” I say, and the word slips from my lips too easily, a dead giveaway to the fact that I’ve thought about this before. Extensively. “I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to live there, it sounds so exciting.”

“I bet there’s a great art scene.”

“Exactly,” I turn over to face him, and my hand reaches out to clutch on and help him to understand how much I want this. Hypothetically. “I just want somewhere bigger, and better, where you’ll never see the same person twice, not on the street or the bus or the tube, it’s just so fluid and dynamic. I’m obsessed with the idea of being unknown, and yet having this incredible space to create, surrounded by other amazing artists, and there’d be so much to do, I’d never ever be bored. I could go to exhibitions and plays and gigs every night of the week. I would be fabulous… But that’s not the point,” I add self-consciously, “If I wanted to move to London, would you give up your dream to come with me?”

“Still yes, but I wouldn’t have to give up my dream to go to London. I could do the film stuff there.”

Wild, unfettered excitement swells inside me and bursts into a million tiny stars in my chest. “You could,” I realise. “We could both be happy there.”

“Uh huh.”

“Am I being too intense now?”

“I like intense,” He splits into a grin and we squeeze each other’s hands, and I realise that all of the things that frightened me about him are slowly dissolving, bit by bit. The fear that he will hurt me, disappoint me, leave me behind, if there is any truth of promise now to the expression on his face, I’m suddenly certain that he won’t do any of those things. “For the record, if it was Tullamore I’d be happy too.”

I roll my eyes, “My God, you wouldn’t, why say these things. Nobody is happy there. I can’t even imagine it, you’d be a complete anomaly.”

“I might visit one day and love it, you never know.”

I have an invasive thought of him standing in the low-ceilinged living room of my parents house and shaking hands with my father. I shudder. As though reading my thoughts, Jude says, “Have you told your parents about me?”

“What? No, of course not,” I say, flipping back onto my front. “I don’t tell them things about my personal life.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’d start trying to find out things about you, and it’s none of their business. I just like to keep things separate, and like, something about having a romantic relationship seems deeply embarrassing. I don’t want them to know that I kiss.”

He laughs, “You’re so interesting.”

“Do your parents know about me?”

“Of course, you’ve been in their house about twenty times in the last month.”

“Yes but never while they’ve been home.”

“My sister has a big mouth, she tells my mother that I’ve had a girl in my room every evening between six and eight PM.”

My face burns, “Oh God, I bet Colette thinks I’m some sort of hussy.”

“She doesn’t, I’ve told her that I’ve met someone really special and that she means a lot to me, and she’s confused, because I’ve told her that you’re not actually my girlfriend, we just hang out, but like, in a non-platonic way.”

“Hm. Yes.” I mutter.

“And I’m like, yeah, fair, that part confuses me too, but it’s alright because I get to make out with her on my bed for like two hours and sometimes she lets me put my hands up her top.”

I am horrified, “You don’t.”

“No, of course I don’t,” He snorts. “What kind of fucked up thing would that be to say to my mother?”

In the distance, I spot Shane and Claire coming back from the store. Shane has a big two litre bottle of water tucked underneath his arm, but they’ve taken a pit stop to furiously kiss underneath a sun umbrella. I look at the sea cliffs instead, lit up the colour of honey and dotted with patches of dried brush. “Do you think I’m stupid for not being your girlfriend?”

“No, I don’t.”

“At times I think I am.”

“What difference does it make, Evie, it’s just a title.”

“Mm.”

“I think you’re a little afraid of doing things that go against your own personal script, though. I think you don’t like the idea of being a girlfriend, because you’ve never had to do it before, but it’s fine. What we’re doing feels like the same thing, you can call it what you want to call it.” A wounded look comes over his face. “Unless you’re actually not, like, committed to this and you’re currently seeing other people at the same time.”

“What? No, I’m not, when would I even have time? Are you?”

“Obviously no. It wouldn’t exactly be fair, and it would negate the whole STI test, wouldn’t it? If I was just hooking up with other women.”

“You got a test done?”

“Yeah and, oh, I forgot to tell you, I have everything.”

“Everything?”

“All of the STIs. I have the full deck.”

“Oh, crazy, me too,” We join hands. “We’re so riddled.”

“It’s worth pointing out that I’m actually clean,” He says with some worry, as though I might in some universe actually believe that he has all of the STIs. “Do with that what you will.”

“Oh, yeah. Cool. Nice,” I say, and turn my face the other way to hide this new blush that’s crept up.

“Yeah,” He says, “Nice.”

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