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I may have scarred him for life at the airport.
‘No. No, of course not,’ I say all breathy, shaking my mussed-up hair from my face and adjusting my vest. ‘It was a most highly enjoyable…’
Even though my thoughts are full of lust, I suddenly sound very formal, like I’m giving feedback at a job appraisal. I clear my throat. ‘It was a most highly enjoyable… encounter. Fully consensual and, erm, above board. Top marks.’
Top marks? My emotions have been all over the place since the redundancy shock. I can feel the endorphins plummeting.
‘Likewise. I also enjoyed our encounter,’ Oliver says, avoiding eye contact as he pulls me up and hurriedly gathers together the rest of the stash. ‘I didn’t mean to… erm… go quite so far with the Tree Tickling.’
I think he is terrified of being accused of coming on too strong.
Ding. Ding. The gong is still sounding.
Now that I’ve managed to turn the atmosphere weird, we race back to our rooms in a rather awkward silence, with Oliver yanking at his pants to hide his massive boner.
When we arrive at my door, he leans forward to kiss me goodnight with a polite peck to my cheek just as I stick out my hand to shake his, as though his job interview is at an end and I’ll be in touch forthwith.
Disappointingly, the result is me rather forcefully jabbing him in the solar plexus. He instinctively leaps away from me with a confused look before dashing into his room, just as the last gong chime rings out across the hot, sticky night.
* * *
The next day I awake embarrassed to my core at having made out with Oliver so enthusiastically, only to spoil it at the end. He couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Memories of me drunkenly pouring my heart out to him about all my petty grievances, Ava and work and how bitter I feel, come back to haunt me. What must he think? And oh my God he knows I’ve told a pack of lies to get this life coaching job too.
The irony. Me, a life coach when I’m a seething-hot mess and now enjoy the company of others like a kick in the tits.
I can’t bear to face him, so to avoid further humiliation, I skip the dawn spirit dance in favour of lying in bed with a hangover. I’m going to give the tribal drums a miss too. My head can’t take it. I will simply lie here and think my headache away.
Huge mistake. I. Am. Ravenous and severely dehydrated.
I could really do with some bread and cheese and salty crisps. I weigh up my options. Break into the barn again or break into Oliver’s room for the leftover stash while he’s out Dawn Bathing with his happy bunnies. I poke my head outside the door, only to make out Gandalf ghoulishly floating down the corridor away from me. He has left a pile of rabbit droppings, half an apple and another stick for me to chew, on a little wooden platter outside my room. I close the door gently. Oliver’s room it is then.
I clamber over the narrow gap between our balconies in my baggy robe rather clumsily. Thankfully, he’s left the balcony door open.
Christ, what a mess. In the darkness, I can just about make out his robe lying on the floor. Bottles, bags of crisps, something long and hard. I poke a toe at it. A baguette. And what looks like a…
A light snaps on, scaring me half to death.
Oliver lets out a piercing scream. It seems to last forever. He is lying spread-eagled on the bed and stark-bollock naked like Vitruvian man. Glorious would be the first word that springs to mind.
He grasps for suitable vocabulary befitting this humiliating scenario, while I watch helplessly from my position, frozen in front of him at the foot of the bed. I’ve got a bird’s eye view right up the length of him. It’s positively outstanding. I blink rapidly.
Snap out of it.
Not glorious. Magnificent. That’s it.
Snap out of it before he thinks you are some kind of sexual deviant.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Oliver eventually roars.
Instinctively, I fling the bag of crisps I’m holding onto his crotch. He holds it in place to cover his modesty and sits bolt upright. He’s annoyed. Very annoyed.
‘Well?’
9
Oliver’s question hangs in the air.
I gulp. ‘Well, indeed.’
