Almost Forever Page 6

  That was just one of the many things I learned, hanging around the FitzRoys. Their fascinating world had been intimidating in the beginning, but after the first few years trying to find my feet, I just started to feel as if all the wealth around me was nothing more than the norm. It hadn’t been hard to adapt to luxury and beauty, and even if I never took it for granted I felt less and less uncomfortable in accepting it. The one thing I hadn’t adjusted to quite so easily, however, was the ever-growing group of friends that Paul always seemed to have around.

  Most annoying of all was the fact that I wasn’t one of them, and neither was Harry.

  ‘He’s such a snob,’ Harry said the morning after Paul went to a fancy party at the yacht club and didn’t invite us.

  I shrugged as we walked slowly from the back gate down to the beach. Paul had turned seventeen last January and since then, the age gap between us, which had never been an obstacle to our friendship before, seemed to have become one this summer. ‘Why are you so bothered?’ I asked him, stepping down the rocky slope carefully. I was wearing slippery flip-flops and this trek into the wild wasn’t really what I had planned when I put them on.

  ‘Because!’ Harry snorted at my question as if his annoyance was completely justified and needed no explanation. ‘He just spent all day with those losers,’ he replied with resentment in his voice.

  I raised an eyebrow then replied sarcastically, ‘Bunch of losers, eh?’

  ‘Right,’ he agreed even though we both knew that Paul’s friends were anything but – some of them even had royal titles – ‘losers’ wasn’t quite the term I would have used to describe them.

  I looked at Harry wondering why he was suddenly acting so weird.

  ‘They were drinking champagne in the pool last night, after the party,’ he said, turning his head to me as we walked on the narrow path.

  ‘We were doing the exact same thing the night before,’ I reminded him. ‘Right up until your father came to take the bottle away from us and forbid us to drink alcohol away from the dinner table,’ I said in a mock Albert voice, but Harry didn’t laugh as I expected he would.

  He shrugged at my comment, and jumped off from one of the rocks straight into the sand.

  ‘Why didn’t we use the normal access, again?’ I asked him, carefully stepping over some driftwood and a pile of dry smelly seaweed.

  ‘Because that’s the way “they” go, and that’s where “they” spend the day, so we can’t!’ he said looking at me sideways as if questioning my loyalty to him.

  ‘Harry, please,’ I said trying to be patient – while actually all this ‘us’ and ‘them’ nonsense was starting to get on my nerves. ‘What’s really going on?’ I asked him, trying to keep my cool about his absurd behaviour towards Paul and his entourage.

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered sharply and kept walking ahead of me.

  I treaded faster through the sand. ‘Harry, wait!’ I huffed in the heat until I was near enough to grab his hand. ‘I said wait!’ The sun was ferocious; the sand was boiling under my feet. I wished we were under one of the lovely canopies in our private part of the beach, only a few feet away. ‘Harry, please,’ I said again, pulling at his hand.

  ‘What?’ he growled, turning to me with a face like thunder, all glaring eyes and furrowed brow.

  ‘You! What?!’ I asked pointing my finger to his chest, incensed by his annoying mood. ‘You’ve been acting weird and I want to know what’s going on …’

  He looked away, then sighed. He swallowed whatever he was about to say, and then looked back at me, his rage somehow under control. He seemed vulnerable and hurt now, and I realised that I’d never seen that expression on his face before.

  ‘It’s because of Lizzie,’ he said eventually, blushing.

  Lizzie was one of Paul’s classmates. She lived in Cambridge too. She’d hung out with Paul ever since I could remember.

  ‘I like her, okay?’ he said and, freeing his hand from mine, he dropped his towel and the snorkel on the hot sand with unjustified force. That explained the angst in his eyes. I was right about his jealousy, but I was wrong about the reason. Harry was jealous of Paul because of Lizzie. Something sharp and painful stung my heart, and I decided that it was better not to find out what caused it. I stood a step away, watching as he muttered to himself. When he took his T-shirt off, I couldn’t look away. He was growing into a sculptured, handsome young man, and his lean face only slightly resembled the nine-year-old boy I’d first met half a dozen years earlier.

  Gee! That’s Harry you’re ogling, I scolded myself, knowing that my hormones were to blame for setting my belly on fire.

  I fumbled with my beach bag, trying not to look at him as he lifted his sunglasses over his head and sat down in a pensive pose that made him look like a bohemian hero.

  ‘I really like her,’ he said, confiding in me and unwittingly putting me in a difficult situation. We’d never really discussed topics of this nature before, so I guessed that was why I felt so uncomfortable. I didn’t like to consider any other reason for the ache inside my chest. It felt strange to suddenly pine for him when I knew I was head over heels in love with Paul. Maybe this was a way for my heart to protect itself, because since Paul had started keeping me at arm’s length, I’d lost hope of ever having a chance with him.

  Harry interrupted my tormented musings, adding more details about his non-existent relationship with Lizzie.

  ‘She is all flirty, you know?’ he sighed. ‘And cute, really cute, when no one is around to see, but then, if I try to approach her when Paul’s there, she just brushes me off.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know!’ he answered testily. ‘She’s been blowing hot and cold the whole summer. Didn’t you notice?’

  I shook my head, resigned to having to listen to Harry’s complaints about Lizzie’s inconsistent behaviour. To give myself something to do, I spread my towel on the scorching sand, and focused on the crashing waves.

  ‘So? What do you think of my plan?’ he asked, claiming my attention again.

  ‘What plan?’ I asked, realising that I’d completely missed what he’d just told me.

  ‘About pretending that you’re my girlfriend?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You, Fran, you! Please keep up,’ he answered.

  ‘Why do you want to do that?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Did your brain get fried by sunstroke?’ he grumbled, rolling his eyes at me.

  ‘Keep talking like that and you’ll never get a girlfriend, not even a pretend one,’ I said, taking my T-shirt off, too hot to wear anything but a swimming costume. Worried about the sun, I rummaged in my bag to find the factor 50 lotion, and started to spread it on my shoulders.

  ‘Please, please, please,’ Harry begged with a hint of desperation in his words that made me empathise with him.

  ‘All right, tell me again what you have in mind,’ I asked, looking up at him, and immediately regretting it because of the grin on his face.

  No good would ever come from a sham relationship, and considering who was involved I could already feel disaster approaching, but Harry was off on a tangent and I knew it was too late to rein it in. He told me the plan was simple: he wanted to make Lizzie jealous, using me.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked tentatively but he was already grinning.

  ‘Just act like you are desperately in love with me.’ I raised an eyebrow at his words, so he added, ‘Laugh at my jokes, snuggle up to me, and if she is around, I might kiss you,’ he said seriously.

  ‘Ewww, no way, no kissing,’ I said, shaking my head. I squirted more cream onto my hands and then spread it evenly on my arms, hoping he wouldn’t notice the slight trembling of my hands. ‘That’s so gross!’ I added for effect.

  ‘What do you mean “gross”?’ he asked offended. ‘Don’t you think I’m handsome?’

  My forced laugh came out slightly hysterical, but it did the job of deflecting the fact that I was attracted to Harry, e
ven if it was just hormones.

  ‘Oh really! What do you think of me, then?’ he insisted, kneeling a few inches away and flirting with a confidence I had never seen from him before. Maybe it was only because he never used his charm on me. We were just friends.

  Against my will, my body responded to him with a slight shiver.

  I lowered my eyes pretending that my heart wasn’t beating faster than it should, and that his proximity didn’t make me feel self-conscious. ‘I don’t think of you at all, Harry,’ I answered with a sigh, continuing my cream-spreading exercise on my legs, purposely trying to ignore the fact that he was leaning uncomfortably closer.

  I could feel his insistent gaze on me when he said, ‘So, you don’t think of me, uh?’ He was getting in the way so I had to look at him.

  ‘Nope.’ I swallowed my lie and shook my head.

  He took a strand of my hair in between his fingers and started to play with it gently.

  No boy had ever invaded my personal space like that before, and the novelty made his gesture even more unsettling. I felt my blood swimming inside my tense body, so when he whispered in my ear, ‘I don’t believe you,’ my breathing stopped altogether.

  Because my cheeks were now burning, and my skin tingled, I swatted his hand away.

  ‘I make you nervous, don’t I?’ he said, moving closer and trailing his fingertips from my shoulder to my jaw in one smooth motion.

  ‘Cut it out!’ I warned him, but he kept moving closer with a voice as smooth as velvet that carried an electrical charge that made me quiver.

  ‘I’m going to kiss you,’ he warned me and I snapped my head up in his direction.

  He was looking at me intensely and it seemed like this was the first ever time I’d looked at him.

  He was mesmerising with his lips set in a teasing smile, his green eyes flashing with excitement, and his skin shining gold under the midday sun.

  ‘D-o-n-t y-o-u d-a-r-e,’ I said through gritted teeth, even if my body wanted the exact opposite. It was too scary to admit that my feelings for him were much more complicated than I’d ever realised, too scary to look him and admit how attractive he was, too scary to find out that my body was responding to him in an irrepressible, uncontrollable way. I just wished I could stop shivering.

  Harry leaned forward slowly, then stopped a millimetre away from me and murmured, ‘I dare you.’

  Instinctively, I bit my lower lip wishing there was a way to freeze this moment so that I’d have some time to think of what to do.

  ‘Harry …’ I begged him with a sigh, unsure at this point what I was really pleading for. These emotions were completely new to me. My heart only went crazy when Paul was around, and now feeling this way for Harry was confusing and frightening and exhilarating, all at the same time.

  He closed the small distance that separated us, with an unhurried exploratory move, keeping his eyes fixed on me.

  The shock I felt when his lips touched mine was so immense it took my breath away. My heart was beating too fast, my body was shaking and my mind was completely blank as he withdrew. When I saw the look of bewilderment in his eyes, I wondered if he felt the same intensity I did. I always dreamed of Paul being my first kiss because I loved him, so why had I felt a sense of angst and fear in my tummy when my lips touched Harry’s?

  I looked up at him, at my best friend, hoping that together we might be able to figure out what had just happened. When my gaze reached his face and I realised he was giving me a teasing smile, my confusion disappeared and his betrayal filled me with anger.

  ‘Was it good?’ he asked with a smirk and I was ready to punch his stupid smile off his mouth; but before my knuckles could connect with his face, he held my fist, wrapping his fingers around it, then moved his head to the side.

  ‘What now!’ I barked.

  ‘There, look,’ he whispered, tilting his head towards the shore. I followed the direction he was pointing, just in time to see Paul, Lizzie, and a few more of their friends, walking by us.

  Given the two pedalos stranded on the shore behind them, I quickly realised that they had been out with those, and were now returning to their sun loungers. Unfortunately, that meant that they had a full view of Harry’s performance and they’d certainly seen us kissing.

  I felt my cheeks blazing with flames of embarrassment and rage. My heart broke with disappointment when Paul simply walked by, unfazed by what he had witnessed, and realising that Harry had just used me for his scheming. I yanked my hand free from Harry’s grip and stood up, furious with myself for feeling hurt and disenchanted by the two people I loved the most in the world.

  I wanted to cry and scream at the idea that my first kiss had been just a ruse, and that the boy who kissed me did it to impress another girl, and not because he liked me. I felt silly and naive at the realisation that this kiss didn’t mean anything for him, that it was just a game – it was make-believe. Outraged, I straightened my spine and I pushed him away with a firm shove.

  ‘You bastard!’ I said wiping my lips with the back of my hand. ‘Why did you do that? Do you understand that you’ve ruined the memory of my first kiss?’ I said as my anger grew exponentially, accompanied now by the hurt in my heart.

  ‘Because of “the plan”? I thought you were on board with it,’ he answered and I snorted in disbelief.

  ‘I hate you,’ I shouted to his face before running away from him and towards the house, back the way we came earlier. Harry called my name. I could hear his footsteps behind me but I didn’t stop running even if the path was uneven and full of exposed roots and rocks that hurt under my bare feet. I kept going as fast as I could until I stepped on a sharp rock, and fell on my hands and knees, badly scraping my skin.

  ‘Fran! Let me see,’ Harry said, running up to me and crouching down by my side.

  ‘Go away,’ I shouted, looking at him through the tears, glad to have an excuse for crying.

  ‘Let me see, come on!’ he said, but I didn’t move. ‘Stop acting like a baby,’ he added and my anger spiked. I turned to him then. My palms were shredded and both knees were bleeding.

  ‘There!’ I said, lifting my hands to him. The expression on his face betrayed his shock. ‘There! I hope you’re happy now. I hope Lizzie is worth this!’ I told him bitterly as tears obfuscated my vision completely, and my feelings clouded my judgement.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Fran,’ he said, drying my cheeks with gentle fingers. ‘I was an idiot. I don’t know what I was thinking.’ He cradled me in his arms, his gesture only marginally soothing the pain and the anger. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he said again, kissing the top of my head. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ I couldn’t tell if he understood that the scraped knees and the grazed palms were not as painful as the ache in my heart.

  We stayed there, without talking, sitting in the undergrowth for a little while longer.

  ‘You were my first kiss too, Fran,’ he said with an embarrassed look in his eyes. That soothed me but also scared me, almost as much as the strange heat I felt building inside my stomach. That kiss had been such a shock, such a blast of unexpected emotions. I had to wonder if perhaps my feelings for Harry were not just pure and simple friendship. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and decided that it didn’t matter. Nothing could ever happen with Paul if I started something with Harry now – and that was the cold shower I needed to clear my head.

  ‘Let’s never talk about what happened,’ I said softly. ‘We’re just friends. Do you understand that we can never be anything more than that?’ I asked and he nodded.

  My knees were still bleeding and my hands were smarting, so eventually Harry took charge of the situation. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, helping me up and supporting me. We walked back to the villa. Before we walked through the door, my heart was hurting more than my hands and knees, but I pretended otherwise.

  ‘Not a word to anyone – nothing can ever happen between us,’ I reminded him when we reached the door.

  ‘Sure,
if that’s what you want,’ said Harry, helping me inside. His eyes were guarded when my gaze met his.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I want,’ I confirmed – for both of us.

  Everything changed for us that summer. Even though we pretended that nothing had happened and carried on as we always did, Harry and I never quite regained that easy way we used to have around each other. At the same time Paul started to avoid me at school and at home, even more than he already did before, leaving me to pine.

  It took us four years to eventually recover from what happened that day, and only when Paul and I finally got together did my relationship with Harry settle back into a comfortable, solid friendship.

  ***

  ‘One cup of tea.’ Harry enters the room with two steaming cups in one hand and a plate in the other. ‘And a bagel with salmon and rocket.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, trying to shake off the ghost of the past.

  Harry places the plate on the coffee table, then steps closer to pass me the mug. I lift my arm towards him to get it, and a stinging pain shoots straight into the back of my neck, making me cry out. I suck in air through my gritted teeth at the dull ache it leaves behind. The left side of my neck is so painfully knotted that I can hardly move without a flash of agony slashing right through my brain. When Harry looks at me with a worried frown, I just wave his concern away with a flap of my hand.

  ‘It’s nothing. Just a tension headache,’ I say, gently rubbing the top of my shoulder.

  ‘Can I help?’ he asks and I know he is really concerned about me.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, taking the cup of tea from him and trying to minimise the effect of the shooting pain.

  I know my attempt has failed when he says, ‘You don’t look well, Fran. Maybe it’s time to visit the doctor?’

  He’s right – of course he is right. I just don’t want to admit it. I can’t keep any of my food down lately due to my constant stomach cramps, probably from the food poisoning still.

  I’m not sleeping well and I have a constant splitting headache too, but I don’t want to go to the doctor because she’d just ask me to take it easy, to relax, to take some time to look after myself. I can’t do that right now, because Paul needs me – certainly more than I need sleep.