“Only Jamie Reynolds!” she says triumphantly. “And guess what? He’s working out here now! He has a bar quite close to here, apparently. Can you believe it, Summer?”
She looks at me innocently enough, but I’ve known her since we were teenagers, and I know perfectly well that she doesn’t need an answer to this. Because she knows. She knows that I already knew about Jamie and his bar. She might think Hercule Poirot and Hercules are one and the same, but Chloe isn’t stupid. I can tell she’s put two and two together, and figured out exactly what brought me here. She just isn’t saying it because she wants to see if I’ll come clean first.
“Er, yeah,” I admit. “I know. I bumped into him yesterday, actually.”
I fiddle with the bottle of sunscreen I’m still holding, thanking my stars that I didn’t tell Jamie the real reason I happened to ‘bump into him’.
“Get out!” says Chloe, not sounding the slightest bit surprised at this. “How funny! Imagine you two just happening to meet, all the way out here!”
Her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. I feel almost as if we’re having an argument, even though anyone watching us would think we sounded perfectly normal.
“Summer,” she says, her voice suddenly softer. “You’re not thinking about Jamie again, are you? Like, you didn’t come out here to try to see him?”
“Of course not,” I reply instantly. “It’s just a coincidence, him being here too. That’s all.”
I shrug nonchalantly, but I can tell she doesn’t believe me.
“Well, good,” she says at last. “I just wouldn’t want you getting hurt again, like the last time. Remember what happened at the leaver’s ball,when you—”
“I remember, thanks,” I say, cutting her off. “I don’t need you to remind me. And I’m fine, really. That was a long time ago. I’m totally over it.”
Chloe looks unconvinced as she stands up, producing a pair of sunglasses which make her look exactly like a film star.
“Right,” she says. “I need to find my room so I can have a quick shower and slip into something less comfortable before dinner. Where are we going, by the way?”
“I normally just eat in the hotel,” I tell her, helping her wheel her suitcase out of the pool area and back towards the hotel. “It’s all-inclusive. It’s quite good, actually. Only they have this thing where you’re supposed to sit at the same table every night, and they’ve sat me next to that Alex guy, which is—”
I pause, searching for the right word to describe what having dinner with Alex Fox is like, but I don’t even know where to start.
“Right.” Chloe looks at me curiously. “Well, I didn’t come all this way to eat on my own, so let’s just go out somewhere instead. What d’you say?”
I’m not surewhatto say to that; mostly because I have a horrible feeling about what she’s about to suggest, and, sure enough…
“I know!” says Chloe, as if she’s only just thought of it. “Why don’t we go to Jamie’s bar? It looks like it serves food as well as booze. And you’re definitely not still hung up on Jamie any more, so that’d be fine with you, wouldn’t it?”
She smiles innocently. She’s testing me, I know. She wants me to say I don’t want to go to The Rowdy Squirrel with her because Iam, in fact, ‘still hung up on Jamie,’ as she puts it. Which, of course, isn’t true.
Well, Idon’tthink so,anyway.
I still don’t want to go there, though. My first encounter with Jamie was awkward enough to make me not want to repeat it. But Chloe is watching me as if she’s about to catch me out in a lie, and I know she’ll never let me hear the end of it if I tell her therealreason I don’t want to see Jamie right now, so I just smile sweetly back at her as if I haven’t got a care in the world.
“Sounds great,” I say casually. “What time do you want to leave?”
Seventeen
We sashay — there’s no other word for it — out of the hotel one hour and three outfit changes (for Chloe) later. I’m wearing a little red dress Chloe insisted I borrow from her apparently bottomless suitcase, and she’s even done my makeup for me, somehow managing to cover up my freckles, and produce cheekbones I didn’t know I had, so that, by the time she’s done, I look like a completely different person.
“It’s about time you had a bit of a makeover,” she said, looking at me critically before we leave. “You’ve been stuck in a rut, Summer. It’s time for a change.”
That’s at least one thing we can agree on, so, even though the silky little dress is much shorter than I’m used to, and I’m wearing so much makeup I’m worried my face might melt in the heat, I pull my shoulders back and remind myself that this is what I wanted: to shake things up, and become the person I always wanted to be.
I wanted to change my life, didn’t I?
Well, here I am, doing exactly that.
Before we left, I told Chloe I had to go back to my room to pick up some euros, and went to knock on Alex’s door instead, so I could apologize for what happened at the pool earlier. But there was no answer. Either he wasn’t in, or he just didn’t want to talk to me, so in the end I just left a bag of salted peanuts from the mini bar outside his door as a peace offering, then came down to join Chloe.
And now here we are; off to find Jamie, just like we’re teenagers again.
