‘Cheers.’ I try to break the awkwardness by clinking the bottles together but Florian abstains. Instead, he strips off his shirt and lies horizontally on his towel, sunglasses hiding whether his eyes are closed.
‘This is nice.’ Archie takes a sip of his beer. He kisses my cheek, and I suddenly feel very aware of every part of my body, everything feeling frustratingly forced.
‘Yeah, it’s lovely,’ I lie. This is possibly the worst thing we could have ever done.
I start to put on my sun cream and offer it around as a sort of peace offering to show that whilst I don’t particularly want to be here right now with these people, I don’t want them to get skin cancer either. Archie looks at his already dark skin and wafts it away and Inés screws her face up at the bottle as if she’s never heard of it. Florian ignores my offer entirely.
‘Fuck, it is hot isn’t it?’ Archie says. I notice the sweat on his forehead.
‘Get in the water then,’ Florian says sharply, interrupting his own apparent vow of silence and Inés and I turn to him abruptly.
Archie surveys the wide stretch of slightly brown water about ten feet away. ‘Is it… clean?’
‘It’s a river,’ Florian says curtly and I can see Archie weighing up whether that was an answer to his question or not. ‘The water flows, you’ll be good.’
‘I’ll come.’ Inés jumps up enthusiastically.
Archie shoots me a pleading look. ‘Ava, you coming?’
‘I might sit this one out for now, sun cream.’ I gesture to the milky sheen on my skin. Archie raises an eyebrow in my direction. I’m not completely sure when I became the exact embodiment of my mother, but clearly that little transition had happened without me realising.
‘Florian?’ Inés asks hopefully.
‘I don’t swim,’ he says into the sand.
‘Looks like it’s just us then.’ Inés gestures to Archie to follow her and he does, slightly begrudgingly, down to the shoreline.
With Florian still face down on the sand, I take the diary out of my bag and turn to a fresh page. When Archie was here, I couldn’t easily write in it without him asking questions, and they were questions I really didn’t have the answer to.
I try to push out the sounds of the kids screeching and the cars travelling over the nearby bridge. I write about the sad little look on Archie’s face when he asked whether I wanted him the same way he wanted me, the thought of not being alone, the opportunities, how normal I’d be, how lucky I’d be. I write about him ordering for me at the restaurant, about how Ettie did the same, about how the old me feels like a totally different person to this current version. That I like this one a little bit more. I write about Florian finding me in my underwear, how I felt more comfortable in that short and incredibly uncomfortable interaction than I have done all weekend with Archie. And then, with that final damning realisation, I slam the diary shut.
‘Do I get to ask you what’s going on now?’ Florian asks. I look around guiltily to see him propped up on his elbows watching me. I feel caught out, wait for the onslaught of questions about the writing, the diary, the entire reason I am here.
I slip the diary back into my bag and turn over, sit up and shield my eyes from the sun. ‘You can ask…’ I try to play it off.
‘Good, what’s going on?’ he says again. ‘Who ishe?’ He gestures to the water where Inés and Archie are swimming out to the diving platform. I feel a gentle relief fall over me. I can handle questions about Archie; he is much easier to explain.
‘A friend.’
Florian scowls. ‘A friend you’re sleeping with.’
‘How very astute you are.’ I smile sarcastically at him and watch Florian writhe a little at my admission. He starts to play with the little leather bracelet on his wrist, plucking at it absentmindedly whilst he looks again at Archie swimming a few metres out, totally unaware of the conversation currently happening on shore.
‘When did you invite him out?’
‘Bloody hell, Florian!’ I whip my sunglasses off and stare at him, hoping that he might get the message. ‘What about her? You don’t hear me interrogating you about your fucking sex life.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘The day after we…’ I stop, correct myself. ‘The day afterIkissed you.’ My response satisfies him. He lowers himself back down to his towel, lighting up another cigarette, and points at the rucksack for a beer. I swear under my breath but still root around for the bottle.
‘He’s a nice guy, Florian. I’m sure you’d like him if you were just a bit nicer to him.’ I hand over the beer; our hands brush involuntarily, and I snatch mine away quickly. Florian smirks.
‘I am being nice to him; I drove us here, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, and pretty much spent the entire forty-minute drive in silence.’
‘Maybe it’s the language barrier, perhaps mynicenessdoesn’t translate well.’
