But I move towards him, wrapping my arms around him, thanking God when he reciprocates.
His salted skin is like moisturiser under my fingertips. A sheen of lotion, a hint of sweet nectar aroma under his arms. My chin fits his clavicle, and my hands trace his freckled shoulder, before running down his sculpted back. He grips me tight, like if he let me go, I’d disappear under the water, despite its stillness, its calmness.
‘I haven’t changed,’ Sam whispers, and his breath dances over my neck, setting my hairs on edge. ‘I’m still your best friend.’
And I hold him tighter to me, to my body, to every part of me. Something stirs between his hips, prompting a mirrormovement of my own. It’s acknowledged with an escaped breath. Uncharted territory, an unexplored island.
No one around.
Sam and I.
Nothing but seclusion and privacy.
Our eyes meet and he gently touches my cheek.
‘Sam…’
Rustling ripples around us, like a rip in time, breaking us apart as something snaps and splashes into the water across from us. A loud squawk makes us both cast around for the culprit.
Two peacocks with fanned feathers circle each other, a magnificent display of affection and hues of green and blue.
Sam laughs. ‘Guess we’re not the only gay ones on the beach.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
WILL
Day Three
‘Alice, you don’t understand, he was hard,’ I whisper, as I hide under the deck of the ship as we sail from the island. ‘Like, his dick was hard. And it touched mine. And I was?—’
‘Hard?’ Alice asks. ‘Oh, what a hard life. Two hot guys being hard together, having hard times, with hard dicks.’
‘Alice, please be serious.’ Even on a call, Alice can give me that look that makes everything less complicated. ‘This is Sam we’re talking about.Sam. Not Ollie.’
‘I know.’
‘Don’t give me that tone.’
‘What tone?’
‘That tone you do,’ I say. ‘Like you know everything and I don’t.’
‘That’s just how we work. Was he big?’
‘Alice.’
‘Okay, okay, where is he now?’
I glance around the small bedroom, which smells of cheap aftershave, reminding me of gym locker rooms. You know, thatone time I’ve actually gone to the gym. There’s a high probability I’m not meant to be in here, judging by the judgemental stare of a polystyrene parrot perched on a table.
‘He’s upstairs.’
‘Okay, and what happened after you were… you know.’
After the gay peacocks, Sam strolled out of the water, his back to me. When he faced me, he looked me up and down. It’s like he knew the hold he had over me at that moment. He readjusted himself, his hands dipping below the waistband of his shorts, never breaking my gaze.
But whatever transpired between us in the ocean, on the island, was lost as soon as we got back on the boat.
