It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,45
of my book for fifteen minutes, because I’m not really reading as much as holding it as a prop while I watch Alex and his friends.
Alex seems happy. He runs around, diving into the sea for the Frisbee, tackling and wrestling with his friends. At one point, he and Vanessa both run after the Frisbee, and she bumps into him, pushing him out of her way, and he laughs. She’s wearing a simple navy-blue bikini, and her dark hair is up in a messy top knot, and she runs and leaps and swims and dives with the confidence and joyful abandon of someone completely at ease in her body.
‘Let’s go for a swim,’ Zach says.
‘I’ll stay here,’ I say.
‘No, you won’t,’ Lucy says, pulling me to my feet. The three of us walk down the beach a little, getting closer to Alex and his friends. I’m still wearing my dress and hat and sunglasses. Lucy is in her red-and-white striped bikini, as bright and cheerful as a lolly, with red sunglasses and bouncing blonde curls. She looks like she should be playing beach volleyball in an ice-cream ad.
Alex and his friends are all in the water, and Lucy and Zach walk into the waves and wade out towards them.
‘Coming?’ Lucy calls over the sound of the waves.
‘In a minute,’ I say, pretending that I just love wading in the shallows by myself.
Lucy and Zach swim out, and I sit down in the wet sand, where the last of the small waves reach, and let the cold water run over my feet and legs, recede, and run over them again. They are having shoulder fights now, one person sitting on another’s shoulders and trying to knock another person off someone else’s shoulders. Lucy is on Zach’s shoulders and she squeals as she falls into the water. Alex is on Owen’s shoulders. He gets flipped backwards into the water and surfaces laughing. He looks at me, and yells something out, I think, but I can’t hear him, and then he’s pulled back into the game.
They seem to be rotating through all the options, so I know what’s coming. Vanessa gets on Alex’s shoulders, and my heart races. He grips her thighs (her lovely, lovely thighs) and they laugh as she fights against a girl on Owen’s shoulders. She yells at Alex, and he yells back at her, and they are both grinning, and Vanessa knocks the other girl off Owen’s shoulders. Alex lowers Vanessa back into the water and she slips off and dives under in one smooth motion. I’ve never felt more repellent or more pathetic in my life.
I should swim out and join in. I should strip off my dress and not care about what I look like. I should joke, laugh and flirt, and show Alex the best parts of me. I should be the Natalie from last night, the Natalie who kissed him. But I’m stuck here in the shallows, watching, too scared to go out there.
I can’t do this. I’ll never be able to do this.
What the hell was I thinking? Outside of the bubble of sharing a bed at night, Alex and I don’t work. I can’t frolic with his bikini-clad friends on the beach, I can’t go to bars and do whatever people do at bars (drink I assume, but what else, there must be more to it). I just can’t handle any of it.
This realisation builds up inside me like an uncontrollable storm, and suddenly I can’t stand it anymore. I get up and walk back to our towels, pick up my things and keep walking, all the way back to the beach house. Somewhere along the way I start crying, which makes me feel even more pathetic, and I feel even more sorry for myself, which makes me cry even harder.
I would give anything to be someone other than me, just for one afternoon, just for a goddamn minute.
16
Two Strikes
That night, Lucy and Zach assume we’ll keep doing the same thing as always and swap beds. It’s our last night in Queenscliff. I agree, because what else can I do, but I am feeling sick about it.
Alex doesn’t come back to the house until late. I hear him come in when I’m standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth. He chats to Mariella and Sal for a few minutes, laughs about something, and walks into his room. He sounds happy. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or bad one.