Page 42 of Ride the Wave

‘Marina hinted that you felt bad about tricking me into an interview the other night.’

‘Did she.’

‘Do you?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Feel bad,’ he says impatiently, his eyes locked with mine.

I shift my weight from one foot to the other. ‘I… well, I think what happened is that you misunderstood what was going on and if you’d listened to my—’

‘You can’t do it, can you?’ he interrupts, taking a step towards me.

‘Do what?’

‘Apologise.’

I narrow my eyes at him. ‘I apologise when I’ve done something wrong, Leo. I won’t apologise for doing my job,’ I state defensively, despite the fact I’ve literally been telling myself all day that’s what I need to do. ‘I obviously don’t want you to be upset with me’ but—‘I wasn’t upset with you,’ he claims, his forehead creasing slightly.

‘You seemed upset when you stormed off from the beach and then didn’t reply to any of my messages asking to meet.’

‘I didn’t storm off,’ he corrects. ‘The interview was over. I had to go home.’

‘Okay, sure.’

He lifts his eyes to the ceiling. ‘I was annoyed at myself.’

‘Why?’ I ask, exasperated, moving closer to him. ‘Everything you said was so good! Trust me, Leo, you gave some really moving and brilliant quotes. Why would you be annoyed?’

‘Because you made me forget myself,’ he blurts out, bringing his eyes back to mine.

I stare at him. His eyes flicker down to my lips and back up again. He swallows.

Somewhere in the pit of my stomach, a flurry of butterflies burst into dance.

The door to the storeroom swings open, the creaking making both of us jump. I take a step backwards, only just realising how close we’d been standing.

Standing in the doorway, Marina smirks.

‘Oh hey you two,’ she says nonchalantly, ‘I thought I heard raised voices. I wanted to make sure you were being nice to Iris, Leo, the person who is hopefully going to write nice things about you, Burgau and this bar,which could use some more tourists spending their money here.’

She gives Leo a pointed look as she finishes her sentence through gritted teeth. He doesn’t say anything, his brow furrowed.

‘It’s all good,’ I assure her, plastering on a smile. ‘I was… apologising.’

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him look to me in surprise.

‘Great,’ Marina says, her expression relaxing. ‘You want to bring the wine through now? You don’t normally take this long to choose, Leo.’ She addresses me. ‘Did he bore you with all his wine knowledge? It’s great that he’s so into it, but he is such a snob, isn’t he?’

Rolling her eyes at him, she spins round and leaves, the door swinging closed behind her. He doesn’t hesitate to follow her out, striding past me and leaving me alone, clutching the bottles of wine in my arms, my mouth falling open as he goes.

12

It’s more than an hour later that we find ourselves next to each other again. I don’t know if he’d been purposefully avoiding me, but for whatever reason we’d been caught up in different huddles of people until now when I turn round to lean back on the bar and find my elbow brushing against his as he slides in next to me. I can tell from his expression that he didn’t know it was me standing here and he’d rather it wasn’t. He does, at least, stick around long enough to acknowledge me.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hey.’

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