Page 34 of Best Mistake Ever
Her eyes widen in mock outrage and she swings her own pillow in a wide arc, catching me on the hip.
There’s a moment’s pause, where we stare intently at each other, then, suddenly, with tacit understanding, we go at each other properly, landing blow after blow on each other’s back, legs, shoulders. Shrieks and giggles escape from her as she takes a volley of soft thumps from my pillow, before retaliating with her own wide, on-point swing, that lands right in the middle of my back.
Even though it doesn’t hurt a bit, I let out a sharp exhalation of breath as it’s knocked from my lungs.
I turn to see her double over with laughter, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed.
It hits me, like another blow to my body, just how beautiful she is.
This has the effect of suddenly sobering me up and I lower my pillow, raising a hand in defeat, fighting back the renewedrush of desire I’ve been shoving away hard since waking this morning.
Dammit.
‘Okay, I concede. You win,’ I tell her, not able to look her in the face now. If I do, I’m afraid I might do something stupid, like try to kiss her again.
There’s a small pause, then out of the corner of my eye, I see her drop her own pillow onto the floor next to mine.
‘Excellent,’ she says, but I hear a hint of disappointment in her voice. It seems she was having fun, knocking seven bells out of me. ‘I suppose I’d better get on with my job.’
I nod, still not meeting her eyes. ‘Yeah, me too.’
We wave our thanks to the person leading the pillow-fighting orgy, leaving the rest of them still at it, and make our way back out of the tent.
‘One last tent to check on here,’ Dee says, heading towards the final one in the row. A thumping base begins from somewhere inside it. I glance at the blackboard next to the door and see thatLube Wrestlingis written on it.
What the hell?
Intrigued and, if I’m honest, reluctant to walk away from Dee right away, I follow her, with some trepidation, into the tent.
There’s a big group of people all crowded round a large child’s paddling pool, its primary colours garish against the natural-coloured tones of the tent. In it are two people, one male, one female, both dressed in swimming costumes and nothing else apart from a single sock each. The pool appears to have about an inch of viscous-looking liquid in the bottom of it. From its thick, shiny consistency, I can tell it’s not water. It’s lube. And both people in the pool are covered in it. It shines on their skin, giving them the look of two seals fresh from the sea.
Except they’re doing something I can’t imagine seals ever doing.
They’re wrestling, attempting to pull the lone sock off the other’s foot, contorting themselves into impossible-looking shapes around each other’s bodies and sliding around the pool in their attempt to evade the grasp of their opponent on their own sock.
It’s the most ridiculous, hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.
The crowd are going wild for it, a chorus of cheers and hoots emanating from them as the music pounds away from a speaker nearby, driving the participants on.
‘Fancy having a go at that next?’ I jest, turning to quirk my eyebrow at Dee, then immediately worrying she might misconstrue that as a come on.
‘That’s a hard no from me.’ Luckily, she seems to have taken it as the joke I meant it to be.
I grin, sweeping a hand over my hair, feeling my earlier jitters returning. Time to go.
‘Okay, well, I’ll see you later at the party.’
‘Great,’ she says. There’s an awkward pause where she smooths her own hand over her hair, looking a little taken aback when her fingers reach the end of her bob, as if she wasn’t expecting it to end there.
Apparently, she’s still as nervous as I am about where our relationship currently resides.
‘See you in a bit,’ she mutters, before turning on her heel and striding away from me and out of the tent, her gait a little less graceful than usual on the uneven ground.
11
BEATRICE
After a day of workshops, hot-tubbing and yoga, the dress-up party begins with a bang at nine o’clock.
