Page 49 of Best Mistake Ever
My resolve breaks. I can’t leave now. It would seem churlish.
‘Okay, sure,’ I say.
‘Let’s not walk that way though,’ he says as I start moving away from the house.
‘Past the lake, you mean?’
‘Exactly. I can barely look at the place now, which really sucks, because I’ve always loved it down there.’
I feel a rush of anger on his behalf. That bloody woman and her ego has a lot to answer for.
‘That’s such a shame. Are you really going to let that one memory stop you from going there again?’
‘It just feels wrong now. Tainted, or something.’
I badly want to do something to make him feel better about it all, but I’m not sure what. He clearly needs to purge thishumiliation so he can get past it. It seems to be haunting him. Perhaps holding him back from moving on with his life.
‘Hey, you know what you should do?’ I say.
‘What?’ he asks a little warily, though there’s a flash of something bright and hopeful in his eyes.
‘You should make a new happy memory there.’
The brightness in his gaze intensifies.
‘What sort of thing did you have in mind?’ His voice is low and gruff now and the sound of it sends a shiver of awareness across my skin. My whole body seems to have come alive with lust. Heat coils in my stomach.
I try to squash it down, but it still lingers.
‘Er, I don’t know… you could go wild swimming there?’ I blurt.
‘We could gowildswimming?’ he says with meaning, like it’s an innuendo and it suddenly occurs to me what he’s suggesting. That the two of us go there and swim naked.
No, no, no. That’s a really bad idea.
‘I didn’t mean—’ I say quickly.
But he cuts me off. ‘Okay then. Let’s go swimming,’ he says, starting towards the lake, his pace picking up so I have to take two steps to his one.
‘Wait! I didn’t mean right now, with me!’ I pant, trying to keep up with him.
‘Why not? I’m in the mood for moving on today. You’ve inspired me.’
How can I argue with that?
I can’t squash his enthusiasm now.
And I’ll be doing it with him as a friend. Purely a friend.
It only takes another minute to get there and as soon as we’re standing on the bank, I see him start to undo the button at the top of his jeans.
I have a moment of panic. This is a terrible idea. Especially if I’m now going to have to watch him undress and reveal his amazing body and not be allowed to touch him.
‘It’s going to be freezing in there,’ I point out, perhaps a little late in the day.
‘No shit,’ he says with a grin.
My heart turns over at the glee in his expression and I see a flash of a younger Jonah before me. The person with all the hope and excitement of his future to come, before it all came crashing down around him and led to so much disappointment and shame.
