Page 81 of Vivacity
He looks out at the pool, at the glorious gardens framing that extraordinary view of the sea, and I swear he’s watching little ghosts running through the gardens and splashing in the shallow end of the pool. He doesn’t speak for a while.
‘The best,’ he says eventually. He turns his hand over on the tablecloth so it’s palm up and he can squeeze mine.
I smile at him. ‘Do you want to share them? I’d love to hear them.’
‘Just’—he shakes his head—‘the simple things, you know? I realise it’s a cliché that the billionaire buys an obscenely expensive house so he can sit on its beach and find himself while playing with shells, but it really is like that. Or it was, anyway.
‘Jamie loves this house so much, and the team here always treated him like their own kid. He used to follow Kelvin around with a tiny watering can when Kelv was telling the gardeners what to focus on.’ He smiles at me, eyes crinkling with all that love, all that memory, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look quite so handsome. ‘He’d be stark naked, waddling around, peeing left right and centre. I think he watered the plants with his pee more than he ever managed with water. That must have been the first Christmas after we’d bought it outright.’
I laugh. ‘Nice.’ I’ve spotted a couple of baby photos of Jamie at Ethan’s London home, and he was adorable. Huge brown eyes. Big smile. Chubby as hell—so different from the shy, subdued boy I’ve met.
He continues talking, still holding my hand. ‘He loved knots. Loved them. Not sure how many knots we learnt one year. He must have been six? I was so out of my depth, watching YouTube videos of how to tie the damn things so I could teach him. One of the guys down at Basil’s Bar took pity on me and showed him the literal ropes, thank fuck. He still has some of the knots hanging in his bedroom at my place.’
Silence hangs between us. ‘You’re a great dad, you know,’ I tell him. ‘It’s obvious you love him very, very much.’
‘I do, but I don’t know how to talk to him, and that’s no fucking good, is it?’
‘You will,’ I urge him. ‘You’ve taken this huge step with Philip purely so you can reconnect with your son, and that is abigact of love, my friend. It’ll pay dividends. I have faith in you.’
He raises his beautiful, solemn face to me, his grey eyes shining with emotion, and, leaning over, kisses my forehead.
‘I need you to have faith in me, because I’m not sure I have it in myself. Not when it comes to Jamie, not when it comes to whatever the fuck I’m doing with this deal. But I’m tired, and I dragged you here so I could forget about all my shortcomings for a few days.’
‘So let’s go explore then. Let’s go and enjoy ourselves.’
He brushes his lips over my forehead once more before pulling away. ‘We should head down to the beach. I’d enjoy myself far more if you were in a bikini, even if I’m not sure I’ll survive the experience.’
CHAPTER 36
Ethan
It turns out that lying with a bikini-clad Sophia in the warm, shallow waters of this beautiful turquoise sea, that kissing her, letting my hands roam over her body, is most conducive to forgetting my woes back in London.
Her bikini is yellow and extremely skimpy.
She’s a goddess.
And, as I lie here on the shore, with the waves lapping softly over my legs and Sophia crouching over me, sandy and tangle-haired and flashing white teeth as she laughs, I have the truest sensation of peace that I can remember in quite a while.
This was a sound decision. A really sound one. I have a tendency to double down when I’m stuck in the reeds, but these reeds were so fucking torturous that I had no choice but to turn and run.
I’m very glad I did.
The oddest thing is that, while none of my problems—not Jamie, nor my father, nor the Montague deal—are, in reality, forgotten, they’re… distant. Manageable. As though I’m seeing them through a telescope. And it makes them seem less fearful. Less overwhelming. It reminds me a little of what Philip calls ‘unblending’ from my parts—that when I can persuade them totake a seat at that boardroom table, it gives me breathing space. And with that space comes perspective, the reminder that they may be a part of me but they’re not actuallyme. And that makes them less all-consuming, somehow.
Back at lunch, when Sophia was asking about my memories from here and I could feel myself spiralling in return, I would have said that I’d rather not talk about any of this shit. That I’d rather shove down all the painful stuff and focus on the here and now—on being here today, with her. On the seven days and nights of sunbathing and sex we have ahead of us. But now, lying here as I stare up into her face, her dark hair backlit against the sun with an actual halo, I feel the opposite. I feel like it’s safe to talk. Rather,I’msafe, even if I talk about some of the things that are bothering me.
London and my family are at the other end of the telescope, after all.
I reach up and tuck a strand of hair behind Soph’s ear. It falls instantly back down again, hanging over me. The sea has made it all wavy, and I like it. It adds to the beach goddess vibe.
‘Do you think my dad’s a narcissist?’
She spits out a surprised laugh. ‘Bloody hell. Um—yeah? Very possibly? What brought this on?’
Quickly, I fill her in on my short conversation with Miles at the bar. It was only two nights ago, but it feels like longer. She sighs and flops down beside me, turning her body towards me and propping herself up on one elbow. I turn into her and mirror her pose.
‘So, narcissism’s one of those concepts that gets bandied about, like sociopathy. And if you’re talking about actual Narcissistic Personality Disorder—NPD—then we don’t even a hundred percent know what causes it. It’s most likely some combination of neurological predisposition and a shittyupbringing—natureandnurture, basically. You think your dad might have that?’
