Page 20 of High Season

“So I guess, in answer to your question, I would choose to be someone different entirely,” he said.

“Someone from a good family. Whose surname isn’t a joke to people.

Someone who has stability. Actual money , not just pots of dwindling assets.

People think they want to be part of our world.

That’s what you want, right? But you have to understand that we’re not in that world either.

Not really. I’m on the outside as much as you are. We don’t belong any more than you do.”

Hannah almost flinched at that. She had been so careful to play it cool. Never to let Blake know how badly, how desperately, she wanted to be like him.

And yet…

Blake thought that they were alike. He was wrong, of course; she knew that.

Whatever subtle class differences existed between Blake and the people he went to boarding school and on skiing trips with were infinitesimally small compared with the vast gap between his life and hers.

The fact that Blake could even notice the intricate hierarchies within his social sphere only proved how deeply embedded in it he was.

But what Hannah really heard was that he thought they had something profound and important in common. Something that really, truly seemed to matter to him.

“I didn’t want to come out here this summer,” Blake said. “I wanted to go stay with my dad, in Italy. He just bought a vineyard over there. Me and him were going to get Vespas and drive down the Amalfi Coast. It would have been so cool.”

“Why didn’t you?” Hannah asked.

She felt the shift of Blake’s head tilting beside her, a half shrug.

“Mum said she wanted us to be all together. She and Harrison are at each other’s throats all the time, and she thinks that if we can play happy families for the summer, he might stick around.”

Hannah thought of what Josie said at the pool yesterday. She wondered if Blake already knew.

“She’s so deluded,” he continued, and his words had a hard edge to them. “Harrison doesn’t want me here. He doesn’t give a shit about me and Tamara and Nina. He especially hates Tamara. And no amount of pretending is going to sort out whatever dysfunctional shit he and my mum have going on.”

He broke off, and the only sound was the gentle slap of waves against the boat.

“Maybe you can do the Amalfi Coast another time,” Hannah said.

“Yeah,” Blake said, brightening slightly. “We’re probably going to do it at the end of summer instead. After Mum’s gone back to London.”

They both fell quiet. If she was still, Hannah could hear the soft in, out sound of his breathing. She could hear the beating of her own heart.

“Hey,” said Blake. “Do you have any plans tonight?”

“Tonight?”

For just a moment, Hannah had been outside of time.

She had forgotten that there was a tonight that would come after this.

That there would be dinner waiting for her in the microwave at home, evening television, chasing sleep with the memory of this evening keeping her awake.

She had forgotten that there was anything outside of her and Blake, this boat, the slow drift of the sea.

Blake sat up.

“We’re going out,” he said. “Me. Tamara. Barnaby. You wanna come?”

And even though Hannah wanted nothing less than to be with Tamara and Barnaby, even though she wanted to stay here until the sky turned black, wanted to stretch this moment until it split at the seams, Hannah nodded.

“Sure,” she said. “Let’s go out.”

Barnaby’s car pulled up outside the dive shop late, after Hannah’s parents had already gone to bed.

She had dried her hair, slicked on mascara.

She was secretly pleased when she opened the car door to realize that Blake would be sitting in the back with her, Tamara in the passenger seat.

Tamara didn’t turn round to look at Hannah as she climbed inside.

Across the darkness of the back seat, Blake’s hand slid toward hers. Their fingers intertwined.

They drove into the nearest city, abandoning Barnaby’s car in a no-parking zone.

“It’s not like we can’t afford the fine,” Barnaby said.

He looped his arm around Blake’s shoulder and ruffled his hair. Blake grimaced and pushed him off, but they were laughing.

“Come on,” said Barnaby. “Let’s get fucked up.”

There were drinks. Vodka shots. A casino, where Barnaby put down a thousand euros and just rolled his eyes and laughed when he lost it.

More shots. Barnaby, sliding his arm around Tamara’s waist. Tamara pulling a face and slapping his hand away.

Cocktails in a rooftop bar where the city seemed to shine, a haze of color and light.

A nightclub where the music ignited something in Hannah, sent a thrum of ecstasy down her spine.

A round of drinks that Blake paid for with a handful of cash.

A bottle of champagne that fizzed through her, that felt like drinking stars.

They moved on to another club that backed onto the beach.

Darker, busier, the music unfamiliar. Strobe lights and a heavy bassline.

Tamara and Barnaby downing tequilas with salt and lemon.

Blake, leaning his head down close to Hannah’s ear, the soft brush of his hair against the side of her face.

Saying that it was so hot in here. So loud. Asking if she wanted to go outside.

Blake needed to use the bathroom, so Hannah offered to queue for his jacket at the cloakroom while he went.

She stood in line, her arms folded across her chest, a comfortable, easy haze to her vision.

The group of girls in front of her shifted forward, and as Hannah followed she felt a breathtaking strike of clarity, as if seeing herself from above.

She was here. She was going outside with Blake Drayton, alone.

This was it. This was the moment that everything would change.

“You’re still here? Jesus.”

Blake was next to her, slipping his arm around her waist as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Thanks for saving my spot,” he said, quietly, so that he had to lean in close to her ear.

“Anytime,” said Hannah, and she really, truly meant it.

Outside the air was cool. Sweat chilled against Hannah’s skin, and she wrapped her arms around herself, realized that she was shivering.

“You’re cold,” Blake said, a statement, not a question. There was a certainty about him that sucked something out of Hannah, made her want him.

No. Not want him, exactly. Want to be like him, to be part of this world, where you always have answers, rather than questions. Where things were clear and assured.

“Here.”

He took off the jacket that she had queued for and slipped it over her shoulders. The inner lining was still warm from his body. The smell of him encased her.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand.

They walked down to the beach, Hannah’s ankles turning inward in her only pair of heels.

She took them off, the sand cool against the soles of her feet.

They both smelled of fresh sweat, the chemical hum of alcohol.

There was a magic to the city in the early hours, shutters closed on the houses and shops that lined the seawater, the feeling that this was an impossible, nonexistent time.

A witching hour where anything could happen.

“I’m so hammered,” said Blake, running his fingers through his hair, almost disbelieving.

“I had so much fun tonight,” said Hannah.

She meant it. She had always known that this world was out here. This feeling that nothing mattered. That she could go anywhere, do whatever she wanted. She had just needed someone like Blake to hold the door open for her.

The touch of his fingers was so light against her thigh that it sent a strange, deep convulsion through Hannah. She wanted him to press his hands hard against her skin. She wanted to be able to feel him. To be able to sense the contours of his bones against hers.

“I really like you, H,” Blake said. His words were quiet. Slurred. “I’ve liked you for years. Ever since we were kids.”

His hand skimmed from her body to her face. Touched her chin lightly, a tremor in his hand. An anticipation. Turned her face toward his.

“I like you, too,” she said.

When he kissed her, his mouth was hard and hungry and somehow familiar. He tasted like salt. Like heat. Like summer.

Hannah knew what would happen, even before Blake rolled on top of her.

Even before his hands moved from her face to her waist, his breath coming faster, urgency radiating out of him.

She knew, it seemed, exactly what to do, even though the whole thing had always seemed baffling and alien to her.

Even though she and Josie had spent hours snorting with laughter as they discussed logistics—what went where, and who did what.

It was as if this was how it was always supposed to be, Hannah and Blake, here on this beach, the sky blank and dark above them, the nighttime air cool and sharp against their skin.

He reached down and slid her underwear off. She was glad that she’d dressed in one of those flippy little tennis skirts, just like the girls that Blake usually hung out with. She didn’t even have to take it off.

“You’re already wet,” he said, and there was a soft surprise in his voice that made Hannah feel good about herself, like she was doing something right.

Later, Hannah would remember how rough the sand had felt beneath her. How there had been a dull pain between her legs for the next few days that sent an unexpected thrum of pleasure through her, a reminder of what had happened between them.

But, in that moment, all Hannah felt was the beating of his heart against hers. The certain knowledge that something good was finally happening to her.

It was over quickly. Afterward, Hannah pulled her underwear back up and felt the scratch of grit against her inner thighs, a wetness on the fabric.

“Fuck.”

Blake was rebuckling his belt, a dazed, disbelieving look on his face.

“That was… unexpected,” he said.

To Hannah, it was anything but. It was what she had wanted from the very first time she saw Blake, before she really even understood her own desire.

Before she knew what that muscular twinge inside her even meant.

There was a clean inevitability to it, the sense that everything had been leading to this moment.

From behind them came a loud, sharp wolf whistle. A whoop. Barnaby sauntering down the sand toward them, Tamara a few steps behind.

“There you are,” said Barnaby. “Wondered where you pair had disappeared to.”

He dropped down onto the sand beside them.

“Hope you two have been behaving yourself.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Tamara.

The words were cold and flat. Hannah ducked her head. Blake was already volleying back, making some joke about Barnaby hardly being one to talk.

“Come on,” said Barnaby. “Club’s closing. We should be getting back.”

As Hannah stood, she could swear that she could feel the heat of Tamara’s stare.

In the back of the car, Hannah leaned her head against Blake’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

She knew that Tamara would probably shoot them a dirty look, if she saw.

She knew that this thing between her and Blake was undefined, that resting against him was the kind of thing a girlfriend would do, and she was not his girlfriend.

She knew that, if she hadn’t drunk so much, she would worry about all these things, overthink whether she was being too forward, if she was annoying Blake’s twin. But right now, she didn’t care.

Barnaby drove fast, his foot pressed hard against the accelerator, the car drifting into the center of the road.

Once, he had to sway to avoid a lorry barreling toward them, the blast of the horn cutting through a sleepy, half-drunk daydream that Hannah had been having.

She and Blake in Oxford together. Pints of beer in tumble-down pubs, sex in a single bed in her halls.

She had gripped the back of her seat when Barnaby swerved, but then the lorry passed and they had all been laughing, saying what an idiot the truck driver was. As if he were the reckless one.

Later, Hannah would look back on that moment and cringe. She would be horrified by how untouchable they had all felt, as if they were asking the world to break them. The frightening hubris of seventeen-year-olds. She did not yet know that somehow, somewhere, someone was always going to get hurt.

But just then, Hannah sat in the back of the car and thought only of the warmth of Blake’s arm against hers. The twinge between her legs. An exquisite pain.

The sun was rising as they followed the coast home, the sky a shade of gold. The promise of another day. Another future, now within Hannah’s reach.