Page 26 of The Next Chapter
‘I mean, I am. Obviously.’ I peer at the edge, move a little closer. ‘It’s just… all the water… and the fact that it’s hanging over the edge of a mountain.’
‘This is like a glorified puddle.’
‘It’s definitely not a puddle.’
I reach the edge away from the infinity part of the infinity pool and feel the cool water lapping at my feet. It’s delicious.
Noah has moved to stand next to me. ‘It could be fun.’ I look at him again. The flush of red across the top of his cheeks is back. I’m an idiot for that flush of red.
Wild swimming isn’t even close to my definition of fun.
And okay, the small loch isn’t a big scary loch.
At worst, there’s probably a stray tadpole in there or something.
Maybe proximity to a shirtless Noah is short-circuiting my brain, making it feel like it wouldn’t be a completely terrible idea to get in the water.
‘We don’t have any swimming clothes,’ I tell Noah, feeling like I must be going insane to even be contemplating this. I’m very hot, fevered almost. And the water is so very, very cool between my toes.
Noah raises an eyebrow at me as the goose bumps take over my whole body.
Before I can reply, he’s splashing forward, storming into the centre.
Any poor little tadpoles in there have just gotten a rude awakening.
Noah turns round and walks backwards with his hands out wide and do you know what’s more distracting than a semi-naked Noah? A semi-naked wet Noah.
‘But it’s so nice!’ he calls.
He walks further back and when the tarn gets deep enough kicks off and floats on his back. He’s still wearing his running shorts (thank heavens for small mercies and all that) but all in all it’s a visual which makes my impossibly blushing skin even hotter.
So much so that the need to cool off becomes a desire, a want. Without really thinking, I sit down. I’m on the very edge of the tarn so I mostly have a wet bum but at least the backs of my legs are cooling down.
I don’t take anything off, but I shuffle forward another inch. Then another. Like I’m being pulled by some invisible force to the edge of the water.
Nothing disastrous happens.
Before I know it, the water is lapping around my waist. My whole bottom half is in.
Yes, I’m basically frozen, alternating between warding off cold hard panic and warding off the actual cold. Because this water is freezing. As if he’s reading my thoughts, Noah says, ‘It’s glacial water round here.’
My teeth chatter.
‘Makes sense.’ I start to swim.
Noah rights himself and then smiles at me before ducking his head under.
He comes up again and shakes his hair off and I have such a solid image of Ariel from The Little Mermaid flinging herself up on that rock that I can’t help but laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ Noah asks, treading water.
‘Just thinking you’d make a great Ariel,’ I tell him, also treading. ‘I think you’d really suit the purple bra.’
He looks down at his chest. So of course, I look down at his chest. ‘I don’t wear enough purple.
’ I can’t help but laugh. Plus, now that it’s less creepy to look, I can see that his tattoo is part of a map, with a compass in the middle, right on the meat of his shoulder.
It’s the reminder I absolutely don’t want right now.
Noah is an explorer through and through.
If I were going to get a tattoo, it’d be of Dad’s house.
Complete with Elton in the front window.
‘Why don’t we check out the edge?’ he asks, meaning the overhang part.
I’m either going to have to get out or move some more before I seize up completely.
‘I’m all over it,’ I tell him, amping up my adventurer charade.
He’s coming towards me then. He’s a killer whale and I’m a baby seal, trapped on a small iceberg on one of those nature programmes.
The baby seal never comes out on top. But did we ever consider that it’s so taken with the strength of the killer whale that it just thinks what’s the point in trying to fight this and flops willingly into the water to die?
Noah is holding out a hand then, his legs floating out behind him. He’s so like Lola, I think. In this setting, out here, he makes more sense. He’s more at ease.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you. I won’t let go,’ he tells me. I get the sense that my wild adventurer charade is not quite as solid as I’d like it to be.
I test out putting my hand in Noah’s and let him guide me slowly, ever so slowly, to the edge of the tarn.
‘What the fuck was that?’ I jolt, absolutely sure something brushed past my leg. I look down, flailing around, fully expecting to see an octopus, or something else with tentacles. A sea snake! I bet it’s a sea snake.
‘Just that bit of bark, don’t worry,’ Noah says. We’re almost at the edge of the tarn now, both of us treading water.
It’s so incredibly beautiful, almost like we’re at the edge of the world. At the edge of everything.
Something brushes my hip and I jolt again, only stilling when Noah puts both of his hands on my waist. ‘Is this okay?’ he asks, and fuck me, his eyes are blue.
I nod, struggling to speak. Be it out of fear, lust or hypothermia, who knows at this point?
To do something with my hands, I put them on Noah’s shoulders.
His skin under them is impossibly warm. And then we’re just there, treading water, looking out at the view.
I’m not even worried about what’s happening in the murky depths beneath me, because I’m finding it hard to concentrate on anything that isn’t interchangeably the view or Noah’s face.
And kudos to my body for managing to summon a hot flush at these temperatures.
While he’s looking out, I study Noah’s face, doing my best to work out what he’s thinking. It’s the sort of micro analysis I normally excel at, in that I can tell if someone’s annoyed at me from a hundred paces just by the set of their mouth.
He turns his head then and the polite thing would be to take my go at appreciating the view. I can’t look away from him, though.
He doesn’t look away either. Instead, he’s studying my face like he’s about to be tested on it and when his eyes drop to my lips, I lick them.
He doesn’t move.
I really want him to move. Preferably towards my mouth.
This isn’t me. I’m not this person. But the wildness of this place is stripping me bare.
‘What’s happening here?’ I ask, my voice really quiet. Noah’s thumbs have started to move at my waist, over my clothes. Rubbing back and forth.
‘I’m no good at relationships, Lily. The long-term thing…’
I nod. Appreciating his honesty.
However, I do, do relationships. I’ve had a steady string of long-term boyfriends since college. These last nine months without a Colin have possibly been the longest I’ve ever been single.
‘It’s just that I move around so much. But… well—’
‘I understand,’ I cut him off, because there’s only so much time you can spend listening to someone explain why they don’t want to be your life partner. ‘I think… it would be tricky anyway… the distance…’
Noah nods, but he looks more troubled. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and grips my waist tighter even though we just said that this was a crap idea.
We stay locked together like that for a few more moments.
I’m thinking about what would happen if he just closed the gap between us, terrible idea be damned.
Or what if I did it? How would it feel? What might happen after?
And if you’re wondering whether I always do a benefit versus cost analysis before I kiss someone, the answer is very much yes.
Here, the benefit is that I’d get to kiss Noah. He might even let me touch a muscle or two. It’s hard to think of a cost. Well, aside from the fact that there’s absolutely no future for us and we both just admitted as much.
But as he leans forward, just a touch, I think who cares about the future? Futures are overrated, surely. Because here on Skye isn’t real life, it’s an alternate reality where I know my birth mum and swim in tarns perched on the edge of the world.
Finally, finally , Noah reaches up and brushes my bottom lip where I’m biting it between my teeth.
‘Lily.’ He closes the rest of the distance. I’m moving too, heading towards his lips like they’re my very own North Star.
The first brush is soft, like a flicker.
But then I’m so pent up that soft is just not going to cut it.
With as much purchase as I can manage treading water, I wind my hand around the back of his neck. The move makes him bob down in the water which also lets him deepen the kiss. And almost drowning him aside, now we’re talking.
The slide of his tongue is like heaven.
His hand on my scalp makes me shiver.
I’m a bundle of nerve endings and they’re all lighting up. There’s a good chance I look radioactive right about now.
We’re a clash of lips and teeth and tongue. Treading water and kissing is actually not as easy as romance movies would have us believe, but we’re A-star for effort.
I’m unleashed and I should be terrified about how good the press of his body against mine feels.
Then, there’s a pain like lightning down my calf. I yank my mouth away from Noah’s. ‘Fuck, cramp!’ I tell him. Every time I move my leg the pain gets worse, lancing through my muscle like a hot poker.
This. This is why I have a healthy fear of open water. One wrong move and you drown. This is it. I’m going to die in an oversized puddle on the side of a mountain.
I panic some more. Swallow icy water. It makes me cough and splutter. Oh god.
Warm arms wrap themselves around my middle and I’m floating backwards towards the mossy banks.
I will my breathing to go back to normal.
Not today, Death.
There’s a chance I said that out loud because Noah laughs.
Well, that’s one way to ruin a good kiss.
We’re at the edge now, and even though I can absolutely walk, Noah hauls me out and I let myself be dragged like a ragdoll. We land on our backs, and I just stare up at the tree canopy above us. Breathing hard.
‘Argh… ahhhh.’ Noah’s hands are on my calf.
‘This should help.’ He rubs the sore muscle. And even though I’m pretty sure that rubbing has zero impact on cramp, I am not about to turn down a leg rub from Noah.
Still, I don’t want him to feel obliged to do it for hours, so after a respectable amount of time, I say, ‘I think I’m good now, thanks.’ I can’t look him in the eye.
‘We should probably be getting back,’ I tell him, all the reasons that kiss was a bad idea hurtling back into my brain now that we’re no longer kissing. ‘I need a shower.’
He nods and kneels up, pulling his trainers towards him.
I sit up too, realizing that half the forest floor is stuck to my wet back.
I wrestle wet socks onto wet feet and push them into my trainers with an audible squelch.
We agree to walk the rest of the way back, on account of the cramp.
What do we do now?
With Colin, we’d been talking online for so long before we met, it was obvious what we both wanted. A life partner. Someone to split the council tax bill with. But this with Noah, like everything out here, it’s just so completely outside of my comfort zone.
‘I can actually hear your brain, you know?’ he says as we emerge onto the depressed grass path that winds around the loch.
And an impromptu swim is all well and good until you have to walk home all soggy with bits of branches in your hair. Then the whole thing loses some of its shine.
‘I’m not thinking that hard,’ I tell him.
He laughs like he doesn’t believe me. And really, this level of thinking is nothing. A drop in the ocean. He should visit my consciousness while I’m trying to get to sleep, that’s when the magic really happens.
Luckily, we’d done most of the run before we detoured towards the pool, so it doesn’t take long for us to reach the hotel again. We go around the side as usual, through the gardens.
‘So, the path is great for a run,’ I say like a woman who doesn’t have half a tree tangled in her hair.
‘Really great,’ Noah adds, also with faux cheer.
‘I’ll pull together an action plan.’
‘Excellent idea.’
Harper, who I’m quickly realizing is almost always on her own, is sitting at one of the picnic benches on her phone.
She watches us pass. My clothes are stuck to me. My white vest top has gone see-through, like I’m taking part in my very own wet T-shirt competition. Though thankfully, instead of my boobs, all you can see is my blue sports bra.
‘Not one word,’ I say to Harper as she opens her mouth to say something. She closes it again and smirks at us instead. At least she’s smiling.