The Summer Holiday by S.E. Lynes

Author:S.E. Lynes [Lynes, S.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781837903009
Published: 2023-05-08T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

JEFF

Walking down the lane, Jeff is smiling like an idiot. Coco is still on his skin, on his lips, in his hair. The last thing he wants to do is wash her off. Really, he wants to find a quiet spot so he can breathe her in from his own hands, play it all back second by second. He wants to run back up to the Carretera de Cadaqués and shout at the top of his lungs: I have just slept with Coco Moss!

She texted just after nine.

Boys have gone. Come up.

There was a rudimentary address, directions in case the satnav didn’t work, and the colour of the door: blue.

Kate was still asleep in the spare room, alcohol thick in the air. She was still half in her dress, one leg over the side as if she’d crashed out midway through an intention to go to the bathroom or something. He didn’t leave water or painkillers, didn’t want her to know he’d checked on her.

He took a long shower, dressed with care – a brand-new plain white T from the pack of five, and the pale blue linen twill shorts he picked last time he collected his suits from Ede & Ravenscroft. He got to Coco’s place half an hour later, almost trembling at the door of the three-storey maisonette. He knocked, waited, thought about knocking again. But then he sensed movement. His chest swelled. A moment later she was there, a loose sky-blue kaftan sheer over her quite obviously naked body.

‘We’re wearing the same colour,’ he said, like a moron.

But she only smiled and held out her hand. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this.’

Too choked to speak, he felt his thoughts tumble through him: If only you knew how much you have meant to me these lonely thirty years. I have built this life with my bare hands, every brick laid so as to block you out, forget you. It was what I had to do to survive. All I ask for is this. If we can be together again, just once, I can return to my life and know that I at least had this.

But he did not say those things, was too afraid of spoiling the moment, had a sixth sense that last time this was what he did: frightened her away with his intensity, too young to know he should have kept his feelings hidden. Now, choosing to trust she felt the same, he took the hand she was offering him and let her pull him inside.

He closes his eyes, opens them. Breathes. The aroma of the town drifts towards him: sugar, heat, petrol. Best thing to do now is go for a swim. If he returns to the villa smelling of the sea, he won’t smell of the wondrous sex he’s spent the last two hours having. He can tell Kate that he thought she’d need time to sleep off her night out. He will make it up to her, as Coco suggested. He needs to keep his wife on side.

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