It felt amazing – the water, the lightness inside of me, the sun shining so strong that I could still feel its heat through the water. I swam length after length, smiling stupidly to myself. I realized I had no regrets. Not about leaving with Kyle. Not about what I’d said to Mum. For once, I’d made a decision based entirely on me, what I needed, what I wanted. The only regret I felt was that we had left the children in the cabin overnight, and that was wrong… But it was also an accident and nothing had happened to them.
After about thirty lengths, I dried myself in the sun for a while, then went to wake up Kyle.
The bed was made and he was lying on it – looking through my sketchpad.
“Well you look like a much happier version of the Amber I had with me last night.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
“I think I’m done crying. Thank you…for last night. You were amazing.”
I wrapped my towel around myself further and shivered in the air con, suddenly unsure of my body.
“Don’t worry about it. I was glad I could be there.”
“And I’m still so sorry I got you fired.”
Kyle beckoned for me to join him. I sat on the edge of the bed, my feet still on the floor.
“I got me fired, remember? And come closer, please. It felt entirely inappropriate to tell you last night, but you looked really beautiful. And you do this morning too.”
I blushed, but scooted closer, leaving a damp trail across the bed. He put his arm around me and I nuzzled into his chest – kissing it through his T-shirt.
He turned a page of my sketchpad and I jerked up a bit.
“You’re going through my art?”
I felt him nod, as his chin rubbed up and down on the top of my head.
“Shamelessly so. I’ve wanted to ever since I first saw you carrying your sketchpad around camp.” He turned another page, to one of the lists I’d been working on with my special black fineliner pen. “Though I am intrigued by these pages.”
I tried to shut the book, but he put his hand in the way. “I’ve already read them all.”
I kicked him.
“You do realize looking at an artist’s sketchbook is like reading their diary?”
He ignored me and pointed to another page. “Why are you so obsessed with situations that are destined to fail? You’ve, like, drawn the whole summer. And I LOVE that I’m in them, by the way.”
I was SO embarrassed. I grabbed the book off him and hit him on the head with it.
“Oww.”
“Good, you deserve it.”
“You’re, like, really talented. You know that, right?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, you snoop.”
“Seriously though, what’s with everything that’s destined to fail?”
I turned redder. I’d been doodling these cartoons all through camp… I never thought anyone would see them.
“I dunno… I’ve just been thinking about it as a concept over the summer, I guess,” I said. “Did you know there’s sometimes foreign words for really cool things that should totally have an English word? Like schadenfreude in German? It means ‘getting pleasure from someone else’s pain’. Like, the good you feel when you see someone else fall over or something.”
Kyle’s smile was so large, it made all bits of me goo.
“I LOVE those words!” he said. “Like, don’t the French have a word for that moment when you think of the PERFECT thing to say in an argument, but like, two days too late?”
“L’esprit de l’escalier,” I said, grinning. “The wit of the staircase…”
“You know it?”
“I know lots of them. I really like them – these weird phrases. Like, do you know voorpret? It’s Dutch and means ‘the feeling of fun you have anticipating an event’. Or, there’s this really beautiful one in Arabic ya’aburnee – it translates as ‘you bury me’. It means hoping you’ll die before the person you love, because the thought of living without them is so terrible.”
Kyle picked up my hand, holding it so our fingers entwined. He pulled me in for a kiss, before grabbing my book out of my hand and pawing through it again.
“Stop!”
“No, they’re good. And you’ve still not explained it all.”
I twisted my hand in his… I didn’t like talking about my art much, I was always scared I’d sound like a twat.
“Well, these foreign words that represent cool concepts. I once found this amazing artist’s website where he makes digital art of what these words look like. It gave me an idea for my A level coursework next year – we have to pick a theme, and follow it the whole year. I think there are words that haven’t been invented yet, and I want to invent them, and do my project on them. Situations or scenarios which language hasn’t caught up with yet. Like, do you remember a time before the word ‘selfie’? Someone invented that word, for a situation we all know. Well, so, for my project, I had this idea to come up with these types of situations, and make them into paintings and then invent words for them.”
“God you’re smart,” Kyle almost whispered.
“Not really. Anyway, that’s what this is.” I jabbed at my ink drawing. “I was thinking about situations people get involved in where they know, without a doubt, that it’s going to fail. But they do it anyway. There isn’t a word for it, but there should be. Like…I dunno…going into a battle when you have no chance of winning. Or trying to argue a Christian out of believing in God. Or knowing you’re not the prettiest by miles, but still entering the pageant. Or falling in love with someone who’s dying… Or falling in love with an addict… I guess most of them probably relate to falling in love…”
Kyle let go of my hand so he could brush my hair with his fingers. His touch was so electric, my body automatically turned towards him.
“How about falling for a dude who lives in America and running away from camp with him? Does that count?”
I looked up, worried. Even though I knew what he meant. “You think this…us…is destined to fail?”
“No… I guess it depends what you mean by ‘fail’. I mean, look at all these.” He used his spare hand to gesture towards my sketches. “You’ve listed all these situations that were destined to fail, but what happened? Really? They all came out okay, didn’t they? Like, you’re still alive…”
“So failure is dying, everything else is okay?”
He dug me in the ribs for being difficult and I squealed. “I guess I’m just saying, yeah, these things are hard, but you did them anyway. And they all led up to us being here, in this very private motel room I might add…” It was my turn to dig him in the ribs. “You just…lived, Amber. You just did stuff and got through hard stuff and life happened to you, and you happened to life. And, I guess I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little freaked out by what you and me are doing here, and what’s going to happen, and, well, I think I’m in danger of possibly falling hard for you…” My heart stopped then, it just stopped. But I let him finish, though I could hardly breathe. “And you could see that as a stupid thing to do, something that’s destined to fail. I mean, whatever happens between you and your mum, you’ll have to get back on a plane to England at some point this summer. America is not just going to let you stay here, we can be certain of that. And that thought makes me, like… Well…everything hurts. You’re already proving to be practically the best person I’ve ever known…”
“What?” I interrupted. “Even with all the crying?”
I was crying again, silently, at his words.
“Of course. With everything that’s gone down with your mum, it would be weird if you WEREN’T crying. In fact, I’m relieved you’re crying, rather than chucking all of Russ’s whiskey down your throat… Anyway, yeah, I’m falling for you. That may be something that’s destined to fail, if failure means I’m going to get hurt. But you know what I think failure really is?”