‘Nick!’
By the sounds of it, someone else at the party was not nearly as committed to playing hard to get as I was. After being completely catatonic for nigh on an hour, Paige sprang to life and sprinted across the sand, throwing herself into Nick’s unwelcoming arms. I couldn’t quite hear her over the music, but I did manage to dance around Kekipi and my other new GBFs, Makani and Aikane, to get myself within hearing distance. Paige had her arms slung round Nick’s neck and seemed to be trying to lure him onto the dance floor with some very dodgy moves. It was painful to watch. Thankfully, even full of cocktails and surrounded by hot twinks, Kekipi never forgot his job.
‘Ms Sullivan. Paige, darling.’ He cut in on the world’s most awkward dance party and scooped Paige up in his arms. Although he didn’t look big enough to manhandle a grown woman, this was clearly not his first time. ‘You’re Cinderella, it’s almost midnight, there’s a coach outside that’s threatening to turn into a pumpkin. Prince Charming comes to you, remember? You don’t go to him.’
‘Nick has to dance!’ she yelped, pointing somewhere in the vicinty of Nick. ‘He needs to do dancing!’
‘I’ll make sure he dances,’ Kekipi promised, carrying her away from the lights. ‘Third rule of dance club – if it’s your first time at dance club, you have to dance.’
‘What are the other two rules?’ I asked Makani.
‘First rule of dance club is never talk about dance club,’ he replied.
‘And the second rule is never talk about dance club?’
‘No, the second rule is drink until you can’t remember dance club.’ He spun me round suddenly and I was so glad not to be wearing my heels. ‘That way you can’t talk about it, even if you wanted to.’
‘You’ve thought of everything,’ I yelled over the music before I felt a pair of hands on my waist pulling me away from my dance circle. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Nothing nearly as inappropriate as what you did earlier,’ Nick said, pressing his lips into my hair. ‘Take these clips out. I want your hair down.’
‘I want never gets,’ I said, pushing him away, but he just grabbed my wrists and pulled me back. ‘Let me go.’
‘You don’t want to talk to me?’ he asked. ‘No more questions?’
‘I’m all out,’ I said, trying to ignore the growing burning sensation that was not caused by the fact that my jeans were too tight and I needed a wee. Even though they were and I did. ‘I think I know everything I need to know.’
‘I agree.’ He let go of one wrist but spun me round with the other and trapped me against him. ‘We should just go back to yours.’
‘Why would I do that?’ I looked down at my chest. So that was what a heaving bosom looked like. ‘After you walked out on me last night.’
‘Why wouldn’t you do that?’ he asked. ‘After you kissed me this afternoon?’
‘I don’t know you, Nick.’ I noticed the rest of the partygoers had formed a subtle circle around us and were keeping a close eye on proceedings. Fantastic – now I was the official entertainment at a gay, Gaga-soundtracked luau. Truly this was a week of firsts. ‘I don’t know why I did what I did earlier. Maybe I’d had too much sun.’
‘Vanessa.’ He stopped dancing and gripped me tightly around the waist. ‘I don’t do games.’
‘Good job I didn’t challenge you to a round of Boggle, then.’
Bothered and bewildered, I slapped his hands off me. I seemed to be breathing awfully heavily.
‘Come on, it’s my first night at dance club,’ he said, smiling and holding out his hand. I hated that smile. Definitely more of a smirk. ‘I have to dance.’
‘I’m sure there are plenty of takers.’ I knocked his hands away and walked off, leaving him to the mercy of Kekipi’s friends.
The tricksy combination of racing hormones and too much rum left me burning with a furious temper that wasn’t even slightly cooled by the giant glass of water I downed the second I stepped through the door. Bathed in the half-light of the fridge, I stood and chugged, really wanting to swap the crystal-clear goodness for another cocktail, but more than anything I didn’t want to wake up with a hangover. I wanted to wake up with a beautiful man and some intimate chafing, but that wasn’t going to happen.
A quiet knock on the door disturbed my filthy thoughts, and, half hoping it would be Nick, I set down the water, pinched my cheeks and opened up. It was Kekipi. What a waste of a pinch.
‘I just wanted to make sure you were home safely,’ he said, calm and professional. Even at a party, business Kekipi was never far away. Although business Kekipi smelled a little bit of sick and I had to assume that had something to do with his new, more sombre attitude. ‘I saw your light from Miss Sullivan’s cottage. Can I get you anything at all?’
My vagina was so sad that it was him and not Nick at my door but there was really nothing he could do about that. ‘No, I’m just going to go to bed. Aren’t you going to go back to the party? It felt like it was just getting started.’
‘It was and I am,’ Kekipi confirmed, the glint back in his eye. ‘Those boys are animals. You won’t join me?’
‘No, no,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s bedtime for me.’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘With or without Mr Miller?’
I wanted to look shocked, but I couldn’t do it. Instead I just laughed as if the very idea were ridiculous. ‘I’m not that kind of girl,’ I assured him. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Kekipi shrugged. ‘He’s very attractive, he clearly thinks you’re very attractive, there’s some chemistry there. Why wouldn’t you?’
‘Because I’m not a gay man?’ I suggested.
‘And that’s what’s wrong with the world,’ he said, starting back down the path but leaving my door wide open. ‘Man, woman, straight, gay. There’s nothing wrong with wanting someone. We’re all adults.’
My immediate reaction was that while Kekipi and I might be adults, Nick was a petulant man-child who needed a good slap, but every other part of my body was screaming something else. Every other part of my body was reminding me that Nick was a very attractive, solid slab of man who invoked the kind of animal lust in a girl that made me want to climb him like a tree. I clutched the door handle, fully intending to shut it, lock it and go to bed. Instead, I just stood there, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Why shouldn’t I go back? Kekipi was right. Why was it such a big deal for me to admit I wanted to eff the hell out of this man?
‘Because good girls don’t do that,’ I whispered, arguing with myself. ‘Because you don’t.’
OK, so I barely knew him, and admittedly what I did know I didn’t necessarily love, but it wasn’t like sleeping with someone I’d been smitten with for ten years had worked out entirely according to plan, so, really, what was the point in a plan? It wasn’t as if overintellectualizing my decisions had got me anywhere. Kekipi was right. I had only five more days in Hawaii, and after that I never had to see Nick again. God knows I wanted him, and against all laws of God and man, he seemed to want me too. I should do it. But still – I took one more breath in and fluffed out my hair – if I was going to do this, there had to be some ground rules for myself. No emotions, no sobbing the morning after. I would go in, get laid and then go back home to bed. All business. All I had to do was screw my courage to the sticking place. Or stick my courage in the screwing place. Or something.
As if by dirty, dirty magic, when I opened my eyes I saw Nick sitting two feet away in one of the