‘I should go, I, umm… I’m going into the town to speak to some of the artists at the local outdoor market.’
‘I could come with you.’
‘No. No need. See you later.’
She made her way out through the main front door and he watched her shoulders slump as she walked down the drive.
Why did he feel like such a twat?
Flick walked down the hill towards the pretty little harbour, with its little white boats bobbing around in a warm summer breeze. The shops and cafés were clustered around the outside of the harbour on the mainroad, all painted in bright colours. Everything looked so cute and charming in the sunshine. There was a shop selling ice creams of every flavour, a shop selling beach paraphernalia like towels, sun hats and Crocs and everything in between. There was a shop selling beach-themed accessories for the home, lighthouses, driftwood trees, decorations made from sea glass. And yes, some may argue it was tat for the tourists, but Flick always loved looking at the different ornaments that people had made. There were other shops here too. An old vintage record shop that also sold vintage t-shirts and photos. There was a bookshop, a florist and the biggest costume shop she’d ever seen, hiring out everything from dinosaurs to Batman costumes.
She walked past the harbour and down the steps onto Blossom Beach. She slipped off her sandals and walked across the warm, white sand barefooted until she reached the sea.
She felt like such an idiot. When she’d suggested the stupid idea of pretending to be Luke’s girlfriend to scare off his fan club, he’d been the one to ask if they would kiss. And as she lay in bed last night, thinking it through, she’d begun to wonder, or even hope that Luke had asked that because he wanted to kiss her, because she hadn’t imagined that moment they’d shared together in the cupboard. And then something had happened when she had kissed Luke, they had shared a connection that went way beyond a simple kiss. He had kissed her with so much passion and adoration that she’d thought for one stupid moment that it had been real and that heliked her as much as she liked him. But it had all been fake, just a meaningless kiss. She was surprised by how much that hurt when she’d known that was all it was before she’d kissed him.
Just then her phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket and smiled to see it was her friend Tabitha. She quickly answered it.
‘Hey gorgeous, how you doing?’ Tabitha asked.
Flick sighed. ‘Well, all the artists working at the house hate me because they don’t like change, some of them are threatening to leave and if they all do I’ll have no one left to save the studios for, I’ve somehow agreed to run the gift shop with no business skills or experience and I may just have developed a rather annoying and completely inappropriate crush on my flatmate and colleague.’
Tabitha laughed. ‘That’s a lot to unpack.’
‘It really is.’
‘OK, first off, when you were telling me about Waterfall House and how you were going off to save it, you were telling me all about the therapeutic art workshops your grandad ran and how important that was to you and to everyone involved.’
‘Yeah, it was. Itis, but we’ve not run the workshops here since he died. It’s just the artists now creating their products and trying, very unsuccessfully, to sell them.’
‘Far be it for me to tell you how to run the place. I can’t even run my own home – you’ve seen the state of my house.’
‘You have three kids, two of them twin boys underthe age of three, plus a whole menagerie of animals. I think you can be excused if your house is a little messy.’
‘Anyway, the point is, you have to give them something to fight for. Right now, they’re just muddling along, creating their art and it doesn’t matter if no one buys it because they clearly don’t need the money or they’d have done something about the lack of sales before now. The whole reason why your grandad bought the house was because he wanted to offer art to people who’d had brain injuries – a cause very close to my heart as you’re aware. That’s the legacy you should be saving, not just the studio space for the artists. Your dream of being able to have a shop selling everything people need to create their own works of art is because you recognise the importance of art and being creative and how everyone should have that opportunity, not just the five artists who work there. Also why would you want to bust your ass to save the place for them when they seem very ungrateful about the help you’re offering them?’
‘Are you suggesting I bring back the workshops?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. Ask the artists who have studios there to run one specific to their art. Ask art teachers to do them. You do it in the name of Headway or Brainwave, both excellent brain injury charities in the UK, and if you choose to charge for the workshops you could give twenty-five percent of the profits to one of those charities. I bet you’ll have lots of people who will want to help and it brings awareness to those charities too. It will inspire the artists who work there to dosomething to help save the studios because it’s not just them anymore, it’s the workshops and the people who use them. You can even do workshops for people who don’t have injuries as studies have shown how important art is for mental health too. Make your studios for everyone.’
‘Tabitha, that’s an excellent idea. I’ve been so caught up in saving the studios for my grandad, but you’re right. It’s his legacy that I should be saving, not the artists. And the workshops will make them care again. Honestly, I could kiss you.’
‘Well save those kisses for your man, let’s talk about him.’
Flick felt her heart sink again after having her hopes lifted with talk of the workshops. She was going to have to face Luke again at some point and probably have an honest conversation with him.
‘Luke is lovely, sweet, kind and funny and I really like him. Well, more than like him if I’m honest. We share a connection that’s…’ She paused as she tried to describe how he made her feel, how she felt drawn to him, how just being around him made her smile so damn much. ‘It’s not something I’ve felt before. It’s something special, well it is for me. Frustratingly, he’s also moving to Scotland in a few weeks so there really isn’t any point in starting something. But I agreed to pretend to be his girlfriend to get rid of some women who won’t take no for an answer and keep following him around.’
‘That sounds very selfless,’ Tabitha laughed.
‘Well, the suggestion probably was. I just thought we’d hold hands and look adoringly at each other. But then he asked if we would kiss as part of the pretence and I realised I wanted that a lot more than I should as a friend doing him a favour, so not altruistic at all as it turns out. Anyway, this woman who won’t leave him alone just turned up and we kissed.’
Flick touched her lips, remembering how it felt, remembering the feeling of being held in his arms, as if they fitted together so perfectly. ‘And I enjoyed it a bit too much and I thought he did too. He was so… passionate and Christ, Tabby, it was probably the best kiss of my life and I’ve had quite a few passionate kisses in my time. But afterwards, he completely back-pedalled away from it. Apologised for taking the charade too far and then basically said, oh obviously it’s not real. He wanted to make sure I knew it wasn’t real, that it meant nothing to him.’
Her cheeks flamed with mortification. ‘And now I feel really embarrassed. I moaned. Who moans from a simple kiss? But he was turning me on so much just from his kiss and I moaned when he touched my bare shoulder, because I really wanted him to touch all over my body. If he’d scooped me up in his arms and carried me off to his bed, there wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t want that. In fact, I was probably five seconds away from taking him by the hand and taking him to bed myself. How sad and desperate is that? I’ve never felt like that before, with any man. And now I’m sure heknows how much I wanted him and I’d quite like to run away and hide and never face him again.’
Tabitha laughed. ‘Oh honey, unfortunately you can’t do that, you have an art studio to save. But he must be someone really amazing if you’re considering breaking your no sex ban.’
Flick pulled a face. ‘There was never an official ban in place, I just haven’t fancied it for a few years.’
