‘Mmmm…’
‘I’d better keep it simple then. Just eggs.’
I go to the shelf, take an egg out of the carton and throw it directly at him.
He moves so fast even I am startled. He catches it neatly between his loosely cupped hands, looks at me, and smiles wryly. ‘I really wanted cooked eggs.’
I smile. I am determined to know more of the man. I know nothing about him. I walk to the cupboard I saw him take a pan from yesterday. I take out a pan, put it on the stove and look around me.
‘Top cupboard to your right,’ he says.
I open it and take out the plastic bottle of oil. I pour the oil into the pan, wait for a minute and then smack the egg on the edge of the pan and pour it in. Great! It has kept its shape. I crack another egg and it too keeps its shape. Jaron puts two slices of bread into the toaster. He brings jam out of the fridge and puts it on the kitchen table with a bowl beside it. I really want to turn the eggs over but I dare not. I turn to look at him and he says, ’Sunny side up is fine with me.’
I breathe a sigh of relief and turn down the fire. When the toast is ready he puts it on a plate and taking a metal spatula from a drawer comes over to me. I take the metal spatula and carefully slide his eggs onto his plate. I am inordinately pleased with myself when the eggs go onto the plate unbroken. My first ever lot of cooked eggs and they turn out so great. Yay!
I look at him with a victorious grin and he is staring at me.
‘What?’
‘Thank you,’ he says softly, and I just know he is not talking about the eggs, but I am suddenly too shy to ask what. We sit at the table and I watch him shake salt and pepper on the eggs.
‘How long have you had this place?’ I ask filling my bowl with jam.
‘Five years. It’s a queen’s ninety-nine year lease,’ he says, buttering his toast.
‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’
‘No, I’m an only child,’ he says casually, but suddenly I feel the care and caution that come into his face.
‘Are your parents still around?’
‘Yes.’ His voice becomes even more distant.
‘Where do they live?’
‘In Australia.’
I feel a movement in the corner of my eye, turn to the window and see that a stork has landed in the garden. It is very beautiful. For a moment it stands very still and then it drops its head and gracefully pecks under its wing.
‘There is a stork in the garden,’ I say quietly.
‘Yeah, they drop occasionally.’
I could have turned around then, but I don’t. I am not so foolish as to turn around and expose myself to his devastating weapons. To allow him to wrap his sensual spell over me. ‘Why did you go to Monte Carlo?’
I wait for him to answer and he doesn’t so I turn to face him.
‘Why all the questions, Billie?’
‘No real reason. It just occurred to me that I know nothing about you.’
‘In time you’ll know everything there is to know.’
Suddenly I feel very naked and exposed sitting in my bikini bottoms. Jaron’s T-shirt is draped over a kitchen chair. I take it and slip it over my head. Now we are both hiding from each other.
Because of high winds the water is cloudy so we do not go snorkeling. Instead we have a sandcastle building contest. Jaron’s is bigger but mine is definitely better. Afterward he buries me in the sand. He takes photos of me and when it is his turn I give him large conical breasts and that looks really funny. We laugh a lot. He breaks out of the sand and chases me into the water.
We swim in the nude, our bodies slipping eel-like against each other in the silky water. We start kissing in the water and end up on the beach where the waves still touch our feet and Jaron’s tongue is everywhere all at once. We make long, languorous love on the hot sand, the sun beating down on us, and the ticklish waves sometimes reaching up to our hips.
‘Sticking my cock inside you is like sticking it in a wall socket,’ he murmurs in my arms, sleepy with the exertions of pleasure.
I bury my face in the hair that smells of sun and sea and me. The reality of love has surpassed anything I could have imagined. I remember when Lana told me she was in love, and I had arrogantly claimed I never wanted to be under another person’s control or power. And now my words have come back to haunt me. My life seemed so empty before he came. I can’t even imagine life without him.
At nearly two in the afternoon we go to the mainland for lunch. Jaron wears sunglasses, which make him look like a really cool movie star. He takes me to a shack, painted bright green with purple doors and yellow window shutters. The sign is in faded blue. It’s funky. And I like it a lot. Plenty of beers are cooling in a huge metal drum full of ice. A man called Ernie whom I met at last night’s party owns the place.