Whoever Fears the Sea Justin Fox (books for 8th graders .txt) 📖

yes, to spend a year in Africa.’ Lorike half-smiled. She had perfect teeth. They were the most perfect teeth in the world.

Paul and Lorike sat on one side of the table, Roy and Katja on the other. The loud music created a barrier between the two couples, for which he was grateful. After Celine came a Whitney Houston love ballad. Paul tried to talk over the song, but was shushed by Lorike, who said she liked it. He thought about how popular love songs were so effective at fixing time and place, a certain emotion from a particular moment. Their transience, being pop, was their embalming mechanism. ‘Your love is my love, And my love is your love. It would take an eternity to break us,’ crooned Whitney, and Paul sat squirming with a fake grin and the inside of Hannah’s apartment etched in his mind.

Lorike spoke of a Greek lover who’d broken up with her when she left to study law at NYU. So she, too, had a problem with New York. They had something in common: heartache and New York. Every now and then, Lorike’s pale green eyes caught his like a lighthouse beam. ‘I have not been able to be friends with him,’ she said. ‘I know it’s bad, but I just can’t.’

The undeserving Greek bastard, he thought, but said, ‘It’s hard to remain friends with the big loves, much easier with the small ones.’

She nodded.

‘You have beautiful eyes,’ he said, regretting it immediately. Too soon, too lame.

‘Thank you,’ she said under her breath. Then she realised that Katja was looking at her quizzically across the table and they rejoined the conversation with Roy.

The music — country and western now — was turned down and chairs were being stacked on tables. They drained their beers, left Roy with a friend and strolled back to the inn, where they sat on the terrace. After a while, Katja said she was tired and went off to bed. Lorike lingered, then yawned and said she too should get some sleep.

‘Would you like to take a walk before bed?’ asked Paul, his heart beating so loudly he thought she might hear.

Lorike looked at him doubtingly. ‘I don’t think it would be right.’

Paul backtracked and apologised. He’d misread the signals.

‘But yes, okay, let’s go for a short walk,’ she said.

They quietly descended the stairs, stepped out on to the promenade and turned left. Even at this late hour, a few men sat on benches enjoying the warm night air. As they strolled along the front, away from the streetlamps, it grew darker. Paul put an arm around her. ‘We really shouldn’t,’ she said.

He retracted his arm. She took his hand, kissed it and placed it back on her shoulder. His breathing grew shallow. Tethered dhows rode easily beside them, brushing each other’s fenders, then parting, before being drawn together again by their mooring lines. They walked to the end of the waterfront without saying another word. Once past the donkey sanctuary, there were no lights and he suggested they head back. In the process of turning, their bodies came together and they kissed. Her breath was warm and her lips felt like satin against his. ‘This shouldn’t be happening,’ she moaned, then kissed him again.

‘Why?’ asked Paul. ‘Do you have a boyfriend or something?’

‘Of course,’ she whispered.

Paul had no idea why it was ‘of course’. He thought of Hannah, his own ‘of course not’, but she seemed a long way off, packed in cotton wool and utterly harmless.

‘I feel so guilty,’ she said, holding his face with both her hands. ‘We must not let on to Katja and Pieter. They know my boyfriend. He’s a lovely man.’

She kissed him hungrily, her tongue urgent. His arms drew them together tighter, her breasts pressed hard against his chest. He could feel her nipples stiffening through the vest.

‘Sorry about the bristles,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter. I like the feeling.’

He suddenly felt self-conscious about his grooming. His toenails were filthy. Tomorrow he’d make more of an effort. She ran her fingers along his chin and up into his salty blond locks.

‘I need a haircut too,’ he said.

‘My beach boy. My white, African beach boy,’ she said with a delicious smile that sent a shiver through him.

‘I can be whatever you want me to be,’ he said, and meant it.

‘The others must not know about this. And we cannot make love, you understand.’

‘But we can do this,’ he said, pulling her closer and kissing her neck.

‘Yes, sometimes we can do this.’ She closed her eyes and let him kiss her on the mouth again.

‘You’re sure you don’t want me to come back to your room?’ he said when she began kissing his neck. ‘I could unwrap your kikoi, I would love to see all of it. The colours look amazing. All those blues. I love pale blue.’

‘It is a nice kikoi and I’m sure you’d like to see all of it. But no. Besides, the three of us are sharing a room.’

‘You could come back to mine for a while.’

‘I know I could, and a part of me wants to. But it must be this way.’

‘Okay.’ And he really was strangely okay with it. Paul did not need a grand, replacement love affair right now, just someone like Lorike.

Back in his room, he lay on the bed. He felt Lorike’s beauty as a force that was not exactly sexual, not yet anyway, but deeply compelling. Basking in the glow of being wanted, half desired even, was enough.

Paul thought about how each journey, each documentary he made, was a thing external to himself, a drama in which he participated. On each trip, he chose the role he wanted to play: interesting filmmaker, mysterious Don Juan, resourceful backpacker, whatever. On this journey, the role had