Episode 10: “Temptation sure is a convincing little biotch…”
By the time June 21st rolled around, I was fully aware why deadlines were the bane of my existence. And any writer, author, journalist who has told you otherwise was lying through their teeth.
[soft laugh]
Coming up with ideas is my favorite part of the job, but it’s that whole turning those ideas into readable pieces that’s a real kick in the ass.
Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. I love expressing myself through words.
But that doesn’t mean writing all those damn words came effortlessly.
Some days, it’s like my fingers can’t type fast enough.
But other days, it feels like pouring honey from a jar.
[gentle sigh]
Ever since Vanessa had added an additional two assignments to my plate with a rubber band-tight deadline of June 25th, I’d been deep in the same routine.
Wake up at seven.
Eat breakfast.
Work.
Quick lunch break, which mostly included me eating a sandwich while I worked.
Work, work, work some more.
Eat dinner.
And somewhere around midnight, I’d pass out with my laptop still open.
A day or two of this was doable, but I was hitting the four-day mark, and the around-the-clock schedule was taking its toll.
I’d ignored phone calls and text messages, I’d declined offers from Jordy to grab dinner or drinks with him and some of the guys, and I’d all but quarantined myself in my hotel room for my writing cause.
The only fresh air I’d obtained was in the brief moments I found respite on the balcony of my hotel room.
Housekeeping probably thought I had Ebola or something.
All work and no play makes Lucky a dull girl.
I was starting to understand why Jack Torrance in The Shining went off his rocker.
[laughs]
And June 21st, well, it would be another long grind of a day…
Just before I settled in and slipped on my headphones, my phone pinged with a notification. When Ollie’s name lit up on my screen, I smiled like a fool.
Mornin’. It’s time for swim lesson number two.
That smile quickly turned to a firm line of confusion, and I typed out a message that showed it. Swim lesson number two? I don’t recall agreeing to another lesson…
In true Ollie fashion, he was quick to respond. Well, little fire, considering I’m your instructor, I think we need to let me be the judge of how many lessons you need or don’t need.
He was my instructor? When did that happen?
Demanding as always, he told me to meet him by the pool in an hour.
I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that the mere idea of leaving my hotel room was tempting.
But that didn’t mean I should give in to the urge. I had to stay strong. I had deadlines. And I also had a strong memory of what happened during swimming lesson number one with Ollie…
It’s like eight in the morning, Ollie. I don’t tolerate demands that well at this hour. Plus, I’m on a bit of a deadline. I promised myself I’d stay locked in my hotel room until I finished.
We volleyed messages back and forth for a good ten minutes.
Me, trying to get him to understand I had deadlines coming out of my ears, and him, trying to convince me I needed a break.
But he proved to be a master of convincing words.
Okay, he’d messaged. In the name of being more accommodating to your “I need options” ways. I’ll give you options. #1: You put on your suit and meet down at the pool in one hour.
Of course, I took the bait like an amateur. And option #2?
I come up to your hotel room and carry you down here myself.
His message startled a laugh from my lungs.
The man was so damn persistent that I couldn’t deny he was making it hard to say no.
I told him his options sucked, and he simply responded with Time’s a ticking. Which will it be?
And a minute or two later, he added, Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll be outside your room.
What could I say to that?
The gauntlet had been thrown.
Sure, I could have been an adult about the whole situation and told him I didn’t have time for his playful games.
But he’d dangled the distraction carrot in my face, and good Lord, I needed a break from that damn hotel room.
I needed fresh air. I needed sun.
I needed to experience another swim lesson with Ollie.
In that moment, I convinced myself I’d agreed because of the whole air and the sun thing, but I’m pretty sure you guys know better by this point…
[sighs]
An hour later, I was dressed in my bathing suit, coated with three layers of sunscreen, and walking out onto the terrace by the pool.
The South African sun was already at full force, damn near blazing, and I had to squint to take the intensity off my retinas as I pulled my sunglasses down from the top of my head and secured them over my eyes.
[laughs]
I felt like a vampire who’d been inside her coffin for the past fifty-five years. Surely, my pale complexion looked the part…
“Well, look who it is!” Ollie called from the pool. He stood in the shallow end, his elbows resting on the edge, while everything from his waist down stayed submerged in the crystal-clear water. “Ready for a bit of fun?”
“No.” I shook my head and plopped down in the nearest beach chair.
A raspy laugh left his full lips. “Seems all that work has made you grumpy.”
“More like your insistence to pull me away from the work has made me grumpy.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute,” he retorted. “You needed a break. And lucky for Lucky, I was persistent enough to make you take one.”
“Is that what you call it? Persistence?” I questioned and lowered my sunglasses to my nose for a brief second to scrutinize his face.
“What do you call it?”
“Annoyance.”
He grinned. “Pretty sure I’ve heard every variation of that word fall from your pretty little lips at least one hundred times. You’re becoming a bit of a broken record, little fire.”
He’d called me a broken record, but all my brain could focus on was his description of my mouth.
Pretty little lips?
Did he think I had a pretty mouth?
Did he want to kiss my mouth?
[annoyed groan]
I hate to say this, but Ollie was right. I was a broken record. And my recurrent song seemed to include thoughts of kissing him…
But I refused to let my brain wander down that path, and instead, I stood up from my beach chair and shrugged off my little cover-up dress. “All right, Mr. Instructor,” I said and turned to face him with two hands on my hips. “Let’s get this hour over with so I can get back to work.”
He smirked at that, and instead of gesturing me toward the water, he braced his hands on the concrete and pushed himself out.
As he strolled toward me, I watched the way the muscles of his body glimmered beneath the droplets of water rolling down his skin. And when my eyes caught sight of one particular drop, I followed its path as it traveled from his shoulder to his chest to his tight abdomen until it went down, down, down and got lost beneath the subtle trail of blondish, brown hair that rested just below his belly button.
[sighs]
It was a glorious sight.
One I shouldn’t have been enjoying as much as I had, but glorious nonetheless.
“You ready?” he asked, and I just blinked like a moron. It wasn’t until I lifted my gaze to meet his eyes that I realized the question he’d asked.
“Huh?” I asked. “Ready for what?”
“To head to the beach.”
“The beach?” I questioned. “Why are we going to the beach?”
“Because that’s where your next swim lesson is.”
“Wait, w-what?” I shook my head. “I’m not getting in the ocean. Are you crazy?”
Ollie just grinned. “No need to panic,” he said, and amusement filled his brown eyes. “I’m not just tossing you in with the sharks.”
“What?” My eyes turned as big as saucers. “There’re sharks?”
“Jesus, woman.” A wolflike laugh spilled from his lungs. “It’s a bloody saying. There are no sharks. So take a breath before you spontaneously combust.”
I glared at him. “That was a horrible metaphor for the situation.”
“Yeah, I’m realizing that now.” He chuckled again and ran a hand through his wet hair, smoothing it out of his face. “All right, little fire, get excited because we’re going on a bit of an adventure, away from the gnarly waves toward much calmer waters,” he said and picked up a life vest from his beach chair. “And you’re going to wear this.”
I scrunched up my nose. “A life vest?”
“Yes.”
“But—”
He shook his head. “There are no buts to this request. You have to wear a life vest. Not only for your safety, but for my sanity too. I refuse to take any risks with you out there.”
His words lacked their normal jovial, teasing tone, and I had no desire to question or argue. Instead, I simply followed his instructions and took the life vest from his hands.
Once I was securely strapped in, I asked, “Better?”
“Much better.”
He grabbed our stuff from the beach chairs and led us across the terrace until we reached the gate that guided a path toward the ocean and sand.
“Now, will you give me a little insight into this adventure thing you’ve got planned?”
He grinned at me over his shoulder. “Kayaking.”
“Seriously?” I asked, and just as we cleared the trail and made our way to the wide-open coast, I knew he wasn’t bullshitting me.
There, just a few feet from where we stopped, sat an orange and pink kayak with two black oars.
Instead of answering my question, he set our towels on the beach and grabbed ahold of the kayak. “Let’s go, little fire.”
[laughs]
Yeah. Kayaking, you guys.
He wanted to take the girl who barely knew how to tread water fucking kayaking.
Go ahead and laugh at the absurdity of it. Lord knows, I am.
“Uh…this seems like a bad idea,” I muttered and dug my toes into the sand. “I’ve never been in the ocean, and I sure as hell have never been inside a kayak. What if I fall out of that damn thing?”
“That’s what the life vest is for.”
“This is crazy.” I shook my head and stepped back a few feet. “And honestly, it’s freaking me the fuck out.”
Ollie let go of the kayak and walked over toward me.
“Listen, Lucky, just trust me on this, okay?” He placed both of his hands on my shoulders, and the way his brown eyes looked so damn earnest, I couldn’t find a reason to doubt him. “I’m not going to take you anywhere dangerous. I will keep you safe. All the while, I’m going to make sure you have a good time, and more than that, get even more comfortable in the water. Okay?”
“O-okay.” I nodded, but when a question popped into my mind, I couldn’t not ask it. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing this?” I explained. “You know, teaching me how to swim and helping me conquer my fear of water…”
“Ever since you told me you couldn’t swim, it’s had me a bit tied up in knots, yeah?” he said. “These events have you near the water every single day, all the bloody time, and I don’t much like the idea of you not knowing how to swim.”
I stared up at him and searched his steady gaze.
He was doing this because he was afraid something might happen to me?
And the idea of me not knowing how to swim was stressing him out?
These were the last things I’d expected to come out of his mouth.
In that moment, I started to second-guess everything I’d originally seen in him…
Maybe I was wrong about him?
Maybe Ollie wasn’t as big of a jerk as I’d originally thought?
I mean, would a jerk be this concerned with my safety?
I didn’t know the answer to those questions, but I did know that I trusted him.
And even taking it a step further, I was both nervous and excited to see what this little adventure entailed…
“Okay,” I said with a small smile. “I’m nervous as hell, but I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
“Attagirl,” he said with a wink and grabbed the kayak again.
I followed him toward the water, and once he’d settled me in the kayak, he instructed me to hold on to the oars as he pulled us farther into the water.
Once the water reached his waist, he hopped inside expertly, just barely rocking our little boat with his movements.
“I’m guessing you’ve done this before, huh?”
“Just a few times,” he said and grinned at me over his shoulder as he moved his oar through the water and led our boat farther out to sea. “Now, it’s about to be a wee bit bumpy through this part, yeah? But once I get us past it, we’ll be smooth as silk and headed straight for the little bay area where the water barely even wrinkles.”
“So, uh, what should I do?”
“Whatever makes you feel most comfortable.”
“Yeah, well, that would be not rowing and gripping the edges for dear life.”
He laughed. “Then do that.”
“Seriously?”
“Just do what feels natural, yeah?”
Do what felt natural?
[incredulous laugh]
I think we can all agree, if I’d followed that line of thinking, I already would’ve kissed him ten times. Pretty sure do what feels natural didn’t pertain to my love life, but for this situation, I could follow his advice…
So, I did what felt natural.
Which, basically, just involved me gripping the edges of the kayak and frequently shutting my eyes when the rocky water became too overwhelming.
I knew the anxiety was irrational, though.
I mean, I had a life vest on, for goodness’ sake.
And thanks to Ollie, I did know how to tread water…sort of.
Plus, it wasn’t like the man in control of the kayak had no experience in this.
He’d set records literally riding waves fifty times bigger than the ones we were currently floating over.
Eventually, though, we reached the calm waters of the bay, and all of the tension locked inside my neck and shoulders waned, and I didn’t feel compelled to keep my eyes closed.
“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I whispered as my gaze took in the spot where the rocky caverns disappeared into the crystal-clear water.
It was breathtaking.
“You like it?” Ollie asked and I nodded.
“I love it.”
“It’s one of my favorite spots on Eastern Cape,” he said and set his oar down beside him.
“One of your favorite spots? But there’re no waves.”
“Yeah, but there’s beauty,” he responded and looked at me over his shoulder. “It’s a bit of a secret spot, though,” he added. “Mind keeping it under wraps?”
“It’ll be our little secret.”
Our little secret.
Those words felt so strange yet so right coming from my lips.
“Now, where’s the part where we actually swim?” I asked, and Ollie smirked.
“Right now.” He hopped to his feet and was out of the kayak and into the clear water before I could question his sanity.
“You’re crazy!” I shouted toward him once his head broke the surface.
“You need to get a little crazy with me,” he called back with a grin. “Jump in, Lucky!”
“Are you nuts?” I squealed. “I can’t just jump in.”
“Why not?” he asked. “You have a life vest on. The kayak isn’t going anywhere. And I’m here. You’re perfectly safe, I promise. Nothing bad will happen.”
I stared at him for a long moment.
“I believe in you, Lucky. You can do it!” he yelled toward me, and there was something about the way he said it that made me feel like I actually could do it.
So, I did do it.
One big, deep breath and I threw caution to the wind and jumped into the sea.
The instant I reached the surface again and my eyes met Ollie’s bright and proud gaze, I’d never felt more exhilarated in my whole life.
My heart pounded erratically in my chest, and adrenaline pumped through my body until it woke up every nerve ending with a high I couldn’t put into words.
Ollie moved toward me and gripped my life vest with both of his hands. “You okay?” he asked, and his eyes searched mine.
I nodded, a manic up-and-down bob of my head, and I knew I looked insane—hell, I felt like maybe I’d gone insane—but I was too damn euphoric to care.
Relief lightened the dark chocolate rims of his eyes, and eventually, it made a path straight to his lips and lifted the corners up into a grin.
Good God, he had a nice smile. Perfect white teeth, full lips, and bright enough to give the sun a run for its money.
Between his smile and his eyes, I didn’t know what I wanted to take in more.
[sighs]
Not to mention, we were alone, you guys.
Alone. Wading in the sea. Our bodies inches from one another.
All I could do was stare at him. And trust me, I drank him up like he was lemonade on a hot summer day.
Kiss him, my brain shouted like it had done so many times before.
But that time, I didn’t ignore it.
Instead, I leaned forward and pressed my mouth to his.
Yes, I kissed him.
No hesitation. No second thoughts. I just up and fucking kissed him.
The salt of the sea mingled on our lips, and with what I could only describe as pure insanity flowing through my veins, I slipped my tongue past his teeth and took a taste.
Good Lord, I wasn’t disappointed.
He tasted incredible.
And that kiss felt so damn good it made my toes curl beneath the water.
He groaned softly against my mouth and danced his tongue with mine, and my head turned fuzzy at how perfect it all felt. Like his lips were meant to touch my lips. His tongue was meant to dance with my tongue. Our bodies were meant to be this close.
[audible pause]
If you’re wondering what was happening to me, don’t worry, I was thinking the same thing.
And I had no idea. Not a single clue.
Maybe I’d sustained some sort of brain damage from that jump?
Maybe all that adrenaline had clouded my judgment?
Or maybe I’d literally reached the point where I just couldn’t resist him?
God, I’d made myself a million promises, and yet, somehow, I’d kissed the one man I’d promised myself I wouldn’t.
Not to mention, I was still kissing him.
Why was I still kissing him?
Well, because Ollie was an ah-mazing kisser.
I don’t know how long that kiss lasted, but I know it wasn’t a short amount of time. When I finally let rational thought invade my senses, I pulled away from his lips and had the urge to bury my face in the sea.
Ollie looked at me and I looked at him, and by the heat creeping up my chest and into my cheeks, I knew my skin had to be a thousand shades of embarrassment.
“You kissed me,” he said.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Pretty sure you kissed me.”
[sighs]
I think we can all agree I was one hundred percent full of shit.
You guys know it.
I knew it.
And, don’t worry, Ollie knew it too.
His lips turned up into a knowing smirk. “You definitely kissed me.”
“Just shut up about it, okay?” I said, and in the need for self-preservation and saving face, I swam back toward the kayak.
Of course, I had no idea how I was going to get my ass back inside that thing without flipping it over my head, but I had to distract myself with something.
I couldn’t face him.
Not then. Not after I fucking kissed him.
“I can’t believe you kissed me.”
“Can we just forget that happened?” I asked as I attempted to toss my leg back into the kayak and gain some traction.
But instead of traction, my foot slipped off the boat, and I slid under the water until my life vest buoyed me back to the surface.
“Need a little help?” he asked through a soft chuckle.
“That’d be nice.”
He swam toward me, and like a gentleman, he helped me back inside the kayak.
“So, was there a reason for that kiss?” he asked once he climbed back inside too.
I gave him the only answer I could. “Insanity.”
He laughed at that, and thankfully, didn’t question me any further. Instead, Ollie grabbed an oar and started paddling us back toward the coastline. All the while, I sat behind him, cursing myself for being such a horny biotch.
I silently berated myself for being such a fool.
Hell, I even made myself a million and one promises that I’d never give in to the temptation again…
[sighs]
But do you think I listened?