Only You

Chapter 4- In Love

When we arrived at the breakfast hotel five minutes early, we were shocked to see that everyone else except Tim and Ollie were there and waiting, including the girl who wasn't at rafting, whose name was Isabelle.

The family with the two older boys said they were too tired to come, and Tim and Ollie were just late. Ella and Maisie had brought a ball and Isaac had brought Dwan.

After another ten minutes of waiting, Ollie and Tim finally showed up, apologising, Ollie blaming Tim for their arrival time. India took her phone out and we all gave her our number so she could make a group chat for all the children later. 

After that, we all set off towards the beach in one big group. There was Imogen, Isabelle, India, Isaac, Ella, Maisie, Jess, Ollie, Tim and me. We dumped our stuff with the adults who were sat on loungers with drinks of beer or cocktails.

Ella took her ball and we waded into the sea together.

We decided to play a game that consisted of trying to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible, which involved a lot of unnecessary diving into the water from Tim and Ollie, who were showing off their skills and often dropping the ball anyway.

We all talked about our home and what it's like back there, our schools, especially for the people that were moving to a new school this year, and our shitty teachers. The last one was the most interesting, and we were discussing how stupidly angry French teachers get for no reason, when the sky started to cloud over.

People began getting out of the water, including Jess and Maisie, who had bonded being the only eleven year olds on the holiday, but everyone else stayed. In fact, we even went further into the water where we had to tread water to stay afloat, and the seaweed (ugh) tickled our feet.

Isaac put his hands up in a W shape to catch the ball and we all laughed as he tried to keep himself afloat as his hands were occupied.

It was too difficult to keep the ball up in the deeper part of the sea, so instead we played piggy in the middle, where Isaac tried to intercept the ball as we passed it over the top of his head.

The game got increasingly more complicated as the rules built up, more people being added to the middle if the ball was dropped or failed to be caught until there were only two people left and six people stopping the ball from reaching the other person until one person remained.

The person who was left would be the next person in the middle at the start of a game and so on, tiring us out quickly. Isabelle had just won, and we were about to start a new round when it started pouring it down.

The rain lashed harshly against the sea, and it wasn't long before thunder started rolling loudly and the adults told us to come back to shore immediately. Which we reluctantly did, even if the lightning didn't start until ten minutes later and it wasn't cold at all.

While we swam or waded back out to the beach where the adults were anxiously waiting with towels for us, I talked to Ollie. And I don't just mean small talk about the weather, I mean actually talked.

He was honestly the best guy I'd ever met. He played rugby like me, but he played League, and I played Union. When we were talking about the annoying people in our rugby teams, we then ended up chatting about how annoying those popular brats who think they're all that at our schools, and he just seemed so genuine and respectful.

I was in love with a boy who lived at the opposite side of the country. Fuck.

The extreme lack of coldness was the reason we all went to the ice cream parlour in the beach bar, and all got a dirt cheap cone of some of the best ice cream ever. It was about £1.50 for an ice cream that tasted like heaven in a cone.