The Irish Sea Caves | H2O

Chapter VIII: Love Letters

"If you wanna get with me, you better line up ladies. Line up ladies. If you want a love letter from me, you better sign up ladies, you better give me your address."

Sitting outside the café, I watched Nate perform the song he had been working on after reluctantly coming to meet on my weekend off. He'd convinced me that he could also write songs for the band to play, but I wasn't too sure. What Rikki had said had been on my mind all week; Nate was working hard for something, something other than the band. I don't get it. But what I did understand was how quickly Nate's songwriting was going south.

"I can't wait to meet your parents, I can't wait to meet your dog-"
"Nate? Nate," I couldn't bare to hear anymore. "Uhm Nate. That's horrendous."

His song was sexist and made me feel so uncomfortable, maybe Rikki firing the band did have nothing to do with me pushing Cleo to take the dolphin trainer job. I look back up to Nate, he looks slightly defeated but shakes it off and attempts to play it cool.

"Yeah? Yes- that's what I said to Rikki when she tried to force me to add it to the set list," he says.
"I still can't believe she fired us," I reply.
"Me either But hey- look on the bright side. We're in this together."

As he speaks, he awkwardly slides his arm around my waist and confidentially stares into the morning sun on the water front. Was Nate maybe hitting on me? That's a bit odd. To top it off, he leans his head down and rests his head on my shoulder.

"What are you doing?" I try to change the mood.
"Uh, comforting you?" he says, moving away.
"Okay, well can you try comforting me without touching me?" I retort.
"Aw yes, yeah, I understand. We can take this thing slow babes."
I shy away, "What thing?" I mumble awkwardly.
"You know? Us," he tries to sexily whisper.

This could not be happening, this was worse than the song and Rikki firing us and me being wrong about Rikki firing us because of me. Nate was actually trying to make a move. I barely knew the guy, he's just the guy from band and Rikki's boyfriend's weird friend. I needed to shut this down.

"Okay, I think we should get one thing straight here, there isn't an 'us', what we have is a strictly professional relationship. You know what I mean," I tried to sound smart, and it seemed to go over his head.
"Okay," was all he could say.
"Good."

                                                  + + +

After this morning's horrible events, I decided to go for a walk along the beach to clear my head. I was so embarrassed that I was wrong and I accused Rikki of having something against me, it was Nate's music all along. And then there was Nate and his feelings, he's a nice guy, I can't hurt him. But I couldn't just ignore both problems.

Just when I thought today couldn't get any worse, a figure suddenly emerging from the water catches my eye. A boy with a nice body and gold hair, and... Oh no.

"Bella?" he calls.
"Will?!" I try to sound surprised, I wasn't staring, he's just a boy.
"Hey! Fancy seeing you here!" he exclaims.
"Yeah, uh- what are you up to?" I say trying to make conversation.
"Just training," he laughs nervously. "I don't suppose you want to grab something to eat?"

I smile and nod, he looks pleased and I watch as he goes to dry off and collect his things from the sandbar. Is he asking me out? Did I have something I was meant to do? He's so cute, wow. What am I thinking? How do I walk?

"There's a neat little food truck I saw up the road, can I buy you a grilled cheese or something?" he offers.
"Um- yeah- s-sure, that's be perfect."

We walked together, everything seemed perfect, life was breezy. Will was actually so cool, I just wanted to spend so much time with him. And run my fingers through his hair and watch movies all night and share a milkshake at an expensive café. Wait- why am I thinking like that again? We're just friends right, there's nothing going on here. Right?

I grab a seat at the fold out dining tables surrounding the food truck and Will orders two sandwiches, such a gentlemen. The service was slow and the sandwich was cold but I couldn't be happier. We talked about Will's diving and my singing and we got to know each other.

"So have you been out to Mako lately?" he asks.
"Uh," I forgot about everything we had to hide from him. "No- not really, it's not that interesting out there."
"I don't agree, something happened to me."

I needed a way out of this, I'm not a liar, I relied on the others when it came to keeping him at bay.

Luckily, my phone vibrates, "It's Lewis. He wants to meet us at the marine park to watch Cleo's dolphin show."
"Oh wow, that sounds fun, maybe I'll drop by," he had a mysterious look on his face.
"Oh yeah, well I'll see you around."