‘Five minutes to go . . . Any New Year’s resolutions?’ Ace asked me, as we stood on the shoreline.
‘Blimey, I haven’t thought of any. I know! To get back into my art, and to find the balls to go to Australia and discover where I came from.’
‘You mean, your birth family?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Wow! That’s something you haven’t told me about.’
‘And your resolution?’ I eyed him in the moonlight.
‘To accept what is to come, and to take it with grace,’ he said, not looking at me, but staring up at the heavens. ‘And to make sure that this is the only glass of champagne I drink tonight,’ he added with a grin.
A few seconds later we heard the hoots of horns from the fishing boats moored out in the bay, then saw the flash of fireworks from nearby Railay Beach visible over the top of the limestone pillars.
‘Oh wow!’ I gasped as we saw Chinese lanterns floating gently upwards into the sky from the other end of the beach.
‘Cheers, CeCe!’ he said, clinking his glass of champagne against mine. I watched as he drained the lot in a couple of mouthfuls. ‘God, that was good! Happy New Year!’ Then he threw his arms around me and gave me an enormous bear hug, which sent most of my champagne flying over his shoulder and onto the sand. ‘You’ve saved my life in the past few days. I mean it.’
‘I don’t think I have, but thanks anyway.’
He pushed me gently back by the shoulders, one hand on each of them. ‘Oh yes, you have.’ Then he put his mouth to mine and kissed me.
It was a nice kiss, quite strong, yet soft at the same time. Like a hungry werewolf on Valium. My rational brain – the bit that normally recognised all the warning signs of such a move – did not respond, so the kiss went on for a really long time.
‘Come on.’ Ace eventually dragged his mouth away from mine and began to pull me by the hand back up the beach. As we passed Po, who must have got an eyeful of us kissing, I smiled at him and wished him a Happy New Year.
As Ace guided me to his room, his hand still holding mine, I felt like it really might be.
That night . . . well, without going into detail, Ace obviously knew what he was doing. In fact, he seemed to be a bit of an expert, while I definitely wasn’t. But it’s amazing how quickly you can learn something when you want to.
‘CeCe,’ he said as he stroked my cheek after what must have been a few hours, because I could hear the faint twitter of birds, ‘you’re just so . . . delicious. Thank you.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said, even if I did feel like he was describing the flavour of an ice cream.
‘This is just for now, isn’t it? I mean, there can’t be any future involved.’
‘Course not,’ I replied lightly, worried that I’d given him the impression I was clingy.
‘Good, because I don’t want to hurt you, or anyone, ever again. Night, sleep tight.’
With that, he rolled away from me, in a bed that I reckoned was even larger and comfier than mine, and went to sleep on his side.
Of course it’s just for now, I told myself as I too rolled over into my own space, realising it was the first time I’d ever shared a bed with a man, as all the other previous fumbles had taken place in the great outdoors. I lay staring into the darkness, glad that the shutters on the windows were letting in tiny strips of New Year light, and thinking that this had been just what I needed. It was perfect, I told myself – a morale booster with no strings attached. I’d go off to Oz in a few days’ time, and maybe me and Ace would keep in touch occasionally by text. I wasn’t a Victorian heroine who had sacrificed her virtue and then got locked into marriage. My generation had been given the freedom to do what we liked with our bodies. And tonight I had liked . . .
Very carefully, my fingers moved towards him of their own accord, to find and touch his skin and to make sure he was real and breathing next to me. As he stirred, I drew them away, but he rolled back towards me and enveloped me in his arms.
Warm and safe with the weight of his body against me, I eventually fell asleep.
*
It transpired that New Year’s Eve hadn’t been a one-night stand. It became a regular morning, afternoon and evening stand . . . or more precisely, a lying down. And when we weren’t horizontal, we did fun things together. Like Ace dragging me out of bed at the crack of dawn to see the monkeys, who announced their presence with a loud thump on the roof as they invaded the palace in search of leftover food. Once I’d taken photos and one of the security guards had frightened them off with a miniature catapult, I’d skulk back to bed. Later on in the morning he’d wake me with a tray of nice things to eat. During the long, hot afternoons, we’d suck at pieces of pineapple and mango and wade through his collection of DVDs.
One sunrise, a plush speedboat had appeared in the shallows of the sea in front of the palace. Po helped us aboard, then whipped out a camera and offered to take a photo of us, which Ace immediately and vehemently vetoed. As we set off, Ace told me he was taking me somewhere special. Having driven my family’s own speedboat up and down Lake Geneva, I soon took over the reins from the captain, steering the boat effortlessly over the waves and doing the odd wheelie just to scare him. When a wall of limestone pillars loomed above us in the middle of the sea, I let the captain take over again. He steered the boat expertly into a hidden lagoon, protected on all sides by vertiginous rocky walls. The water was green and calm, and there were even mangrove trees growing inside it. It was called Koh Hong and it was paradise. I was the first to jump into the water, but Ace soon followed and we swam across it as though it was our own private swimming pool, cast away in the middle of the ocean.
Afterwards, we sat on the boat deck drinking hot, strong coffee and basking in the peace and tranquillity of this incredible place. Then I drove us home and we went to bed and made love. It was a wonderful day and one I knew I’d never forget. The kind of day that happens once in a lifetime, even to someone like me.
On the fifth night that I lay next to Ace in bed, my own room abandoned since New Year’s Eve, I wondered if I was in a ‘relationship’. Part of me was terrified, because it wasn’t what I had intended, and Ace had made it clear he hadn’t either. Yet, another part of me wanted to take a photo of the two of us looking romantically at each other on the beach and send it to all my sisters so that they would realise I wasn’t a loser after all. This man, for whatever reason, liked me. He laughed at my jokes – which even I knew were really bad – and even seemed to find my funny little body ‘sexy’.