“Contract?”
“Yes, a promise to get through the whole list and get over our exes. We need something to commemorate this moment and make it unforgettable.” Alex started scratching in his bag and pulled out a pen. “I don’t have a knife, but this should do.” He walked up to what appeared to be the only free bit of bamboo space.
“Hey, wait!” I suddenly remembered something. “What’s number one?”
Alex looked confused.
“Last night you read me number two and we did number three. What was number one on the list?”
Alex pulled the magazine out of the bag, cleared his throat and started reading again. “ ‘Number One. Don’t Jump Into Another Relationship. Your feelings are all over the place right now and it’s easy to think you’ve developed feelings for someone else all of a sudden. This is probably just transference and they are not real. You need to take a break from all relationships and focus on yourself for a while.’ ”
“That one sounds really important,” I said, because it did. It wasn’t flippant like burning paper or jetting off to tropical islands, and it really resonated with me.Focus on myself.God, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Myself had been so wrapped up in Matt for so damn long.
“It is,” Alex echoed, “very important.” He folded his arms and grew silent and thoughtful-looking. I noticed that while he thought, he brought the pen up to his lips and bit the tip between his teeth. He finally spoke after a few moments of silence. “So that’s it then, we make a promise to each other, right here and now, that we’ll swear off relationships for a while and go through this entire list together?” He looked at me and raised the pen in the air.
“Well, the first part will be easy for me,” I chuckled. “It’s not like I’ll be meeting anyone anytime soon.”
“Me neither,” Alex agreed and brought the pen down to the bamboo and started scratching. But it soon became clear that no amount of scratching with a complimentary hotel pen was going to work on the bamboo. This became very evident when the pen snapped.
“Crap,” Alex said and then looked up at me. “What now? We need to do something to remember this moment.”
“My grandmother used to tie string around her finger when she wanted to remember something,” I suddenly said without thinking.
“That’s brilliant!” Alex said. He reached into his bag again and pulled out the small promotional notepad that the hotel had given us. Around the notepad was a small green ribbon, that matched the ribbon on the pen. Alex pulled the ribbons off and walked up to me. “Give me your left hand,” he said, holding his out.
I lifted my hand slowly and placed it in his. Alex began wrapping the ribbon around my ring finger and started tying it.
“Repeat after me,” he said.
“Okay.” I watched, transfixed by his hands, transfixed by the fact he was—for the second time in two days—putting something onto my ring finger.
“I, Val, do solemnly promise to swear off relationships and work my way through the entire list.” He looked up at me and our eyes locked. I swallowed, it felt like something had lodged itself into the back of my throat. Everything around me felt a little more silent all of a sudden.
“I, Val,” I repeated softly, “do solemnly promise to swear off relationships and work my way through the entire list.” I looked back down at my finger as he tied the final knot. It was just a little piece of green ribbon, but it held so much meaning right now that I felt somewhat overwhelmed.
Then Alex passed me his hand and I began doing the same. I almost forgot to make him repeat the words as I studied his hand carefully. It was big, his fingers were long and his fingernails were perfect. Prominent veins crisscrossed the back of his hand, making it look strong and powerful. When I was done, I pulled away and we stood looking at each other in complete silence. There was this sense in the air that the two of us had just done something significant together. Something important that needed to be respected and could never be undone. His gray eyes seemed to have darkened a little in the shade.
“Come, we better keep moving,” Alex suddenly said and started walking again.
I followed him.
I still had no idea where we were going, and no matter how many times I asked, it was still “a secret.” It was hot and humid, and got worse the further we walked. The path quickly got steeper, and soon my legs didn’t feel like they could go on much further.
“Alex,” I moaned, “are we almost there?” My left calf muscle felt like it was about to explode out of the back of my leg.
“I think so.” He turned around and smiled at me as he continued his fast stride. I’d been watching him walk for quite some time now, and I was certainly able to deduce one thing from the experience: this man went to the gym! With each step his calf muscles, unlike mine, tensed and relaxed—God, he had better legs than I did!
I confess to allowing my eyes to drift north, to where the legs met the body, aka his arse. And although it was hard to tell through those shorts, he did seem to have the kind of arse that a girl—if she were so inclined—might want to dig her nails into. Not that I was inclined to do such things.
And then, without warning, the incline got even steeper. So steep that it felt like climbing a ladder. The burn moved from my calves to my thigh muscles, which never got a workout, except when hovering over public toilets. The burn moved up further and into muscles I didn’t even know I had.
“A . . . le . . . x,” I puffed as I tried to keep up.
“Yes?” he replied casually over his shoulder as if he wasn’t even moving.
“When are we there?”
“Soon!” he shouted.
