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‘I’m actually on South Beach Boardwalk. This is so cool.’
The awkwardness of this morning is gone as Becky tugs off her flat shoes and runs down the sand to the water’s edge. I pull off my boots, turn up the ends of my jeans, and follow after her. We stand in the water, people coming and going around us. Kids play in the sand. People eat ice cream. Kites are flying. All under the brightness of a cloudless sky, not that that does anything to warm the chilly Atlantic around my toes.
‘Another thing off your list. What happens when there’s nothing left?’
‘I guess I’ll have to find another reason to make you stick around.’
As soon as she’s said the words, she starts walking along the shoreline, leaving me wondering whether there was an undertone to that statement or not.
I catch up to her, and we head onto the boardwalk, where I buy us waffles and ice cream from a cart. Becky douses hers in chocolate sauce – the woman really does have a sweet tooth – then we take a seat on a bench to eat.
‘Your family is really great, Drew. The way you all look out for each other and take an interest in each other. God, you actually listen to each other and have fun. It’s something very special.’
I nod, guilt resting in my stomach.
‘Is there a reason you don’t see them often?’
‘I speak to them every week,’ I say, sounding a little too defensive. ‘I’m busy.’ I sigh. ‘My parents gave me everything they had when I was growing up, so I could get a good education. I don’t ever want that to go to waste.’
‘That’s why you work so hard.’
I stare at waves rocking gently against the sand in front of us. ‘Mostly. I saw what it was like to struggle, and I don’t want that for myself. Or…’
‘Your family.’
I want to tell her that I’m not a family man. That I’m not that kind of guy and I just don’t have it in me. But the words come to my tongue and get swept like a wave, silently out to sea.
‘Maybe if my family had been more supportive and hadn’t wanted to just marry me off like in the Dark Ages, I’d be like you too.’
‘You work at one of the best restaurants in the world, Becky. I’d say you did pretty well for yourself.’
What I meant as a compliment doesn’t seem to have been taken well at all. She drifts somewhere, lost in a world I’m not invited to as she stares out to sea. I count the seconds until her next breath. When it comes, she closes her eyes and her shoulders fall as her chest fills. Her body seems to go rigid. Then she slowly comes back, relaxing into the bench.
‘For your information, the posters I pinned around my bedroom as a teenager weren’t of the Backstreet Boys. I was a major Boyzone fan. Then Westlife.’
I smile, grateful for the turn of conversation, but a small part of me wonders where Becky just went in her head. If she wanted to talk, she would; that’s what I decide.
‘Boyzone and Westlife. And they are?’
Her jaw falls open. ‘No way!’
And just like that, she’s back to the Becky I’ve come to know. She breaks into a rendition of some song I’ve never heard – completely pitchy. I’m laughing so hard that my ribs are aching, as she does hand movements to match the words.
‘Becky, that’s horrendous.’
‘The dancing, or the singing?’
‘Can I say both?’
She chuckles. ‘That’s probably fair.’ She takes another giant bite of waffle that has me shaking my head in disbelief. Where does she put it? ‘So, Mr I’m-So-Good-At-Everything, what kind of music did you like growing up?’
‘A bit of everything. Rock, mostly. It depended on whose pants I was trying to get into.’
‘You really have no shame. What was the first concert you went to see?’
‘I used to go to gigs, not concerts, for a start. I was actually in a band in high school, so I guess my first gig would have been some band in school, maybe.’
