one to the left which was swirling with clouds of light at its entrance. This was the one marked Aidan
What Could Have Been—Aidan
Jennifer slipped out of bed and padded across the room to pull the curtain back. Sunlight immediately poured in and though it was still only early, she could feel the heat of the day penetrating the glass. She gazed out at the view, loving the way the sea glinted and twinkled through the gaps in the rooftops. Their little one bedroom apartment in the bay-side suburbs of Brisbane was very basic, very compact, but it was also only a twenty-minute walk from the beach.
She opened the window a fraction and breathed in deeply. Then she tipped her face back and let the already strong rays bathe her skin with their warmth.
It was strange getting up every day knowing it was going to be hot and that the sky would almost definitely be blue. She’d always considered herself a total sun worshipper but having been away for so long now, the sense of urgency to get out there and work on her tan had started to fade a bit. Sometimes, if she were being totally honest, she even found the constancy of the temperature a little relentless, a tad monotonous, to the point where recently she’d found herself secretly craving a bit of grey sky. This was ironic given that she was always the first to moan about the abysmal climate in England and yet what she missed about the British weather was that subtle change of seasons. Nothing beat a glorious, breezy, spring day, or that first sniff in the air which told you that autumn had arrived, when the light became more golden and the leaves were falling from the trees, crunchy and brown.
‘Hey sexy.’
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ she said, turning round to see Aidan grinning at her from the bed. He was brown, toned and fit from all the hours of running on the beach he was doing most days. She still felt a lurch of desire every time she clapped eyes on him.
‘Yeah funny that, given that you’ve pulled the curtains wide open. Now, seeing as you’ve woken me up, get your sexy bum over here,’ he said, eyeing her greedily.
She was only wearing a small vest top and a pair of knickers.
‘I know what you’re after,’ she grinned back at him, knowing full well he’d have a raging hard on. He woke up with one every morning. In that way he was a bit like the Queensland weather, predictable.
‘Just shut up and come here,’ he said, flinging back the sheets to reveal that her guess was indeed correct.
Not needing to be persuaded, Jennifer approached the bed and succumbed to half an hour of intense passion. Before Aidan, she hadn’t been aware of ever having such a voracious sexual appetite but he’d definitely woken something up inside of her that she supposed must have been lying dormant before.
After what was, as ever, mind-blowing, energetic sex, they both lay flat on their backs panting, sated, sweating.
‘You’re amazing,’ said Aidan, idly tweaking her left nipple.
‘So are you,’ she replied. ‘Seriously amazing.’
‘Love you,’ he said, hugging her tight. As he did so Jennifer marvelled at how safe he made her feel. The chemistry between them was something she doubted could ever be replicated with anyone else, to the point that sometimes they were almost savagely passionate with one another. She didn’t think there was anything she wouldn’t be prepared to do with him physically and, as a result, she had never felt so confident in her own body or so empowered in terms of the effect she knew she was capable of having upon him.
‘Are we going to the beach then?’ said Aidan.
‘Not the building site?’
‘Nah, that can wait. It’s too much of a scorcher. Maybe tomorrow?’
‘OK,’ she agreed, flopping over to her side so she could get up and start getting the beach bag ready.
Just then the phone rang.
‘Yours,’ said Jennifer lazily, though a second later she regretted this when she remembered it would probably be the scheduled phone call she’d arranged with her parents before they retired to bed on the other side of the world.
‘Yup, here she is,’ Aidan was saying, in a fed up, vaguely unfriendly tone which simply confirmed it was them.
Jennifer sat up and reached over for her vest top which she pulled back over her head before taking the phone from him. It was such a small apartment that there wasn’t anywhere for her to go where she could talk without Aidan listening in, so rather than standing up in the tiny kitchen, where he’d be able to hear every word anyway, she just stayed where she was. Never having any privacy did get to her sometimes.
‘Hi Mum, how are you?’
‘Oh all right,’ said the so familiar voice, made tinny from the sheer distance it was travelling.
Jennifer pictured her parents, sitting by the phone together, probably ready for bed in their dressing gowns, in the lounge with the radiators blasting.
‘What have you been up to this week, Jen?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ she replied ‘Working, bit of beach action. You know? The usual really.’
‘I thought you were going to that Surfers Paradise place.’
‘Oh yeah, we were, but we didn’t in the end,’ said Jennifer, turning around so she had her back to Aidan. He was looking grumpy like he always did when she chatted to her parents. It was getting on her nerves.
Three months ago, at exactly the time her mum and dad had been expecting her to be landing at Gatwick, back from her holiday with the girls, Jennifer had rung them from Athens to break the news that she’d essentially decided to throw caution to the wind and take an unplanned gap year. In Australia…
To say they’d been furious had been an understatement. Her dad had shouted, her mum had wept though, as it transpired, it was less the fact she wasn’t coming home which enraged them so much, but more the fact she wasn’t coming back because of a man they hadn’t met.
Their reaction had been so bad that Jennifer had seriously considered giving up on her adventure altogether. Had even thought it might be best just to admit defeat and head home straight away, tail between her legs. In fact she’d just been about to tell them that she was sorry and that she would do exactly that, when her mother had interjected with, ‘One whiff of male attention and you go and lose your head, Jennifer. It’s pathetic when you think about it.’
And that one comment changed everything. For at that point, Jennifer’s mood had switched from apologetic and shamefaced to resolute and determined. She’d been utterly insulted by her mother’s accusation and had said as much to Aidan when she’d got off the phone a few minutes later in order to have a think, on the proviso that she’d call them back with a decision.
She’d left him drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette in a dusty roadside cafe in a busy square and as she’d approached, it was obvious to her that despite trying to appear nonchalant he was in fact really nervous.
‘What
