2 (Wave Walkers)

After leaving the Harvest Fete dance amid hushed comments and uneasy stares (about which he didn’t give a toss; that was a lower class of mammal who had wondered curiously about how he could possibly be so grinning and gleeful after having Samantha Hoggett’s considerable wrath directed toward him, lesser humans who lived on the hard ground alone, with hearts and wills like clotted cream, who couldn’t conceive of any greater synchronicity between opportunity and payback than what their tiny minds had been shown by the cinema or telly), and downing three heady draughts of St. Austell’s at the Crest and Claw (after which Neville had muttered to him that it might be better to take a break, amid concerned looks and pressing questions that had gone mostly unanswered in favour of inward snickers and planning), Ross had gone home and had himself one of the hottest showers, one of the most fulfilling wanks, and one of the best night’s sleep he’d had in a long, long time.

On the following morning, after a pulse-pounding run on the beach with Scott (who was often the only one of the crew up before sunrise, these days, since he could only surf in the mornings now that Venus had an hour long commute from Truro in the evenings, and four-year-old Emma needed someone to be at home for her), and an early cut into the dawn-breaking waves, Ross was still flush with anticipation, over both Sam and Amber.

Rather than cooling his ire, being given the time to think it over had made him even more eager to get back at Sam for all of those useless nights spent lying on his board or in his bed, alone, staring up at the sky or the ceiling and wondering where he’d made the wrong turn. The answer – he knew now, shown to him in the pretty and just-seductive-enough smile of a younger girl – was that Sam was full of shit and that he hadn’t made any wrong turn. He’d just had to wait to get his sweet, sweet revenge on the woman who’d dangled him by his heartstrings (not to mention the blood vessels in his cock) and then made a fool of him after getting him hard over her. Sam hadn’t been the first woman to do that, of course, to use him and then toss him away like yesterday’s rubbish; she wasn’t even the most memorable. But he saw her with such annoying regularity – at the pub, at the lifeboat station, on the street – and that almost daily reminder of her presence (not to mention her very existence) grated on his nerves.

More than anything at that moment, he wanted Sam to feel the same ache of rejection and self-doubt that she’d made him feel for the last two years.

And he really, really wanted to fuck Amber.