Off The Cretan Track chapter 21

Nick has a heart to heart with Sandra

Nick stood, facing the sea in a daze. His heart was pounding, his whole body throbbing, making any kind of coherent thoughts impossible; all he could do was feel. He paced breathlessly, with the kiss running itself through his head as if on fast forward, then rewind, and then fast forward again. His head was in chaos. Did that really just happen?

 

Sal and him had just kissed! A full on, mind blowing kiss! He knew, just knew, how hot that would be, but my God, now that he'd done it once, he was desperate to do it again… and again… and again! He wanted to do it now! He had just had a taster of how passionate she could be, but he'd experienced enough to know how badly he wanted more of it.

 

"Nick?" A voice startled him suddenly and he turned with surprise to see that Sandra had approached him. She placed a hand on his arm, pausing his frustrated pacing. "Are you okay?" she asked.

 

He took a deep, steadying breath, making some attempt to calm his raging emotions. "Yeah," he replied, somewhat unconvincingly.

 

Sandra gave a small laugh. He clearly wasn't. He looked really shook up.

 

"Let's sit down for a minute," she suggested.

 

They sat on the sand, with the party behind them.

 

"Nick, what's wrong?" Sandra asked, watching him closely.

 

"Nothing's wrong exactly," he replied. Then he turned suddenly to her, asking suspiciously, "Why?"

 

What had been said?

 

"Well, one minute you two were… err, kind of… all over each other," she chuckled, "and the next, Sal had left you pretty quickly to go sit next to Kate. Now call me crazy, but if she chose to sit next to Kate, there had to be something wrong," she said wryly. He looked at her blankly. "Never mind, just tell me what's up," she said, taking the more direct approach when her joke went straight over his head. "You've just got engaged; you should both be on cloud nine. What have you done to upset her?"

 

"What do you mean?" Nick asked, glancing behind himself to look for Sal. She was sitting by the barbecue, but from where Nick was standing, he couldn't make out any kind of expression on her face. "Is she upset?"

 

"Nick, she practically ran away from you," Sandra said in disbelief at how blind Nick was being. He had always been a bit useless at dealing with emotion, but she'd never thought of him as downright oblivious to it.

 

Nick's face grew increasingly pale. Had she been that keen to get away from him? Maybe he'd misinterpreted her reaction to the kiss. Maybe it was just him who'd enjoyed it.

 

Nick had gone silent and now looked even more distraught than when Sandra had first joined him.

 

"Nick, are you going to tell me what's going on?" she said with frustration.

 

He ran a shaky hand through his hair. Oh God, what had he done? Had he messed everything up with Sal? And they were getting on so amazingly well too.

 

What was he going to do?

 

"I've got a confession to make," he began, deciding to come clean to Sandra in hope that she could give him some advice. "Me and Sal aren't engaged."

 

Nick hated the way that Sandra's expression changed when he'd said that. He'd seen that look on her face before when she'd decided to leave Agios. It was as if her break up with Dave had taken away her faith or trust in anyone.

 

"What do you mean?" she asked suspiciously.

 

"Sal just said that to the hippie guy, who was coming on to her, to put him off. We came here as friends," he explained.

 

She laughed. "Yeah, it really looked like you were friends," she said sarcastically. "Do you always get so carried away with your friends Nick?"

 

He looked sheepish. "Err no. But the kiss was supposed to put the hippie guy off."

 

"Can you honestly say that Bob was in either of your minds a few minutes ago when you were kissing each other to death?"

 

Is that what it had looked like? Then surely Sal had enjoyed it.

 

"No," he admitted. "but we've never kissed before. It just started off as…" He trailed off, unsure of how to continue.

 

"Are you going to try to convince me that it was all for Bob's benefit again? Come on Nick, be honest with yourself at least. Look, she's probably just a bit confused; she doesn't know where she stands if you came here as friends. Don't you think you should tell her how you feel?" she reasoned.

 

Tell her? Nick had never seriously contemplated that before and the idea created a leap of nervousness, or was it excitement, in his stomach. Then he remembered Jen.

 

"Oh hell, I can't, I've got a girlfriend," he said, without thinking.

 

"What?" Sandra frowned.

 

Oh great! After her past experience with men, she was bound to come to all the wrong conclusions now.

 

"Look, yes, I do have a girlfriend at the moment, but our relationship is practically non existent. I've never cheated on her though, and I did want it to work, but… it's just not working. To tell you the truth, I met her at the wrong time. We got together after only dating for a few weeks, and we moved in together more for convenience than anything else. Even so, I wanted it to work," he stressed again. "Then I met Sal, just a few bloody days after! If I'd have met Sal first…" he trailed off. He'd said more than he had to anyone before about this, but he'd thought it so many times. Maybe he'd said too much.

 

Sandra's expression softened however. "Okay, I get that you tried to make the first relationship work, and I even accept that you made a mistake and want to be with Sal now, but don't you think you should have split up with your girlfriend before you kissed Sal like that?"

 

"Yes." Nick ran a shaky hand through his hair. "And I've been thinking about splitting up, but," he growled with frustration, "she's not even back in Greece yet. I left her in the UK to spend a few more days with her parents."

 

Sandra shook her head at Nick and tutted. "What a mess."

 

"Tell me about it! You know, I didn't mean for the kiss to happen though. I didn't plan it; it just happened so quickly."

 

If he was honest with himself, he hadn't expected Sal to allow it to happen. And if he was even more honest, he was thrilled that she had, but he wasn't going to tell Sandra that.

 

"Look Nick, you can't really tell Sal how you feel about her now; you have no right to until you have split up with your girlfriend. But you have to say something to her because she'll be confused and hurting right now," Sandra explained.

 

"She will? Why?"

 

God, why were men so clueless when it came to emotions?

 

"Confused, because you've got a girlfriend and yet you kissed her, and hurting, because she'll be feeling used," she said bluntly.

 

"What? But it's not like that between me and Sal. I'd never intentionally hurt her and I haven't used her, she would know that. We are close friends; we talk openly about everything," he said defensively.

 

"You haven't talked openly about this," Sandra pointed out. She was right. What could he say? "Look, take a few minutes to think about how to fix this, for the time being anyway, and then go talk to her," she suggested. "I'm going to go get another drink," she said, turning around.

 

Nick placed a hand on her arm to halt her though, before she left him. "I do want to do the right thing, and also, I do care a lot about Sal, Sandra," he stressed, wanting badly for her to believe him.

 

She patted his hand. "Then sort things out Nick."

Reviews

[Dupree]

Just break up with Jenn you idiot.