#silverandteal

At dinner, you unfortunately had Kimi in front of you, which meant that every time you looked up to join the conversation, you looked at him. Now, many would say this was not a bad thing, but it was annoying every time you wanted to say something and had to look into his eyes, which were clearly amused by you.

He was eating the same meal as you - some steak. It was delicious, with a wonderful basting on it, but you couldn’t help but feel bitter at his clear unoriginality. Seriously? Ordering the same meal as you? He really could’ve done better.

Your parents are on fire by now, having drunk all afternoon and now into the evening. They spoke and laughed and caught up on years of news, stories and events in their lives.

Sure, they saw each other now and then, but they just couldn’t stop finding things to talk about. Everyone was having a great time, it seemed, except for you. You were tired, jet-lagged, and you felt strange after seeing Kimi with that blonde girl.

She was looking at you like she’d claimed him as hers already.

“And then, Andy is now going into Formula 1. We’re so proud of him!” His mom speaks to yours, smiling and laughing. Kimi flushes a little red. He always did that when he was embarrassed, it was usually when his mom showered him with compliments.

“Yeah, yeah, grazie mamma…” He speaks softly.

Once dinner is over, you walk back in the dark, alone, to your room. It’s Mauritius. Nothing will happen. Nothing has ever happened.

You can hear the waves softly patter against the sand. Due to the large coral reef around the island, the water is flat close to the shore, so it wasn’t an aggressive slap to the shore like other places.

It was just right, the right temperature, the moon sparkling over the ocean, it was gorgeous. You were mesmerised by the scene. There were a couple of drunkards at the hut on the beach, it was a little bar. You could hear them talking and dancing. If only you could join the fun, actually have fun on this holiday.

So melancholic, on your own vacation. Aren’t you being a right arse, just stop moping about already. Your parents probably paid an absolute fortune to be here and-

“Boo!” Some strong arms wrap around your waist and lift you up

You let out an embarrassingly loud screech before the familiar laughter fills your ears.

“It still works!!” Kimi is almost bent over laughing. You’re still trying to catch the breath that exited your breath, and Kimi is absolutely hosing himself.

“Kimi! Put me down! Right now! Kimi- stop it!!” He reluctantly puts you down, laughing ominously in your ear.

“That was not funny! People are sleeping!” Your complaints fall on deaf ears as you walk back to your room. He is walking around, all chuffed with himself. You can hear him sneak in a giggle, obviously rethinking your reaction.

“Maybe don’t get scared next time.” He says smugly, you just give him a faux pout before opening the sliding door to your room and deliberately not turning on the lights. You don’t even want to look at his face, but you can imagine the most obnoxious smile on it right now.

“Where is the light switch I can’t see anything-“ You hear him shuffling around the room, before you can hear him stub his toe. “Ah-“

You laugh at him, before walking to the light switch and turning it on.

Serves him right.

-

The next day, you wake up hearing Kimi muttering in his sleep. He still does that, clearly. As a kid, he used to be a really active sleeper. Kicking around, moving around, speaking. It was almost impossible as a kid to sleep close to him.

You hear him muttering things like “pace” and “tyres.” Obviously dreaming about that fastest lap. It’s the only thing he seems to care about, after all.

You grab some clothes out of your suitcase and freshen up in the bathroom. A nice, relaxing shower. It was finally a respectable hour to wake up, you hadn’t yet missed breakfast, and it was nice and warm outside.

When you get out of the shower, clearly you woke up Kimi, as he’s sitting up in his bed.

“I’m going for breakfast.”

“Without me?”

“Yeah, I mean, you’re 17, not a toddler, you’ll figure it out.”

“Well- Well I could get lost! You’d maybe never see me again!” He exclaims, now climbing out of the bed.

“There are signs, Kimi. You read them…” You drawl, trying to make it sound like you had to draw pictures.

“Or you can just follow your stomach! It’s pretty good at finding food!”

You hear him groan as you walk out of the room and begin walking. Along the way you stare at the beach, the palm trees hang over you, and the water just looks like a welcome respite from the sun which was already up with full force.

You check behind you as you stand still, you wouldn’t want Kimi sneaking up on you for a second time, right?

-

At the pool today, Kimi decides to be more like you, sit and tan on the sun loungers and read books. It was truly so easy to be lazy on this island. The temperature was a staggering 34 degrees and not a single cloud in the sky. The palm trees surrounding the pool gave you a little bit of shade, but it was no help.

Kimi was lying in the full sun on his stomach, “tanning” his back. Was he tanning? No. He was sitting there waiting for something to do.

“You’re going to get sunburnt.” You say, throwing the sunblock directly at him and having it land on his back.

“No, I’m Italian. We don’t get sunburnt.”

“You’re not immune to the sun because you have naturally olive skin.” You cross your arms, looking unimpressed.

“I’m fine.”

An hour later, he was in fact sunburnt, he hadn’t noticed it yet because he was then with your parents, getting cruelly embarrassed.

“You two remember when you played mini golf for his 10th birthday?” His mom brings it up. You can hear him groan already.

“Mamma!”

You laugh a little, sensing his embarrassment.

“Weren’t you the one who got upset that I won?” You tease back, and he flushes a little.

“I was just, you know, uhm, dedicated to winning!”

“Okay, whatever you like to tell yourself.” You nod, looking him up and down before turning your head away sarcastically.

“As far as I am concerned, you’re the one who missed the hole not once, twice, or three times, but you had missed it 8 times.” You tease, and he turns to look at you.

“8 times! No, it was only 4!”

“I counted, it was 8.” You cross your arms.

“No it wasn’t. I was the one playing, it was 4.”

“Seriously? You want to deflect now?” You seem to let the snark into your voice by accident, to which your mom shoots you a little glare.

“Alright, alright. Let’s just move on.” Kimi sighs, sitting down. You’d never seen him admit defeat before. That’s new.

You just sit on the sun lounger again, next to Kimi, and you lie there for ages, who knows how long. After a while you decide that your legs might both spontaneously not work if you don’t take a walk soon, so you go down to the beach. You dig your toes into the Mauritian sand and have the soft waves crash onto your feet.

You wondered if maybe Kimi wasn’t so bad anymore. He’d learned how to press your buttons when he turned 10, and that’s when he turned into a right arsehole. He just loved getting a reaction out of you.

Rumours he made because he didn’t want you to be seen as better than him, competitions designed so you’d fail so everybody would see him as the winner, intentionally telling everybody your embarrassing stories and his best ones so you looked like an idiot.

The worst part is that it worked. Everybody believed him. After a while, maybe you did too.

You spot Kimi when you’re walking back. He’s fiddling with the volleyball court.

“What are you doing?”

“I didn’t know they had a volleyball court here!”

“Beach volleyball. I think every living soul on the planet has play-“ He thrusts a ball into your hands and walks to the other side.

“Come on, can’t we play it a bit?” He claps his hands impatiently.

“Fine.”

“Best of 3!” He shouts.

You first serve the ball, throwing it up and throwing it down to Kimi. He’s unfortunately super quick and gets it right back over the net to you with force and power. He was so obviously an athlete.

The first couple of points are scored normally, before they just begin becoming questionable.

“OUT!” Kimi shouts.

“Absolutely not! The line is here!” You point at the line in the sand.

“No! It was totally out!”

“You’re just saying that cause you know that means I would get a point.” You smirk.

“I’m just enforcing the rules.” He says with too much faux care.

“You just decided where the line was like 10 seconds ago.” You roll your eyes and throw the ball to him again.

About 5 minutes of playing later, the ball was about to hit the outer edge of your part of the volleyball court, and you absolutely dive to prevent the ball from hitting the sand. You explode into a bunch of sand, it goes everywhere.

In your eyes, in your swimsuit, in your mouth, you could feel its sticky particles all over you. Kimi is almost bent over laughing at the scene.

-

Somewhere between your arguments over rules and who was out and what was right and wrong, this game started becoming fun. It was no longer the best of 3, cause you were far past 3 games at this point.

You were determined to win once against Kimi.

Kimi was determined to win against you for the millionth time. You’d assume he’d finally get bored of these shenanigans, but obviously not.

The wind started picking up, and a couple of people were packing up off the beach, but you never noticed, too focused on serving the ball as quickly as Kimi was.

It swooped past you. That was a good shot.

“Point for me!”

“Yeah yeah. What are we on?”

“6-12.”

“No! Absolutely not, I’m pretty sure I scored a couple more times than 6.”

“No, what are you talking about?”

“You know, I scored like 2 more times in the last couple of minutes, that makes it 8!”

“Liar!” He clicks his tongue, he throws the ball up into the air and throws it up again. As it flies past the net, you hear a rumble of thunder.

“Kimi…”

“You’re getting distracted! Focus!” He shouts, looking at you. “Kimi, look at the sky!” You point to the storm that was about to come past the two of you. It was about to rain. It looked like it was going to rain hard.

“One more game, please?”

“Okay fine!”

The ball was on your side, so you threw it up and hit it across the net, Kimi hit back, and you entered the familiar rhythm of hitting it over and over.

Right before the end of your game, the wind blows the ball out of the court and into the sand on the beach.

“We should probably go!”

Kimi couldn’t really hear you over the howling of the wind, and then it started raining. You quickly run to the steps, as the rain pelts down all around you. Kimi is next, seeing as you have begun running to the nearest shelter.

You both find some shelter by a little hut by the steps, and you are both forced to sit inside of this little, confined space, touching shoulders and looking out at the sea.

“So we’re stuck here now.” Kimi sighs, looking out at the ocean.

“Yeah, unfortunately.” The sea is now covered in dark clouds, this storm was not ending anytime soon.

“You were totally losing at volleyball” Kimi announces, “I was winning.” And you just scoff.

“You were only winning because you weren’t counting my points! The last point was totally mine!”

“You say that every time you lose.” Kimi laughs a little. A cold breeze sweeps in between the two of you. A small bikini is doing nothing to keep you warm.

“I was not losing!”

“Yeah, you were.”

There’s a beat where you just sit with the cold wind circling in. You curl in on yourself for warmth. It was your idea to run inside the hut, now it’s cold.

“You still argue the same,” Kimi speaks softly.

“Do I?” You look up.

“Yeah, you’re always the first to defend instead of saying I’m wrong.” He looks at you, and for the first time since you were twelve, you look properly into his eyes again.

“Well, you know me. It’s just how I am.”

He hums and you’re back into silence, with rain hitting the roof and the cold wind circling in. After a couple of minutes, you’re left shivering a little. It was belting outside, you could see the waves of rain coming down. You were truly trapped.

“You know, I thought you’d at least come to one race,” Kimi speaks out of the blue, his eyes are focused on the wooden floor. He bites the inside of his lip, exactly like he used to do as a kid.

You sigh, because yes, you never came to his karting races, but truth be told, you were always busy. You always had projects, friends who asked to hang out months before he did, you felt a little guilty.

“But I was busy, genuinely.” You look down, feeling like the worst person in the whole world - cause maybe sometimes you were avoiding him.

“Were you?” He pulls his legs towards his chest, wrapping his arms around them and resting his head on his knees. You looked into those brown eyes and you felt your heart squeeze in your chest.

“Well, you wanted me to leave you alone, don’t you remember?” You think back to the fight you had over the kitchen table. It was a bright, sunny day, and the sun was streaming down on Kimi as he shouted at you.

You were fresh off another rumour you’d made about him, and you had been dealing with the issues from the rumour he created about you, so you were both tearing the roof down with how much you were screaming at each other.

He muttered a soft, “Just leave me alone.” Before walking up the steps to his room and closing the door. Twelve-year-old you didn’t know it yet, but that was the last time you had seen Kimi for five years.

“Well, I didn’t mean forever,” Kimi said softly, still looking into your hesitant eyes.

“I know, I know.” You cut yourself off before letting the ‘I’m sorry’ roll off your tongue. Sorry wasn’t going to fix this; not at all.

This was too big for a sorry.

It could never undo every race you never went to, it could never repair the years spent in dead silence from the two of you. It would never fix the fact that the Kimi you knew was no longer Kimi, with long limbs and a childlike face. You’d imagined him like that for so long that seeing him as a man looked jarring and unfamiliar.

Sharp jawlines and toned arms, he was now tall but not bony like he had once been, and he didn’t sound like a kid anymore. He wasn’t a kid, and you weren’t either, but this felt like someone you didn’t know.

He was almost a stranger again. A total stranger. But normal strangers don’t know that his favourite flavour of gelato was stracciatella, that he used to throw pool noodles at you in the pool, or that he cheated in Uno one too many times and you vowed to never play it again with him.

Normal strangers don’t know any of that.

You both sit in silence, watching the waves crash onto the shore and the rain soak the boats still on the sea.

That feeling that you were off to a bad start on your holiday just kept persisting, despite good food and feeling relaxed, you couldn’t help but feel all emotionally pent up, like it would never give you a reprieve.

Once the rain finally settled to a heavy drizzle, you both walked (it was kind of a run) to the main house, where both of your parents were sitting waiting for the two of you.

“E voi due dove siete stati?!” Kimi’s mom begins in her high-pitched voice. You stand awkwardly to the side as they begin arguing, fully in Italian. (And where were the two of you?!)

“Mamma-“ Kimi begins.

“Non ci posso credere! Hanno passato del tempo insieme!” Kimi’s dad chips in, and you see your parents giggle a little. (I can’t believe this, they actually spent time together!)

“I was wondering if you two had been blown into the sea or something!” His mom now directs at you, and you stand awkwardly.

“We were just in one of those huts, it started raining before we could get here.” You try to reason with her, but her high-pitched screaming at the two of you didn’t go unnoticed by the other guests.

Some of them obviously found the situation humorous as you see a couple of tables watching and laughing to one another.

“And you were doing what?” She asks, almost incredulously.

“Talking.” You replied with a deadpanned tone in your voice. His mom almost bursts out into laughter on the spot. Was this really so unbelievable?

“Talking! Gli asini voleranno!” His mom and his dad laugh together. (The donkeys are going to fly!)