summer love / lewis redman

day 10

"I haven't actually been to the beach yet, not since May." Luciana admitted, rolling out her towel alongside Lewis and JJ's,

"You're lying!" Tobi laughed in disbelief. "But you work right there!"

"Exactly, I work." Lucy sighed, sinking down onto the towel and wiggling out of her denim shorts and tee shirt, revealing her black bikini. She cracked open her copy of Withering Heights, leaning back on her elbows as she flipped to her page and began to disappear into the whimsical love story laid out before her.

Lewis sank down beside her, crossing his arms behind his head as the other guys lathered up in sunscreen and ran out to the water, already becoming loud and rowdy. Lucy made in almost through an entire chapter when she felt something tugging on her arm, and she glanced down to see Lewis tugging on her wrist.

She held out her arm in confusion, holding her book in one hand. Lewis slid his fingers in between hers, linking their hands together. Lucy stared at their intertwined hands for a moment, trying to calm her rapidly beating heart, before she settled for a smile and turned back to her book, finishing off the chapter before she shut the book and curled onto her side, resting her head on the sand so she could watch Lewis.

"When do you leave?" Luciana asked, pursing her lips and trying to convince herself that she would be okay when he left again.

"We're here two weeks, so... four days left?" He almost asked, looking up as if he was reading some invisible calendar in the sky.

Lucy nodded, wishing that Lewis Redman had just been another tourist passing through. She'd had her fair share of flings, of one-nighters, of men passing in and out, but none of them had come back for more - and not just more in the physical sense. He brought her flowers, and he tried to speak Spanish to her mother. He asked her questions about her life, her dreams, her family, her future.

Lewis didn't want to go. He hadn't thought about the day he left because he couldn't seem to do anything but live precisely in the now with Lucy. She made him want to speak - not that he didn't often, but he was a bit quieter because of his friends and their monumental personalities. But Luciana made every single word he said seem important, even if they were horribly conjugated Spanish ones.

Her dark eyes were pinned absently into the side of his face as he looked back over at her, something in his chest growing heavy as he tried to blink and imagine the sand without her in it. That was the future for him, the future back in London in less than a week.

"Want a photograph?" He teased, raising his sunglasses and smirking at Luciana beside him. Lucy shoved his shoulder, letting out the same laugh that had enticed him the first day as she realized she'd ended up staring as her thoughts spun around themselves..

He wanted her to laugh forever, to never stop laughing if it always made him this dizzy. Lewis reached out and squeezed her side, making Lucy shriek and laugh harder, curling into her side. He couldn't hold back the grin rising to his lips as she continued to laugh, her whole body thrown into it.

"I think I'm falling in love with you," He said before he even realized the words were coming out. He'd never even thought the words, and yet suddenly they were out of his mouth. 

Lucy's laugh faded out and she slowly stopped laughing, her smile not fully disappearing, but moving only to meet her eyes as she looked at him thoughtfully. He realized how fully he could've just screwed everything up, and how bad of a position he may have just put Luciana in. But she rolled slightly closer in the sand and gave him a soft kiss on his lips.

"You don't mean that," Her thick accent drawled as she rolled back onto her side, giving them more space between them.

Lewis's heart was racing and simultaneously dissolving, because she was so enticing and effervescent that he couldn't help but disappear when he felt her near him. "I think I do mean it, though."

"Why would you be falling in love with me?" Lucy asked sardonically, running a hand through her hair and crossing one thick thigh over the other as she gazed out at the sky.

"I don't think I've ever had a worse feeling in my chest than what I felt when I realized you weren't coming back to London with me." Lewis admitted, avoiding her gaze. He was ashamed of how vulnerable he was being with her, that he'd ended up having so many indescribable feelings for the girl he'd hooked up with on a lads' vacation.

Lucy lolled her head to the side, looking at Lewis' profile as the warm sun illuminated his tanned skin, making him glow. As if he couldn't look any more perfect... She sighed, wrapping her arms around herself.

"You're rich, and handsome, and you've got style and a sweet personality and a lovely attitude, and you're good in bed." Lucy added cheekily, earning a laugh and a glance from Lewis, who felt himself relaxing slightly. Even if she was rejecting him, she was doing it gently. "You'll find some beautiful girl back in London. And some day maybe our paths will cross again in Ibiza, or London, or somewhere. And maybe by then, I'll just be a face from the past."

Lewis' smile was soft, but he couldn't force it to stay on his face for long. Because she was letting him down as gently as she could, but every single cell in his body was screaming at him to fight her back, to fight for her.

"What if I don't want that, Lucy? What if I don't ever want you to just be another face?"