“It’s half two now, and the event starts at three,” Millie pointed out to Lucy and I, already standing near the door, her kitbag on her back. “By the time we’ve walked there, which takes twenty minutes-”
“Fifteen minutes,” Lucy corrected her, sitting on the changing bench and dragging a comb through her short hair, not bothering to use a mirror. “You’re worrying too much, Mils.”
“I just don’t fancy rushing when it’s this hot,” Millie replied, drumming her fingers on the wall in the way she always did when she was pissed off. “If I can get changed by now, I don’t see why you two need so much longer.”
“Hey, don’t look at me,” Lucy said quickly. “Paige is still in the nude, for fuck’s sake.”
I looked at her in the mirror. “What happened to sisterly solidarity? Team spirit?”
“Fuck off.”
“Just hurry up, Paige,” Millie exhorted me.
“I am hurrying. Once my hair’s done, I just need to throw on my bikini and some shorts and I can go. Oh, and shoes, but I’ve got my sliders.”
Satisfied with my hair, I went back to my kit bag and had a quick rummage to pull out my bikini. Then I rummaged a bit more. Then I dug right into the corners. Oh shit.
“Um, I think I’ve forgotten my bikini,” I said, bracing myself for the reaction.
“Really? Come on Paige, you’ve known about this all bloody week.”
I could see the bikini: sitting on my bed, ready to be packed in all its yellow glory. But I hadn’t packed it.
“You can’t wear your synchro suit,” Lucy pointed out.
“I’ll have to go home and get it,” I said.
“No way, that’s way too long,” Millie cut in, her voice taking on a whinging tone.
“Well I’m open to suggestions,” I replied, starting to get narked, “But I can hardly magic a bikini out of thin air.”
“Isn’t Nathan around today? He could get it,” Millie said, suddenly, a smile returning to her face.
I tried to think of reasons this wouldn’t work. There weren’t any: he knew where we kept the spare key, he obviously knew how to get into my bedroom and he might even get to the student union before we did.
“I’ll ring him now,” I said, bending down to pick up my phone from the bench.
“You could put some clothes on, first,” Lucy said, averting her eyes from my arse.
Somehow it was even hotter now than it had been all week. The sun was scorching, and walking across Kingley from the university pool to the student union was only made bearable by wearing the absolute minimum of clothes and sticking to the shady side of the road. Despite the heat, though, it was hard not to be in a good mood. My exams were over; I had zero responsibilities for another three weeks before graduation and then starting my new job; and it was the last day of rag week, where students without anything to do put their efforts into raising money for charity. Millie was on the rag committee and took it a lot more seriously than Lucy and I did, but the entire week had been little more than fun in the sun. We’d done a charity swimming gala; an old-fashioned sports day with egg-and-spoon races and the like which inevitably the lads took far too seriously; a charity car wash; and a particularly memorable day pushing old folks around the town in wheelchairs, which was ostensibly a sort of scavenger hunt but the gang of old ladies we’d been pushing were raunchy as hell and we’d been in fits of giggles all day.
On top of this, Nathan and I were going on our first official couple’s holiday next week: five days all-inclusive in Crete. Nothing was planned except sunbathing, drinking, and spending a lot of time in bed, and ever since Nathan and I had got together my sex life had improved dramatically. We’d spent the past year and a half exploring what had become my mile-wide exhibitionist streak, sparked by our first time together all the way back on the ski trip. Nathan loved pushing my boundaries and I loved being pushed: the only rule we had was that I wasn’t allowed to let any other guy actually touch me, but everything up to that line was not just acceptable but downright encouraged. He’d fingered me under a blanket on the flight home from the ski trip; we’d had sex at least six or seven times in the pool changing rooms; I’d flashed my tits at a Slovenian truck driver on a road trip to meet some of his school friends; I’d masturbated and we’d fucked on anonymous webcam sites countless times. Even now, my phone’s memory was bursting with amateur porn videos of me and Nathan together; it seemed like practically every time we had sex I suddenly felt the urge to get my camera out and record it. Corfu promised much more of this, and possibly even some more interesting situations. Our room had a balcony, for example, something that Nathan definitely hadn’t booked by accident.
In short, being exposed and on display made me horny as fuck. And today’s event, the finale of rag week, was almost like a fantasy come true: Kingley University’s Fifth Annual 5BQ, pronounced like ‘five-bee-queue’. It stood for ‘babes, beer, bikinis, barbecue’. BBBBBQ became 5BQ. Except in my case, since I’d forgotten my bikini, it was looking more like a 4BQ, unless Nathan came to my rescue.
“Oh my God, I love you,” I said when I saw him, standing around next to our barbecue stall looking hot. I rushed over and kissed him on the lips, then took the plastic bag he was holding.
“You’re welcome,” he said, simply, grinning. “Hi Lucy, Millie.”
They waved back at him as they approached.
“Listen, Paige, I’ve got to run, I need to digitally submit my final few exam markings,” Nathan said, dropping his voice so only I could hear. “I’ll be back a bit later on, okay?”
I nodded. “Sounds perfect.”
“Don’t forget to put on sun cream, it’s bloody roasting out here.”
“We’ve got our tent for shade,” I pointed out, looking at the construction next to us.
“Even then.”
One more kiss and he left, walking briskly and dodging around the other people who were still setting up, connecting barbecue grills to gas canisters and fiddling with the tension settings on sun shades. I breathed a sigh of relief, and Millie finally looked calm for the first time in hours.
“Just get changed in the tent, I’ll zip you up in there,” Millie said, pointing me towards it. “We’ve still got ten minutes to set up if we hurry.”
I ducked inside the tent, which was just about big enough to stand up in, and was bright orange, so everything inside was glowing luridly. Millie took a few goes to get the zip’s teeth to catch properly, but when she did she zipped up the entrance to give me privacy and I tipped my bikini out of the bag.
“Oh, fuck.”
“Everything alright?” Millie asked, a note of stress creeping back into her voice.
“Um, yes. Just give me a minute.”
I stared at the bikini. This was categorically not the yellow one I had left out on my bed to take with me and which I had explicitly told Nathan to get. This one was from the bottom drawer of my wardrobe, underneath my box of hair styling equipment, so there was no way Nathan could claim to have picked it up by accident. But it was too late to do anything about it now: Nathan was gone and by the time he’d got back to the house and picked up the right one, the 5BQ would be half over.