A Pacific Island Romance- Fiji

Chapter 1

As Tara stepped off the boat , she could feel all the stress and tension in her body fall away .

'OMG Tara, look at this, can you believe we are finally here?'

Beth, Tara's best friend had stepped off the boat behind her and was ankle deep in the clear blue water, arms out stretched with her face to the sun.

Tara smiled, no she really couldn't believe she was here.

Only two weeks ago Tara was planning on spending New Year's Eve as she always did, in bed with her close friend Jade, watching Sex and the City singing along to Auld Lang Syne and eating Chinese food. The idea of spending NYE outside of her house, not in her Pyjamas and surrounded by drunk obnoxious people was hell.

But then she got a text from Beth,

'He has cheated on me again..'

Tara had been through this a million times with Beth and her arsehole of a boyfriend.

'I'm sorry babe, I know you thought this time would be different.'

An hour later Beth was sat at the end of Tara's bed, surrounded by snot coated tissues, one hand holding a bottle of wine and the other clutching to a very empty wine glass.

'I just can't believe it, he told me he would never do it again, he begged me to forgive him last time, he cried until I took him back and now, what? I'm just supposed to take it on the chin and move on. No I'm not having it!'

'How did you find out this time?' Tara asked, knowing Beth would have gone through dickhead Dave's phone.

'Dave had left his phone on the kitchen counter when he went for a shower. I wasn't going to look, I honestly wasn't, but it got the better of me.'

'How did you get into his phone? I thought it was passworded'

'I've been watching over his shoulder to see what the new code was.'

Beth looked down at her wine glass, shamefaced.

Tara let out a sigh, she could see how ashamed her friend was, and it broke her heart a little bit more every time she sat with Beth and talked about the latest girl Dave had been sleeping with behind her back.

'Anyway, so I unlocked his phone and he had a message from someone on WhatsApp. I clicked on it, and the conversation had all been deleted other than her reply, it said "of course I won't tell anyone, I'll be your dirty little secret" and the dirty little slut followed it up with a tongue emoji.'

Tara placed a hand on her friends knee as her tears started to fall. It was so hard for her to find the right words, 'I told you so' and 'once a cheat always a cheat' had been said by everyone else but Tara knew Beth deserved better, from Dave and her friends.

'Beth, please don't put yourself through this any more. You are the most beautiful person I know, you are smart, you are funny, you deserve so much more.'

Beth looked up, as she poured wine into both their wine glasses.

'But I'm not, clearly I'm not or he wouldn't cheat would he?'

The rage in Tara started to bubble. She was always the calm friend, the sensible friend, the shoulder to cry on, but right now she really didn't feel like she could take it anymore.

'Enough!'

Beth's eyes flew to hers, wine spilling from her overly full glass. Tara had never shouted at Beth before and Beth was not expecting her best friend to snap at her.

'What? It is true I genuin..'

'No seriously stop it.' Tara said with a steady tone. 'You know that is bullshit, Dave does not deserve you, you have spent the best part of two years crying over this arsehole and slowly he has chipped away at the Beth I love. You don't laugh anymore, you don't go out and have fun. When we first met you were the biggest, albeit lovable, liability, every night out I'd lose you and find you on the dancefloor with a group of strangers dancing like a fool. You'd be the one to scream "skinny dipping" before dive bombing the pool with no regard to who saw your big butt!'

Beth let out a little laugh as the memory of spring break filled her.

'Dave has taken that from you, each time he has cheated he has chipped away at that vivacious personality of yours. I know we are 23 now, I know we aren't young and reckless and I know I am in no position to lecture you on not being the crazy 21 year-olds we used to be, but Beth, don't you see, you aren't you anymore. He has dimmed your spark.'

The tears came again, Beth desperately tried to wipe them away as she thought of all the times in the last two years she had sat on this bed crying about Dave.

She looked up at Tara and felt a pang of jealousy. What it must be like to be 23 and have your shit together, to know who you are and what your purpose in life is.

'Wow, mate you really meant that huh? I miss 21 year old me too. I'd do anything to go back to being 21 and carefree.'

Tara let out a small laugh,

'Look I'm not saying go back to waking up on people's front lawns because you're too drunk to get home'

She paused raising an eyebrow highlighting to Beth that it wasn't a hypothetical situation and she still remembers getting a phone call to come pick Beth up from a garden 3 doors down,

'But I am saying be confident, take some time to be you again.'

Tara stood up and walked to her little kitchen, in her cosy flat and looked out the window. The expanse of Wellington CBD lit up the sky. She had always been jealous of Beth. Imagine being so confident you could make friends anywhere, or meet guys all the time. That was never Beth's life, University consisted of SOS phone calls for her to come pick up a drunk friend or get them out of yet another ridiculous situation. Tara was anxious about almost anything and never dated because of the constant fear of being hurt, or embarrassing herself. She was safer alone.

The sound of Beth blowing her nose from the bedroom reached the kitchen snapping Tara out of her own pity party. She walked to the fridge, leaned in to the deep dark space in the back of the fridge and pulled out a bottle of tequila.

'I feel like I am going to need this.' She muttered walking back to Beth.

'Okay, you have tonight to cry this out and then that is it.'

Tara handed the tequila to Beth who started to cry again, right on cue.

As Beth handed the bottle back, Tara took a deep breath and a long pull on the bottle.

The next morning, both Beth and Tara woke with bad heads and a horrible tastes in their mouths. After Beth cried for a further hour, Tara couldn't much remember what happened that night. It was only as she picked up the empty bottle of tequila off the floor, did a memory flash in her mind.

'Tara, what if we could go back to being 21 again? What if we went to Fiji for New Year and relived spring break all over again?'

'OMG what a good idea, here book the flights on my credit card!'

Tara, now hungover and no where near as confident as she was last night opened her email, anxiety gripping her throat.

There was the email from AIR NEW ZEALAND: "Congratulations you're going to Fiji!"