Sammie woke up first, and was greeted by the sight of Ben’s back. Unlike the day before, she didn’t touch him. Instead, she watched him sleep. She was thinking about what had happened after Ben had arrived at her door with his things. He’d been determined to talk, and they had done so until the early hours of that morning. She felt like they truly knew and understood each other now. She had thought they had known each other relatively well as it was, as she no longer needed question anything Ben did, and she was sure he no longer why she acted in certain ways. Their talking had cleared things up though.
She was talking about the Christian-Kaz-Paul love triangle too. That had been a major topic of the evening. Well, night. She knew how worried Ben was about the situation; he cared about Paul and Christian deeply. He knew she felt guilty about it being her friend that had come between them. He’d shocked her though. He obviously knew more than she did, and had said:

“Don’t blame yourself or your friend. It’s just an unpleasant circumstance we’ll probably sing about in a couple of months. Hey, that’s a point, have we ever sung about a proper love triangle?”

Sammie smiled at the memory. Trust Ben to think of singing or a song. He had sung her to sleep too, his voice had been so soothing and his arms had been so warm . . . she smiled again, remembering the way he had sung ‘like a rose’, and the way he’d kissed her when he had finished, thinking she was asleep.
Ben turned and interrupted her thoughts.
“Morning gorgeous” he said, thought without his usual smile. He was still worried that Christian and Paul would never speak again.
“Hey sexy, how are you?”
“I’ve been thinking about this whole mess back home”
“And?”
Ben finally smiled.
“I have the BEST idea”

*****

Sammie was stretching her towel out on a lounger when Ben grabbed her from behind and dive-bombed into the hotel’s swimming pool. She came up, gasping, and dunked him under as payback. He grabbed her waist as he came back up, and gave her a quick kiss before whispering,
“Our little ‘friends’ are back”
Sammie looked around and saw the cameras once again recording their every move. Ben chose that moment to swim away. Sammie swam after him, both of them dodging through all the little kids in the pool. She caught up with him at the deep end, where he gave her a small kiss.
“Why did you leave me?” Sammie asked, giving him puppy dog eyes. She knew he’d been playing, but she felt like winding him up. He gave her a small squeeze, and pointed at the kids they had swum around.
“Wanna play with them?”
“Fine, ignore my question”
“I felt like playing ‘it’. Let’s get those kids involved, they’ll have a great time”
Sammie nodded, and they swam over to the other side of the pool together.
“Hey, do you guys wanna play ‘it’?” Ben called. The kids turned around, and those who spoke English nodded. Ben thought, and spoke in a few other languages. The rest of the kids nodded. Sammie gaped at Ben.
“I just told them to watch then join in” he said quietly.
“Where’re they all from?”
“France, Germany, and a couple of Asian countries” he raised his voice “Okay, I’m ‘it’, you have the count of ten before I move” he held up both arms and parted his fingers so that they all understood.
“Ten”
A finger went down, and the English kids started swimming away from him, Sammie included.
“Nine”
The rest of the kids in the pool moved away from him as the next finger moved down.
“Eight”
Most of the kids had attached themselves to the side, and Ben was halfway through the first hand.
“Seven”

“Six”

“Five”

“Four”

“Three-two-one!”
He lunged forward and the kids in front of him scattered, shrieking with laughter. He pretended to be really slow, so the kids could move away from him. Sammie was watching absently-mindedly, thinking about how good he was with all the kids. His face suddenly loomed in front of her, grinning widely, wiping away all thoughts she had about their own kids. You know, if they were to have any.
“You’re it!” he called, and touched her shoulder, then swam away quickly, leaving Sammie to be ‘it’ and slowly chase the kids.

They carried on playing in the water for the rest of the morning, and the kids started moaning as they climbed out, begging for them to carry on playing. Ben shook his head, looking miserable. He turned to Sammie, and wrapped her in her towel. He grabbed his own towel and they walked back to the room.
“That was great!”
“I know! We used to play it in pools all the time, Lucy, Rupert and me, and more and more people would join in until the whole pool as playing. It’s always more fun like that”
They got inside the room, showered and dressed, then sat on the bed, talking. Ben had told Sammie his idea, and she agreed that it could work, so now they were just deciding how to pull it off. Ben even called Mark at one point to see what he thought of it, and what the latest on the situation was.
After about an hour, there was a knock on the door. The camera crew were there.
“You guys still have one thing to do before you go tonight”
“And NO running off, okay?”
Ben and Sammie gave them identically innocent smiles, and joined the camera crew, giving each other stupid faces, and just generally annoying the cameramen even more.