It had been a great two weeks with Helen, I had enjoyed taking her out sightseeing in my car, places not normally seen by your regular tourists. Helen had liked that, she wasn't as much of an all-day sunbather as her mates were.
The rest of her gang, soon realised that we were an item, they had seemed a bit shocked that straight-laced Helen had a girlfriend, but they appeared to accept it with good grace, if not a bit of piss taking.
I quickly found that I had allowed my feelings to get carried away, something I avoided with holiday-makers, I was falling for this girl. It somewhat shook me when I realised.
Shit! The last thing I needed was a permanent relationship and a long distance one at that. No way, was I about to leave Portugal, I loved my DJ work too much besides all the other perks of living there. Helen was only halfway through uni, and she was fast approaching the peak of her athletics career. There was even a good chance of her making the British team.
What hadn't occurred to me, was that Helen was maybe brighter in the head than me. She was two steps ahead of me.
She had said to me, towards the end of her holiday, "Dina, I know you're falling for me, I can see it in your eyes, the way you talk and the way you want to look after me all the time. I also know that it's not what you want, you don't want to be tied to one person. I actually understand, even though I know that if our circumstances were different, I would want nothing more than to be with you. But, I'm not going to ask, and I'll say no if you do, I would be very happy if you were to want us to just stay good friends."
I had felt bad but at the same time relieved. Our last night together had been wonderful, not just all about passion and sex, but something much more, it had nearly broken my heart. In the end, it had been a very tearful goodbye.
It was almost two months since she had left, and I hadn't so much as looked at another girl. Romero, my gay waiter friend at the club in Praia Da Rocha, had been quite concerned for me, tutting away like an old woman. "It's about time you got back to normal," or something along those lines, he'd said several times. He'd even gone out of his way to point out a few likely prospects to me, but nothing had got me going.
It was getting close to the end of the season, not so many punters, less late nights and I actually got a night off. Next week, I had a weeks holiday and I was trying to decide whether I should go and visit Helen. What did I do on my night off? You might think I'd enjoy a break from the tourists, but no, instead, I went to the main karaoke bar. I fancied myself as a fairly decent singer, mostly country type music. There was the usual crowd of dreadful singers, a few reasonable, but only a couple who were any good, One was a fairly old guy, but he knew his fifties and sixties, he certainly went down well with the crowd.
The other, a very pretty dark haired girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years of age, she had taken some persuading to get up and sing. She was with two other girls who had been urging her to sing for ages. Anyway, finally, she got up on stage. I could see that she was extremely nervous, the song had to be restarted when she made a hash of the beginning, but it did sound as if she had a nice voice. Pepe caught my eye and beckoned me up, she had chosen one of the sings I quite often did, Patsy Cline's version of 'Have you ever been lonely'.
"Fuck Pepe, do I really need this?" I thought. But I got off my ass, walked over and took a mic.
"Okay love, it's you and me."
She let me start, before joining with me. Pretty quickly her confidence grew, then she really started singing, and I do mean singing, her voice was amazing, even better than mine, I grudgingly admitted. The second verse, I just let her sing, before rejoining for the remainder of the song. We brought the house down, but even then, she smiled very shyly.
I invited her to the bar to have a drink with me. Turned out that just like me, she also sang mostly country, she had in fact, got a huge cd collection, she had started collecting seriously since she was about sixteen. When I say sang, it meant at home, she'd never been on a stage before.
I fetched the songbook and asked which songs she knew. Before long we had a sizable list of numbers we were both familiar with.
We did a couple more together, which both received stupendous applause. Then Pepe asked if he could join us. He knew I was on holiday the following week and asked if I was going away at all. Then he told us that he wanted to make us an offer, he wanted us to do an hours show for five or six nights, using the karaoke for backing music, he would pay us the going rate. Adding that we could, if we wanted, rehearse in the mornings.
I told him that we'd let him know tomorrow.
Dawn said she wasn't sure that she could do it, saying that it was a bit different singing a couple of karaoke songs to doing an hours show, and for nearly a week.
Two or three Malibu's later, and I was winning her over.
...
Pepe had gone to town with a huge poster, even a good photo he'd taken when we were on the karaoke. It said, ' Dawn & Dina, Double Dynamite Country Duo', it went on to say, we were appearing nightly, for a one hour spot.
Our first night was magic, we sang to a packed house, God knows where they all came from, but they did. The rapport between us was soon obvious to see, it was as is if we had been singing together for years, it was so natural. We were quickly becoming close. We were halfway through another Patsy Cline number, 'Always'. I got to the line, 'I'll be loving you, always' when she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, to my credit, I didn't stop singing, but it was like an electric shock had hit me. Then we were facing each other as we sang, she was clearly staring into my eyes. Was it just the song? I wondered, or was there some message she was sending me?
We ended up doing an extra half hour, the crowd just wouldn't let us go, but finally. our first night was over. Pepe was over the moon, thrilled to bits and he showed it with a nice bonus.
Dawn couldn't stop looking at her half of the money, "I'll be rich by the end of the week!"
"Well, hardly rich," I answered, "but it ain't half bad."
We sat in an alcove, while the karaoke carried on. Dawn's hand came to rest on mine, "Dina, that was the best night of my life, I'm so glad that you insisted we should give it a go," then she leaned and kissed my cheek again.
I turned to face her, I was about to speak but she put a finger on my lips, "Dina, I know. I know that you're a lesbian, my friends didn't waste any time in warning me, but I don't care." She took a few moments to collect her thoughts, "I'm normal. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like that. What I mean is, I have a boyfriend, well sort of, nothing serious. I've never had any inclination to look at a girl before but now I'm feeling confused, I'm having feelings towards you that I don't understand, maybe it's just that we're so good together, singing and that," she trailed off, lost for what to say.
"Dawn, don't worry, I'm not about to jump in your panties, we are good together, we're a partnership but that's all it is."
...
The next evening, we were even better as we got used to working together, everything flowed, it was brilliant. Then in the middle of one number, the instrumental break, she took my hands and did a bit of a dance, I turned her into a spin and as she came back to face me, her arms went around my waist, for a second she held me tight, then giggled before singing the next verse.
At the end of our last encore, she turned to me and kissed me again, not on the cheek this time, but square on my lips. She held it for a second longer than was necessary, the crowd roared their approval, clapping and cheering us off the stage.
I told her I needed a smoke, I'd be back in a mo and took myself outside.
Two arms came around me from behind and squeezed my stomach, as a voice whispered, "I meant that kiss, Dina."
I turned myself to face her, "You sure about this, baby? I wouldn't want anything to spoil our friendship."
