In some ways, Chris has been waiting for Claire to just come out and say it. Because it's been ages since they've properly hung out, since he felt like she actually wanted to talk to him or just do whatever like before.

But it's never as easy as all that, at least not for Chris. He knows enough about how people can say one thing and mean another; he's done it, after all.

"See, I think that's bollocks," Chris says, after a long moment, and he pulls his hands out of the sand to look at them and clap them together and dust them off as he speaks, "Because that night... at the camp, Claire, we couldn't lie. You wanted me to pick, and I picked. So you can't tell me that was nothing."