by Karina Halle
I know I sound like the long-suffering youngest child, I know it’s a part that’s far too easy for me to sink into. But it’s been a part of who I am since the moment I was born. That moment I was forever measured against what I could become. I was never taken as I am.
And yet here is Logan telling me everything I’ve always craved to hear and I’m not even sure he knows what he’s saying. Juliet was his wife and in some ways, maybe every way, he’s breaking her confidence by telling me these things.
Or maybe it’s the kind of things I should have always known. Maybe the pedestal I put her on was always a little too high.
Logan is gone longer than I anticipated. With my phone completely destroyed by the water I have no way of knowing how much time has passed. The clouds are still coming from behind us, obscuring the sun, leaving a grey and shadow-less void over the jungle. I can hear the faint chatter of the other hikers far in the distance, a familiar sound that reminds me that I’m not completely alone out here. If things get weird between Logan and I, I can always head down to their camp and join them.
And aside from the sounds of the violent surf and the steady roar of the stream, I can hear birds singing, along with the occasional crow of a rooster. Even in the heart of the jungle, the damn chickens are everywhere.
I also hear what sounds like a mew. I turn my head to see a cat poke it’s face out of a bush. It’s grey and white, scrawny but not starving, with large dark eyes.
“Hey,” I cry out softly, sticking out my hand and making the motion for him to come forward. “Come say hi.”
The cat doesn’t move, just eyes me curiously. Quickly and quietly, trying not to scare it, I lean over and pick up the packet of beef jerky and fish out a piece, holding it out.
The cat starts to approach then jumps and scurries back into the bushes.
Seconds later, Logan appears, branches in his arms. He eyes where the cat disappeared and looks at me, the lines in his forehead deepening. “And I thought you weren’t a cat person.”
Ah, the other thing discussed at Christmas.
“Ha ha,” I tell him. “The poor thing is all the way out here by itself.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about the cat,” Logan says, stooping down to put the branches by the fire. “There are a bunch of feral ones out here. And they aren’t suffering. A forest full of chickens like this? It’s fucking KFC.”
“Kauai Fried Chicken?”
He lets out a soft laugh. “Something like that. Here, we’ll let the fire dry these branches out before we use them later.” He sits down beside me and nudges me in the shoulder. “And since you were so eager to give the cat our rations, how about you share some with me? Or is it reserved for animals only?”
I look him over, pretending to inspect him. “That wouldn’t be far off,” I say warily. “You seem more like a bear than anything else.”
“A bear?”
“Something large, dark, and hairy, anyway.”
“Is that so?”
I shrug and hand him the packet. “But I can share all the same.”
He takes it from me and for one beautiful, terrible second, our fingers brush against each other. It’s like a lightning rod placed straight to my heart. But if the touch meant anything to him, he doesn’t show it. Like usual, it’s all in my head.
Forget your head, I remind myself, it’s your whole damn body.
“Is that your nickname for me?” he asks, opening the packet and tearing into a piece. “The bear?”
“Nah,” I tell him. “I actually don’t have a nickname for you. Except habut, but every time I hear it, I think of booty.”
“If it’s my booty, I don’t see the problem.”
“This is the second time today you’ve referenced your ass.”
“It’s a good one, why ignore it?”
I pause, smiling to myself. “You’re more like…Gruff.”
“Gruff?”
“Mr. Gruff.”
He laughs. “That’s a name of a dog. Somewhere in the world, there is a dog called Mr. Gruff.”
“How about Grumps?”
“Not sure if that’s much better, Freckles.”
“Sorry, you don’t get to choose,” I tell him, taking the beef jerky back. “Taste of your own medicine.”
“I guess it’s a good reminder that I have a reputation to uphold.”
But Logan doesn’t lapse back into the gruff grump I’ve known him as. Instead, our conversation continues to flow with a strange kind of ease. We talk about the island and how Logan’s changed since moving here. We talk about his brother and mother back in Australia, how he’d love to go visit. We talk about his childhood, how he grew up fatherless (his father was a deadbeat) and how I grew up essentially parentless, even though they were still there physically. My nannies raised me better than my parents did, even though there was always a revolving door of them and I never got to know one nanny longer than a year.
Soon night has fallen. The fire is still going, though it’s dwindling down into dark coals and glowing embers. The rain has stopped and we’re both fully dry now, the heat and the shelter raising our body temperature back up to a normal level. Though the roar of the stream has died down, it’s a steady reminder of why we are here. No matter what, there is no escape.
Our food is almost all eaten—the apple is saved for breakfast tomorrow—and it’s time to worry about how we’re going to sleep. Though the rain has stopped for now, odds are it will come back (it’s Kauai after all) and there’s barely enough room for one person to stretch out under the shelter.
Logan nods at me. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you lie down? There’s enough room between the wall and the fire.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll sit here.”
“And sleep?”
“If I can. Keep watch in case that cat comes back. I didn’t trust his face.”
I watch him for a few moments until he gestures at the earth again. Finally, I lie down, my back to the wall, my face to the fire, those last flames licking the logs. The ground is hard but it’s warm, and even though I’m a finicky sleeper, my head already feels heavy. To be honest, lying down like this feels like bliss.
But it doesn’t feel right. Logan should be lying down too, even though he has no choice but to lie with me. I wouldn’t mind. In fact, as I start to drift off, I can’t help but imagine that the warm, hard cliff at my back is him.
* * *
I wake up with what feels like a flashlight in my face. I blink, groggy, while everything comes back to me. My limbs are stiff and sore, and I feel exposed to the world.
I fully open my eyes to see the moon peeking out over a palm tree, full and bright and in my face, shadowed clouds passing beneath it. Crickets chirp over the sound of crashing waves.
Easing myself up, I look over for Logan. He’s sitting up, his back against the wall of the cliff, his head slumped to the side. Sleeping.
I have to go to the bathroom and don’t want to wake him up. I feel terrible that I’ve been lying down asleep and he’s had to sit up like that most of the night, but I’m still too afraid to insist he lie down with me. He’d turn me down, I know this, and I’d be asking for all the wrong reasons.
Slowly I get up and step over the fire, keeping my head low so I don’t hit the tarp. I don’t go far, only a few feet and off to the side to pee. When I’m done, I step back onto the path and run right into Logan.
“Argh!” I let out a cry while he grabs my arms.
“It’s just me,” he says, voice low.
“I had to pee,” I explain. My heart is beating a mile a minute. He scared me half to death and I’ve had enough scares to last me a lifetime.
“And I had to make sure you were coming back,” he says. He turns and I follow him back to our site. “It’s a gorgeous night,” he says over his shoulder as he sits down where he was before. “The full moons here are something else. You really feel the pull. That feeling of being on a planet in oute
r space. So small. So insignificant.”
I can’t help but shiver at that as I sit down, which he notices.
“Want me to start up the fire again? I might be able to get some kindling going.”
“No, it’s not that,” I explain, wincing. Everything hurts. “It’s that the last thing I want to be reminded of is how isolated and desolate we are.”
“Right,” he says. “Well, sometimes we need it. Helps put things in perspective.”
“I think I’ve had enough put into perspective in my life, let alone the last twenty-four hours. So, earlier,” I say, leaning against the wall beside him and hugging my knees, “when you said that you never listened to what my mother said…that you didn’t hire me because of her. Was that true?”
“Of course it was.”
“And you hired me then because you knew I was a good cook.”
“That’s right.”
“You never called any of my references…”
“You never supplied any references,” he says. “But I still called them all the same.”
My chest goes hollow. “You did?” Oh shit. “Who did you talk to?”
“Erik,” he says matter-of-factly. “He was your boss, wasn’t he?”
Yes. He was my boss. He was also my lover. The man I fell in love with. The man that broke my heart. The man that got me fired.
“Look, shit happens,” Logan says but I can’t even meet his eyes. He knows, he knows! “I’ve…fallen for the wrong people myself and I’ve done some crazy shit. I might be almost forty, Freckles, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten my life before.”
“And you still hired me,” I say in disbelief.
He laughs. “Are you kidding me? It made me want you even more.” I glance at him wide-eyed and he just grins at me. “I told you earlier you march to the beat of your own drum. You fucking tried to burn the whole kitchen down because he pissed you off. That’s crazy, and I’m sorry but I like it.”
I sigh loudly, burying my head in my hands. “That’s not exactly what happened,” I mutter. “The kitchen fire was all his.”
But here’s what did happen.
Erik was the head chef at Piccolo, and the guy I’d been secretly, or not-so secretly, in love with since the moment he was hired, which was half-way through my career there. He was everything I thought I’d ever want in a man. Older, successful, cocky, handsome. A lot like Logan, which I try not to think about. But while Logan, for all his faults, has this sincerity underneath his gruff exterior, Erik was all show. He never had a heart, he never loved. He never cared about anything except himself.
And getting pussy. I knew he was a player but it didn’t stop me from thinking I could be the one that changed all that in him. Like any romance novel fantasy, I saw Erik and thought that once he got to know me, once he fell in love with me, that he would realize he’s finally found what he’s looking for.
I changed for him. The minute we started seeing each other I did everything I could to keep him. I did everything in the bedroom. I dressed the way he liked. I did everything I could to be the best. I guess in some way I was trying to be Juliet to someone who didn’t even know who Juliet was.
It worked for a short amount of time. I didn’t know that though. I thought it worked for years. We kept our relationship pretty much secret (at least I thought we did) and like a fool I thought I was the only one in his eyes.
I wasn’t.
He’d been cheating on me, and when I finally found out about the girls (yes, plural), he acted like it was no big deal. Just as easily as we’d started, he tossed me to the curb. To make matters worse, he told the staff what had been going on between us, and then he started up with one of the new waitresses, rubbing it in my face whenever he could. I even caught her giving him a blow-job in the deep freezer and before I shut the door he’d said, “Better luck next time.”
Whatever respect I had tried to earn at Piccolo was gone in an instant. All those years of service, of starting from a line cook and making my way up to chef di partie was gone. I was the laughing stock. Everyone pitied me. I was the fool who’d been screwed over by Erik, I was the one who thought she could sleep to the top. That wasn’t true, but that didn’t stop people from twisting things around.
So I did whatever anyone else would do in my position.
I printed out a not so flattering picture of his dick and slipped it into everyone’s menu with the headline “The Chef’s Special—perfect if you lack self-respect. Order now and get a free side of garlic bread.”
I thought it was hilarious—mainly because I’d absolutely lost my mind at that moment. And most of the staff had to agree.
But Erik was the boss. Obviously I was fired on the spot. Later that night he burned every one of those pics on the stove, causing a small fire in the kitchen, which he would later blame on me. I never lit shit on fire. The minute I handed out those dick pics, I was done. But he has to say he fired me for something, so that’s what it is. He’d never admit that pictures of his flaccid penis were handed out along with the night’s dishes.
So that’s what happened. That’s why even though I spent most of my career at Piccolo, I can never use them on my resume. That’s why working for Logan and Moonwater Inn is my chance to rebuild myself again.
“You know what?” I say to Logan. “I don’t regret a fucking thing. If you fuck me over, I will fuck you over in return.”
He watches me for a moment, the smile on his lips faltering. “I wouldn’t doubt it.”
I grow quiet for a moment, working up the nerve, working to open myself. The sounds of the jungle grow louder, the darkness seems thicker. “Thank you, by the way,” I say, my voice low, as if I’m aware the jungle is listening.
“For what?”
“For saving my life. Earlier today.”
He gives me a quick smile and shrugs. “You would have done the same for me.” He pauses. “No wait, you wouldn’t have. You would have watched me go downstream and waved goodbye.”
Even though his tone is light, I can tell he’s actually serious.
“I wouldn’t have,” I tell him.
“Oh, come on Veronica,” he says with a dry laugh. “We both know I’m not your favorite person.”
“That’s not true,” I say and I mean it. Because he’s right but he’s also so wrong. In some ways he is my favorite person, even though I still hate him.
I do still hate him, right?
“It’s okay,” he says. “I get it.”
“Do you really?” I retort and I realize this is the closest that either of us have gotten to talking about the elephant in the room.
He shoots me a sharp look, his brows furrowed. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“And that’s all you have to say about it?”
He looks away, swallows thickly. A faint tic appears on his firmly-set jaw.
“You can’t blame me,” I go on. “How I feel about you. What you did.”
“No, I can’t,” he says.
I growl in frustration, wanting to just address the damn thing and have it over with, be done with it. “Why did you do it?”
Silence. Eventually he says, “Do what?” His voice is hollow.
“Why did you do to my sister what Erik did to me?”
“It’s hardly the same,” he says.
“It hurt Juliet didn’t it? Then it’s the same.”
More silence. He breathes in, breathes out. My nerves are prickling, head to toe, waiting, wanting, dying for a reason not to hate him anymore.
“The truth hurts, Freckles,” he says with some finality.
“That’s all you’ve got?”
He glances at me, his eyes shining in the dark. “You do know I loved your sister.”
“How could I ever believe that?” I ask incredulously, feeling the need to get up and walk away.
“Because I’m telling you I did,” he says.
“Actions speak louder than words!”
“I know,” his tone is getting harde
r, an edge that could part hair. “And short of you being witness to our marriage, you’re not going to understand. You won’t allow yourself.”
I shake my head, my cheeks turning hot. “You cheated on her. You had an affair. She told me this. She told everyone this. This is why everyone hates you.”
“And why you hate me,” he says simply. In the light of the moon, his eyes look dull.
“You want me to hate you!” I cry out, now getting to my feet.
“Maybe I do,” he says, staring up at me with venom. “Would it make you feel better to know why?”
“Because you have a guilty fucking conscious!” I yell, throwing my arms out. One hits the tarp, spilling water onto the path. I don’t know why I’m so angry, and I know this is the last place we should be having it out, but everything I’ve kept buried is boiling to the top and spilling out of my mouth.
“I do have a guilty conscious,” he fires back. “But not for the reason you think.”
We stare at each other for a few beats. The world is reduced to a dark, bittersweet syrup. It’s him and me. Whatever desolation I felt moments before has been replaced with the acute feeling that there’s nothing beyond this, beyond us. Like the world has moved chess pieces to get us to this moment. My blood hums.
“Then what is the reason?” I manage to ask, my voice sounding so small, so wrecked.
His gaze never wavers from mine. Whatever he’s trying to say, he’s saying it with his eyes. They burn, like fire, like a primal element, a basic need I’m just discovering in myself.
“I don’t think you’re ready to hear it,” he says.
And then I snap out of it. Push through the syrup, find my clarity. The man is a joke. He may have saved my life, he may have told me things I wanted to hear, but the fact remains that he cheated on my sister and he’s too much of a chicken-shit to even own up to it. He’s just trying to get me to run around in circles instead of looking the truth in the eye. I did that with Erik. I’m not going to do that with him.
“Fuck you,” I tell him and turn on my heel, stomping off into the forest, heading up, up, up the slippery path, branches and leaves slapping at my bare legs.