by Dawn Steele
KURT
Blackness.
My dreams are filled with seawater. There’s water, water everywhere. Water in my eyes, water in my ears, water in my soaked pants which are weighing my down, water in my mouth, and water in every other orifice that I have.
Fuck.
I don’t think I’ll ever have a bath for the rest of my life.
REBECCA
I open my eyes and see the clear blue sky.
That is the first thing I see.
A bird wheels against this sky, its black silhouette stark against the pale blue bowl. White clouds scud across, obscuring higher clouds which are like feathers far, far above.
The ground beneath my body is hard. I blink several times, trying to gauge if this is a dream.
What happened?
I turn to my right, and I can see a wide expanse of beach. The sand is white and fine and very, very warm. My hands grasp fistfuls of it, more for the reassuring contact with Mother Earth than to test out how fine it is. My hair is sticky against my cheek, and a couple of sand particles stick to my eyelashes.
Is it true that no two grains of sand are alike? Or is that reserved for snowflakes?
Palm and coconut trees fringe the lush, green growth that borders the beach. Beyond this is higher ground bedecked with dense trees taller than anything I have ever seen in my life. The air is balmy and very humid. It is also extremely fresh, and the salt sea tang carries itself on the breeze.
I remember being blown by that freaky gust of wind off the deck and into the sea. I remember being majorly freaked out. It was as if a giant hand of air had plucked me off my feet and thrown me into the sky
Naturally, I landed.
I can swim like a fish, ironically, which is what kept me afloat – my ability to tread water for hours on end. But the sea was extremely choppy and there was no way anyone could swim for long in those waters. That is, until the life buoy came sailing into the air and struck me in the side of my head like a well-aimed shoe.
I’m saved, I thought.
Except that I wasn’t.
But what surprised me was the sight of Kurt Taylor diving in after me. Of all the stupid, dumbass things to do.
I mean . . . what would you do if someone goes overboard, right? You’d yell for the crew immediately. Yes, you’d throw out lifebuoys, but then you’d yell for the crew first. That way, someone other than yourself actually knows that a victim has gone overboard. You don’t dive in after the hapless victim, because then NO ONE will know that you are BOTH overboard.
You get it, right?
I get it. I’m a strategic planner. A thinker.
Obviously, Kurt Taylor hadn’t got the memo on what to do if people pitched overboard from a luxury cruise liner.
Of course he wouldn’t get it. He is a convicted felon, sentenced to hard labor with a mop and a wash rag on a ship on which he should be the nightly star attraction.
Kurt!
I sit up.
Where the fuck is Kurt?
Panic suddenly seizes me. My back protests something awful as I clamber to my feet. My feet are bare, naturally. I remember my heels coming off the moment I struck the surface of the water. My green dress – the one that was so expensive and in which I had looked so good in the night before – is mostly dry now and encrusted with the grime of salt.
Salt-baked dress. Haha. Take that, Prada.
If you think I’m being cavalier about all this, I am not. I’m terrified as hell. And when I’m terrified, my mind goes into an endless chatter of consciousness, where it makes – out of its subconscious volition, I swear – lame jokes and word associations and anagrams and everything that has been explored in ‘The Da Vinci Code’.
My legs are wobbly, but I make myself walk down the beach, looking for anything that can be construed as a body. I realize that the specter of Kurt Taylor actually dying fills my head with more horror than actually encountering the dead drowned body of Kurt Taylor himself.
He can’t die!
He just can’t!
We have unfinished business!
“Kurt?” I try to call, but my voice comes out in a squeak.
The life buoy has also washed ashore, and it lies there, covered with sand. I’m not sure if it is my life buoy or Kurt’s. They don’t exactly come in ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ matching rings.
You see what I mean when I say that my mind babbles when I’m scared out of my wits?
“Kurt?” My voice comes out stronger now.
Where the hell is he?
Of course, there’s a possibility he could have drowned at sea. I remember both of us clinging to our life buoys, and I remember his arm forming a link around mine so that we wouldn’t be parted.
I remember him telling me, “Just close your eyes and rest. I’ve got you.”
I remember being so tired that I actually obeyed him in spite of my initial instinct to say, “Don’t tell me what to do!”
I remember closing my eyes, and feeling his hand – still warm despite the wetness that pervaded us – and drifting off.
Until I woke up here.
Only I have no idea where ‘here’ is and where Kurt Taylor is. Theoretically, he would never let me go and we should both end up on the same beach.
My heart skips several awful beats. I still can’t locate Kurt Taylor.
I continue to trawl the shore. I’m not sure if we are on an island, or if we have washed up to mainland. But one thing is certain. We are in the tropics. The sun is too high and the weather is too humid. I have only been walking for a bit, and already the sweat is clinging to my salted and tattered green dress.
“Kurt?” I call again.
And then I see him.
A body. Lying in the sand behind some boulders.
My heart literally stops.
My feet pick up speed and then they are literally flying to where he is. As I round the boulders, I see that he is half submerged in seawater. A trail of blood lends a red cast to the water around his right leg.
He’s hurt! Oh shit!
“Kurt!” The panic is very obvious in my voice.
I quickly place my hands under his armpits and tug him out of the water. His body is heavy and very limp. He is passed out, and his wet face is tranquil in repose. He is still breathing, thank God. I pull him up the shore until his feet are completely cleared of the water.
I don’t know the first thing about treating a wound. I need help. I need reinforcements.
I look around frantically. But there is no one. We are marooned in the middle of nowhere. Kurt has only me to tend to him.
I have to be strong for the both of us. I can do this. I really can.
Taking a deep breath, I inspect Kurt’s prone body. He still has all his clothes on, although his feet are bare, like mine. Sand covers the skin of his hands and feet.
I have to take off his pants to see where he is bleeding from.
The thought of taking off Kurt’s black pants fills me with a strange feeling.
Oh, come on. It’s not as if you’re taking his pants off for that thing.
Mustering my courage, I kneel by his body and start to undo the zipper of his pants. His pants are soaked through, and my fingers fumble as I finally manage to wriggle his waistband beneath his hipbones. He wears Calvin Klein underwear, and I can’t help noticing the nice bulge in his crotch. And he isn’t even hard.
Stop it.
I pull down his pants gingerly. I can’t help observing his thighs. They are muscular and very, very taut. He must do cardiovascular exercises fairly often. Dancing, I’ll bet. I read somewhere (OK, I didn’t really read it but merely skimmed through the article) that he worked diligently at improving his chosen craft. He took singing and dancing lessons in addition to songwriting.
I must admit I was impressed when I read . . . I mean skimmed through those factoids.
I work his pants over his knees, and that is when I notice the bleeding gash on his left shin. It is a linear cut, and I think he
must have dashed it against some rocks or coral when he was washed ashore.
I have to stop the bleeding.
His shirt is made of a material which looks as if it can be easily torn. Now I have to take his shirt off as well. Undoing his buttons, I shrug it off his shoulders and arms. Not an easy feat, I can tell you, especially since I’m caught by the sight of his marvelously formed chest and his brown, enticing nipples.
His nipples are the particularly protuberant sort. Very erotic.
Stop it this instance!
His arms are nicely muscular as well. But I already knew that. When he was a high school jock, he already had a spectacular body. It only serves that he would grow into that body when he became a man. How old is he now? Twenty-three? He is in the prime of his physicality, and it shows in every magnificent part of his body.
Too bad he’s such a prick.
Still, he did dive in to try to save me. That has to count for something. Stupidity, perhaps, but it was still something.
I rip a large swath of his shirt with a cracking sound which seems too loud for the quiet atmosphere of distant chirping birds and rustling trees and washing waves. Then I fashion a sort of tourniquet and bind it around his shin. His leg is heavy as I lift it. I make several rounds and ensure the wound is covered tightly.
I can only hope he doesn’t get an infection.
Kurt stirs. I tense.
His eyes flutter open.
“Rebecca?” he says weakly.
“I’m here. You’ve been hurt and I think you’ve had a concussion.” My words spill over. I am aware that he is now mostly undressed except for his underwear. “I had to bind your wound. Look at it. Neat, huh? Are you all right?”
I’m babbling again. I am indirectly apologizing for taking almost all his clothes off.
I’m sorry for looking at you. And we still have that unresolved issue between us, so I don’t find you attractive.
His eyebrows crinkle as he frowns. Then he groans. His hand goes to the back of his head as he tries to sit up.
“Maybe you should just lie down until you feel better,” I suggest.
He looks me up and down as if I have a ripe pimple on my nose. His expression is dazed and confused.
“Are you OK?” he asks.
“No worse for the wear.”
He manages to balance himself on his buttocks. He glances at my makeshift bandage.
“Can I look at it?”
“No,” I say quickly. “It’s bleeding and I’ve just gotten it to stop.”
Indeed, the blood is seeping through the absorbent material of his shirt. That fabric is not made to be gauze, I can tell you.
“The bandage will need to be changed later on,” I say. “Here, let’s get out of the sun.”
I help him stand up. He smells of sea and salt and his own peculiar brand of man smell as he leans gingerly on my shoulders and hobbles into the shade of the trees. I am very aware of his masculinity.
“I’m OK,” he finally says as we both plunk our bodies down into the shade.
The ground is strewn with pebbles and patchy grass and dried leaves. The sun dapples in between the leaves. Out there, the waves are roaring as they flow and ebb, flow and ebb.
“Where are we?” he asks.
“Hell if I know.”
He licks his lips. “I think we should explore.”
“With your leg like that?”
“I’m not a baby.” He gets up again.
“Sit down. Rest a bit. Let’s think of what we should do next.”
“You’re always the one who has to be in control, isn’t that the case, Rebecca?” he shoots.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you always have to boss people around. Here we are, shipwrecked, and you still have to be the one in charge,” he says with a touch of bitterness.
My jaw drops in surprise. Oh, of all the nerve!
And to think I thought I found him attractive.
I quickly close my mouth before a mosquito can decide to go in.
“I’d just suggested that we should sit down and plan what we should do next instead of barging into the tropical forest like a Neanderthal. Besides, you are in no shape to walk around, Mr. ‘I Jump, You Jump’.”
It is his turn to drop his jaw in amazement.
“Excuse me, but didn’t I just rescue you from certain death by drowning?” he says acidly.
I’m a little abashed, but I’m on a roll.
“Yeah, but look at us now. Maybe you should just have called for someone and they would have hauled us both onboard. Instead, thanks to your bullheadedness, we’re both stranded here instead of being on the ship.”
OK, I’m awful. I’m really, really awful.
But I can’t help it. Kurt Taylor brings out the worst in me. And I can’t help it if I find him so damned attractive when he is half-naked and oozing sensuality without even trying. I can’t help it if we had that disastrous past together connected by a tenuous thread called Adeline Frost.
I can’t help it if I always push the people I’m most uncomfortable with away.
His face flinches, and I know I’ve hit home.
Ouch.
“Maybe I should just leave you in there to drown next time,” he says.
“Yeah, maybe you should.”
We both turn away from each other to sulk like petulant little children.
And to think we might be stuck here with each other for a very long time.
KURT
Rebecca is right, of course. I should have alerted one of the ship’s crew before blindly hurling myself into the vortex. But it’s too late now to rue what I should have or should not have done, because we are both now marooned on a deserted island.
Or is it really an island?
My throat is parched and my stomach rumbles something rude. I uncurl my long legs and get up.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m thirsty,” I say to her. She has her back to me, of course. “I’m going to see about getting us some fresh water.”
I venture off towards the forest without another word. I don’t know where I’m going, of course. All I know is that walking around barefoot is a bitch. Pebbles and twigs dig into my soles. My left shin hurts something silly.
“Wait!” she calls after me. She scrambles to her feet and runs after me. “I’m coming too. Don’t go off like that. We might get lost. We need some landmarks so that we can get back to the beach.”
She is right again, of course. I curse myself. She is right about a lot of things.
“I think I’ll know how to find the beach again,” I say in a huff. “It isn’t as if we left a boat full of supplies down there or something.”
I’m right too, of course.
She shoots me a glare. “Well, you certainly left your clothes behind. You want to bring those along or are you planning to walk around like Tarzan?”
Oh, right.
I open my mouth to retort that I am indeed going to walk around half-naked like Tarzan. But then I think of Rebecca’s disapproving gaze roaming all over my body, and my testicles sort of contract a little.
Holding my head as high as possible, I stalk towards the beach to gather the remnants of my clothes. I may not be able to wear the shirt again, but at least the cloth will come in handy for bandages, assuming that I would have soaked through the one Rebecca patched on me.
Then, jutting my chin forward, I pass her again in my way towards the forest, but not before catching the smirk on her face.
Damn!
*
Finding water somehow proves to be a bitch. We have been walking for hours, and this island – if it is indeed an island – is panning out to be larger than we thought.
“Where do you think we are?” Rebecca says.
She’s keeping up ably behind me although her breath is coming out in shorter and shorter bursts. I am not lessening the length of my strides just for her to keep up – that ingrate.
“I assume we’re so
mewhere in the Caribbean,” I say. “Maybe near the Bahamas. There are plenty of islands around this chain.”
Along the way, we hear birds and cicadas and many animal sounds that I have never heard in any zoo before this. Then of course, I don’t expect to see lions and tigers and bears.
Or do I?
Now and then, the undergrowth would rustle with the sounds of an escaping animal. I’m not even sure what sort of animals live here in these tropics. Would they be small or large? Would they be frightened by humans – whom they may never have glimpsed before – or curious? Would they be vegans . . . or carnivorous?
That last bit makes me queasy. I’m not sure I can fend off a charging wild boar or something as big and ferocious.
My mouth is now very dry, and I can’t remember the last time I took a leak. Rebecca hasn’t asked for any stops either, which means both of us must be very dehydrated.
“Maybe we should take a rest,” Rebecca says. “You know . . . to conserve water.”
Water? What water? I think my body capacity for water is only half full by now. My blood must be thicker than molasses.
“OK,” I concede. “But only for a while.”
“You’d think there would be plenty of water in the tropics,” she grumbles. “Do you think they realize we are missing?”
“Since it’s already morning, someone is bound to notice we’re missing. You have a cabin mate, don’t you?”
I fling myself under the shade of a particularly large rainforest tree. We are quite a distance up already, and I can no longer see the beach or the sea. Here, the trees form a tangled canopy so dense that the sunlight scarcely filters through. The ground is strewn with dead leaves and very little growth because nothing from above can seem to penetrate through.
My shin is throbbing. There is a patch of red seeping through my makeshift bandage.
Rebecca flings herself beside me.
“Here, let me take a look at that,” she says gruffly.
“It’s OK.” I brush her hand off.
“Hey!” She gives me an angry look. “I’m trying to help, OK? I’m sorry I seemed a tad ungrateful earlier – ”