Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor)

by Dawn Steele

  He laughs as he strides out of the water. He is quite the exhibitionist.

  “With what? Fig leaves? Why don’t you chill out, Rebecca? I need to dry my clothes, and frankly, yours need a wash too.”

  I know he’s right. I wave at the spread of food.

  “Know how to start a fire?” I say.

  He comes right up to me, defiantly parading his wobbling genitals. Something about his cock is so sexy that I can feel a twitch of desire shooting right through my loins.

  No. No. Mustn’t find him sexy.

  “I can try.” He bends down to take two pieces of rock. I avert my eyes. I must stop roaming my eyes over his naked and very magnificent body. “But maybe not here. The stones here are too wet. And I need dry kindling. I’ll do it in the forest.”

  He straightens and looks me up and down.

  “You’re very industrious, Rebecca,” he says admiringly, indicating the eggs and the paw paws. “Where did you find these?”

  I launch into telling him about the events of the morning. I keep my eyes at the level of his face as I do so, refusing to give in to his obvious bait. But his dick keeps drawing me to it, especially since it seems to get harder as I chatter on. It rises ever so slowly, filled with life-giving sap.

  It is Kurt’s turn to flush.

  “Uh,” he interrupts me and indicates his dick, “don’t think this is because of you. It’s my usual morning chubby.”

  I am suddenly speechless.

  We both realize at the same time that we are in a very awkward situation. There’s a long pause where neither of us does anything but stare at each other. (At least, I’m trying to stare at his colored face and not at, well, his more-than-impressive manhood set.)

  Then he says quickly, “I guess I better go start a fire.”

  “I guess I can see that your wound is healing nicely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  There is another awkward pause where the air contracts between us. Then he swiftly reaches down for his underwear and grabs it. I turn away, my palpitations obvious in my chest, as he pulls it up his legs to cover that marvelous package of his. Now it’s nicely tucked away, but the bulge is still very prominent.

  We run off to do our respective errands.

  KURT

  I don’t know what I was thinking of when I exposed myself to Rebecca like that. Now she will think I’m sort of lowly flasher. But that’s right. I wasn’t thinking. I never think twice when I bulldoze my way into doing something.

  I was the same way when I went for the American Rock Star audition. I never stopped to think twice when I waltzed through that door. I never thought about how I might not have had any formal singing lessons, or if my voice was shaky, or if I couldn’t warble a tune like Adam Lambert. I only went headlong up on stage and did it.

  I was the same way when I dived in after Rebecca without wondering if I could keep afloat myself.

  Rebecca will probably report me to my probation officer when we get out of here for exposing my genitals to her. She would probably get a restraining court order to ask me to keep two miles away from her. And I would probably deserve it as well.

  But as it was, I didn’t think of what I was doing when I climbed out of the stream, dripping all over the ground like a soggy rag. I only thought of shocking her – of seeing her smug face explode into ‘are you kidding me?’ incredulity.

  That was extremely childish.

  Not to mention extremely foolish.

  We might be stuck here for a long time, and now all I have achieved is to create an awkwardness between us. As if we weren’t already awkward enough with each other.

  All I can do now is to make amends by starting a bonfire. Provided I can actually find two dry rocks in this entire forest.

  Damn.

  Where’s a trusty lighter when you need it?

  *

  I do not succeed in making a fire all morning, even when my palms are raw from striking two oddly shaped stones. I have no magnifying glass or way of concentrating sunlight either.

  So I scratch my chin, which is started to prickle with a day’s growth of beard, and say to Rebecca, “How are you for raw eggs?”

  She shrugs. “Raw eggs are fine. I’ll just think of it as a protein shake from the gym.”

  “Fine with me.”

  So we make a feast out of raw eggs and paw paws. To most people, it would be a revolting combination. But to us, it was as delicious as anything we (didn’t) taste at the Clarion. We are both nicely dressed now. I have even put on my pants for the occasion, even though my shirt is a lost cause.

  Neither of us brings up the subject of nudity. Thank God.

  “So, Rebecca,” I say, chewing the last of my paw paws slowly, “you go to the gym?”

  She scrunches up her face. “You going to make a nasty remark about that?”

  I think for a while (a first!), and then I retort, “I was just going to say that if you’ve been going to the gym, it hasn’t managed to shake off that baby fat. So getting stuck here eating raw eggs and paw paws is probably going to do a helluva lot more for your figure than any pricey personal trainer.”

  Her mouth opens, and then snaps shut into a firm line, just as I knew it would. I grin. It was mean of me to say it, but I feel mean today. It’s the only way I can defuse how my body is reacting towards her.

  “If you have a thing against large-boned women, why don’t you come out and say so?” she challenges.

  “I don’t have a thing against them. I’m just making an observation. Think of this ordeal as a protracted weight loss program at a spa.”

  Her expression turns apoplectic, but she doesn’t say anything.

  Later, much later, when she has decided to speak to me again, she says, “So what do we do now, Mr. Cock-of-the-Walk?”

  I laugh. “So you’ve decided to forgive me.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” I lean back on my elbows, watching the stream.

  I’m actually quite worried as to how we are to find our next meal. I’m hungry again, and I know we have to find something more substantial than eggs and paw paws.

  She bites her lip, and then says: “I think we should go back to the beach and put up a SOS signal just in case any rescue plane looking for us is going to fly by the island.”

  As usual, she makes perfect strategic sense.

  I pretend to stroke my chin. The bristles right now are sharp and poky.

  “OK,” I say. “If we can actually find our way back to the beach.”

  “It’s easy,” she says with a smirk. “We just follow the stream.”

  *

  Why don’t I think of things like these? I groan inwardly. I certainly feel like hitting my own forehead repeatedly.

  We do as Rebecca suggests, of course, and follow the stream downward. It is going to lead someplace for sure, either to a lake or to the sea. I’m willing to bet it’s the sea.

  Along the way, we find banana trees – broad leafy, stumpy trees with bunches of both green and yellow bananas. Bananas are more substantial than paw paws, and so we dine on them. Later, I stuff as many bananas as I can take into my pockets. For the first time, I rue the fact my pants are so tight.

  “No problem,” Rebecca says.

  She fashions my tattered shirt into a makeshift bag, gathers as many bananas as she can, and wraps it all up. Then she slings it across her shoulder and sets off.

  I can’t help admiring her butt inside that tight green dress as she walks. The dress is made all the tighter by the seawater.

  By late evening, we glimpse the shining sea again. It has been a long, weary trek, and as soon as we hit the beach, we collapse onto the sand and sprawl there as if dead. The stream has become a small river mouth, and this empties out into the ocean beyond.

  “Do you know how to fish?” asks Rebecca.

  “Only with a fishing line.”

  “Maybe we can fashion one.” />
  I groan. “Can’t we rest here a bit?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Actually, so am I. And it’s a man’s job to fish for a woman.

  Where did I get my Neanderthal ideas?

  I make myself get up anyway. We go into the forest again to hunt for vines that may be able to do the trick. Then we dig for earthworms, which are consistently evading us today. There aren’t even the prerequisite earthworm mounds to suggest that they might have made their homes there.

  “I found some sort of beetle,” I say, picking up the wriggling blue and black thing. I hope these tropical beetles don’t bite. “Do you think the fish would like these?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “If not, I hope they like bananas.”

  Still, we fashion a sort of hook out of a gnarly piece of wood. Then we cast the line with the dying beetle into the mouth of the stream, where we can see fishes swimming against the current.

  I guess not too many people do fishing here, because after fifteen minutes, we get a bite. I triumphantly pull out one wriggling silver fish.

  “Don’t let it go!” Rebecca yells as the fish tries to dance out of our slippery grasps.

  “Yeah, I was just going to unhook it and throw it back into the sea,” I deadpan.

  We plop the fish into the sand and slowly watch it heave its final breaths, its gills opening and closing.

  “Wicked,” I remark.

  “I know.” She stares at the fish, fascinated. “It’s a wonder not more people are vegans.”

  “I don’t feel like a vegan. I feel like a fruitarian.”

  “There’s always the problem of not being able to start a fire.”

  I grin. “Fancy eating sashimi?”

  REBECCA

  We are so exhausted from our long trek that we fall asleep after a nice meal of sashimi (not sushi, Kurt corrected me, because sushi has rice in it, and we certainly don’t have rice.) What I would give to have a plate of rice right now. Or a hot meal. Or a Wendy’s burger.

  But my dreams are not of roast chicken and baby potatoes, or of pavlovas whose meringues crumble in your mouth. Strangely enough – or not so strangely – they are of a super-hot naked man who just happens to be lying next to me on the soft ground beyond the beach.

  When we wake the next day, I do not tell Kurt of my dreams, of course.

  Kurt’s beard is starting to grow. It’s still a shadow on his jaw, but the shadow is getting heavier and darker. He’s sexy as hell this way. I wonder how those bristles would feel scraping against my skin.

  No. No. Absolutely not.

  We argue a little over how we are to make our S.O.S sign. Finally, we settle for the biggest S.O.S letters we can make on the expanse of beach we have. To make the letters, we haul driftwood and other types of wood.

  The finished product reads kind of like this:

  S.O.S

  K.T

  R.H

  From ten miles above, it would resemble a child’s scrawl, I suppose.

  “Have you heard any passing airplanes so far?” I ask him.

  “No. Have you?”

  “No.”

  We contemplate this for a while. It’s sobering to think that we might be stuck here for days and days. Or even weeks.

  Months.

  I gulp.

  Kurt says, “Let’s go exploring during the day. We can always return to this beach as our home base. Waiting around to be rescued is not my can of beer.”

  “Cup of tea.”

  “Huh?”

  “The expression is not ‘can of beer’ but ‘cup of tea’.”

  “Seeing as I don’t drink tea, a can of beer is as good as any. Besides, I’m still not sure this is an island. We may be on a desolate part of the mainland. For all we know, there might be civilization across the bend.”

  I can’t argue with that. I would hate to think that we might be near a tourist township all this while and we starved to death because we didn’t venture out to explore just one mile more.

  “OK,” I say. “Besides, if a rescue plane was looking for us, they would see the S.O.S on the beach and know we are here. They would then mount a search and rescue and come looking for us in the jungle. So we don’t have to stay glued to this spot.”

  I haven’t read the manual on what to do when you’re stuck on a deserted island, so I’m making it up as I go along.

  We spend the next few days like this. We comb the interiors, staying close to the stream. We figured that if there are any townships or villages, they would make their homes close to the water. Then we broach into territories beyond the stream, making sure we would know how to return to it by giving ourselves little scout markers to follow.

  Oftentimes, I feel like we are Hansel and Gretel wandering deeper into the forbidding woods.

  But we find no one and nothing.

  We have become better at foraging for tubers and wild tapioca and catching fish, however. Kurt finally got the technique of fire-starting correct, but he had to break many nails or whatever it takes to get it right. His beard is a lot fuller now, denoting the passage of time. His body has gone leaner and tanned from the sun. He looks just like in his music video for Sunglass Hut, where he is a guerilla in shades romancing Britney Spears, who does a ‘featuring’ appearance.

  (OK, so I admit I logged into his Vevo channel. Once.)

  I have warmed up to Kurt, and he doesn’t repel me as much as he used to. We have fallen into a companionable camaraderie.

  “Of course, we can always walk down the beach instead to explore. Human habitation might be sequestered to the beaches,” Kurt suggests.

  Of course.

  Why didn’t I think of it?

  Following the beach front is not as easy as it appears. The ‘beach’ vanishes for large portions of the time, dissolving into pure rocky land and dense jungle. You would still have to do a lot of climbing, and I can tell you that it is not easy with bare feet. My soles are blistered and callused and bruised, as are my hands.

  God, I’m going to need a hundred pedicures to restore my feet when I get back.

  However, we didn’t have to go a long way down (or up) the seafront before we find the man.

  And what a find it is.

  REBECCA

  Kurt is the first to notice the man.

  “Look.”

  He points to a sheer cliff rising from the sea. The cliff has an out-jutting promontory that sticks out like a protruding tongue. Below, furious waves dash against the cliff wall, spraying water and white foam everywhere. The wind whistles everywhere, stinging our faces with crisp, salty air. Here, the humidity is staggering.

  The man is immobile. He sits facing the sea, his back against a large boulder that is covered with moss and creeping plants. From what I can make out from here, he is wearing khaki style clothing – very Camel Outback.

  The way he sits is unnatural.

  “Oh my God,” I say to Kurt. “Is he dead?”

  Kurt doesn’t say anything, although his silence confirms he agrees with me. My heart begins to beat with a percussive note that is both omnipresent and depressing.

  “So what do we do?” I say.

  “He could be stoned and out cold,” Kurt offers.

  “Stoned? Here?”

  “Hey, there are plenty of mushrooms and plants in the jungle that can do the trick.”

  Right. We both don’t think that is the correct assessment, however, and we both know it.

  “I’ll call out to him,” Kurt says. He cups his hands and cries, “Hello!”

  His voice echoes through the stillness.

  There is no reply.

  Kurt says, “I’ll climb up there and find out.”

  The path to get to the cliff is extremely treacherous. I gaze at the steep ground, tufted with rocks and clinging vegetation.

  “You stay down here,” Kurt says.

  My first response is to bridle. Don’t tell me what to do and I’ll climb up there with you, thank you very much. But I’m too scared.
It’s like we have been playing Adam and Eve – without the sex – and we suddenly find we are not alone in the universe.

  The only thing is to find out now if the serpent is up there on the cliff.

  So I can only stand my ground and follow Kurt’s marvelous body – even more toned now we are both on a forced diet – as he deftly scales the ascending ground, hooking his bare feet around thick roots for leverage and using his hands to haul himself slowly up like a tailless monkey. He loses his footing and almost slips a couple of times, but manages to brake himself in time.

  My heart is in my mouth.

  Please be careful, Kurt.

  Kurt finally gets up there with difficulty. He is about forty feet or so above from me, but from my vantage, he appears tiny. He is now and again obscured by ropy vegetation – thick vines that drape around the branches of trees from here to there. We are within shouting distance, however.

  I can see him approaching the figure.

  “Is he alive?” I call.

  “No,” comes back the answer. “He’s dead.”

  A chill comes over me. Not too far from me, the surf crashes against the rocks.

  “Long dead?”

  “I’m not CSI, but I don’t think he’s been long dead. He’s not a skeleton. But I can’t tell about decomposition in this heat.”

  Not a skeleton. My spine creeps with unease.

  Kurt bends over the figure, inspecting something.

  “What’re you doing?” I say.

  I am afraid Kurt might catch something from the body. I’m not sure what kinds of germs exist around dead bodies which aren’t buried, but they can’t be good.

  “I wonder if I should take his clothes. Our clothes are practically falling off and his still look good.”

  “No, Kurt, don’t!” There is something distasteful about wearing someone else’s grave vestments.

  “You don’t have to wear them, but I think they will fit me.”

  He’s right, actually. We are marooned victims. We don’t exactly have Neiman Marcus across the bend to select our wardrobe from. And any type of cloth is good.