On the Island

  ***

  We sat cross-legged, facing each other near the water’s edge so I could shave him. He leaned forward, resting his hands on my thighs for balance.

  “How did I become your personal groomer?” I teased. “I’ve bathed you. I shave you.” I spread the shaving cream, which was almost gone, on his cheeks.

  He gave me a big smile. “I’m lucky?”

  “You’re spoiled. When we get off this island, you’re going to have to shave yourself.”

  “That won’t be any fun at all.”

  “You’ll manage.”

  I finished shaving him and we walked back to the house, ready for a nap under the awning.

  “You know, I would be happy to give you a bath or shave you, Anna. Just say the word.”

  I laughed. “I’m fine, really.”

  “Are you sure?” He was lying on the blanket beside me and he reached over and pulled my arm up, then ran the back of his hand along my underarm. “Wow, you are smooth.”

  “Stop! I’m very ticklish.” I swatted his hand away.

  “What about your legs?” he asked, and before I could answer, he leaned toward me and ran a hand slowly up my leg, from ankle to thigh.

  The heat that flooded my body took me by surprise. I made a noise, a cross between a gasp and a moan, and it slipped out before I could stop it. T.J.’s eyes widened and he stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Then he smirked, clearly pleased with the effect his touch had on me.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I can handle my own grooming.”

  “I’m just trying to pay you back for helping me out all the time.”

  “That’s very nice of you, T.J. Go to sleep.” He laughed and turned on his side, facing away from me. I lay on my back and closed my eyes.

  He’s only eighteen. That’s too young.

  A voice in my head said, technically it’s old enough.

  A few days later, in the afternoon, T.J. and I swam with the dolphins. There were four of them, and we watched as they frolicked around us. I wanted to name them, but I couldn’t tell them apart.

  When the dolphins swam away, T.J. and I sat on the shore. I dug my toes into the soft, white sand.

  “Didn’t you say you were going to take a bath?” he asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t bring anything with me though.” Our supplies were dwindling fast. We only washed with soap once a week now. I no longer noticed the way we smelled.

  “I’ll get everything for you,” he said.

  “You will?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, but I need clothes, too.”

  “No problem.”

  He brought it all down and left it on the sand. I waited until he walked away and then got undressed.

  When I finished bathing, I stood for a minute drying in the sun. I walked over to the pile of clothes, expecting to find a tank top and shorts, or a bikini. What he picked out surprised me. He chose a dress, the only one I’d packed. It was one of my favorites, short and light blue with thin straps. He also selected a lacy, pink pair of bikini underwear, and I felt the heat on my cheeks. He’d forgotten a bra, or maybe he hadn’t, but I never wore one with that dress anyway.

  I stepped into the underwear and slipped the dress over my head. When I reached the house, T.J. stared openly.

  “Do we have dinner reservations I don’t know about?” I asked.

  “I wish,” he said.

  I stopped in front of him. “Why a dress?”

  He shrugged. “I thought you’d look good in it.” He took his sunglasses off and looked me up and down. “And you do.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling the heat on my cheeks again.

  He left to go fishing, and I sat on the blanket under the awning waiting for him to come back.

  I often caught T.J. staring at me, but he’d never been so blatant about it. He was getting bolder, testing the waters. If he had been trying to hide his feelings before, he wasn’t as concerned with that now. I didn’t know of his intentions, or even if he had any, but living with him was about to get complicated.

  That much I knew.

  ***

  “I wish we had scissors.” I was sitting on the blanket outside the house a week later, trying to brush the knots out of my hair. It hung almost to my butt and drove me nuts. “I should have had you hack off some of my hair before the knife got so dull,” I said.

  I glanced over at the fire.

  “You’re thinking of burning some of it off, aren’t you?” T.J. asked.

  I looked at him like he was crazy. “No.”

  Maybe.

  I continued brushing.

  T.J. walked over and held out his hand. “Give me the brush. I’ll do it. See? I’m paying you back for shaving me.”

  I handed him the brush. “Knock yourself out.”

  He leaned back against the outside wall of the house, and I sat in front of him. He started brushing. “You have a ton of hair,” he said.

  “I know. It’s way too long.”

  “I like long hair.”

  T.J. patiently dealt with the tangles, working on one section at a time. The sun beat down, but the awning shaded us. A cool breeze blew off the ocean. The omnipresent sound of the waves crashing into the reef, and the feel of the brush moving gently through my hair lulled me into a state of relaxation.

  He lifted my hair off my neck, and then pulled me toward him so that my back rested against his chest. I turned my head, and he pulled my hair to the side, laying it over my right shoulder. He continued brushing and it felt so good that after a while I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

  When I woke up, I knew by the sound of T.J.’s breathing that he’d fallen asleep, too. His arms encircled my waist from behind, his clasped hands resting on the bare skin above my bikini bottom. I closed my eyes again, thinking about how nice it felt with T.J.’s arms around me.

  He stirred, whispering in my ear, “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah. I had a nice nap.”

  “Me, too.”

  Though I didn’t really want to, I sat up and his hands slid off my stomach. My hair fell in a smooth sheet down my back. I looked over my shoulder and smiled. “Thanks for brushing my hair.”

  His eyes were heavy with sleep and something else. Something that looked unmistakably like desire.

  “Anytime.”

  My heart rate increased. My stomach filled with butterflies and a warm feeling spread over me.

  Thinking that our relationship was about to get complicated might have been an understatement.

  Chapter 24 – T.J.

  I watched Anna walk away after I brushed her hair. I thought about the other day, when she made that sound when I ran my hand up her leg. I wondered what kind of noise she’d make if I did something else with my hand. The urge to slip it inside her bikini bottom and find out had been almost uncontrollable. If we were in Chicago, I wouldn’t stand a chance with her. But I was starting to wonder if, here on the island, I might.

  ***

  Anna and I swam back and forth in the lagoon, waiting for the dolphins. “I’m bored,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said, floating on her back. “Hey, let’s see if we can do that lift like Johnny and Baby.”

  “I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve never seen Dirty Dancing?”

  “No.” The title didn’t sound half-bad, though.

  “It’s a great movie. I saw it in high school. 1987, I think.

  “I was two years old.”

  “Oh. Sometimes I forget how young you are.”

  T.J. shook his head. “I’m not that young.”

  “Well anyway, Patrick Swayze played this dance instructor named Johnny Castle at a resort in the Catskills. Jennifer Grey played Baby Houseman, and she was there with her family.” Anna paused for a second and then said, “Hey, I just thought of something. Baby and her family were spending their whole summer vacation away from home, just like you.”

  “Was sh
e pissed about it, too?” I asked.

  Anna shook her head and laughed. “I don’t think so. She got together with Johnny and they spent a lot of time in bed.”

  Why have I never seen this movie? It sounds awesome.

  ”But then Penny, Johnny’s dance partner got pregnant, and Baby had to fill in. There was this tricky lift, and Baby couldn’t do it at first, so they practiced in the water.”

  “And that’s what you want to do?” If it meant touching her, I was all for it.

  “I’ve always wanted to try it. It can’t be that hard.”

  She stood in front of me and said, “Okay, I’m going to run toward you, and when I jump, put your hands here.” She took my hands and put them on her hips. “Then lift me straight up over your head. Do you think you can lift me?”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Of course I can lift you.”

  “For some reason, Baby wore pants in the water when she did this, which I never understood. Okay, are you ready?”

  I said yes, and Anna ran toward me and jumped. The minute my hands touched her hips, she collapsed on me because she said it tickled. My face ended up in her crotch.

  We untangled ourselves and she said, “Don’t tickle me next time.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t tickle you. I put my hands where you told me to.”

  “Okay, let’s do it again.” She backed up to get a running start. “Here I come.”

  This time, when I lifted her, the water was too deep and I couldn’t stay on my feet. I fell backward and she landed on top of me, which didn’t suck.

  “Shit, that was my fault,” I said. “We need to move into shallower water. Try again.”

  This time we did it perfectly. I lifted her up and she stretched out her arms and legs and arched her back.

  “We did it,” she yelled.

  I held her as long as I could, and then lowered my arms. I had taken a few steps backward beyond a slight drop-off, and as soon as her feet touched the bottom, her head went under. I reached down and lifted her up. She took a breath and put her arms around my neck. A few seconds later, she wrapped her legs around my waist and held on.

  She looked surprised, maybe because she didn’t expect the water to be over her head, or maybe because I had her ass in my hands.

  “I’m not bored at all now, Anna.” In fact, if I moved her a little lower, she’d feel exactly how not bored I was getting.

  “Good.” She still had her arms and legs wrapped around me, and I was thinking about kissing her when she said, “We have company.”

  I looked behind me as four dolphins swam into the lagoon, poking us with their snouts and begging us to play with them. Disappointed, I moved into shallower water and set her down, making sure she had her footing on the ocean floor.

  I liked playing with the dolphins, but I liked playing with Anna a whole lot more.

  Chapter 25 – Anna

  We sat under the awning playing poker, watching the storm roll in. Lightning zigzagged across the sky, and the humid air pressed down on me like a blanket. The wind picked up and scattered our cards.

  “We better go in,” T.J. said.

  Once inside, I stretched out beside him in the life raft and watched the interior of the house light up with each lightning strike.

  “We won’t get much sleep tonight,” I said.

  “Probably not.”

  We lay next to each other, listening to the rain beat against the house. Only a few seconds separated the crash of thunder.

  “There’s never been so much lightning before,” I said. Even more unsettling, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end from the electrically-charged air. I told myself the storm would end soon, but as the hours passed, it only intensified.

  When the walls started shaking, T.J. climbed out of the life raft and reached into my suitcase. He turned around and threw my jeans at me. “Put these on.” He grabbed his own jeans and stepped into them. Then he shoved the fishing pole into the guitar case.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think we can ride this out here.”

  I got out of bed and pulled my jeans on over my shorts. “Where else would we go?” As soon as I asked, I knew. “No! There’s no way I’m going in there. We’ve made it through other storms okay. We can stay here.”

  T.J. grabbed his backpack and stuffed the knife, rope, and first-aid kit inside. He tossed me my tennis shoes and jammed his feet into his Nikes without untying the laces first. “There’s never been one this bad,” he said. “And you know it.”

  I opened my mouth to argue with him, and the roof blew off.

  T.J. knew he had won. “Let’s go,” he said, barely audible over the howling wind. He slipped his arms through the backpack and handed me the guitar case. “You’ll have to carry this.” He picked up the toolbox in one hand and my suitcase in the other, and we hurried through the woods to the cave. The rain pelted us and the wind blew so violently, I thought it might knock me off my feet.

  I hesitated at the entrance of the cave.

  “Get in, Anna,” he yelled.

  I bent down, trying to work up the courage to crawl inside. The sudden cracking of a tree branch sounded like a gunshot, and T.J. put his hand on my butt and shoved. He pushed the guitar case, toolbox, and suitcase in after me, and followed behind right before the tree fell, blocking the entrance to the cave and plunging us into darkness.

  I collided with Bones like a bowling ball into ten pins. The skeleton scattered across the floor of the cave, and a few seconds later, T.J. landed in a heap beside me.

  The two of us – and everything we owned – barely fit in the small space. We had to lay flat on our backs, shoulder to shoulder, and if I stretched my arm out, I could have touched the cave wall, inches to my right; T.J. could have done the same on his left. The cave smelled like dirt, decaying plants, and animals I hoped weren’t bats. Grateful to be wearing jeans, I crossed my feet at the ankles to prevent anything from crawling up my pant legs. The ceiling was less than two feet above our heads. It was like being in a coffin with the lid closed, and I panicked, heartbeat thundering, gasping, feeling like I couldn’t get enough air.

  “Try not to breathe so fast,” T.J. said. “As soon as it stops, we’re out of here.”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on inhaling and exhaling. Just block everything out. Leaving the cave now is not an option.

  T.J. took my hand and laced his fingers through mine, squeezing gently. I squeezed back, holding onto his hand like a lifeline.

  “Don’t let go,” I whispered.

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  We stayed in the cave for hours, listening as the storm raged outside. When it finally stopped, T.J. shoved the tree branches away from the entrance. The sun was up and we crawled out, gazing in shock at the devastation.

  The storm toppled so many trees it was like picking our way through a maze to get back to the beach. When we finally made it out of the woods, we both stared.

  The house was gone.

  T.J. looked at the ground where it once stood. I hugged him and said, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t respond, but he put his arms around me and we stayed like that for a long time.

  We scoured the area and found the life raft shoved against a tree. We checked it carefully for holes, and I listened for the hiss of escaping air, but didn’t hear anything. The water collector floated in the ocean several yards offshore, and the tarp and roof canopy lay tangled amid the piles of wood that were once our home.

  The seat cushions, life jackets, and blanket were scattered across the sand. We left them to dry in the sun. We attached the roof canopy to the life raft, but T.J. had cut away the nylon sides and the roll-down door to use on the house. The canopy would shield us from rain but we no longer had any protection from the mosquitoes.

  We spent the rest of the day constructing another lean-to and gathering firewood, piling it inside so it could dry. T.J. went fishing, and I collected coconut and breadfruit.

  La
ter, we sat by the fire eating fish, barely keeping our eyes open. Thankfully, the life raft continued to hold air and when the sun went down T.J. and I went to bed. I fell asleep instantly, my head resting on my slightly damp seat cushion.

  ***

  I swam back and forth in the lagoon. T.J. was working on rebuilding the house, but he promised to join me as soon as he finished nailing a few more boards.

  His desire to get a roof over our heads again consumed him, and in the six weeks since the storm, he’d made remarkable progress. He’d finished the framing and shifted his focus to putting up the walls. Having already built the house once his pace was faster this time around, and he would have worked around the clock if I didn’t convince him to take a break.

  I was treading water when he appeared on the beach. Suddenly, he ran toward the shore, yelling and motioning for me to get out. I couldn’t figure out why he was so upset, so I turned around.

  I spotted the fin seconds before it disappeared below the surface. I knew by the size and shape of it that it wasn’t a dolphin.

  T.J. ran into the water yelling, “Swim Anna, swim!”

  Afraid to look over my shoulder, I swam faster than I thought possible. I still couldn’t touch the ocean floor, but T.J. reached me, yanked me by the arm, and pulled me to shallower water. I found my footing, and we ran.

  I shook all over. T.J. grabbed me by my shoulders and said, “You’re okay.”

  “How long do you think that’s been swimming around in our lagoon?” I asked.

  T.J. scanned the turquoise water. “I don’t know.”

  “What kind do you think it was?”

  “Reef maybe?”

  “You can’t go fishing, T.J.” He often stood in waist deep water, since our fishing line wasn’t very long.

  “I’d get out if I saw the fin.”

  “Unless you didn’t see it.”

  We spent the next few days by the shore, watching for the shark. The surface of the lagoon remained unbroken, and the water stayed calm and still. The dolphins came, but I wouldn’t go in. We took turns bathing, but we agreed to stay near the shore, only going in a few feet to rinse ourselves.