Chapter 11 #2
“And that’s half of the fun.” I wiggled my eyebrows.
“That doesn’t sound fun at all.”
“Oh, come on.” I reached over the table for paper and a pencil, my arm brushing against his.
Using a trial-and-error approach, I drew a complex network with vertices and degrees, rotating numbers and moving them from place to place.
Then we scribbled arrays with numerals, and shifted them by a certain quantity, assigned letters from the alphabet, and copied the results into a grid.
This would have gone much smoother if my fingers could access my computer.
We counted how many times each digit appeared. On a separate page, we created charts containing the most common vowels and high-frequency consonants and paired them with some numeral combinations.
Hours later, the flame of the second lantern danced and guttered as we continued to decode, but despite making countless letter pairings, nothing reasonable came to our minds.
An idea of a Braille code surfaced in our debate, but without Google, it was useless.
We didn’t know the amount and position of the dots, and we weren’t sure if Braille had even been invented by the early 1800s.
The following morning, we were able to drag the Reely Nauti about twenty feet closer to dry land. When the sun reached the point of turning us into ants under a magnifying glass, Hunter and I returned to interpret the meaning behind the numbers. So many numbers.
The thick, hot air took up too much space in the room, and a drip of sweat ran down between my breasts. Judging by the numbness of my butt and where the sunlight bleached the tattered sofa’s armrest, we’d worked for long hours.
“What’s this?” Hunter tugged on a piece of paper with an outdoor shower I had sketched last night after we said goodnight.
I tried to smash my hand on it to stop him from pulling it out from under the journal, but he was too quick and yanked it out.
Abandoning my chair (and lucid thoughts), I launched for it, but Hunter raised it above his head, then behind it, then out to his right, not letting me catch it.
“Goodness.” He laughed. “What is it?”
I climbed onto Hunter’s lap, reaching for it, my boobs smashing Hunter in the face, his exhaled “oof” skimming my skin. The move brought our bodies flush together. The chair tilted back too far and gave a warning wobble. I squealed, my thighs squeezing his waist, readying for impact with the floor.
“Whoa!” Hunter’s arms went under my butt, and he jerked forward, standing up and saving us from falling backward. The chair tumbled with a loud thud.
Hunter’s body was a hard wall of muscle.
Of course, I knew that from observing him for hours, but I’d never imagined how it would feel when one hung on to it like a buoy in the middle of the ocean.
The heat radiating from him was enough to burn down this hut, especially where his forearm propped me up under my ass.
His gaze was no longer playful, but scorching, yearning.
My breaths resembled those of a triathlon winner, and my eyes were trained on his.
And his were … on my mouth. From my very center, something spread like warm, soft honey in every direction of my body; the feeling amplified as it reached certain parts of me and turned into throbbing.
Another beat passed before Hunter cleared his throat, and his arms relaxed, releasing me.
I didn’t want to let go of him. I wanted him to touch me more.
My legs trembled, but I managed to stand without falling.
Hunter bent and reached for the chair, and I used that moment to yank the page out of his hand and flip it face down on the table.
“Wonder Woman, why are you so protective of that?” Hunter chuckled, setting the chair upright. “What is that? Did you figure out the message?”
“It’s nothing.” I smoothed my frizzy hair and sat down, my heart racing at the speed of light. “Just a stupid idea.”
How Edward had lived on the island without proper plumbing forever would remain a mystery, but I imagined what I would have done if this was my place.
My dad built a rain barrel watering system for my mother’s garden.
During hot days, we used to joke that the sun had heated the water to the point it could be used for showering instead of watering the plants.
And that made me think about designing an outdoor shower.
On the island, there were plastic bins and an endless supply of fresh water and sunlight. Everything we could need.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Hunter said, swiping one of the bigger journals off the table and placing it on his lap as he sat down. His blue eyes stood out more against the red hues spreading across his cheeks.
“Fine.” I blew my fallen hair off my face and turned the sheet over. “I just thought that you have enough junk here that we could build this.”
Hunter leaned in, pulling the page closer, and studied it. I used the pencil to point at the top of my sketch to eliminate accidental or non-accidental body touching. We’d had enough of that for today.
“That’s the large blue plastic drum you have by the shed,” I said.
Hopefully, it wasn’t used for toxic waste and had no holes.
I move the pencil’s tip to the bottom of the barrel.
“And this is an awful illustration of the watering can toy we could use as a showerhead. We could build it in the open area with a damaged tree halfway between the hut and the waterfall. These are plumbing pipes overhead.”
The “hmmm” Hunter made didn’t sound as if he was all that convinced.
But I went on since he asked, and I had nothing else to lose.
“We’ll secure this drum on this trunk, stick the hose inside, add the watering can on its end and divert water into it from this pipe.
” I circled the bamboo tube. “During the day, the sun will heat the barrel, and voilà, in the evening, we’ll have a warm shower.
” Just thinking about it made me ecstatic. I flashed a triumphant smile.
He hummed. “It’s a fine idea, but it won’t work.”
My smile dropped. “Why not?” That came out whiny with a touch of defensiveness.
Hunter was about to lecture me, just like Phill often did, about my inability to assemble even a simple IKEA bookshelf without connecting it to my laptop.
And yes, I was sure I’d have figured out how to make an even better outdoor shower if I had internet.
There were enough YouTube tutorials available that anyone could build a space rocket in their backyard if they wanted to.
In our situation, I would have looked up how to construct a motored raft.
“It’ll leak all day long.”
“I thought about that, too. We’ll use that sticky goo you use on the boat to fix any leaks.”
“Okay.” He tugged on his bottom lip with his teeth as he eyed me. “What about the faucet? You could bend and pinch the hose a few times, but eventually, it will break.”
“Didn’t you study physics in high school?
” I teased him with the exact phrase my dad had used on me.
“I don’t know the specific law, but it has something to do with the water level always being at the same elevation.
With a rope, we’ll lift a hose above the water level in the barrel, and it shouldn’t leak.
When we’re ready to shower, we lower it down.
” I beamed proudly and wished my father could see me now.
At last, I was doing something besides sticking my nose into a computer screen or book.
He would be so pleased with my inventiveness.
I also pondered, not for the first time, if he would be pleased with me for trying to fulfill his sailing dream, or if he would tell me it was solely meant for him?
Hunter hummed again, nodding. “Okay,” he said, straightening in his seat.
That was all? He did not find it impressive.
I knew it was a stupid idea. I wanted to ask (shout), “What do you mean, okay and hmm?” but I was afraid he would turn into Phill and belittle me with cheap and baseless facts, twisting them in such a way that it would crush my self-confidence. I didn’t want that.
Plastering a fake smile, I removed my sketch from his view and added it to the pile of papers with our dismissed ideas about the puzzling message. “Let’s get back to working on these numbers.”
* * *
“I don’t think I can take this anymore,” Hunter said about an hour later, leaning back on the chair and linking his long fingers behind his head.
His plain, light green T-shirt stretched across his broad chest and clung around his biceps.
“Do you want to go for a swim with me, and then I’ll start on our dinner? ”
“I came from a family of robotics engineers and financial modelers. Math is my second nature. Algorithms were my second language. I can’t give up just yet,” I said. “I need to beat this.”
In truth, it wasn’t a genuine excuse for me not going.
Working so close together we frequently touched and leaned on each other more often when it could have been easily avoided, his knee pressing to mine, or my hand resting on his forearm. And I think it was all my doing.
“I’m not in a swimming mood.” I nudged his foot slightly with mine—see, I could have avoided that—while my gaze pointlessly zigzagged across the five diagrams we had created. “If I get tired of this, I might read a gardening book. You have fun.” I saluted him and flipped to a new page.
Pressing the pencil tip on the sheet, I closed my eyes and tried to envision the numbers for a minute, but all I could see was water, Hunter, and me next to him. Oh, why not. I dropped the pencil on the paper and stripped to my bikini.
On the porch, I glanced up just in time to see Hunter stopped short before the water.
The sun was already down but there was enough light for me to see him fidgeting with his shorts, and then taking them off.
Oh. My. God. I should have felt some embarrassment, but I didn’t.
And that mortified me. I stumbled backward into the house and knelt before the bookshelf, the vivid image of Hunter’s naked ass imprinted in my vision.
Naked everything. Well, not everything. He didn’t turn around. Shame.
There was no way I could go for a swim now. Or maybe I should. Nope. I wasn’t that brave.
I yanked a T-shirt and shorts back on and sunk onto the couch with the Coastal Gardening book, the metal springs inside the worn-out cushions jabbing at my butt.
I turned to the “Crops” chapter. Educating myself with something new should have taken my mind off Hunter’s nakedness.
Hunter wore nothing under those shorts. Was it every day or just today?
I shifted in my seat. Good grief, he had a nice butt.
Besides Phill I’d never seen any man nude.
Well, a few times, I had spotted a few guys parading in hammock thongs in Miami Beach (when they really shouldn’t have) but I blocked that image out of my memory.
I was five pages into the chapter but couldn’t recall anything I’d read. Did I even read it? Was he still swimming? I got up from the sofa, clutching the book to my chest, and edged to the door to peek outside.
Hunter had returned from the beach—with his shorts on—several feet away from the porch. I hurried back, dropped the damn book in front of the couch, snatched it up, sat down, flipped it open, and pretended to be immersed in it.
“How was your swim?” I asked without lifting my gaze when he came in, my palms damp at the thought of what was hidden under his shorts.
“Fine.” Hunter retrieved a brown sack of rice from the cabinet near the couch. “You should have joined me.”
My breathing increased, and I hummed my answer. My focus was glued to a page with an image of some odd structure, but from the corner of my eyes, Hunter’s chiseled torso taunted me.
He crossed the room to the door. “Must be an interesting book.”
“Yes, very informative.” I regarded Hunter’s broad shoulders, saltwater clinging to his tan skin.
“Easy to read?” He turned, meeting my eyes.
“Yes, why?”
His mouth curled into a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Because you’re holding it upside down.”
Damn it. I flipped it around.