26. Dylan
TWENTY-SIX
DYLAN
We stand opposite each other with the case on the sand between us. Adrian has his arms crossed over his chest, and he’s glaring at the bright orange nylon. It really looks like he’s about a second away from kicking it.
He’s been like this since my small I-came-this-close-to-dying moment. I sound flippant, I know, but I’ve almost died twice in the last few days, so for all intents and purposes, I’m getting used to it.
Also, I had Adrian’s lips on mine.
It’s all I can think about.
It’s not like I’m under any illusions that it was anything even resembling a kiss. He was giving me mouth-to-mouth.
But it was still his lips on mine.
I’ve been moving around in this strange haze all morning, trying to act normal. I’ve had a lot of practice hiding. Over the years, I’ve become a professional at pushing my feelings down and never showing them.
It’s coming in handy now.
I ignore the way my heart keeps skipping, and I ignore the jolts of excitement in my chest and the flutters in my stomach.
I tilt my head to the side and study the life raft case. “Should we inflate this thing or…”
“Yeah, let’s see what we’ve got,” he says.
There’s a cord on the side. Adrian sits on his haunches and tugs. The life raft deploys at once, air rushing into it with a loud whoosh , and it unfolds smoothly on the sand in front of us.
I eye the life raft and then glance at Adrian.
“Well. Okay,” I say. I’ve never seen a life raft before. I mean, I’ve seen pictures, but this thing is bigger in real life. It’s like a kiddie pool. It’s a hexagonal shape with its sides inflated, and an attached canopy on top. “I think we got ourselves a tent.”
He looks at me then, and it’s a relief to see that at least for right now, he looks a tiny bit more relaxed. A tiny bit more like himself.
“You mean we don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night with rain pouring down on us and then freeze our dicks off after? I can live with that.”
He sends me a small smile, and I grin back. “You can still sleep outside if that’s something you’re into.”
“No. I’m pretty fond of my dick, so I’d like to keep it around if at all possible.”
I do my best not to think about Adrian’s dick. Adrian’s dick is and has always been off-limits, no matter how fond of it he is. Or how fond of it I could be, given the chance.
I look away and order myself to be normal.
It shouldn’t be this difficult. I’ve got so much experience, damnit! But that brief mouth-to-mouth connection has jolted something in my brain that should’ve been dormant by now.
All the craving and yearning and aching and wanting—it comes back with a vengeance. Not that it ever fully went away, but it’s been in hibernation.
Not anymore.
I can’t deal with that right now, so instead I take a deep breath and force myself to concentrate on the raft. It’s my lifeline to normalcy.
“Is there anything else in there?” I ask. “Like… a survival kit or something?”
Adrian crouches down and crawls into the life raft.
“Nice place,” he calls out. “Very homey.”
“Is it?”
“It’s got a roof that doesn’t leak.”
“As far as you know.”
He peeks out from behind the canopy. “Now who’s the pessimist?”
“Anything else interesting in there while you’re mentally doing the decorating in your new home?”
“ Our new home.” He grins and waggles his brows before he pulls out another small case. “This is my moving in present for you.”
I let out a big breath of relief and finally manage a sincere smile. “Fuck yes. What have you got for me?”
We both drop to the sand on our knees, and Adrian opens the flap of the pack. There are two separate smaller packs inside, both properly sealed so water can’t get to them.
“Repair kit,” Adrian reads from the front. “Bailer, sponge, pump, whistle, signal mirror, hand flares, sea anchor, knife.” He looks up, excitement and relief all over his face. “We can use all of it if?—”
He stops speaking abruptly. He doesn’t have to finish. We can use all of it if nobody comes for us. It’s the unspoken fear we both carry around.
It’s been four days.
Shouldn’t they have found us by now?
“Medical kit,” Adrian says a bit too loudly and too brightly. Once again, he’s protecting me.
“What’s in it?” I ask with the same too-bright tone. Fake it until you make it.
“A whole lot of bandages. Band-Aids. Safety pins. More bandages. Paraffin gauze.” He looks up. “No idea what that’s for.”
“Burns,” I say, remembering a long-ago first aid course from high school. “Superficial ones.”
Adrian nods before he continues, “Antiseptic cream. Painkillers. Antihistamines. Scissors.” Suddenly, his hands stop moving inside the case. He lets out a victorious shout of joy and pulls out a plastic bottle. “Emergency clean water.”
I grab the bottle from his hands and hold it reverently.
“Holy shit,” I breathe out. “Water.”
I wrestle the cap off, which takes a bit of time because my hands are all shaky. I take a big gulp of water and hand the bottle to Adrian. We empty it between the two of us in no time at all.
The water tastes stale, but that barely registers because it’s water. Pure, clean water.
We share those last tiny drops between the two of us before Adrian sits back on his haunches, an expression of pure bliss on his face for a moment before his gaze moves over everything we found from the life raft case.
“We can figure out a funnel of some sort and the rain will fill the bottle back up,” I say.
He nods and absently picks up the signal mirror.
“Ever used one of these?” he asks.
I shake my head.
He turns the mirror over between his fingers. “You have to tilt it up toward the sun and?—”
He stops speaking and frowns when he picks up the small envelope the signal mirror was in.
“Uh, Adrian?”
“Yeah?” he says distractedly, still frowning, but then he blinks and comes back to the present. “I think—guess—we can try and use this to start a fire.”
I eye the mirror.
“Really? This isn’t like a normal mirror, though, is it? Will that still work?”
“We can at least try. It’s possible to do it, but it’s tricky. Better than rubbing sticks together, though. We need sunlight, but there’s plenty of that here.”
I process what he’s saying for a bit, and once I’m done, a slow smile spreads over my face. “I knew you’d be useful one of these days, and that blessed time has finally arrived.”
He flips his middle finger up, lips twitching. “Fuck off. I’m a god among men. You’re lucky you’re stranded with me and not some useless rando.”
“Should I bow?”
“At the very least.”
“This feels like one of those things where right now you’re expecting a pat on the back, but it’ll escalate in a snap, and pretty soon you’ll be demanding worship sessions complete with blood sacrifices during the full moon.”
He nods seriously. “That was the plan.”
We grin at each other, and then he’s all business. “We need dry wood. We need tinder, and we need kindling.”
“On it, boss.” I salute him.
For the next hour, we rummage around the forest by the shore and gather everything that seems like it’s dry and would burn.
We’re surrounded by trees, but the task isn’t an easy one.
This is the tropics, so everything that surrounds us is at the mercy of the humidity.
The air. The ground. The trees themselves.
It all feels damp to the touch, to the point where it’s difficult to say if the branches I find are actually wet or if it just feels like it because I’m sweating so much.
Still, it feels good to have a distraction. For a moment, I almost manage to forget the gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach.
Adrian drops an armful of branches on the sand, and I add my loot. I turn my pockets inside out and pull out the dry leaves I found under some low-hanging branches, and Adrian supplies the coconut husks. Luckily we have plenty of those, and they look promisingly flammable.
I’m in a bit of a sad state of self-inflicted pessimism where I don’t want to get my hopes up too much. This might very well fail, and then I’ll probably jump off a cliff out of desperation. Better to keep my expectations low.
Adrian arranges the tinder and kindling. He rubs the fibers of the coconut husk between his fingers to separate them then arranges them in a pile. He takes the signal mirror, glances at the sky, and holds the rectangle up at an angle. He adjusts the height for a while.
It takes time to aim the light precisely, and I try not to be too impatient or too hopeful.
It takes a bit of time and a few adjustments, but then there’s suddenly a tendril of smoke, so faint I can barely see it in the bright sunlight.
Adrian puts more of the coconut husk into the smoke.
Slowly, so very slowly, he coaxes the smoke into a tiny flame.
He adds little sticks and leaves.
Then bigger sticks.
Then a branch.
Then two.
The whole time, I watch silently like it’s the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.
Eventually, Adrian sits back on his haunches and blows out a big breath.
“Well,” he says, “that ought to do it.”
“You can have that blood sacrifice,” I say.
He laughs, and for this tiny moment, he sounds like the old Adrian.
“But not the worship session under a full moon?” He quirks an eyebrow at me.
“Let’s leave some things in our back pocket for later. To keep you motivated.”
He laughs again.
My shoulders relax, and I let out a breath of relief.
We secure the life raft between two palm trees. I’m not sure what the storm situation is in this part of the world, but I imagine it’s not something unheard of, so it’d be better to make sure this thing stays still.
The knife from the repair kit isn’t the sturdiest thing I’ve ever seen, but it cuts through bamboo well enough, so we chop down as much as we can, ramming the pieces into the sand by the ends and securing them with rocks to create a kind of bamboo teepee-like structure above the life raft.
For dinner, we share more coconuts.
“Fucking coconuts,” Adrian says with clear disgust. I get where he’s coming from, I really do, but for now we’re not outright starving. Sure, we’re on the brink of starvation, but that’s better than the alternative.
Problem for another day. I refuse to think about it right now.
The firelight paints the darkness in oranges and yellows and has the unexpected benefit that it keeps the mosquitoes at bay.
And stars are out.
So many stars.
Numerous stars.
Endless stars.
It’s been a long day, and I’m beat. I keep yawning so hard my eyes water.
“Go to bed,” Adrian says after my twentieth yawn.
I only manage a nod. He does something with the fire, but I’m too tired to pay attention.
I drag myself into the life raft. I don’t have any way to brush my teeth, and I’m well aware of how disgusting they’re starting to feel, so I lift the hem of my T-shirt and scrub it over my teeth as best I can.
I don’t think it accomplishes anything, but it’s the best I can do.
I lie down on my back and try to get comfortable.
I miss my pillow.
And my blanket.
I miss home.
Adrian crawls in as if summoned by my morose thoughts.
“It’s like a tent,” he says appreciatively.
I tilt my head to the side. That thought makes it a bit better. I’ve slept in plenty of tents over the years. This is just another one.
Adrian settles in next to me, and I close my eyes.
This island is loud. Especially at night. I can hear frogs, insects, rodents. Leaves rustle. Branches snap. Some animal screeches. Something flaps.
They’re foreign noises. Far removed from the sirens and engines I hear outside my window in San Francisco. It’s unnerving and unfamiliar, but tonight I’m tired enough that it doesn’t bother me as much as the previous nights.
The nylon underneath us makes a swishing noise when Adrian moves. It’s a comforting sound. He’s still here, right next to me. I’m not alone.
“Do you want my sweater?” I mumble, already half-asleep.
He’s silent for a second.
“Why?” he asks.
“So you won’t be cold.”
“But then you would be cold.” There’s a smile in his voice.
“I’m wearing pants.” In my sleepy brain, it makes sense.
He chuckles softly. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. It’s warm enough here.”
I don’t know if he says anything else, because I succumb to sleep.