47. Adrian
FORTY-SEVEN
ADRIAN
“There’s sand in my ass,” Dylan grumbles, fidgeting so that I cut the strand of hair I’m holding much shorter than I initially intended.
“Stop fidgeting, then.”
He’s sitting on the fabric of the sea anchor, and every time he moves he adds more sand to it by accident.
“I should’ve worn shorts,” he says grimly and makes a face.
“Do you even know where yours are?”
We’ve been spending a lot of time naked lately.
For one thing, both our shorts and underwear are showing some serious signs of wear and tear after more than two years on the island.
And there’s also the fact that not wearing any clothes means easy access to strategic body parts, and that’s something I’ve come to appreciate a lot. A lot .
I pull his hair gently. “Stay still, or you’re gonna have to figure out how to do a combover to cover the bald spots I’m giving you.”
“ You’re gonna have to figure out how to give me a combover. You’re the one who has to look at me. I haven’t seen a mirror in two years. For all I know I have warts on my nose by now.”
“I’m pretty sure you’d feel a wart on your nose.”
“I don’t go around touching myself all the time.”
“That’s disappointing,” I say mildly.
He looks up over his head and grins at me, once again fucking up the haircut I’m trying to give him.
I’ve given up and wear my hair long, sometimes in a ponytail, sometimes in a bun, or when Dylan is in a charitable mood, he’ll braid my hair.
I use a piece of coconut rope to secure it and call it good.
Dylan hates it when his hair gets too long.
It gets in his face and sticks to his cheeks, and he pretends he’s fine with it, but I know better.
I’m pretty sure if he had to make a list of the things he hates about this island, the hair thing would come out on top.
Fuck the brushes with death; those he can handle, but the hair in his face… So I cut it for him every few months.
I never considered giving a haircut an intimate thing. It is when you’re sitting naked on a beach behind the guy you’re?—
I frown.
Lately, I can’t seem to make myself think of what Dylan and I are doing as fucking.
The word grates. It seems too… crude? I don’t know.
It’s been messing me up a bit. Not that I spend too much time pondering my word choices about getting my dick somewhere in close proximity to Dylan. I’m more of a doer than a thinker.
But it’s… Things are getting just a bit weird.
Like, lately when I look at him, there’s this weird flapping feeling somewhere around my solar plexus. My chest feels just a bit tight then, but not exactly in a bad way. More like I’m bracing for an adrenaline rush.
I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels weird.
It’s almost like those butterflies I got when I first saw Freya, but that doesn’t make any sense.
First of all, it’s Dylan. Also, it’s not quite the same.
With Freya, everything was a rush. A spark that lights everything on fire.
A dizzying feeling where it almost felt like my body reacted first, and my mind needed to catch up later.
Whatever is happening right now is slow.
And intense . The kind of intense that makes it feel like my bones are vibrating.
It’s a tide rising, where I didn’t even realize it’s happening at first, but then suddenly I’m surrounded by something .
It’s a steady glow in my chest that hits somehow deeper, lights up the parts inside me I didn’t even know existed.
It’s not supposed to feel like this.
It’s Dylan.
My Dylan.
We’re easy company and comfort and laughter.
We’re not supposed to be looks that hold too long and touches that linger.
I didn’t ask for the confusing heat in my chest and the slow, unsettling realization that I’m tied to him in a much deeper way than I ever imagined.
I didn’t pay attention when or how I started feeling so lost when he wasn’t near me.
And is any of it even real?
Maybe I’m just coming down with something.
Whatever is happening, I keep my mouth shut. I can’t make Dylan nervous about some mysterious tropical fever I’m possibly developing.
“Um, are you almost done?” Dylan’s voice jerks me out of my thoughts, and I look down at where I’ve apparently just randomly been moving my fingers through his hair.
“Almost.” I quickly cut off the next strand.
Dylan closes his eyes and hums in contentment. He likes my fingers in his hair. Always has.
“I suck at this,” I say when I look at the slightly uneven haircut I’ve given him. You’d think I’d have gotten better at this after all this practice.
“Like at a lot of stuff.” Dylan tilts his head back until he can look at me. “Luckily for you, your sucking is one of my favorite things.”
I grin and kiss him, my nose bumping into his jaw. He laughs, and the sound gives me that fluttering feeling in the solar plexus again. It’s been happening more and more frequently.
We kiss until Dylan groans and takes his dick in his hand. He leans his head against my thigh, and I cover his mouth with mine again while he strokes himself.
It’s a hot-as-fuck sight.
He sighs into my mouth, all content as he keeps up the lazy strokes. I wrap my hand around my own dick.
He comes all over his stomach and chest, and I come all over his back in a matter of minutes.
“Oh good. Another swim,” Dylan says with a mock sigh once our heart rates return to normal after the orgasms.
“Yeah, washing is the worst.” I smack a quick kiss on his forehead before I pat his thigh. “Come on. I’ll do your back.”
“You already did my back. It’s what got me into this situation.”
I laugh, and we go and take that swim. Later, we lie in the shadow of the palm tree doing absolutely nothing.
“School starts back up again at home soon,” Dylan says absently, squinting at the horizon and the gathering rain clouds in the distance.
“Do you miss it?”
He shrugs. “I always liked school.”
“You can enroll once we get off this island.”
He’s silent for a while. “I’m not sure I want to. It feels like another life. Someone else’s life. I’m not sure I even know how I’d go back to that.”
I nod because I get it—the hesitation and confusion about having any kind of hope of going back. He doesn’t have to explain any of it.
I’m also more than a little relieved about that.
He’d come back home.
We’re quiet again. A lone bird sings somewhere above our heads, and thunder rumbles somewhere in the distance.
“We should head inside soon.” Dylan yawns.
“Why San Francisco?” I blurt.
He goes very still next to me for a moment before he shakes it off. “What do you mean why San Francisco?”
“Why did you move away? Why the other side of the country?”
It takes him forever to answer. “It’s a good school.”
“We have those close to home too.” I frown. “You didn’t get into any on the East Coast?” It doesn’t make sense. Dylan’s smart.
He turns his head and looks at me.
“I didn’t apply to any schools near home,” he says.
I blink at him. That one comes as a surprise. “Why?”
I don’t know why I’m digging for some deep meaning behind his actions. It might very well be that he just wanted an adventure.
But…
It doesn’t feel like Dylan.
It just doesn’t.
Dylan loves us. He never wanted to leave.
I was the one who pushed for a break to go traveling and see what’s out there.
I was the one who wanted an adventure, and I wanted to drag Dylan with me, only he didn’t come.
I always knew he didn’t really want to go.
The sudden move to San Francisco… It never made sense.
And the idea that we might get back home, and then he’d leave again… Even the mere thought makes my breathing quicken and the first notes of panic echo through my insides.
“Why?” I repeat when he still hasn’t said anything.
“I couldn’t stay.”
That’s really not an answer. “Why?”
He pushes himself up into a sitting position and sends me a glare. “I just couldn’t, okay?”
I lick my dry lips and sit up too. “What about when we get back home?”
He rolls his eyes. “With all these rescue planes everywhere?”
“We’re going home one of these days.”
He clamps his mouth shut for a little bit before he pushes himself to his feet. That’s when the first drops of rain come down.
“We should get inside,” he says.
“Dyl.” I stop him by grabbing his arm. “Tell me you’re staying in Boston once we get back.”
He fucking looks away.
I’m starting to get a serious urge to shake him.
He starts for the raft again. Sporadic raindrops turn into a steady downpour.
“Dylan!” I call.
He ignores me, so I run after him and pull him to a stop. Rain hammers down on us.
“What?” he asks in an exasperated voice.
“When we get back, you won’t leave, right?”
He closes his eyes and draws in a slow, deep breath before he opens them again. “Why do you care?”
I stare at him. “What does that mean?”
He drags his hand through his wet hair and looks away before he focuses his gaze on me again. “You don’t need me.”
I stare at him because he can’t mean that.
Doesn’t he get it? Doesn’t he see that I can’t do anything without him anymore?
“That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“You don’t. You have a life back home. You have people. You have—” He stops speaking abruptly and looks down at his feet. “You don’t… You don’t need me.”
We both know what the unspoken word is. Who it is.
It’s the first time we’ve brought Freya up out loud to each other.
He looks at me, rain-soaked, drops of water clinging to his lashes.
“What the fuck are we doing?” he asks softly. So softly that I can barely hear it over the pounding rain.
I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. Only that the idea of giving Dylan up makes me feel like I’m being strangled. He’s the only real thing in my life.
I have to make it clear. I have to show him. I have to make him need me as much as I need him in my life. Because I do. It’s not just that I want him with me. Wanting implies some agency. I don’t have any.
I need him.
He looks away. “I don’t think?—”
“Play a game with me,” I say loudly. I’m breathing harshly, trying to calm myself down enough to escape the suffocating vines that have wrapped themselves around my chest tighter and tighter. “Play a game with me.”
“No.” He takes a step back. “No, no, no. We’re not?—”
“East Coast or West Coast?” I talk over him.
He’s quiet for so long I don’t think he’s going to give in, but then…
“East,” he sighs.
“Big city or a small town?”
He looks away and swallows hard. “I don’t?—”
“You’re doing it wrong. Answer the question. Don’t think.”
He lets out a shaky breath. “A private plot of land somewhere far from other people, but close to the family,” he whispers.
“A house?”
He nods and closes his eyes. “A big one. Cozy enough for two people, but with enough room for when family comes to visit.” He blows out a slow breath.
“Big trees in the front yard and a swing attached to one of them. A large dining table for Christmas dinner and a huge backyard for birthdays and just hanging out in the summer evenings. Maybe a firepit. A big back porch with French doors leading to the kitchen, and in the summer those would be open all the time.”
“You know the cat and dog will just keep wandering in and out the whole day. Don’t even get me started on the chickens,” I say as levelly as I can. I started this game. I didn’t know what I’d started; how confused and messed up it’d make me feel. How, in my head, I’m in that house with Dylan.
Forever.
Because there isn’t another option. There is no way for me to be anywhere else but with him.
My heart keeps getting louder and louder, and I’m not sure whether it’s fervent wishing or panic anymore. Whether what he’s saying and the underlying meaning of it freaks me out, or if I crave all of it.
“Chickens need a fence,” Dylan says. His eyes are still closed, and now there’s the tiniest smile in the corner of his mouth. “Do you think keeping bees is difficult?” He opens his eyes and sends me a questioning look.
I force myself to swallow, despite my dry throat. “I’m sure it’s possible to learn that somewhere.”
He hums, getting a faraway look in his eyes. The small smile stays in place.
“They’re good for the ecosystem.”
“Uh-huh,” I say in a choked voice.
Dylan snaps my eyes back to me, and I can see the moment when he reads what I’m feeling like I’m a goddamn open book, because to Dylan I am a goddamn open book.
Always have been. He knows me better than anyone else in the whole world.
I’m spiraling into a tornado of confusion because I don’t understand anything anymore, and it’s freaking me the fuck out.
Dylan’s breath hitches.
His hair is plastered to his skull, and a ray of sunshine peeks through the thick clouds and lands straight on his cheek.
“I…” I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to explain what I’m feeling. That I’m freaking out but not because of him, but also a lot because of him.
“Asshole,” he rasps out, and then he turns on his heel and takes off running, and I can’t make my feet move to go after him, so I stand there, rooted in place on the wet stand, feeling like everything—my whole life and my whole world—has just been turned upside down, stuffed into a blender, shaken, chopped up, stirred, and then poured out on the floor.
There. Piece it back together, why don’t you?
What the fuck?