32. Pippi
“I am human.”
In the dream, it was a man saying those words.
The tall, long-limbed man sat with me beneath the stars, his body glowing beneath the moonlight as we listened to the waves tumble beneath the inlet cliffs.
I turned to him as he spoke, wanting to see him.
But no matter how I squinted and strained, the details of his face kept slipping out of my brain.
Like creamy yolk sludging off a half-cooked egg.
“You’re not human, though,” I said to him.
The man huffed and pulled me to him, nestling my rump between his thighs and twining his arms around my torso. Wrapping every part of his body around me.
“I am.” His chin rested atop my head. “Pippi!”
His voice sounded different when he said my name. Distant. As though he’d slipped away from me.
I nestled back, burrowing myself into him. But his warmth vanished.
“Pippi. Wake up.”
I jolted, my eyes springing open, and I grimaced when my cheek scraped against the scraggy scales on Alistair’s head. “Was I asleep?” I croaked, dumbfounded. My voice definitely sounded sleep squeaky. I had grit in my eyes—my very swollen and puffy eyes—and wet drool painted my cheek.
“You were,” Alistair said. “And you s-s-s-snore . Did you know that?”
Err…yeah. Jackson might’ve mentioned that at one point.
“It’s… cute .”
I wiped the drool from my chin on the sleeve of my crusty shirt—crusty, because it’d dried with the salt from the sea clinging onto the fabric, making it gritty and stiff.
Gross.
I sneezed when a bit of the salt flaked off and floated up my nose.
And then I sneezed again, because the first one didn’t clear the gunk out.
And then three more times, because my nose was generally a jerk when I first woke up and threw a hissy fit over every particle of dirt and dust it had to inhale.
“Oh dear.” Alistair laughed once the fit had subsided. “Waking hurts?”
“It does today.” Because I’d been sound asleep. A slumber so deep, it was almost a coma.
I yawned—wide enough to make my jaw pop—and stretched my hands over my head as I sat up. Surprisingly, my back wasn’t sore. My hips didn’t creak. All the aches and pains I usually had first thing in the morning weren’t there.
Apparently, Alistair made for a comfy mattress.
My hair though… Yikes.
The dried salt had my curls sticking up in a porcupine style.
“Ugh.” I finger-combed the strands, wincing when they crunched. “Jeeze, I’m sorry, Alistair. I spent half the night crying, and then I passed out on you. I wasn’t very good company, huh?”
“You were lovely,” he said.
“H-h-how long was I o-o-o-out?” This yawn started as a quiver in my belly and it rolled upward, gathering momentum, until it wrenched my mouth open and escaped.
“A while. And I didn’t want to wake you. But it’s nearing orb…sun-sunrise.”
Wakefulness crashed over me like an icy wave. “It is !? Oh no. I…Gosh, Alistair, I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to stay out this late! I have to get back.”
“You’re nearly back, Pippi,” Alistair soothed. “But I can’t stay above the surface. And I didn’t want to go under while you slept…”
“Oh.” It took a few seconds before realization actually hit me. “ Oh. Yeah. Well, thank you for the heads up.” I clambered to my feet, clutching onto his horn for support. “No one likes to wake up with a soggy bottom, eh?”
He purred an affirmative as his head sank beneath the surface.
I tried not to squeal when the frigid water slashed into my bare feet.
Tried.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“No worries.” I shook my left foot, trying to get the blood flowing back to my toes. “I can’t believe I passed out like that.”
“You needed it. The sleep.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I chewed on my lip as Alistair passed the jagged cliffs bordering the inlet.
Those craggy rocks had been in my dream too, and they’d looked just as malicious beneath a sparkling blanket of moonlight as they did swaddled in curtains of fog.
The dream man had been beautiful, though, with his skin glowing under the ethereal light.
And he’d felt as solid, warm, and real as the rocks around us.
But he wasn’t.
“I am human.”
The man was a wish. My heart’s mournful, desperate desire for Alistair—this charming creature I’d grown so attached to—to be a human. Someone I could take with me, away from this island. Someone I could share a life with.
In just a scant handful of days, I’d somehow forged a connection with Alistair that ran deeper than any other. But I couldn’t keep him.
We were two lonely souls that lifted each other up. We belonged together.
But we couldn’t be together.
So I dreamed of him as a human man. And grieved when that dream ended.
“We’re here. Pippi,” Alistair said.
I blinked. Realized I’d been blankly staring at my hand, where it was curled around his horn, and looked up.
My eyes immediately found the cliff path that would lead to my cottage.
My tennis shoes were still scattered there, one teetering close to the edge while the other was thrown back against the rocks.
Because I’d ripped them off with shaky hands and had been too blinded by tears to notice where I’d chucked them.
My mouth suddenly went dry. Painfully so. The sort of dry that hurt to swallow.
I didn’t want to leave Alistair—leave this magical, emotional, exhausting, wonderful night we’d shared.
I didn’t want to go back to Jackson and confront… everything. The argument. Our relationship. All the wounds and blisters that would hurt when we dug into them, but that all needed to be lanced to heal.
“It will be alright, Pippi,” Alistair said when I hesitated.
I nodded and clambered up onto the cliffs. “Yeah. We’ll…we’ll work it out, I’m sure. But he’s gotta be furious that I didn’t come home last night. And made him worry.”
“He won’t be m-mad,” Alistair assured me. “Once he sees you’re okay.”
I nodded, even as doubt curdled in my belly.
My fingers were stiff as I grabbed my shoes and slipped them back over my feet, wincing at the slimy feeling of shoving wet toes into damp pleather. And the shaking got worse as I set to my hair, trying, and failing, to look a little less like Medusa’s rabid pet porcupine.
“Guess we’re going with a braid.” But my hands struggled with that simple plait.
The stiff strands of hair kept springing out of the twines.
My fingers kept getting the chunks tangled.
I imagined in the end, it looked less like a braid and more like a half-melted cotton candy spiral. But it would have to do.
“How do I look?” I asked Alistair as I straightened my shirt and flexed my legs to get the stiffness out of my jeans.
“From what you can see, anyway? Am I presentable? Or am I—Oh shoot. I didn’t have makeup on, did I?
” I wiped my hand over my cheeks. “Phew. Okay. I took it off earlier. Forgot about that. Drunk raccoon face averted.”
“You look lovely, Pippi.” Alistair’s sadness nestled into my chest, cuddling against my own sorrow. “Always.”
Jackson wasn’t in the cottage when I got there.
And guilt gnawed at me.
I’d been so selfish last night.
I changed quickly, squirming out of my sea salt stiff clothes and shimmying into the skirt and blouse I’d worn yesterday, chewing at my lip the whole time, and telling myself that I needed to take these few minutes to put myself together.
So when I found him, I wouldn’t stink of the sea and have him half out of his mind worrying if I’d tried to drown myself.
And I took thirty seconds to reassess myself in the mirror. My hair wasn’t so bad—the sloppy braid almost looked stylish—but my face.
Stars.
Puffy red eyes peered back at me from the mirror. Red stained my cheeks as well—either from the scrub of saltwater against my skin, the tears, or both.
This was going to be a heavy makeup day, for sure. Cold compresses for the eyes. Lots of concealer. And then no one would know I’d spent the night bawling and swapping sob stories with the Loch Ness Monster.
But, for now, I wiped the cakey flakes of dried salt off my cheeks and headed out the door.
I didn’t have to go far to find Jackson.
He meandered through the fog, his hands grappling to free the key from his pocket. Wrath engulfed his beautiful eyes when he glanced up and saw me standing in the open door.
“Jackson!” I called, waving my arm. “I’m?—”
“Decided to come back, have you?” He scowled as he slammed the key back into his pocket.
“I—”
“I figured you were bunking with your gal pals. So I went to breakfast without you. Sorry.”
Breakfast?
I glanced up at the fog over our heads. “It’s barely dawn.”
“Kian and some of the others went for a pre-dawn hike up in the mountains. We got to Brew & Bites just as they started serving breakfast. I would’ve invited you, but you bailed on me.
We saw the banshees and the will-o’-the-wisps, by the way.
So, I hope your little tantrum was worth missing out on an awesome experience. ”
“ Tantrum?”
“But at least you’re here, and I won’t have to go drag you out of the chicks’ house. Did you cool your heels any? I hope so.” He knocked his shoulder into mine as he bulldozed into the cottage.
Rage peeled off him in big, hot, lashing waves. They struck me harder than his body had—hard enough to have me flopping back into the doorway.
Jackson never turned his eyes to me. He strode toward our bedroom, peeling his shirt over his head.
I followed him. Numbly.
“You can shower after me,” he snapped. “And you need to be ready to leave by 10:00 a.m.”
“I…” The words choked me. There were too many spiraling up my throat too fast for my brain to process. “W-w-w-we...”
Goodness, is this how Alistair feels when trying to speak?
Poor thing.
I cleared my throat, knocking the words loose, and swallowing the ones I didn’t need. “Jackson,” I whispered, “can we talk?”
“The boat tour takes off at 11:00 a.m. Unless you’d rather sit that out as well?
” Jackson shrugged out of his pants and stomped into the bathroom.
Over the hiss and rattle of the shower starting, he added, “But I paid for two tickets. And they were pricey. And you’ve already cost me a fortune on this trip, so it would be nice if you could stop PMS-ing for the day and go on the boat tour with me. ”
My gabbers were flasted. Thoroughly.
I couldn’t even think straight.
It took me several seconds to realize I’d left the front door wide open.
Several more to have the sense to close it.
He’d gone hiking ?
Ate breakfast.
Booked a boat tour.
There’d been no concern from him when he’d seen me standing at the door. No remorse or worry. Just anger and annoyance.
He hadn’t cared where I was. Hadn’t paused to wonder why I was upset. He’d just carried on with his trip and expected me to “ cool my heels ” and go along with it.
He didn’t care. Maybe he never had.
And I’d felt guilty for going out with Alistair.
Now I hated that I’d felt guilty.
Hated myself for hating that I’d felt guilty.
What I’d done was wrong.
But Jackson…
Heat exploded over my skin, making me itch. And fume.
I stormed into the bathroom.
His towering shadow wriggled behind the thin shower curtain as he scrubbed at his hair.
I ripped the curtain aside.
“If you’re thinking of using sex as an apology”—Jackson flicked shampoo out of his eyes—“you better get to your knees. I’m not interested in anything else.”
“We need to talk,” I snapped.
His eyes scorched into mine. “About what ?”
“How about…”
The fact that you’re a selfish prick.
And I was too stupid to see it.
“...L-last night,” I said, after only a brief stutter. “And this trip. And us. ”
Jackson stuck his head under the trickling water and angrily scrubbed the shampoo off. “I can’t believe this. You’re still sour. Still? For fuck’s sake. What is the matter, Pippi?”
“I’m trying to tell you?—"
“You haven’t been right since we came here.”
“Because I didn’t want to come here.”
He closed his eyes. “I swear to fucking…I surprise my girlfriend with a dream vacation?—”
“This wasn’t my dream vacation.”
“—I bring her to a magical island?—”
“—knowing she’s terrified of the ocean. You forgot that part.”
“And she decides to be an ungrateful bitch.” He flicked water at me.
“ Ungrateful? ”
“I don’t know what the fuck got into your head—” Jackson broke off, sudsing up a rag and scrubbing his body down. An action that, a week or so ago, might’ve left me salivating. And he was so deliberate about how he did it. Fondling his chest. His biceps. His cock.
But I’d never been so cold.
Sexually cold, at least.
The anger was broiling.
“—but I miss my happy girl,” he finished.
“I don’t think your happy girl has been happy . Not for a while.”
He heaved a big sigh.
“We really need to talk about this, Jackson. I can give you some time so we can both cool off.”
“We don’t have time. We have to be at the dock in a few hours.”
I bristled. “Why on earth would you buy?—”
“Because everyone is going to be on this tour, Pippi!” Jackson threw his rag at me. “ Everyone. And maybe you don’t give a shit about the people I like, but can you at least appreciate that I enjoy their company?”
“Sure I can. When you start appreciating the same thing about my friends.”
He rinsed himself, glaring at me the whole time, and then flicked the shower off. “Can you stop being selfish?—”
“How dare ?—”
“—and be in a civil mood. Then maybe, maybe, I’ll be civil for whatever pointless talk you wanna have.” He snatched a towel off the hook.
And, before I could muster up an insult, Jackson walked out of the bathroom and slammed the door in my face.