27
Day 67 – Tack
I woke with her under me, shocked that we hadn’t shifted in our sleep. She amazed me. I didn’t feel her forgiveness, but I felt her letting me in. Slowly. Carefully. Deeply. I was getting under her skin as much as she was getting beneath mine.
“Good morning,” she whispered, her voice husky with sleep.
“Good morning,” I sighed, nibbling at her neck. I didn’t typically spend the full night with a woman, but I’d spent many with Juliet. I liked knowing she was next to me. I’d stopped thinking she was a dream and started accepting her as my reality. We had so much to do, so much to learn, but we were taking steps in the right direction.
“What’s that sound?” she said. I hadn’t heard anything and I chuckled.
“I think it’s my stomach,” I muttered into her sleep-warm skin. “I’m hungry.” I was starving, but more so, I was famished for her. I wanted second helpings of everything. Moments like this. Days spent together. Nights taking things further. I couldn’t say how far we’d get, but we had months to work things out. Neither of us was going anywhere soon, and there was a certain comfort in that thought.
“It sounds like something’s gurgling. Like a fizzing noise.”
I leaned up on my elbow and a finger traced down the middle of her body, between the valley of her breasts, the flatland of her belly and leading to the bush at the top of her legs. Her hand stopped my journey.
“Tack.” I looked down at her. “I’m serious.”
One tent flap was snapping in the wind. We’d fallen asleep with the tent wide open, and surprisingly, we hadn’t had any visitors. Originally, I had no intention of sharing my things with the wildlife, but how different I felt after two months. I stood to close the flap, assuming it was the noise she heard, when I saw a thin wave of water rush up to the fire circle. Watching the water recede, I noticed the tide had come much closer to the dwelling. More importantly, the waves had begun to crest and crash in a more riotous motion against the beach. The sky was gray—solid gray—which is something we hadn’t seen. Most rain clouds filled and passed easily over the island with blue skies leading the path and trailing behind. This was different. This was a tropical storm.
“Shit,” I hissed, turning back to her, still spread naked over my mattress. I wanted nothing more than to open her and take my time to explore again, but we had more pressing matters. “I think a storm is coming. A big one. Could you help me tie stuff down?”
She sat up and an arm crossed her chest as if that would cover her. I stalked back to the bed.
“Let’s hope it’s nothing, but it might be better to pull up my camp and move some things to your place.”
Her eyes opened wide and she nodded. Then she scrambled off the bed and began dressing. I didn’t want to panic her, but the more I listened to the sound of the waves and the increase in the wind, the more the change in weather hinted at something stronger than a storm. We worked diligently. She collected most of my loose items: pots and pans, coffee pot, the hammock, and placed them in one of my four trunks. While my tent was just inside the jungle edge, the trunks were further back for safe keeping. One stored food. Another was my clothing. Two were full of camp supplies. I dismantled the tent as best I could and dumped it in a relatively empty trunk.
“I think it might be best if I try to tie these to a tree or two.” The way the water was climbing the beach, I didn’t know how far it would reach, but I didn’t need my things floating out to sea. I rolled my sleeping bag and tucked it in a backpack along with a random assortment of clothing and the copy of The Little Prince. I threw in a propane tank, matches, and a lantern. I’d once had to fill out a survival guide in high school. Rank the items you’d need to survive. I couldn’t think as a kid, but looking up at Juliet, a strange thought occurred. I decided there wasn’t anything else I’d need but her.
She watched as I tied a fisherman’s knot on the handle of each trunk. Another skill I hadn’t used in a while, despite my previous interest in tying willing women to beds. I hadn’t thought of that possibility, those women, for months, and I looked up again to find Juliet staring at me. Panic set in her eyes, panic I recognized. She was frightened, but I’d do anything to assure her we were safe. My own heart raced, but I swallowed down my fear. I finished quickly and approached her.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I said before kissing her forehead. She nodded against my lips. Without words, I didn’t know if she fully trusted me, but I was all she had at the moment, and we were about to face something we hadn’t had to deal with yet: nature and its wrath.
+ +
Inside her tree house, I used binoculars to try to see the ocean. I didn’t have a view of my beach and had no idea how my things were fairing. Besides, the rain was coming sideways again, appearing almost like a white sheet, making visibility impossible.
“The waves are increasing,” I stated. I didn’t like the sound of the wind rustling the trees. The whistling sound was increasing, an extreme sort of white noise, that was grating on my nerves. The subtle crack and snap of smaller limbs around us alerted us to the strength of the gusts. I wasn’t convinced we were safe in her tree house. Water couldn’t get us here, so I didn’t worry as much about flooding, but if the gale force picked up a few levels, we’d be blown out like the leaves.
“I think we should seek higher ground. Maybe sturdier shelter.” I spun to face her. She’d been sitting on the edge of her bed, chewing a nail, which I hadn’t seen her do before. Her violet eyes were too wide and her knee jiggled.
I called her name and her attention snapped up to me. “I think we need to find that cave.”
She nodded but she hadn’t moved. A gust of wind shook the tree limbs over the low roof over our heads and she understood. The roof creaked, a strange strain on the boards, as if something were tugging at them to be free. We couldn’t stay where we were.
“Pack some clothes. Maybe your blanket. I have my sleeping bag.” I scanned her room. “Collect your notes.” I knew she’d been working hard to compose her thoughts each day on the island and I didn’t want her to lose all that work. She digested her feelings much better than me. I’d only worked up to three or four sentences a day in my journaling, while she had filled pages.
She collected her notebooks in a satchel bag and then filled a backpack with her blanket and a few clothes. I filled a second backpack with water bottles and any foods I thought we could survive on for a few days. A tropical storm could last twenty-four hours or longer. On an island as small as ours, I could only hope the clouds would pass quickly but with nothing but the sea around us, the weather could decide to stay and play, spiraling around us instead of moving onward.
The second we opened her door and struggled to lift the hatch for her ladder we were in for a battle. The stairs floated through the harsh air.
“I’ll go first so we’ll climb down together. I know the ropes can’t really hold us both, but I don’t want to lose you. We’ll just work as fast as we can.” She was so lightweight, I feared she’d blow away. “You’ll have to trust me.” Her wide eyes flashed to mine, but her focus was missing. Again, I had that sense that she didn’t have faith in me, but she had to believe I would do what I could to keep us safe.
I stepped down a few rungs and then reached for her. “Trust me.” I sought her eyes to assure her. She turned her body so her back was to me and filled in the limited space above me. My hand came to her hip to guide her descent, reinforcing that I was here for her. As the ladder resisted, attempting to fly sideways, our climb strained the rope linking, but I didn’t want to lose a hold on her. The descent seemed slow and we struggled with each rung as the ladder flung us nearly sideways. I didn’t dare release my hold on her, moving my fingers to her belt. Finally, we hit the ground.
“If we stay low, and rush through the brush, it might protect us a little.” I didn’t intend for us to crawl, but we had to stay hunched over, protecting our heads from the slapping tree limbs and using them to shield us from the wind. The rain pelted just as fierce, stinging as we slipped over the muddy earth. The upward climb was even more of a struggle than I expected, and at times I felt like I was dragging Juliet. She didn’t complain, but she tugged at me, resisting me. The climb grew steeper. Every moment I thought we were closer, we weren’t. I worried I miscalculated where we found the cave.
“I don’t know where it is,” I yelled, my words carried off in the gusty air. If she heard me, she didn’t answer, just clutched my hand, as if all her trust laid in that connection.
We continued on, with the wind beating our backs and twigs smacking our body. At one point, Juliet released me, and I spun, afraid she wouldn’t still be behind me. With her eyes closed, her hands cupped her forehead. She stepped back, and I feared she’d slide down the steep slope. I reached for the strap of her satchel and pulled her forward.
“What happened?” I shouted.
“My head.” Releasing her hands, a gash across her forehead was all I needed to know. I reached out as if I would pick her up, but she pushed me away. “You can’t carry me. Keep going.”
Her voice filtered through the howling gale, the sound haunting. I pushed her before me and forced her forward with me at her back. If she passed out, at least I could catch her.
Eventually, we broke through the bushes, reaching the flat landing before the cave. As Juliet stepped first, the wind took her sideways. My heart left my body as I envisioned her thrown from the cliff ledge, and I reached for the strap of her bag again. Tugging her down to the moss-covered rocks, we crawled to the cave entrance. I hadn’t given a thought to animals or other critters finding shelter from the weather within the hollow. They would have to share the space because I wasn’t going back down the mountain.
We burst through the entrance and Juliet immediately sat with her back to the rock wall. I passed her, scrambling to stand, as I searched our surroundings as best I could in the dim light. My knees gave way and I began searching for the propane lantern. I couldn’t let it run all night, but we needed to see the inside of the cave and warm up a little bit. Plus, I wanted to inspect Juliet’s forehead. We hadn’t thought to bring a first-aid kit.
“Mouse,” I hollered. The tapping of her crawling behind me told me she followed my command. Shaky fingers struck a match and lit the wick of the propane tank. The cave illuminated, and to my relief, nothing else hid within. The cavern’s walls were the purest black I’d ever seen, slick with a sheen, but brilliant and dry.
“Here.” I walked on my knees and opened my sleeping bag, spreading it wide against the back wall. I directed Juliet to follow. She hadn’t made a sound and I worried she’d gone into shock or had a concussion. “Let me look, Mouse.” She shivered before me, and I noticed her clothing was soaked, as was mine. I didn’t know what was worse—the sting of the rain or the slap of the wind.
“Let me see your head.” Tenderly I caressed over the cut, and she flinched. I reached for my shirt, tugged it over my head and dabbed at the blood. The tree raked over her skin, leaving a gash that didn’t look deep but was long. She still hadn’t made a noise, and her silence frightened me.
Inside the cave, the haunting howl dissipated. Tucked back into a corner, we were protected from the elements. Neither the wind nor the rain could reach us here or so I hoped. Juliet continued to shiver next to me. We were facing a long night trying to survive a hurricane. With no weather warning system, no cell phone, or emergency radio, we had not been prepared, and my anger grew with the thought, especially when I envisioned Juliet blowing off that ledge. Garvey had told me a storm was coming, but this wasn’t what I expected. And there was nothing he could do to help me. Juliet and I had to figure it out, together.
“We need to get out of these wet clothes.” I’d already removed my shirt and began taking off my shorts. Juliet hadn’t moved. “Mouse, take off your wet things.”
She didn’t look up, her body trembling.
“Mouse?” I questioned, reaching for her shirt and slowly unbuttoning it. Her eyes had lost their focus and stared into emptiness, definitely shock of some type. “I need to warm you up.” Though it had been humid, the rain soaked us to the core and my teeth chattered with a chill. She still hadn’t moved, and my patience was thinning. The rush of adrenaline still coursed through my body.
“Mouse, take off your clothes,” I snapped. “We need our body heat to warm each other.” Her head slowly lifted, but she made no attempt to follow my directions. Shaking with the need to be close to her, and the surge of adrenaline, I barked at her again.
“We’re going to play this my way. Blink if you understand me.”