*****
The next morning, I woke up to a wet cloth stroking my face. I expected to open my eyes to the green-eyed Fisher, but instead I saw the dark eyes of Jake.
“Good morning,” was all I could think to say. My cheeks reddened at the thought of what I’d seen in the night.
“Does sex embarrass you, Hope?” he asked.
I thought about his question. “I suppose it does.”
“We’ve long since let all that go.” He stroked my neck with the cloth. “Are you well enough to bathe?”
“Yes,” I answered, suddenly aware of how long it had been since I’d brushed my teeth, or since my skin had touched a bar of soap.
“Come, Fisher is out getting lunch, but I warmed some water for you.”
I rose from my makeshift bed, the pain nearly gone, and followed him outside. “Did you build this shelter?” I asked, looking around for the first time.
“No, it was here.” He pointed to an old metal tub. “Get in.”
Jake stood there staring at me, showing no sign that he was going to leave.
“Could you, um, maybe,” I felt the blush rise from my chest to my scalp. “I mean, can you go while I get undressed?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Oh,” was all I could think of to say.
We stood there in a standoff until he finally turned his back to me. “Listen, Hope, the sooner you stop acting like you’re back home, the easier this will be.”
“How long have you been here? On the island?” I asked, peeling my dirty clothes from my body.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “I’ll answer your questions while you clean up or I can let you have some privacy. Your choice.”
I stepped into the warm, sudsy water and slid down up to my shoulders. It was heaven. With a surge of bravery, and a desperate desire to get some answers, I decided the modesty offered by the bubbles was enough.
“It’s a deal. How long have you been on this island?”
He turned around and walked over to an ancient metal chair next to the tub. “That’s hard to answer. Time sort of, well, time gets weird here.”
“How old are you then? Can I ask that?” In the back of my mind, I worried about the back-home legalities of them being underage. Flashes of kissing Fisher ran through my thoughts.
“Twenty-three.”
“And Fisher?” I asked, trying to disguise the nervousness in my voice.
Jake smiled wide and chuckled. “He looks young, but he’s not jail-bait, don’t worry. Not that it would matter here.”
“I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t plan on…”
“Yes, you did, and yes, you will. He was twenty-two, I think.”
“Was?”
“Uh, is, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, I’m much older,” I said, reaching for a sponge.
“That really doesn’t matter here, either.”
I nodded as if I understood what he was talking about. Age mattered everywhere. “And you got here how?”
“Shipwreck. We’re all that’s left.”
My mind raced to any recent shipwrecks, but I couldn’t think of anything that had made news recently. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get rescued—”
“No, Hope,” he interrupted. “We are never leaving this island. It’s our home.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, shocked. How was I going to get back home then?
“You don’t, you couldn’t. But you will, because it’s now your home, too.”
“Am I dead?” I blurted out. The thought had nagged at me since I heard the sirens sing in the ocean. None of this is real, and is it heaven or hell?
He laughed out loud. “No, you’re very much alive. Maybe for the first time.”
My hand drifted across my stubbly leg in the soapy water.
“Do you have a razor I could use?”
Jake’s face was covered in dark stubble, but Fisher was shaved smooth.
“Yeah,” he said and from a wooden box brought out what looked to me to be a switchblade. He held the object out to me.
“Oh, no, I mean like a Gillette or whatever. You know, a safety razor.”
He stared at me, confused. “You wanted to shave?” he finally asked.
“Yes, my legs. I’ve never used anything like that before. Is that a straight razor, like they use in barber shops?”
He nodded. “Works great. I sharpen it myself over on the rocks.”
I rubbed my leg one more time under the soapy water. “I think I’d end up cutting myself to pieces with that.”
Jake opened the blade and gestured for me to put my leg up on the side of the tub.
“Oh, uh, I don’t know…”
He pulled the old metal chair to the edge of the tub and again patted for me to put my leg up. “Okay, why not,” I said.
I couldn’t look away as he took his shirt off and tossed it to the ground. He was physical perfection, muscled and bronzed, and unlike the unmarked skin of Fisher, Jake’s skin was covered in ink. Even more intriguing, underneath the tattoos, there were scars.
He leaned down and looked at my skin for a long moment, and then he began. The cold blade scraped down my calf with the precision of a craftsman, leaving a smooth path of hairless skin in its wake.
“You’re good at that. Are you a barber?”
“No, I was a thug.”
“A thug? Like a gang?”
He nodded. “But not like you know, it was different.”
“So you were on a ship headed where when you wrecked?”
My lower leg finished, he moved his chair next to me and began to shave my thigh. “How high do you want me to go?” he asked, running his hand up my inner thigh.
I froze, the surge of arousal overwhelming me.
“I could shave this.” His hand went higher, cupping between my legs.
“No,” I said, pushing his fingers away.
“You want me. Why the games, Hope?”
“I’m married.”
“Not anymore.” His words caused a knot in my stomach at the thought of Daniel and what he’d done to me.
I craved his touch again; I wanted him more than anything at that moment. It can’t happen, he won’t want me if he sees all of me, I thought. “You are far younger than me,” I argued.
“So. Who cares?”
“That doesn’t matter here, I know you said that. But we’ll eventually go back and—”
“It doesn’t matter anywhere. And we’re never going back.”
“They’ll be looking for me, we’ll get rescued now that I’m here.”
He sighed. “No one is looking for you.”
Jake finished shaving my legs in silence, then gestured for me to raise my arms. With precision, he raked the sharp blade along the curves under my arms. My skin was smoother than the best wax I’d ever had.
“So you were on a ship going where? Why? Like a cruise?”
He laughed, his lips forming a sneer. “That’s funny. Bath time is over, so that means question time is, too.”
Jake stood up and reached for my hand. “Oh, will you turn around again?”
“You are ridiculous,” he snapped, reaching for a worn towel.
“Is all this stuff from the wreck?” I imagined all the Titanic artifacts I’d seen when I visited the museum last summer.
“I said question time is done. But, for your information, there was a settlement here on this island of some sort. They left quite a bit of shit.”
“What happened to them?”
He shrugged, clearly done answering me.
The tub water was growing cold, and I decided to do something that would stop his flirtation. I stood up, and took a deep breath as I waited to see the inevitable look of repulsion on his face. Instead, all I saw was lust. Lust and a growing bulge in his jeans.
My loose belly, from years of gaining and losing weight on every diet I could find, was there on display. The too-large breasts that I should have had lifted years ago hung low. Thick thighs stood there, the part I hated the most. I’d been battling an extra fifteen pounds that year, and Daniel reminded me constantly to get to the gym.
But that day, on that island, things were different. Something changed, and my view of reality shifted forever.
Jake held the towel open, but just out of my reach. “Very nice, very nice indeed,” he said with a wink.
He wrapped the towel around me and held me tightly. “I want you, we want you. Don’t make us wait too long.”