Adrian

We sit by a little fire I’ve built outside. It’s a little cooler now that the sun has set. I’ve built a small fire pit with large rocks I’ve found around the island. I like to sit here at night. The fire keeps pesky bugs away. There’s something soothing about the flickering flames and gentle heat the fire gives off.

But tonight, Nadine sits on my lap. I sit on a roughly-hewn chair I made in her absence. I’ve been giving myself projects to do to occupy my mind, and even considered building a boat and making my way to another island somewhere. That’s just plain stupid, though. I have no idea what they’re saying about me in America, and there’s nothing like some loon with wild Tarzan hair and burn marks to arouse suspicion. And for all I know, with no real navigation or sailing equipment I’d just sail to my death anyway.

So I stayed here, and I’ve been working on crude carpentry. I have a few chairs, a stack of plates and bowls. She’s proud of the work I’ve done and admires it. I don’t let her talk much, though.

So after we built the fire, I sat down and pulled her onto my lap. She turned and burrowed herself into me, her cheek against my chest. She was so still, her breathing so soft, that I thought she’d fallen asleep.

“Nadine?”

“Mmm?” she asks.

“Thought you were asleep, baby.”

“Nope. I’m just soaking this up. Jesus, I missed this so damn much. I was an idiot.”

Without thinking I give her ass a good slap. “I don’t want to hear you say that again,” I warn. “You were not stupid. And anyway, I was the one who told you to go.”

She nods and smiles. “You know, that’s true. It’s actually your fault, then. Why’d you let me go?”

I wrap my arms around her and hold her even tighter. “I decided I didn’t want you as my captive,” I tell her. “I wanted you to be free.”

“I am,” she whispers.

We sit in silence until a log falls over in the fire. The crackling sound makes her jump, but my arms tighten around her and she quickly settles.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” I ask.

She nods, lifts her head, and looks up to me. “There’s actually a fucking lot to tell,” she says.

I smile at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She grins at me. “Yeah. This is a good point,” she mutters. “So I got back home. When I got back there, they’d sold my apartment and gotten rid of my things because they thought I was dead.”

“Seriously?” I’m mad on her behalf. Jesus Christ.

“Yeah,” she says with a sigh. “Seriously. And then I get off the plane, and there are like all these reporters and flashing lights and so many goddamn people.”

“God, I fucking hate people.”

She laughs and sighs and buries her head on me again. “Me too. And this is why you’re mine.”

I nod. “Likewise. Go on.”

She goes on about her new apartment and how she couldn’t stand how it looked and felt, and how she longed to get back here, to our little patch of paradise in the middle of nowhere.

“Where there’s no beeping phones or trucks or text messages to answer or bills to pay.” I say softly.

“Yes. Where there’s none of that. And where there’s… what I really, truly do need.”

I look at her quizzically and lift her chin in my hand. “What’s that, baby?”

She looks shy, ducking her chin against my hand. “You, Adrian. I… well, maybe I got used to the way you are with me.”

“You missed getting your ass spanked,” I mutter. God, I missed teasing her. “You girls are all the same. You’re all ow, ow, ow, sir, that hurts! And then you go for a week or two without it and you need to be brought back to heel.”

She smacks my chest. “Brought to heel!”

I nab her wrist and drop my voice. “Damn right.”

Her pupils dilate, and she bites her lip. “Well maybe I did sort of miss it a little. And I really did miss the island. The serenity. Calm. And…” she pauses. “You.”

I have no qualms about the bald truth. “I felt like someone died when you left. Sorta wished I would. The bed felt lonely, and I thought I was gonna make myself crazy talking to myself. But I missed you, too.” I take her chin back in my hand, forcing her to look at me. “Because I love you, Nadine.”

She swallows, licks her lips, then whispers. “And I love you.”

I let go of her chin and let her burrow into me again.

“I hated being back in America. There’s so much fucking pretense about things.”

I nod. I agree. It’s why I never did play the goddamned games, and never regretted not playing them. The games I played with my family took on a whole other fucking meaning, too, so I was mired in layers and layers of goddamned deceit.

“Yeah, I hear you there. But didn’t you like your… hmm, how did you put it… body wash and cell phones and Wi-Fi and shoe shopping?”

Her shoulders shake with laughter against me. “Not as much as I thought I would.”

I sigh. “I could go for a steak, though.”

She sits up on my lap. “Well, now it’s time for you to hear the rest of the story…”

She fills me in on her interview and the insistence from her work that she get into therapy. She quiets when she gets to arriving at the therapist’s, though.

“Why did you stop?” I ask, weaving my fingers through her hair.

“Because I know you,” she says.

“What?”

“I know that what I’m about to tell you is going to make you so furious you’ll probably want to kill someone, and since I’m the only one on this island…”

I grip her arm and force her to look at me. “Don’t even joke like that.”

“Okay,” she says. “But I wasn’t joking about the other part.”

“Tell me.”

“Just don’t overreact.”

“For God’s sake, tell me before I have to spank it out of you.”

She sighs but smiles a little and nods. After she tells me every detail, I lift her off my lap and place her on her feet. She was right. She was fucking right. I do want to kill someone, but the person I want to murder is already dead, and by her hand.

“They’re total fucking leeches,” I fume, marching around the fire and running my hand through my tumbled hair.

She’s on her feet. “But they’re gone now, Adrian. And thanks to Alex, I am, too.”

I freeze. “Who the fuck is Alex?”

She grins at me like I just gave her a goddamned diamond. “You’re jealous,” she says. “You are so jealous.”

I cross my arms and glare at her. “You really need a spanking.”

She laughs out loud and shakes her head. “Alex was my boss. My very old, very happily married boss.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief.

“So Adrian… when I say it’s over, I mean it. You don’t exist anymore to any of them. And I don’t, either.” She walks over to the bag she left on the ground outside the shelter that I didn’t notice before and pulls out a navy-blue folio. “You are now officially Mr. John Dole.”

I tug out the one behind it and look at both of them. “And you’re Janet Dole?” I grin at her.

She nods.

“So… neither of us exists to anyone else in the entire world?”

Her eyes light up like little stars at night. “Exactly.”

I tug at my beard. “So we don’t have to get married or any shit like that, right? Our I.D. says we already are. And there’s no one to do the job anyway. I can just drag you by your hair to my cave and call you woman?”

She tosses her hair as if to tempt me and grins. “Perfect.”