Chapter 9 | Adam
The first thing Adam noticed upon waking was Wade wrapped around him again. He wouldn’t argue with an ideal and efficient way to keep warm, considering they hadn’t had a fire all of yesterday. It was comfortable and comforting.
The second thing he noted was that it had stopped raining.
A fact for which he was so very grateful. It rained so much the night before, they were both soaked, even though he’d managed to rearrange their roof leaves so that the rain didn’t leak through as much.
Adam didn’t move, staying huddled against Wade. Both arms pulled in as the other man covered him protectively. Wade’s breathing was deep and soft. As he watched Wade sleep, he took that time to really study Wade’s face. How the lines of concern that seemed so permanently etched on his face when he was awake vanished while he slept.
At first, Adam estimated Wade’s age at around thirty. Watching him sleep, Adam realized he could possibly be younger than that. It was hard to put an age on him. Judging from when Wade said he graduated, he was most likely only a few years older than Adam.
What worries weighed Wade down while he was awake?
It intrigued Adam, and he wanted to know.
Adam found a way to dislodge Wade’s arm without waking him and crawled out of their lean-to. After a full day hunched up and under shelter, he needed to stretch.
And what was yesterday’s almost-kiss about? It was obvious that Wade had wanted to. Adam wasn’t sure what stopped him. He remembered their conversation, of course. He didn’t spell it out, but Wade's family sounded like a bunch of old-fashioned, homophobic bigots. Perhaps that was part of the problem.
Ugh. No. Absolutely not. The last thing Adam needed were tangled, messy feelings for a straight man. And Wade had made it absolutely clear he was straight. Adam wasn't excited about going there.
He had to believe it was for the best. Keep as much distance emotionally as he could so things between them didn’t get complicated.
A small voice in Adam told him it might be too late, already.
While Wade slept in—and wasn’t that a funny thing to think considering neither of them had jobs to go to—Adam scouted the area for their lost coconuts. He didn’t find them. The winds and rain had been pretty epic yesterday, and while it was hard to believe that coconuts could be blown away, that may’ve been what happened. Or rolled away. They could be anywhere.
Adam considered striking off and trying to find the trees again to gather more coconuts, but they really needed something more substantial in their diet than coconuts.
He walked down to the beach. Some of the wreckage had been washed back out to sea; other debris had taken its place. No more bodies appeared. There wasn’t that many on the flight, but Adam knew he'd hadn’t accounted for everyone.
There was more clothing strewn about. Pieces of foam, metal, vinyl, wiring. The wiring could be useful. An iPod, missing the earbuds.
Probably torturing himself, Adam couldn’t stop searching through the wreckage in the hopes of finding useful things. The clothing, as Wade had discovered when they first got there, could be used for binding. Also as a strainer or filter. Or covering.
Even though Adam believed that the universe provided for people just what they required in their time of need, it felt weird to scavenge items that belonged to people who were dead. Disrespectful, perhaps.
And if it resulted in a flowery, muumuu functioning as curtains, then so be it.
When he returned to the lean-to, Wade was up and attempting to start the fire again. “Hey,” he said, looking up from his work. He leaned in and blew on an ember to get it to flare. “I had to use bits of our support binding as tinder to get the fire started.”
“Well, the thing hasn’t fallen in yet, so I think it’ll be okay.” Adam put his findings in a small pile and started sorting through it.
“From the wreckage?” Wade asked. He put the small flame under his pile of twigs they’d protected from the majority of the rain and blew again to keep it going until it caught.
“Yeah, more stuff washed up on the shore.” Adam shook the muumuu out and held it up.
“Pink and teal aren’t my colors,” Wade said.
It took Adam a moment to catch his joke. “Ah, so you’re a winter.”
Wade chuckled. “I think we need to go looking for food again. Living on coconuts is not going to cut it long term.”
“I was just thinking that. I thought I saw a small jetty further south of us. Want to take a walk to see if there are mussels or crabs or something?”
“I was never much of a crab lover.” Wade wrinkled his nose. “But desperate times…”
“Shrimp and fish aren’t my favorite. When we get hungry enough,” and they most certainly would, “we may grow to love them.”
“Isn’t that an exciting prospect.” Wade stoked the fire and settled next to it. “Let me get this going properly so I can leave it without it going out.”
Standing, Wade pulled his leather belt off and tossed it onto Adam’s pile of salvage. “Maybe we can use that. I can’t imagine we’ll be going to any parties that require being dressed to the nines.”
Next, Wade unbuttoned his shirt to expose his chest. He didn’t take it off, but that was enough of a peek for Adam to find the iPod suddenly very fascinating, instead of admiring Wade’s incredibly toned body.
“I wonder if I need to replace the slacks,” he said, looking down at his legs.
Adam shrugged. “Depending on how long we’re here? I expect normal wear and tear will take care of that.”
Wade nodded in agreement. “I’ll hold off. If we ever need more material for binding, I’ll have plenty.”
Adam considered the natural materials they could use on the island. Once they had seen to their basic needs of water and food, Adam would go out to see what he could scrape up. “I’ll head south and see if I can find anything to eat.”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
With a wave, Adam struck off. He had to get moving or suffer the torture of Wade’s body there to providing a very pleasant distraction. He certainly didn't need Wade to notice Adam ogling him. How awkward would that make things?
A small pool about fifty feet in diameter lay on the other side of the jetties. Within it swam a number of small fish. They didn’t have a net to use and no fishing poles. How were they going to do this?
Wade appeared not long after. “What did you find?”
“Lunch. On me. But we just need to figure out how to get them out.”
“Spearfishing.”
Adam looked up. “Spearfishing? You’re serious?”
“Sure!” Wade looked towards shore and struck off. Hacking and cutting echoed back from the grove of small trees before Wade reappeared carrying two long poles. He chopped at them to get rid of the branches and sharpened the ends before handing one off to Adam.
The pole was light, at least. Adam hefted it in his hand a few times, twirling to figure out how he was supposed to hold it. “Have you ever done this before?” he asked.
“I’ve seen it on TV a few times. How hard can it be? Get a pointy stick and jab them, right?”
Well, Adam was willing to try anything once.
Spearfishing, it turned out, was a lot harder than it looked on TV. Wade’s frustration grew the more they attempted it, and Adam found he was getting equally frustrated. “What are we doing wrong?”
Wade threw down his spear. “Is there a wrong way to do this?” he snapped. With a slow breath, Wade pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I am just… I’m sorry.”
“There’s apparently a learning curve to this art of spearfishing.” Adam stepped out of the water and circled to stand on the crop of rock.
Wade shaded his eyes to look up at Adam. “Where are you going?”
“Maybe we’re overthinking this. So I’m changing my perspective.”
“Dead Poet’s Society fan?”
Adam just grinned at Wade. “I think our issue is that the fish are small. So they move faster than a larger fish would. What we need is a net.”
“You mean, scoop them out?”
“Sure. They’re trapped in a small pool of water; it’s not like they can swim too far away from us, right?” Adam hopped down next to Wade.
Wade stared at the pool, seemingly lost in thought before he nodded. He rolled his shoulders and slipped his dress shirt off. “What we’re doing isn’t working. Might as well try that.”
Taking a deep breath and focusing on the pool rather than shirtless Wade, Adam took hold of the offered clothing. Adam drew on many years of meditation to focus on the task at hand and not Wade’s very broad shoulders.
And chest.
And stomach.
It took a bit of fashioning, but Adam made a hybrid fabric scoop with handles. “So, I think if we hold this at the top and bottom and move it, like a fence, we could crowd them into as small a space as possible and then scoop them out?”
Wade nodded his understanding of how Adam wanted to do it. Working as a team, they could accomplish much more than trying to do it on their own.
It took a few attempts before they were able to gather a few fish in their makeshift net. They rushed to the shore and laid them out on the sand. Four small fish about the size of Wade’s hand flopped about.
Adam sunk to his knees. “This ends the sum total of my experience on what to do now.”
Wade pivoted and went to the rocky outcropping. He returned with a small hand-sized rock. “You didn’t learn to fish while you were studying with this mentor of yours?”
“Her husband handled all that. I just learned to appreciate her cooking talents.”
“Then I will clean, and you can cook.”
He wasn’t a vegetarian, but Adam had to avert his eyes when he saw what Wade was going to do. Taking life, in any manner, wasn’t pleasant and it hurt Adam to think about it. It was a necessity, or else they both risked starving. It didn’t make it any less unpleasant.
Wade stopped short of the first kill. “Adam,” he said in a very patient voice, “why don’t you go back to check on the fire and stoke it up so we can cook them when I’m done?”
Thankful for the reprieve, Adam nodded and rose to his feet. “You may want to take them to the rocks, so you don’t get fish guts all over your shirt.”
“You mean our new fishing net.”
By the time the fish were done, stuck on sticks and roasted over the fire, the scent of fish made Adam’s stomach feel ready to chew its way out of his body. “I never thought fish would make me this hungry.”
Wade tapped and tested one of the small fish on a stick, then pulled it off the fire, handing it to Adam. “You get to be the official taste tester.”
“Fair enough.” Adam took the offered fish and delicately pulled at it with two fingers. It was hot, and it looked cooked, which was a good thing because Adam could’ve choked down raw fish at that point. He took a small nibble and rolled his eyes. “Holy shit, Wade. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted fish this good.”
Wade took another stick from the fire and pulled the fish off it. “Just as long as the fish don’t turn out to be poisonous.”
“Then I’ll die happy,” Adam said around a mouthful of fish.
And he’d die happy at this dinner with a view because Wade still hadn’t put his shirt back on.