Oh, and I learned he was married. How crazy is that? I really didn’t expect it. Not that people need to talk about their exes—though lord, I know I talked enough about mine—but you’d think it would have come up in conversation. Even Lacey didn’t mention it, then again she barely wanted to tell me about his sister. Next I’ll find out he’s a secret agent or something. Definitely has the body for it.
Now we’re living in what he calls the barracks, which is this old research station. The Goatman, a scientist (not an actual goat man), lives across the lagoon (we’re on the south side of the island now). Yesterday he took Lacey and Richard to visit his digs on some other island. When they came back, they said that he placed a call for help and that we’ll get rescued in two days! Yay!! They also brought some supplies that Goatman gave them, like an extra sleeping bag and pillow, towels, and some cooking stuff. Just watch them hog it all for themselves.
So that’s that. I’m lying down on the bed, which is just wooden slats and as uncomfortable as it sounds but, with the sleeping bag beneath me, it’s okay. Still no pillow for me, but rolled up clothes work fine (though they still smell like diesel, even after washing them).
It’s just after sunrise. I should probably get up, but I know Tai takes this time for himself and after I kissed him, I feel like I’m a pest. A sexpest. Although yesterday, we did have a good time putting all the stuff away, kind of like old times.
But who am I kidding? Even the old times were never easy. If we weren’t flirting, we were fighting.
For once I’d like to do neither. I’d like to just…be with him.
I sigh and close the journal.
The symphony of Richard and Lacey’s snoring is amplified in this room, though I have to say last night was the best sleep I had yet. Lately it’s taken forever to fall asleep because I felt like bugs were crawling on me (and they usually were), and my mind has been racing over the whole being shipwrecked thing, going over all the possible horrible scenarios in this endless anxiety spin. But last night I must have passed right out. I was even trying to stay up to see when Tai came back to bed. He disappeared around ten and that was that.
I sit up and eye his bed in the dim light. Not sure he even slept on it, his sleeping bag is gone.
I get to my feet, pull on my skirt and a tank, and step onto the deck.
Wow. What a view.
From this side of the island the sunrise isn’t as prominent, but it doesn’t make it less of a show. Just like Tai said, the sun rising is the one thing you can count on when you can’t seem to count on anything else. No matter how uncertain the future, the sun still rises.
Then I see him.
Swimming half-way across the lagoon to the little island.
He looks like he’s on a mission, swimming fast.
Then I see what he’s swimming toward.
Glinting in the rising sun is my suitcase, washed up on the shore.
Oh my god!
Without thinking I pull down my skirt and run into the water in just my white tank top and underwear, sloshing through it. It gets as deep as my chest after a while, and it becomes easier to just swim.
Tai reaches the tiny island’s shore and turns around to see me swimming toward him. “Daisy, look,” he says, going over to the suitcase. “When I last checked the boat, I didn’t see it. I figured it went out to sea with the hole in the hull.”
He’s grinning like he won the lottery, so you can understand how I feel, given that’s my suitcase.
“Oh my god,” I cry out breathlessly, splashing through the water until I collapse into the baby-powder white sand right beside the suitcase. I throw my body on it, hugging it. I don’t care. “And you made fun of me for bringing it.”
“Don’t get carried away yet. Everything might be ruined.”
But I know I invested in the right sparkly rose gold luggage. I quickly unzip it and push the top open and it reveals the smaller suitcase inside, like a nesting doll.
Totally dry.
I let out a whoop and Tai helps me bring the carry-on out. We plop it down on the sand.
“I never thought I’d be happy to see these again,” he says.
I laugh and unzip the smaller suitcase.
You know the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, how when Sam Jackson opened it, all you’d see is the gold reflecting on his face?
That’s what this feels like. Except, replace the gold bars with bottles of alcohol glinting in the sun, and there you have it.