Lovewrecked - Karina Halle Page 0,75
I manage to get across the shallows of the lagoon just as Lacey and Richard come spilling out of the bungalow.
“Where have you been?” Lacey says and then sees the suitcase as I dump it on the sand. She points frantically. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“It washed ashore like a message in a bottle,” Daisy says proudly, as if she had something to do with the suitcase coming back to her like a boomerang. “Any guesses what that message is?” she asks.
“That stupid designer bag you kept moaning about losing?” Lacey says.
Daisy rolls her eyes, and then reveals the bottle of vodka she had hidden behind her back. “The message was, let’s get crazy!”
While Lacey and Richard freak out over the booze, practically snatching the bottle from her hands, Daisy gives me a faint wink. Which is to say, we already did the crazy part.
Not that it was crazy, per se. I should feel ashamed for finally having sex with her, or at least a little guilty, but surprisingly I feel neither. I told myself I needed to stay away from her because she was a distraction, a road with no future, a chance at heartbreak, something to steal me away from redemption.
But at the moment, I just don’t care.
Because that was better than I could have even imagined. Not only was it a long time coming, but it was something I never even knew I needed. Not just in a physical way, though god knows it’s been way too long since I last got laid, but in a spiritual way. Like that release was for those darkened, hardened bits inside me, the ones I try to keep buried and locked away. It helped shed light on those places, helped to give me hope that I could one day be free of them.
Or maybe I’m looking into it too much. Either way, I have no regrets. The only thing I have is this pressing need to do it again, immediately. A swift return to Naked Island.
But any hopes of that are dashed now that Lacey and Richard are all over the vodka. I never thought I’d see either of them drinking hard liquor straight out of the bottle, but there’s a first time for everything, and being isolated on this island is apparently bringing that out of everyone.
“We need to have a party,” Lacey says adamantly.
Never thought I’d hear her say that either.
“We need to invite Fred and Wilson,” Richard adds, passing the bottle back to her. It’s already half-way gone from just the four of us.
“The goat?” I question.
“Of course,” Richard says. “It’s the man’s only friend.”
Uh-huh. “Don’t you think it’s odd that he talks to the goat?”
“People talk to animals all the time, Tai, it’s called anthropomorphizing.”
“I mean, the goat talks to him.”
Richard raises a stern brow. “Tai, goats don’t talk.”
I can’t argue with that.
Daisy takes the bottle back from Lacey and examines it. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be drunk by noon.”
“There’s always the wine,” I mention.
“You have wine?” Lacey exclaims.
“Yes,” Daisy says cautiously. I can tell she doesn’t want to share it and I probably shouldn’t have said anything. “I don’t want to burn through it but…”
“We’re getting rescued the day after tomorrow,” Lacey says. “Tonight we’ll party, we’ll drink. Tomorrow we’ll pack and be all hungover. The next day we fly out of here. Fiji! You can buy more wine there.”
Daisy seems to weigh that option. “You’re right.”
“I suppose we should go invite Fred,” Richard says. “The question is, how do we get over there? We have no way of contacting him from here, and he’s the one with the raft.”
I’m about to volunteer to swim there, since a lot of it is shallow enough and there are a few other smaller islands peppered about, good places to rest if I get tired, when Daisy points into the distance.
“No need,” she says. “I think that’s him already.”
I quickly grab my binoculars from the bag and look through them. Fred is coming across the water in his dinghy, with Wilson at the very front of the boat. He looks like he’s got some equipment with him.
“It’s like he knew,” I comment.
It’s not long before Fred is close to shore and the goat is leaping off into the water. It runs, splashing through, straight toward us, until he veers to the side at the last minute, disappearing into the jungle.
“Ahoy,” Fred says. “Permission to come to your island.”
“The Island of Dr. Boner,” Daisy says.
“Stop,”