A Sudden Crush Read online

  Once I’m done with the laundering I hang my pants, shirt, and underwear on a low tree branch that’s mostly in the sun and happily jump into the water naked. Ah, this truly is paradise. I paddle my way around the lake frog-style, enjoying my daily swim in the fresh water, and splashing Manny when he jumps in next to me.

  “Eek,” he protests.

  It’s funny to see him swim around dog-style. He does a lap of the pond and gets out, watching me expectantly. Manny likes the water, but he doesn’t feel safe in it.

  “Let Mommy swim a bit, ok?”

  “Hoo.”

  “Good boy!”

  I lower my head below the surface and brush my hands through my hair. What I wouldn’t give to have a bottle of shampoo and a hairbrush right now. My usually straight hair is becoming hopelessly tangled. Bathing is the best part of my day, and the only one that makes me feel at least partially clean and refreshed. But, like everything else on this island, it gets dull after a while. I stay in long enough for the pads of my fingers to get impossibly wrinkly. But after I’ve tried every combination of swimming, floating, and dipping, I declare myself officially fed up and get out.

  I pull myself out of the water, relishing the sensation of the cold droplets slithering down all over my body, and go fetch my clothes. The underwear is already dry, so I slip my bra on and bend over to pull up my panties. I straighten immediately when I hear a guttural snort coming from behind me.

  I turn around and instinctively jump backward when I see Connor standing next to the lake at the beginning of the path into the jungle. He’s staring at me with his face half hidden in the shadows, and even if I don’t have a clear visual of his expression, I can tell he’s been enjoying the show.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I ask indignantly. My whole body searing red with embarrassment.

  “I just wanted to see if you had some of those ashes left to wash my shirt,” he replies innocently.

  “How long have you been there?” I need to know how much he has seen.

  He chortles under his growing beard and confirms my worst fears. “Long enough.” His eyes twinkle with amusement. “But don’t worry, I’ve seen better and I’m not interested.”

  “As if you had a chance,” I say, caustic.

  “If I wanted it, I would have a chance. Trust me. But you’re not my type, missy,” he replies with an unconcerned shrug of his muscular shoulders.

  “It’s Mrs.! And what’s that supposed to mean—I’m not your type?” I ask in an annoyed, shrill voice that doesn’t sound anything like mine.

  “That you’re too high maintenance for me. And frankly, in your present condition you’re not exactly charming.”

  “What condition? What’s not charming about me?” I hiss, narrowing my eyes at him.

  “For one, you have more hair on you than the monkeys.” He laughs, self-satisfied at his own joke.

  I stare at my legs for a moment and…it is bad!

  “What am I supposed to do about it? It’s not like I can go to the local Spa and wax,” I howl, offended, snatching my still wet pants and putting them on to cover my hairy legs. I feel flustered, and I’m about to cry. I can’t cry in front of him. I won’t cry in front of him.

  “Come on, be a sport. I was joking!” Mr. Ogre yells, still chuckling.

  “Ha ha! Very funny!” To my horror, “funny” came out in half a sob.

  “Are you crying?” Connor asks, incredulous.

  “I’m not crying!” I whimper, while two treacherous tears make their way down my cheeks. I try to cover them by turning around to button up my damp shirt.

  When I’m properly covered, I turn around again and unleash my venomous comeback. “Nothing an emotionally challenged, sorry excuse for a man with the sensibility of a toenail could tell me would make me cry,” I screech, sending the monkeys into one of their frenzies.

  “Eek. Eeeeek, eeeeek, ooook, ooook.”

  Connor, on the other hand, stares at me with a dumbfounded, unreadable expression, and for once doesn’t retort.

  “I have been nothing but kind and friendly with you. And you’ve been rude, condescending, and just mean,” I rampage. “And that shirt is hideous!” I hiss, marching toward him, trembling with suppressed rage. “You shouldn’t wash it, you should burn it. I hate that shirt.”

  He’s blocking the passage to the beach and doesn’t take the hint he’d better leave me alone after the capital offense he pulled off.

  “Anna, listen, I’m sorry. It was supposed to be a joke.”

  He tries to block me, but I’m seething with so much fury that I fiercely wriggle away from his outstretched arms and shove him heavily in the chest with both my hands, yelling, “Jerk.”

  The troll wasn’t expecting to be pushed, so he stumbles backward, losing his footage, and falls into the lake with a loud splash. My path cleared, I storm away, finally giving free flow to my tears. I cry for my hairy legs, my dirty clothes, my dirty hair, my dehydrated skin, my fishy diet, my shipwreckedeness in general, the fact that I’m stranded on the most boring island in the world with the meanest man on earth. But most of all I cry for my lost husband. Oh Liam, I miss you so much. Where are you?

  13

  Day 33

  “Would you like some more?” Connor asks me with puppy-dog eyes. Admittedly blood-shot puppy-dog eyes, but still.

  In the last few days he has discovered that, besides being “high maintenance,” I can also hold a grudge for a very long time. After the hairy legs incident, I’m giving him a dose of his own medicine. I’ve adopted his language habits, so I accept his offer for more lobster by grunting in the affirmative. In the past week, we’ve had lobster every day. I almost feel sorry for him, as the fishing-with-a-spear-under-water effort is really showing. He has had red puffy eyes for two days now. The saltiness of the sea is taking a toll on him, so much so that he’s having trouble keeping his eyes open. I have to give it to him; he’s really trying to make an effort to be forgiven.

  This is so strange. Since his “funny” joke about my excess of body hair, Mr. Ogre has changed his attitude completely. He asked questions about me, my job, Liam…after twenty or so days in the wild, during which he hadn’t asked me a single question, I’d given up hope he ever would. However, it was his turn to be answered in monosyllables.

  For example, when he asked me what my job was, my holding-a-grudge answer was “I’m a book editor.” Whereas my not-holding-grudge answer would have been “I’m a book editor,” plus, “I simply love it, how my fingertips tingle when I hold a manuscript and think ‘I have to work with this author on this book,’ especially when it happens with unknown writers’ submissions that were almost picked up by chance. I can’t describe how exciting it is, and I love that it can stay my little secret, at least until I finish the book.” A bit too talkative? Maybe, but that’s me.

  Another example—yesterday, Connor asked me how I met Liam. My resentful answer was, “I edited his first novel.” Whereas my regular answer would have been, “I edited his first novel,” plus, “I fell in love with the manuscript from page one. Then, when I met Liam in person, I was a lost woman. Not only was he the most brilliant writer I had ever met, but he was also ridiculously handsome. He signed with my firm shortly afterward, and we worked together on the book for hours. Our literary chemistry was great from the start—if a passage I read didn’t convince me in the full, even if I didn’t know exactly what it was, he would immediately understand my unspoken thoughts and make it perfect. Our minds were in symbiosis, and my stomach fluttered with butterflies every time I had a meeting with him. I didn’t think he liked me back, not in a romantic way. Not until one night when we were the only ones left at the office, and he showed me exactly how wrong I was…well, let’s just say we didn’t accomplish much workwise on that particular night. He proposed two years later on Christmas Eve, then we got married this January, and our plane crashed during our honeymoon. And now I don’t know where he is or how he’s doing.”


  “Here, take the claws, they taste better,” Connor says after carefully smashing the shells with a rock.

  He still has the abandoned dog look. Maybe he has suffered enough.

  “Thank you.” I take them. “And you’re forgiven,” I add.

  A boyish smile spreads on his lips, and he devours the remains of the last lobster with much increased gusto.

  “Can I ask you something?” I eventually ask.

  “Sure,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Why have you been so nice recently? You had an epiphany or something? I mean, you started asking personal questions. Did you hit your head?”

  “I was a jerk. I wanted to apologize,” Connor says simply.

  “Yeah, but why? Before, you acted as if you couldn’t care less about me. So what changed?”

  Before answering, he stares at the fire for a long time. “It’s what you said,” he murmurs finally.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “The part about me being an emotionally challenged, sorry excuse for a man with the sensibility of a toenail.”

  Did I really say that? I must have been really angry.

  “It’s what my wife said when she left me, more or less…” he explains. “She had a go at my shirts, too. Apparently I don’t understand either women or fashion.”

  Ouch.

  “I didn’t really mean all of that,” I say, trying to mollify him. “I was just angry.”

  “No, no. You did, and she did too,” Connor says. “It got me thinking. All this time I thought I had it all figured out. I knew she’d left me for a city boy, and that was it. But you saying the exact same things, with the exact same hurt expression I could never understand, made me question if I had it all wrong from the very start.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Connor Duffield, the man behind the caveman.

  Another long stare at the fire, and he starts his story. “We were high school sweethearts. I met her in the ninth grade and fell immediately for her. Cat was your typical all American girl: blonde hair, blue eyes, big smile…she was one of the popular girls. But it wasn’t just her looks. She was—she is—the best person I have ever met. She was kind to everybody. She always had a smile for everyone, one that would positively melt your insides, and she didn’t even know it. I think every boy in school was in love with her. I admired her from afar for about two years, until we ended up being in the same chemistry class in the eleventh grade. She was comparing schedules with one of her friends during lunch on the first day of school, and I overheard them. That afternoon I schemed to pair-up everyone in the class, and be sure she was left with no other option but to sit with me as a lab partner.”

  He chuckles at the memory. “It took me a semester to charm her into liking me, and we made it official by going to the junior prom as a couple. We dated throughout the rest of high school, and went to college together in Urbana. I was an agricultural science major, and she was biology. We got married the year after graduation and moved back to Dubuque. Everything was great for a while, then I really don’t know what happened. One day she told me she was leaving me.”

  “Just like that?” I ask.

  “She said she’d been unhappy for a long time.”

  “And you didn’t know?”

  “I thought she was a bit subdued toward the end, but I never imagined it was serious. Heck, I never thought she would leave me for real. She was my everything. As long as I could remember, I had been in love with her. I didn’t even think there could be a life for me without her in it.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  “I think that part of me will always love her,” he says, staring at the fire.

  “But what did she say exactly when she left you?”

  “She told me she felt we’d been growing apart. She said we were leading different lives, that I was working so much she barely saw me, and that she felt alone in our house. She told me we didn’t have fun anymore, that she couldn’t remember the last time I had made her laugh.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her that if she gave me another chance I’d make it better.”

  “And she said no?” I’m surprised.

  “No, she said yes. I was good for maybe six months and then got back to my usual patterns. Staying out in the field until late, going out early in the morning, and not paying enough attention to her.”

  “But why?”

  “I took her for granted,” Connor states simply.

  “Then what happened?”

  “One night I came home and she was gone. She’d left me a note explaining she needed some space to think, and that she was going to stay with her sister in Chicago for a while. She never came back.”

  “And you let her go? You didn’t go after her?”

  “Initially, yes,” he says pensively. “In the beginning I was too shocked. I was angry with myself for not doing enough, and with her for leaving. Honestly, I was in denial—the concept of her going was just not conceivable. I honestly thought our bond was too strong, and that she was going to come back on her own. But after a couple of months she was still gone, so I went to Chicago.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “I did.”

  He doesn’t add anything, and I don’t want to push him. I patiently wait by the fire for him to talk when he’s ready, or not talk at all.

  “She was with him,” Connor finally says.

  “She was already dating someone?”

  “No, I don’t think they were dating at the time.”

  “I don’t understand.” I scrunch my face interrogatively.

  “I wanted to see her alone because her sister never liked me. So I waited for her in front of her sister’s building. But when she came down she was with this guy, so I followed them. They went to a bar to eat, one of those pubs with glass walls where you can see inside. I watched them all night—they were talking, drinking, and having fun. She was happy. That beautiful smile I had not seen in forever was back on her lips. She was smiling again, and he was the one making her laugh. And so I left.”

  “You never talked to her?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Does she know you went after her?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  His story is so sad. I feel tears prickle my eyes.

  “Do you ever think of going back to that night and talking to her?” I ask.

  “Every day,” he admits in a whisper.

  “Connor, I’m so sorry.”

  “No need to be, it was a long time ago. And things went down the way they were supposed to. She married him two years later—they have three kids and she’s happy. She’s better off with him.”

  “Connor?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’re a good person. I’m sorry for what I said,” I apologize sincerely.

  “Does that mean I can stop drudging after lobsters?” he asks, smiling.

  “For now, until you’re bad again.” I beam back. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”

  “Nah, I’ll stay here a little longer.”

  “Good night then.”

  “Night.”

  I get up and go back to the hut, leaving him in front of the fire to cope with his past. It must be sad to have the perfect person by your side and to let her slip away like that. I feel sorry for him, but I can’t help but take heart in the fact that Liam and I are so much stronger. He would never give up on me, and I would never leave him. As soon as I close my eyes, I start dreaming about Liam. I dream of being in his arms, of making love to him, but most of all I dream about talking to him. It feels like I spend the entire night having a conversation with my husband. I know him so well I’m almost sure I got all his rebukes and thesis right. It’s both reassuring as I feel Liam so close, and heartbreaking because in reality he’s so far away.

  14

  Kiss the Rain

  “Hey, heeeeere. We’re heeeeere.”

  “Eek.
Eeeeek, eeeeek, ooook, ooook.”

  As soon as I start screaming, the monkeys go into mayhem mode and their cries join mine in a screeching contest.

  “Who the hell are you shouting at?” Connor asks, getting out of the hut and running toward me.

  “There’s a plane!” I yell, waving my arms frantically above my head while jumping up and down.

  “That’s a commercial plane,” Connor says, unimpressed.

  “So? Hey. Heeeeere.”

  “It’s at least seven miles above us. There’s no chance someone could see you, or hear you for that matter!”

  “Are you sure?” I sober up.

  Grunt, meaning yes.

  “Oh.” I hunch my shoulders forward, demoralized.

  The plane is the only human-related thing that’s come this way since we’ve been here. Every day that passes by and we are left on this island alone, the harder it is to keep hoping someone will ever find us.

  “We should do one of those huge SOS writings in the sand,” I say, trying to keep a positive attitude. “Maybe someone will see it from above.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Connor dismisses me.

  “Why do you always have to be so damn pessimistic?” I scowl at him.

  “It’s called being realistic, Anna.”

  “Be as realistic as you like. I’m doing it.”

  “You will be just wasting your time.”

  “Well, I don’t have anything but time to waste, do I?” With that, I turn on my heel and march away to begin my engineering project.

  After our talk in front of the fire we had a few days of truce, but after sucking it up for a week, he quickly returned to his brusque mode. I guess there really is no changing him. I’m not even sure which way I prefer him—his trying-to-be-nice self was somewhat out of character, and his usual self is utterly infuriating. The only moment when I really liked him was when he opened up about his past, but I don’t think I’m going to get another story any time soon. Considering he did open up only after mortally offending me, I’m not sure I want to, either.