Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (12 page)

“OK,” I say. “If we can actually find our way
back to the beach.”

“It’s easy,” she says with a smirk. “We just
follow the stream.”

*

Why don’t I think of things like these? I
groan inwardly. I certainly feel like hitting my own forehead
repeatedly.

We do as Rebecca suggests, of course, and
follow the stream downward. It is going to lead someplace for sure,
either to a lake or to the sea. I’m willing to bet it’s the
sea.

Along the way, we find banana trees – broad
leafy, stumpy trees with bunches of both green and yellow bananas.
Bananas are more substantial than paw paws, and so we dine on them.
Later, I stuff as many bananas as I can take into my pockets. For
the first time, I rue the fact my pants are so tight.

“No problem,” Rebecca says.

She fashions my tattered shirt into a
makeshift bag, gathers as many bananas as she can, and wraps it all
up. Then she slings it across her shoulder and sets off.

I can’t help admiring her butt inside that
tight green dress as she walks. The dress is made all the tighter
by the seawater.

By late evening, we glimpse the shining sea
again. It has been a long, weary trek, and as soon as we hit the
beach, we collapse onto the sand and sprawl there as if dead. The
stream has become a small river mouth, and this empties out into
the ocean beyond.

“Do you know how to fish?” asks Rebecca.

“Only with a fishing line.”

“Maybe we can fashion one.”

I groan. “Can’t we rest here a bit?”

“I’m hungry.”

Actually, so am I. And it’s a man’s job to
fish for a woman.

Where did I get my Neanderthal ideas?

I make myself get up anyway. We go into the
forest again to hunt for vines that may be able to do the trick.
Then we dig for earthworms, which are consistently evading us
today. There aren’t even the prerequisite earthworm mounds to
suggest that they might have made their homes there.

“I found some sort of beetle,” I say, picking
up the wriggling blue and black thing. I hope these tropical
beetles don’t bite. “Do you think the fish would like these?”

She wrinkles her nose. “If not, I hope they
like bananas.”

Still, we fashion a sort of hook out of a
gnarly piece of wood. Then we cast the line with the dying beetle
into the mouth of the stream, where we can see fishes swimming
against the current.

I guess not too many people do fishing here,
because after fifteen minutes, we get a bite. I triumphantly pull
out one wriggling silver fish.

“Don’t let it go!” Rebecca yells as the fish
tries to dance out of our slippery grasps.

“Yeah, I was just going to unhook it and
throw it back into the sea,” I deadpan.

We plop the fish into the sand and slowly
watch it heave its final breaths, its gills opening and
closing.

“Wicked,” I remark.

“I know.” She stares at the fish, fascinated.
“It’s a wonder not more people are vegans.”

“I don’t feel like a vegan. I feel like a
fruitarian.”

“There’s always the problem of not being able
to start a fire.”

I grin. “Fancy eating sashimi?”

REBECCA

We are so exhausted from our long trek that
we fall asleep after a nice meal of sashimi (not sushi, Kurt
corrected me, because sushi has rice in it, and we certainly don’t
have rice.) What I would give to have a plate of rice right now. Or
a hot meal. Or a Wendy’s burger.

But my dreams are not of roast chicken and
baby potatoes, or of pavlovas whose meringues crumble in your
mouth. Strangely enough – or not so strangely – they are of a
super-hot naked man who just happens to be lying next to me on the
soft ground beyond the beach.

When we wake the next day, I do not tell Kurt
of my dreams, of course.

Kurt’s beard is starting to grow. It’s still
a shadow on his jaw, but the shadow is getting heavier and darker.
He’s sexy as hell this way. I wonder how those bristles would feel
scraping against my skin.

No. No. Absolutely not.

We argue a little over how we are to make our
S.O.S sign. Finally, we settle for the biggest S.O.S letters we can
make on the expanse of beach we have. To make the letters, we haul
driftwood and other types of wood.

The finished product reads kind of like
this:

S.O.S

From ten miles above, it would resemble a
child’s scrawl, I suppose.

“Have you heard any passing airplanes so
far?” I ask him.

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

We contemplate this for a while. It’s
sobering to think that we might be stuck here for days and days. Or
even weeks.

Months
.

I gulp.

Kurt says, “Let’s go exploring during the
day. We can always return to this beach as our home base. Waiting
around to be rescued is not my can of beer.”

“Cup of tea.”

“Huh?”

“The expression is not ‘can of beer’ but ‘cup
of tea’.”

“Seeing as I don’t drink tea, a can of beer
is as good as any. Besides, I’m still not sure this is an island.
We may be on a desolate part of the mainland. For all we know,
there might be civilization across the bend.”

I can’t argue with that. I would hate to
think that we might be near a tourist township all this while and
we starved to death because we didn’t venture out to explore just
one mile more.

“OK,” I say. “Besides, if a rescue plane was
looking for us, they would see the S.O.S on the beach and know we
are here. They would then mount a search and rescue and come
looking for us in the jungle. So we don’t have to stay glued to
this spot.”

I haven’t read the manual on what to do when
you’re stuck on a deserted island, so I’m making it up as I go
along.

We spend the next few days like this. We comb
the interiors, staying close to the stream. We figured that if
there are any townships or villages, they would make their homes
close to the water. Then we broach into territories beyond the
stream, making sure we would know how to return to it by giving
ourselves little scout markers to follow.

Oftentimes, I feel like we are Hansel and
Gretel wandering deeper into the forbidding woods.

But we find no one and nothing.

We have become better at foraging for tubers
and wild tapioca and catching fish, however. Kurt finally got the
technique of fire-starting correct, but he had to break many nails
or whatever it takes to get it right. His beard is a lot fuller
now, denoting the passage of time. His body has gone leaner and
tanned from the sun. He looks just like in his music video for
Sunglass Hut
, where he is a guerilla in shades romancing
Britney Spears, who does a ‘featuring’ appearance.

(OK, so I admit I logged into his Vevo
channel. Once.)

I have warmed up to Kurt, and he doesn’t
repel me as much as he used to. We have fallen into a companionable
camaraderie.

“Of course, we can always walk down the beach
instead to explore. Human habitation might be sequestered to the
beaches,” Kurt suggests.

Of course.

Why didn’t I think of it?

Following the beach front is not as easy as
it appears. The ‘beach’ vanishes for large portions of the time,
dissolving into pure rocky land and dense jungle. You would still
have to do a lot of climbing, and I can tell you that it is not
easy with bare feet. My soles are blistered and callused and
bruised, as are my hands.

God, I’m going to need a hundred pedicures to
restore my feet when I get back.

However, we didn’t have to go a long way down
(or up) the seafront before we find the man.

And what a find it is.

REBECCA

Kurt is the first to notice the man.

“Look.”

He points to a sheer cliff rising from the
sea. The cliff has an out-jutting promontory that sticks out like a
protruding tongue. Below, furious waves dash against the cliff
wall, spraying water and white foam everywhere. The wind whistles
everywhere, stinging our faces with crisp, salty air. Here, the
humidity is staggering.

The man is immobile. He sits facing the sea,
his back against a large boulder that is covered with moss and
creeping plants. From what I can make out from here, he is wearing
khaki style clothing – very Camel Outback.

The way he sits is unnatural.

“Oh my God,” I say to Kurt. “Is he dead?”

Kurt doesn’t say anything, although his
silence confirms he agrees with me. My heart begins to beat with a
percussive note that is both omnipresent and depressing.

“So what do we do?” I say.

“He could be stoned and out cold,” Kurt
offers.

“Stoned? Here?”

“Hey, there are plenty of mushrooms and
plants in the jungle that can do the trick.”

Right. We both don’t think that is the
correct assessment, however, and we both know it.

“I’ll call out to him,” Kurt says. He cups
his hands and cries, “Hello!”

His voice echoes through the stillness.

There is no reply.

Kurt says, “I’ll climb up there and find
out.”

The path to get to the cliff is extremely
treacherous. I gaze at the steep ground, tufted with rocks and
clinging vegetation.

“You stay down here,” Kurt says.

My first response is to bridle.
Don’t tell
me what to do and I’ll climb up there with you, thank you very
much.
But I’m too scared. It’s like we have been playing Adam
and Eve – without the sex – and we suddenly find we are not alone
in the universe.

The only thing is to find out now if the
serpent is up there on the cliff.

So I can only stand my ground and follow
Kurt’s marvelous body – even more toned now we are both on a forced
diet – as he deftly scales the ascending ground, hooking his bare
feet around thick roots for leverage and using his hands to haul
himself slowly up like a tailless monkey. He loses his footing and
almost slips a couple of times, but manages to brake himself in
time.

My heart is in my mouth.

Please be careful, Kurt.

Kurt finally gets up there with difficulty.
He is about forty feet or so above from me, but from my vantage, he
appears tiny. He is now and again obscured by ropy vegetation –
thick vines that drape around the branches of trees from here to
there. We are within shouting distance, however.

I can see him approaching the figure.

“Is he alive?” I call.

“No,” comes back the answer. “He’s dead.”

A chill comes over me. Not too far from me,
the surf crashes against the rocks.

“Long dead?”

“I’m not CSI, but I don’t think he’s been
long dead. He’s not a skeleton. But I can’t tell about
decomposition in this heat.”

Not a skeleton. My spine creeps with
unease.

Kurt bends over the figure, inspecting
something.

“What’re you doing?” I say.

I am afraid Kurt might catch something from
the body. I’m not sure what kinds of germs exist around dead bodies
which aren’t buried, but they can’t be good.

“I wonder if I should take his clothes. Our
clothes are practically falling off and his still look good.”

“No, Kurt, don’t!” There is something
distasteful about wearing someone else’s grave vestments.

“You don’t have to wear them, but I think
they will fit me.”

He’s right, actually. We are marooned
victims. We don’t exactly have Neiman Marcus across the bend to
select our wardrobe from. And any type of cloth is good.

Up there, Kurt moves the body with a flurry
of movements.

I hear an expletive and tense.

“What?” I call.

“I think he’s been murdered.”

My heart stops in my throat.

“Why do you say that?” I squeak.

I don’t think Kurt heard me. My mind suddenly
overflows with possibilities. If the man has been murdered, it
means that he has been murdered by
somebody
. And that
somebody has been here on this island or whatever it is.

Kurt says, “There’s a knife sticking into the
back of his neck. It’s awful.”

I can imagine.

“Kurt, come away from there! It isn’t
safe!”

“It’s OK. Whoever did this to him has been
long gone.”

Yeah, but he can still be around.

Of course, I realize this is ludicrous.

“I need the knife,” Kurt says.

“No!” I don’t want a murder weapon around
us.

“We need a knife, Rebecca. He’s not going to
need it anymore.”

Yeah, especially since it killed him. This
murder is almost like a hit. But the presence of this man and his
murderer also means something. It means that this island is easily
accessible and it is not as godforsaken as we initially
thought.

I hope Kurt is not going to suggest we
investigate the murder, because we need all our strength to
survive.

“What are you doing now, Kurt?” I call again.
I must sound like a nagging mother, checking up on his every move.
There’s a lot of activity going on up there.

“Removing his clothes, shoes and knife. He
has a wallet in here, but it’s empty of money. He has no ID.”

Figures.

Kurt goes on, “But he has some sort of
backpack that has fallen off this side of the ledge. It’s hanging
from a root or something a little way down. It might contain
something we can use. I’ll go get it.”

I can’t see the backpack he is referring to.
It must be on the other side.

“I don’t know, Kurt. Be careful.”

“I can reach it. No problem.”

There’s some sort of scuffle up there. I have
to bite my lip very hard to keep myself from yelling out.

Then Kurt cries out, and I hear a splash.

My breath stops.

“Kurt?”

There is no reply.

Oh shit shit shit. He has fallen into the
sea. He might have dashed his head against the rocks. I quickly
scramble to the side overlooking the sea. From where I am, the
ground falls about ten feet down into the water. There is no beach
at all here.