Gillian's Island Read online

  I have the feeling that Ivy would break my heart—completely.

  But that suspicion doesn't quell my longing. When I'm foraging or wandering and something funny happens, or something frightening (there are a lot of snakes on this island), or even something only mildly interesting, I find myself eager to tell Ivy all about it, to bask in her smile, her laugh, her wit.

  I have never felt so drawn to anyone in my life.

  God, it's maddening.

  Charity, of course, realizes that something is up, and she's been trying to wheedle it out of me, but I'm too mopey to talk about it with her.

  This afternoon, I need to be away from everyone else, so I'm walking through a part of the woods I haven't explored yet with my trusty snake-whacking stick. I never whack them hard enough to hurt them, just hard enough to stun them. I mean, they have every right to be startled by the sight of a human being in their tropical paradise. They just tend to have violent reactions to that sight, and I'd prefer not to die here, if I can help it. This section of the forest is thick with trees, nothing but green everywhere, as far as the eye can see, like a jungle. But among all of that green, I spy a flash of gold ahead. Maybe it's a bird?

  I brought my camera with me, because I can never predict the beauty that I might encounter on one of these walks. And, besides, I still have to take pictures for the board's presentation, despite being, you know, shipwrecked. So I grip my camera in my hands and creep forward, intent on capturing this gorgeous golden bird...

  And I freeze.

  Because it's not a bird that I'm seeing through the brush.

  It's Ivy.

  Ivy is standing just beyond the trees on a rocky outcrop beside a small waterfall—a waterfall I've never seen before. In the back of my mind, I notice the little details, like the fact that her blonde hair is gleaming golden in the sunshine. That's what I glimpsed through the brush and mistook for feathers.

  And the fact that, against the greenery surrounding her, she looks as golden as the sun, like a statue made of gold.

  She's entirely nude.

  I take in her muscled length, her muscled curves that draw my eyes as would a lovely piece of art. Because that's what she is, I realize, as my breath hitches in my throat, as my skin flushes, heat racing through me. She's art. Her every line looks like the brushstroke of an artist.

  But she isn't a painting, motionless on a canvas. She's living, breathing, and she's right in front of me.

  I want her so deeply, this need as intrinsic to me as my bones.

  As I watch, breathless, Ivy steps gracefully into the water and prowls beneath the waterfall's pummeling spray. She lifts up her hands and spreads her arms wide, like she's offering an embrace to the sky, letting the cold water rush over her skin.

  She looks like a siren. Like a goddess made mortal, as she tilts her head back, as the water sluices over her. I'm holding my breath, watching her... But then I wince, turn my head, swallow. I've been staring, and without Ivy's permission. Not okay. I draw in a deep gulp of air, curling my hands into fists at my sides as I let my camera settle back down on my chest. And then I take a step backward, trying to tiptoe away.

  Ivy calls out, “Leaving so soon?”

  I freeze, eyes saucer wide. Oh, my God.

  She knew I was here, was watching. I'm mortified as I turn back to face Ivy; there's nothing I can think of to say, no excuse, no explanation. I was unabashedly staring at her, at the beauty of her, and I was doing all of this after I broke off our kiss and ran, left her in the woods...

  We've been civil to each other since then, but we've behaved like strangers. Like people who have nothing in common, nothing to say.

  I inhale deeply, lost, miserable.

  I don't know what to do. I can't speak.

  And Ivy doesn't say anything, either, only lifts her head, her green eyes piercing against the blue of the waterfall. She steps away from the cascade, tossing her sopping wet hair over her shoulder as she takes one step, another. And then she extends her arm to me.

  “Come,” she says, her mouth turning up at the corners softly, her voice low enough to cause a shiver to race over my skin. “You'll like it,” she murmurs, holding my gaze as she beckons me with her hand, her eyes, her lips.

  “No,” I tell her, breathless. “I shouldn't—I can't—”

  “Too shy?” she asks, her eyes narrowing, her mouth slanting sideways.

  “Um...yeah,” I answer, even though that isn't the whole truth. By necessity, I've learned to be less-than-modest during my stay on this island. After all, there aren't any private restrooms here.

  But the thought of being naked in front of Ivy—who I left in the woods; who I have hardly spoken with since, because her distance is too painful... Being naked, bare, vulnerable in front of her now would be more than I could bear.

  “It's okay,” she says, lifting her chin, still holding out her hand, unwaveringly, to me. “I won't peek.”

  She's making it impossible for me to refuse...

  And I don't want to hurt her again.

  Am I really going to do this?

  Dry-mouthed, I step out of my hiding place and take her hand, impossibly warm, even though she was just standing beneath that freezing waterfall. She helps me down to the ground beside the pool, and then she winks, turning her back to me purposefully “Go on. It's a total rush.”

  From a practical standpoint, I'm so overheated right now that stepping under the waterfall might be the best way to cool off. And being naked together...it'll make us both vulnerable, right? Maybe I'll be able to apologize to her properly. Maybe we can get back on equal footing, be friends again. Maybe I can make everything okay.

  It's amazing, sometimes, how we justify the things we want so desperately.

  Friends, really?

  I don't want to be friends with Ivy.

  I want...so much more.

  Everything within me calls out for her. I want her. I don't have a plan or an idea or even a thought as to how this will go. I simply go—go with it, adrenaline rushing through me as I stuff my camera into its bag, which is never off of my shoulder these days. And I begin to undress with shaking hands. I undress faster and faster, slinging off my pants, my panties and my shirt in an ungraceful pile on the side of the pool. When I'm fully naked, I draw in a deep breath, and I take a tentative step into the water of the pool.

  Oh, my God, it's so much colder than I expected. Instantly, I have an ice cream headache, and I haven't even dunked my head under the water yet. The frigid temperature of the water and the intense heat of my body combat with one another. But I push through the discomfort of the cold, and then I'm plunging myself right into the water and under the crash of the waterfall.

  It's colder than anything I've ever felt, a type of cold that slides deep into my bones... But at the same time, the cold is invigorating.

  It's...delicious.

  I shriek, the sound squeezed from my throat because of the shock of the cold, but then I find myself laughing as I spread my arms just like Ivy did, trying to be brave and accepting of the water cascading over me. “Oh, my God, this is awesome!” I exclaim breathlessly, whirling around, blinking water out of my eyes.

  “Told you,” Ivy says, a smile in her voice. Her back is still facing me, and she's folded her arms.

  She's standing in a shallow end of the pool, the water lapping at her thighs, so I have a very good view of the backs of her legs and her toned backside, the curve of her hips arcing into her waist and then curving out to her back. The indentation of her spine is a line of skin that I want to touch, to trace with my fingers.

  I'm breathless because of the water, but I'm also breathless because I'm in view of someone so beautiful.

  After a few more moments standing beneath the waterfall, my body has adjusted to the temperature so that I don't notice the cold so much. The adrenaline is also wearing off, and I'm beginning to feel very self-conscious.

  Ivy remains perfectly still, staring off into the trees, and...and.
..I need to talk to her.

  She deserves that much; she certainly deserves a coherent apology. God, what was I thinking? How could I kiss her? It was so unfair of me. I thought I had the courage to follow through, to start something with her even if it wasn't going to be the relationship I want... And I faltered. I wasn't courageous enough, and Ivy paid the price for my cowardice. She didn't deserve that.

  I hurt her.

  I have to fix things between us...

  But how?

  Again, I feel overwhelmed, speechless. I'm so anxious right now that all I can think about is leaving the water, putting on my clothes, so that's exactly what I intend to do. I step out of the waterfall, running my hands over my sopping wet hair. “I'll just get dressed,” I tell Ivy then, my voice quiet as I move toward the bank of the pool and my heap of clothes.

  “Wait,” says Ivy, and I turn, allowing myself one last glance of her rear, of her long legs, even though I feel sick with guilt for looking.

  “What?” I ask her.

  Ivy lifts her chin, says over the roar of the waterfall, “Remember when you said that, if you could start your life over, you'd know how to swim?”

  I shiver. “Um. Yeah.”

  Ivy flexes her shoulders a little, and I watch that elegant motion, spellbound. Her tanned skin bears few tan lines. Maybe she used to sun herself nude on the privacy of her boat...

  “Well, what do you say? Wanna learn today?” asks Ivy nonchalantly. There's nothing hidden in her words; it's just a genuine question, a genuine offer.

  But my anxiety grips me tighter. “You mean, you want to teach me?”

  “Sure. If you're up for it,” she says, a chuckle warming her voice.

  “But...” I wrap my arms around my breasts, feeling a thin sheen of sweat break out over my skin, even though I'm still so cold from the waterfall. “I don't have a swimsuit,” I tell her lamely.

  And Ivy laughs. “What you've got on will work.”

  “I don't have anything on—” I start to protest.

  “Exactly,” she says, with confidence.

  “Oh. Um...” I swallow; my throat is as dry as sandpaper.

  Ivy shakes her head, points over her shoulder without turning around. “Hey, relax. Just go duck into the pond, and I'll join you when you're submerged. Don't worry,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice, “the water's murky. I won't be able to see your secret places.”

  A wave of heat rushes through my limbs and across my skin as I imagine Ivy seeing my “secret places”—and the heat intensifies as I imagine her not only seeing them but touching them, tasting them...

  But, God, there's still an elephant in the room, proverbially speaking. There is still an abyss yawning between us. I haven't apologized; I haven't told her why I felt the need to kiss her and then flee from her.

  Yet, despite that, she's still being so nice to me...

  She's even flirting with me a little. I think. I'm not sure. God, I'm not sure of anything.

  But here's the truth: after nearly drowning in a shipwreck at sea, I am highly, highly aware of the fact that swimming would be a useful skill for me to possess. If it weren't for Ivy, I would have died, drowned. Because shipwreck aside, I couldn't even execute the simple task of propelling my body toward flotsam in order to hang onto something until I was rescued. I was just sinking in that ocean.

  I have to learn. I have to. Learning to swim could save my life.

  And that we're both naked right now just makes the impending lesson feel a little...um...sexier? And sexier isn't a bad thing, even if it's with the woman I have been trying to squash my feelings for. Unsuccessfully.

  Wow, this is going to be a mess. I know it already.

  But I'm powerless to say no. I can't refuse her again. And I want this. I want to be in the water with Ivy, even though I'm so nervous that I'm shaking.

  Somehow, I find the courage inside of me, half-convincing myself that this will be easy, that she's just going to teach me how to swim, nothing more.

  “Okay,” I tell her then, yelling over the crashing water. Resolute now, I wade into the pool beneath the waterfall. The pool isn't especially large or deep, and the water isn't quite as murky as Ivy promised me it would be. Still, once the water laps over my breasts, I call back over my shoulder to her: “I'm ready!”

  And Ivy—fully nude—turns around and strides calmly toward me through the water, lowering herself into the pool in easy, liquid motions. God, she's beautiful. And she looks perfectly at ease, in her element. As if she's part of the water, and it's part of her. She grew up on the water, after all, makes her living on the waves...

  Ivy's yellow hair floats around her shoulders like golden seaweed, and her eyes are electric green as her mouth slowly turns up at the corners and she smiles at me.

  She smiles like she means it. Like nothing awkward ever happened between us. Like I never kissed her and left her.

  She's giving me an out. I should take it.

  But I can't. She deserves an explanation.

  “Ivy,” I whisper. I feel bared in more ways than one, standing with her, face to face in the water, completely nude. And I know she can see through the water, can see my “secret places,” as she called them, beneath the water, my breasts very close to the surface. I close my eyes, gather courage around me as I consider that I could reach out, that I could touch her at any moment.

  That she could reach out and touch me, too.

  “I'm sorry,” I tell her then, my throat so parched that I croak out the words. And that's when I open my eyes; that's when I take in Ivy's expression.

  For a moment, hurt flashes over her face. But then she shakes her head, her mouth drawn into a thin line. “What for?” she asks me. Her voice sounds worn, tired.

  “I...” I don't know what to say. I've considered this conversation and how it might go a hundred times in my head, ever since the afternoon of the kiss, but all of my practice lines seem weak, insubstantial. They evaporate into nothingness, and I'm left with no words, nothing to fall back on. So I draw in a deep breath, square my shoulders, and I wing it.

  “You don't do relationships. Right?” I ask her, and it sounds all wrong, coming out of my mouth, and again pain flits across her face... Yeah, that wasn't the right thing to say.

  But Ivy lifts her chin, and she nods at me. “Right,” she agrees simply. “I don't.”

  I want to ask her why; I want to dig deeper, have the conversation where she's vulnerable enough with me to give me her reasons. But I haven't earned that right. Instead, I lift my chin, too, and I tell her, as quietly as I can while still being heard over the waterfall, “Well, I do. I...I don't do casual well. I want a relationship when I get together with a woman. And I realized that when I...” Oh, God. I gesture with my hands helplessly, spluttering into the silence, “I realized that I wanted that...with you. When I kissed you. But I remembered what you'd said, and I figured you weren't looking for a long-term thing, so I didn't want to, um, start something. Something we couldn't finish.”

  I bite my lip and point my gaze to the water. If there were a rock nearby that I could crawl under, I would do that, but the closest boulder is down by the shore. So I continue standing before her, flushed, heart and body bared.

  But finally Ivy takes a deep breath, and then she shrugs a little, nodding. “I figured that was why,” she tells me quietly. Then she holds me in place with her bright green gaze. “No hard feelings,” she tells me, her words so soft I can hardly hear them.

  Inside, my guts twist. Grief floods through me. All in all, this is a good outcome. She's being understanding, kind, two things she is under no obligation to be, but I wish...

  Well.

  I wish.

  The most poignant words in the English language, those: I wish. I wish so much and want so much, and that's not going to get me anywhere, because we've both spoken our piece, Ivy and me.

  And we're left with no hard feelings, as she said. That's a better outcome than I deserved. But Ivy i
s cool and carefree, and she's understanding. Of course she wouldn't hold a grudge.

  I've blown this all out of proportion. She probably didn't place as much importance on that kiss as I did. Mountain out of a molehill, I guess. It wouldn't be the first time I've made that mistake.

  “Okay,” she tells me then, her mouth turning up softly at the corners as she nods to me. “First lesson—floating. Do you trust me?”

  I'm still dry-mouthed from our conversation, still anxious and worried and now, faced with the reality that Ivy is about to try to teach me how to swim, I'm a little disbelieving. Like, is this really happening? Am I dreaming? But then I find myself nodding my head.

  And then I'm speaking again, and I'm telling her the truth: “You saved my life, Ivy. I trust you—with my life.”

  For a moment, Ivy seems taken aback by this admission. She licks her lips, draws in a deep breath through her nose. “All right, then,” she whispers, and for another long moment, we stare at one another across the small space between us. She's softening as she looks at me. Her brow slowly unfurrows, and her eyes widen, just a little, like she's gazing at something she appreciates.

  And then she nods once, and she moves through the water gracefully, circling me until she's directly behind me. My heart flutters in my chest, pounding blood through every vein, as I absorb how close she is, how close her skin is to mine, her body to mine...

  Every inch of my body is alive, on fire, as Ivy murmurs behind me, “I want you to lean back, toward me.”

  I swallow, my breath shallow as I shift slightly to look back at her. She smiles at me reassuringly. “Don't worry—I'm here,” she says, her voice low. “I'll hold you up. Let your feet rise from the bottom. Don't fight it. Just let your body drift upward. It knows what to do...”

  Does it? I'm half-terrified, half-turned on. But I obey. I lean backward, shoulders slicing through the water, and I draw in a deep breath, and I can feel my body rise, drifting upwards, even as I feel Ivy's hands grazing the small of my back. I try to relax, and I take another deep breath...

  And I suddenly realize that I'm floating flat atop the surface of the water. Which means that my nakedness is completely visible to Ivy, her hands lingering beneath my back as she helps me maintain my floating. I have an instant, urgent need to lower myself and hide my body from her, so I fold inward, drawing my legs up, my bottom down towards the floor of the pool, and I swallow a little water because I splash so ungracefully as I try to cover myself.