by Juniper Bell
I made a point of getting a visual of every new person who came to the Oasis. I knew Bliss still wanted to find me. Courtney, with her magical ninja computer skills, had been keeping me one step ahead of her. But I knew Bliss to be infinitely resourceful, so I wasn't about to let down my guard. You could never be too cautious. That was my motto, and it had worked well for the past six months. I'd watched every boat landing, and had scanned the face of every single visitor to my tropical refuge.
I'd found this isolated spot by sheer chance, but once I'd waded off the longboat, my bag held overhead to keep it dry, I knew it was perfect. The Oasis was located on the jungle-bound Southeast corner of the island Koh Pha Ngan, on one of three beaches linked by footpaths. The area was its own little cut-off world. It had no roads, no motor vehicles. Other than by longboat, the only way off the beach was through the jungle. For that, you needed plenty of mosquito repellent and a machete.
The longboats landed on Haad Tien, the beach where the Oasis was located. That meant if someone did show up searching for me, chances were I’d see them before they saw me. If not … well, I had a machete.
I was so grateful I'd found this place. Thank you, Thailand. Thank you, wandering hippie adventurers hanging out in youth hostels, trading tips about places to stay. Thank you, tiny bungalow that cost me five dollars a night.
To top off my good fortune, my employers paid in cash, didn't care what my real name was, and had no interest in where I came from. And so far, no one had shown any sign of recognizing the "Senator Sex Toy."
Lovely nickname. Such a proud moment in my life. Thank God I could put it behind me here in this tropical dreamland.
Except for the times when I tossed and turned, reliving the intensely erotic experience in that restroom with Rye.
Fucked up, I know.
I finished sliding the lemons and tucked them into a plastic bin covered with a wet towel. I slid the bin under the bar, which was made of curved tropical hardwood made shiny by layers and layers of polyurethane. I loved wiping it down. It was so satiny-smooth I could see my reflection, and for the first time that didn't bother me. It reassured me, because I looked so different. I'd hacked off most of my hair and dyed the rest strawberry-blond. The equatorial sun added streaks of platinum. A small peridot jewel sparkled in my left nostril. Body jewelry was so prevalent among the young gypsy travelers that it would look suspicious if I didn't have at least one piercing.
Besides, Bliss would have loathed the idea.
What else? I went wild with the eye makeup. I'm talking glitter, purple liner, whatever crazy thing I could come up with. It felt liberating to do whatever I wanted to my face. I didn't have to create any sort of specific effect. I didn't have to look polished or even desirable. No one here cared what I looked like. They were all either too hungry from their juice fasts or too stoned to notice me.
That was another thing. Despite temptation around every coconut palm, I hadn't taken a single hit of weed or any other substance. Even though I felt relatively safe on Koh Pha Ngan, I couldn't take a chance. But after nearly a month here, I was starting to relax. A lot of that was due to Courtney.
Rye had appeared on her radar a couple of times. He'd hired an investigator—Doug Berkowitz—to find both me and Courtney. The first time Rye had arrived in Morocco, Court asked me if I wanted her to make contact with him. I said no. I didn't think it was safe yet. The second time he showed up, I wavered.
"What do you think he wants?" I asked Courtney.
"I don't know. When I saw him outside your townhouse in DC, he looked wild to find you. But he didn't have much to say about your interview. I asked him if he'd watched it, and all he did was nod."
"You couldn't tell what he thought about it?"
"No, my X-ray mind-reading powers were temporarily on the fritz. I'll get that fixed any minute, don't you worry. So what do you want me to do?"
"Just keep an eye on him. No contact," I finally told her. I wanted to believe that he was looking for me out of love. Because he missed me, or worried about me, or even because he wanted to fuck me. But I would be foolish to forget his original purpose in tracking me down.
If he still wanted to ruin the Blakewells, this would be the perfect opportunity. My precious, precious freedom could slip through my fingers like the white sand on the other side of those arched doorways. And I'd given up so much for it. By leaving Bliss in the lurch, I'd sacrificed two things. The first was the chance to learn who my real parents were. The second was the evidence she kept under lock and key to control me.
She had a videotape that showed me planning a job in which I pretended to be the girlfriend of a bank manager, leading to a big unsolved robbery. Bliss held that tape over my head like a guillotine. Without it, I'd never be able to go back to the United States without worrying.
But here in Thailand, none of that mattered. I was in the land of green jungles, giddy with hope. The only sad part? I missed Rye like crazy.
I pushed that thought aside, as I did with all thoughts of Rye.
The boy, Chati, came skipping through the door, tugging a wagon piled with young coconuts behind him. He flashed me a wide, gap-toothed smile.
"Julie! You look beautiful!"
"Thanks, kid." I felt bad telling such an innocent young boy a false name, but what difference did it really make? Everything else about me was false too. Hair, appearance, history. They all thought I came from Los Angeles, where I used to work as a chef.
And yet, in some ways, the people here knew me better than anyone had back in DC. I was more relaxed here. More "myself."
Well, I'd been the most "myself" with Rye.
Who I wasn't supposed to think about.
"New boat come," Chati was saying, his words floating in a current of laughter. "Land at other beach. He almost tip over and fall everyone out!"
"Other beach?"
"Haad Wai Nam. Where they land when water too high."
"Oh. Right." My little bungalow was located on Haad Wai Nam, but I’d never seen the longboats land there. It made me a little nervous, but it probably didn't matter. I would make sure to check my bungalow thoroughly before I went inside.
Don't be so paranoid.
A group of yoga students, sweaty and blissed-out, came to the counter for their post-class juice fix. I got busy with the blender. They were all talking about the upcoming Full Moon Party. Bonfires would be lit all along the sand on Haad Rin Beach, a short boat ride away. The little food shacks would stay open all night. People came from all over to trance-dance in the sand and do ecstasy until the sun rose.
I served a coconut-banana medley to a girl with crystals threaded through her long hair, and a flax-hemp-green micronutrient concoction to her boyfriend, who was rocking a man-bun and a perfectly sculpted bare torso. I pulled out the ledger from under the counter and carefully added their drinks to their tab.
I was still noting the amount when someone pulled up a stool next to the yoga couple.
"I'm not even going to ask if I can get a cold longneck here."
My head snapped up.
Rye.
Rye.
Not one of my occasional fantasies of him appearing out of nowhere, but the real thing. Live, in the flesh. Beautiful as ever.
He wore that wide grin that made a deliciously lickable groove appear in one cheek. The tropical sun had browned his skin even darker, setting off the silver of his eyes. He wore a light gray t-shirt—a look that stood out for its simplicity. No sarong, no Thai fisherman's pants, no piercings. Just pure, one-hundred-percent luscious male.
My belly quivered with lust.
"You're supposed to be in Morocco," I blurted.
His grin disappeared. "How did you know I was in Morocco?"
"I have my ways."
He rested his forearms on the counter and leaned toward me. "You've been monitoring me all this time?"
"Can I get you something? Banana smoothie? We have a Jungle Love special today, it has coconut flesh and—"
"Why?"
"Because it's anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, high in the ‘good’ kind of fat—"
"I'm not talking about coconuts, for fuck's sake. Come on, throw me a bone, Lau—"
I put my fingers over his lips. The contact sent a flurry of shivers through me. I bent forward and kissed his cheek, whispering into his ear, "Call me Julie. What are you here for?"
He shifted his head just slightly, enough so his stubble-grained cheek brushed against mine while he found my ear. "I'm here for you. Julie."
I pulled back, because if I didn't, I might launch myself over the bar and into his lap. It was so good to see him. I knew I shouldn't feel that way, because my precarious existence here was much safer without him. But I couldn't stop my body from warming under his smile, or my mind from flashing images of his strong body braced over mine.
The grin spread across his face again. I wondered if he knew the power he wielded with that one expression. I felt my panties go damp at the sight. But I fought it. I still didn't know what he wanted.
"How did you find me?" I whispered. But before he could answer, I had to pull away to serve one of the regulars, Rolf. The man had so many Tibetan tattoos he was like a one-man walking gallery. I quickly made him his usual—a Green Blast packed with protein powder.
As I popped a straw into his glass, he gestured with his dreadlocked head toward Rye at the other end of the bar. "Is he a friend of yours?"
"I'm not sure exactly what he is. That'll be two hundred baat."
He ignored my request for payment. "That sounds like a question for the pendulum."
"Excuse me?"
He fumbled for a small leather pouch that hung around his neck, and pulled out a crystal tied to a thong. "The pendulum is very sensitive to energy. You ask it a question. It answers based on the vibrations it picks up."
I barely kept from rolling my eyes. Every New Age fad in creation found its way here to Koh Pha Ngan.
"I think I can figure this out on my own, Rolf. Would you like to put this on a tab?"
He was staring at his pendulum. "But look—" He held it up so the crystal dangled in the air, almost as if it was dancing. "It's already responding to the waves of energy radiating between you two. Very powerful. Erotic."
"Okay, then. Never mind, your Green Boost is on me." Anxious to escape, I hurried back to Rye.
"Please order something," I murmured. "Hopefully something complicated that will take me a while so I don't have to talk to the dude with the pendulum."
He picked up one of the printed menus and grimaced. "Fine, I'll order something. But do I have to drink it?"
I laughed, and that's when I had to face facts. I was incredibly happy to see Rye.
Rye stayed at the bar for the rest of my shift, ordering smoothie after smoothie to justify hoarding the stool. Some of the time, he tapped messages into his phone. This drew hostile glances from several other customers, but I found the sight comforting. It was like a little piece of familiar American life in a sea of alien unfamiliarity.
Why hadn't Courtney warned me?
Using the pretense of a bathroom break, I shut myself in the office and logged on to the computer. The Oasis prided itself on its lack of connection to the outside world. Cell service was spotty at best. Only one computer was hooked up to the Internet, and the connection was painfully slow and deliberately overpriced. I had no interest in the Internet except to stay in touch with Courtney. Maybe she'd warned me about Rye coming.
Sure enough, there it was on the fake Facebook page she'd set up for me. "B met with R. She's up to something. R heading your way. Have fun. P.s. Gonzo is a handful."
I pictured the wink Courtney would have attached to the advice to “have fun.” She was a strong proponent of enjoying sex whenever and however you could. For years she'd been telling me that clinging to my virginity was only depriving myself. She'd definitely approved of the shot from the Redwood Club restroom.
"That's hot," she'd told me. "Was it as fun is it looks?"
I shut down the computer, a shiver of anxiety passing through me. Bliss knew where I was. How long had she known? How long had I been deluding myself that I’d escaped her? And why had she told Rye where to find me, after working so hard to turn us against each other? She'd tried to convince me that he'd taken those nude shots and plastered them all over the Internet. She'd wanted me to hate him. Had something changed?
God, how I hated trying to figure out Bliss and her endless games.
Back at the juice bar, a Swedish girl named Gretel had taken the stool next to Rye. I knew her from her fire-spinning practices on the beach. She was blasting a killer smile his way and explaining her palm-reading technique.
A hot wave of jealousy swept over me. "Did you want to order something, Gretel?"
She barely gave me a glance. "Young coconut, please." Back to Rye. "Have you tasted a young coconut yet? You must, absolutely. It's a Thai rite of passage. Everyone who comes here becomes addicted to them. I must initiate you."
"We're out of coconuts," I snapped. "But you can go climb a tree and get some more."
She jerked at my snippy tone.
Rye raised his eyebrows at me, eyes filled with mischief. "Sorry, Gretel. I'll take a pass on the coconuts."
Gretel slid off the stool, already scanning the restaurant for her next target. "Silly Americans."
As soon as she was gone, he turned back to me. I busied myself wiping down the bar. Rye's presence was making my senses go haywire. As if all the settings on my internal compass were spinning and shifting to focus on him.
"You seem nervous. I don't want you to be nervous. Do you want me to go?" Rye asked in a soft voice that felt like a feather drawn across my skin.
"That depends. Why did you come here?"
"A few reasons. I needed to see you. Ask you a question. It's about what you said on TV. You said, 'I've loved him since I was thirteen.' I've been wanting to know for the past six months—is that true?"
My face burned at hearing that quote from the interview I'd given. "I wanted to take the focus off Brian. I didn't want people to think it was his failure. It was the least I could do."
"So … it wasn't true. It was just something you said for public consumption." Rye sat perfectly still, watching me closely.
Somewhat … but not entirely. But could I trust him? My lifetime habit of keeping my guard up kept the truth trapped in my heart. "You knew I had a crush on you back then."
"Yes. Well, I knew because Annabelle told me. But the woman I saw on TV wasn't talking about a childhood crush. She was talking about real emotions. Present tense. That's the woman I want to talk to now."
I glanced around the bar, noticed a few curious glances cast our way. Beyond the arches that framed the common area, the sky was a luminous, deep purple. I shook my head. "Rye … this is a different place, a different time. I'm a different person here."
"A different person," he repeated slowly. "Tell me you don't really believe that."
If he only knew how many times I'd become a different person, he wouldn't sound so skeptical. "It's what I do, Rye. It's what I've been doing my whole life."
He snagged my wrist, tugged me closer over the bar. "Bullshit." His voice dropped a couple of octaves, to a deep, sexy rumble. "The important things are the same. This." He brushed his thumb over the vein fluttering madly in my inner wrist. My nipples hardened as he deliberately dropped his gaze to my chest. "The way you respond to me. The way I respond to you."
I tried to govern the pace of my breathing, but even I didn't have that much skill.
"Your breath is coming faster because I'm touching you. Your pupils are dilating. Whenever you're aroused, the gold flecks stand out more. Did you know that? I bet I know more about your body's language than you do. That flush sweeping across your cheekbones means you want me. That's the same thing it meant when you stood in my room at the Colonial and offered me anything I wanted from you."
That "flush" was probably turni
ng into a stain of scarlet as embarrassment flooded me. That crazy mix of desire and desperation felt so far away now.
"It's okay, Lauren. I want you just as much. More. I haven't been able to get you out of my mind for six months."
I tugged my lower lip with my teeth. Definitely mutual.
"Elijah and Annabelle think I've gone off the deep end. And maybe I have. Just tell me I'm not alone. Tell me you've been thinking about me too."
I stared at him. The familiar Oasis scents wafted around me. Someone was smoking a clove cigarette. A whiff of tiki torch oil drifted from the beach. The night breeze was spiked with ocean salt. And underneath it all, solid and intoxicating, was the scent of Rye. An anchor of real in a sea of strange.
I wanted him so badly I could barely speak. "Of course I've been thinking about you," I whispered. "How could I not? But Rye—"
"Shh. That's all I need. We can work out the rest from there."
"The rest?"
His eyes flared with naughty promise. "It's my turn."
"Your turn for what?"
"My turn to offer you anything you want. In private or in public."
3
Rye
After Lauren’s shift ended, I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder and followed her into the warm night. She guided me toward a path that snaked along the endless curved beach. Tall palm trees swayed overhead, and new coconuts sprouted alongside the trail. There were actually three beaches linked by one path, or so the longboat captain had told me. One was the popular spot for swimming and sunbathing. It was called Haad Yuan. The Oasis’s beach, Haad Tien, was more of a playground, with volleyball nets and chaise lounges.
The third beach, Haad Wai Nam, where I'd landed after a queasy ride around the point, had only a narrow strip of sand to it. It was the most secluded beach, the one where travelers rented bungalows along a path that led into the island's interior, toward the jungle.
Lauren had chosen to stay at Haad Wai Nam, and that's where we headed, anticipation vibrating between us like a physical thing. I walked behind her, enjoying the surefooted way she navigated the trail and shamelessly ogling her long bare legs. This new version of Lauren was … well, ultra-hot. Back in DC, she didn't normally show so much skin. She'd been buttoned up and wary.
