Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2

by Becky Wicks

  ‘Joshua,’ she’s saying to the camera now. She looks clean; her hair’s brushed and styled around her beautiful face. My heart pangs and I realize I’m fighting for breath. Damn, I miss her, more than I even thought. Her scent comes back to me, just looking at her; the feel of her skin, the sound of her laughing as she danced on the sand.

  Chloe gets up, walks out of the shot. ‘I don’t know where you are,’ Alyssa says, leaning forward. Her eyes are bigger, lined with black kohl, imploring. ‘But I found your cousin Evan and I know there’s a treatment, and I’m going to make sure you get it.’

  She sits up straighter. The fierce look I know too well is back in her eyes. ‘No more secrets, no more lies,' she says. 'We’re the island now, Joshua, they can’t touch us anymore. You don’t have to hide away, from anything… you don’t have to run, OK? Just come back to me, please. You’re my reality.’ She sighs, looks straight at the lens. ‘Everything else is just projections.’

  The video ends and I hear the girl behind me sniff loudly. ‘Oh my god,’ she says again. ‘I love Alyssa.’

  I shut the email with trembling hands. I’m about to shut the entire window down when I see another email from the bank underneath it. I never get emails from my bank. My heart’s thumping like a beat box as I open it and I already know what she’s done.

  41

  Alyssa

  The wind is howling. The snow came last night like it always does in Denver – sudden, covering the city in white and rendering it silent, like some old movie. Driving here from Boulder this morning took ninety minutes. Not that I minded. Time has actually had far less significance since I left that island.

  ‘Alyssa?’ I turn from the office window. Megan’s standing here, looking at the collection of heels and clothes I’ve boxed up; the ones I kept in my desk drawers in the name of being prepared for any situation. She’s sad that I’m leaving, but how could I have come back?

  She walks over to me, stands next to me in the window and follows my gaze over the snow. ‘Where are you going first?’ she says, looping her arm through mine.

  I shrug. ‘My friend Shan is taking a cruise this summer, from Barcelona,’ I say. ‘It’s not really my thing but I may go to Europe, meet him after that. He wants to visit Greece with me.’

  ‘I love Shan,’ she says, and for a weird second I wonder how the hell she knows him. Then I remember she watched the show and that my world is warped beyond belief. I don’t know why I forget sometimes. One of the reasons I want to leave so soon is because it’s all everyone wants to talk about. I’ve watched and relived each episode on phones, televisions, blogs… more than I ever wanted to.

  What surprises me most, aside from feeling my heart crumble every single time I see Joshua’s face on a screen, is how Stephanie and Jaxx were portrayed. They got just as much screen time; flirting, talking, making out in secret once or twice. And then there was Stephanie on her own, telling the world via camera how she found the immunity charm as soon as Jaxx found it and was planning on playing him till she got it. All in the name of Nashville, and her brothers.

  Journey was a plant, as the guys suspected. She’s never spent a day in Nepal in her life. She’s an actress from Los Angeles called Annabel Kline and she’s fully booked for the rest of the year, according to People.

  Punk too, spent most of his time talking to the camera near the well, telling stories, battling his demons out loud about heading into the water long before we found out what happened to his friend on the jet ski. Everyone at home fell in love with the honesty he hid from us; the same way they fell for my sense of humor, my positivity and I quote: ‘that body in that bikini.’ I cringe when I think about it. The shot of my ass halfway up a palm tree made the cover of U.S Weekly. I had to rip it off the bulletin board in the kitchen as soon as I got here.

  ‘It’s a long time till summer,’ Megan says, gesturing to the snow. ‘What’re you going to do till then? Hang out with orphans in Cambodia?’

  ‘Probably,’ I say, smiling. The truth is, I don’t really have a plan and I kind of like it. I want to meet new people and explore new cultures, and eat food from different places. I want to learn how to cook that way. I don’t want to be in some school learning someone else’s rules until I absolutely need that certificate.

  The floorboard creaks behind us. We both turn around.

  ‘Alyssa, don’t forget to send me the spreadsheet, please,’ K-Lame says.

  ‘The low hanging fruit?’ I say, as my eyes are drawn straight to a coffee stain.

  ‘Yes. The users we all need to target now you’re leaving us,’ he replies, without a hint of recognition or heart. ‘Come see me before you go?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ I struggle to hide my smile as he strides off into his corner office and shuts the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Megan says, squinting back out into the snow. I follow her eyes downwards. The snow’s coming down in thick, white balls now but I can just make out a figure standing below on the street. There’s no one else outside.

  It’s a guy, wearing a thick, black winter coat. He’s holding a cell phone and appears to be looking in all directions, then back to the phone in confusion. He looks up suddenly and all the breath leaves my body. I stumble backwards and Megan grips my arm.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she says, but I’m already halfway out the door. I slam my hand against the elevator button. It takes forever to arrive. The doors open and close behind me and every second feels like a month.

  Eventually I’m deposited in the lobby. I run across the marble, throw myself into the revolving doors. The cold smacks me like a boxing glove as soon as I step outside. I’m wearing a thin blue dress and winter boots. My coat is upstairs. I don’t care. ‘Joshua,’ I breathe.

  He’s facing towards the street now, looking at the phone. He turns around when he hears me. Something in me breaks but I’m fixed to the spot. My eyes take in his familiar face and body in a whole new world; a whole new context. His stubble’s thicker around his jaw line. His eyes look darker in the gray. The snow is building on his shoulders and hood.

  ‘You got a phone,’ I say stupidly and he half smiles, holding it up.

  ‘I thought I should probably get with the twenty-first century. But I can’t figure out Google Maps. Why can it not just say Alyssa is here, you asshole with a big red arrow?’

  He looks at me almost nervously for a moment as my teeth chatter. I’m freezing. The snow between us is almost a wall. He pushes his hood back and steps closer, searching my face now, lowering the phone. I close the gap before I pass out and I can’t even stop my tears now. His arms are around me in an instant. I throw my own around his snowy coat as he finds my lips and kisses me till I’m crying into his mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says now, holding onto me, ‘I’m an asshole.’

  ‘You’re not,’ I say, kissing him, holding him even tighter. ‘You’re not, you’re summer, so you’d better warm me up.’

  He kisses me again, lifts me into his arms, pulls me back into the double doors and pins me against the glass as it spins us. ‘Alyssa,’ he says, pulling away and meeting my eyes. The flecks of brown and green I know so well are watery and his words make me cry even harder. ‘What you’ve done for me, for my life…’

  ‘I want you to get better, whatever chance there is,’ I tell him, putting a finger to his lips, ‘nothing else matters, Joshua. Besides, I want these moments. I want to keep on getting to know you.’

  ‘What about your culinary course? Your restaurant?’

  ‘I can always cook snakes. Life's for living!’ I pull him back into the lobby out of the snow. He takes my face in his hands, then rubs my freezing, bare arms. I notice the snow on his black boots where his bare, tanned feet should be in the sand. So surreal. ‘Where’ve you been?’ I say.

  ‘Wondering how to live without you.’ He presses his forehead to mine, draws my mouth to his. ‘I don’t think I can,’ he says against my lips. ‘You’re kind of hard to get over.’

  I stifle a s
ob. ‘Good!’

  The security guard coughs in his corner at the desk and I realize we’re clinging to each other and making out like we’re back on the island and not standing in a building in Denver, dripping snow all over a floor. ‘How did you find me?’ I say, straightening up and pulling him towards the elevator. I hit the button.

  ‘You’re not exactly off the grid, M-lister,’ he says. Our skin is cold, hand in hand. The cave rushes back to me; the heat, the friction. His eyes turn serious as he tilts my chin. ‘Alyssa, seriously, I can’t thank you enough for what you did. You didn’t stop fighting for me, even when I was a selfish asshole. Seriously, I don’t deserve you.’

  ‘You need to learn that you’re deserving,’ I tell him. ‘And you weren’t an asshole, ever; you were confused and you were scared. Joshua, just ‘cause you’re a survivor doesn’t mean you have to face the world on your own.’

  He half smiles. ‘I didn’t think about that before.’

  ‘Well, start thinking about it,’ I say, swiping at my eyes. 'People can help you if you let them.'

  ‘You’re amazing,’ he whispers, reaching a hand to the back of my neck and wiping my tears with his other hand. ‘But your prize money, Alyssa, are you sure…’

  ‘I’m so sure,’ I say, as the doors fly open and I pull him inside with me. He kisses me again against the wall; deep, passionate - the kind of kiss I know means that the next time I’m naked in his presence, things could get hotter than they ever did in that suffocating cave. There are way too many clothes between us.

  ‘Listen,’ he says now, releasing me as the elevator stops, dropping a kiss on my cold nose. ‘I have to go to California in two weeks to start the treatment. They need to monitor it for a while but after that I can go anywhere, as long as I check in. It’ll have to be regularly at first…’

  ‘We’ll deal with it. However long it takes,’ I say. ‘But where do you want to go, emotional drifter?’ I lead him out and onto my floor. ‘I'm fine with no plan but I just packed a big old box of clothes in here and I have nowhere in particular to wear them… oh, except one gay cruise in Barcelona.’

  I loop my arms around his neck again. He smells like soap and clean laundry and it’s weird; not quite right, but I’ll get used to it.

  ‘Well,’ he says, shaking melting snow out of what now must be an inch of hair, ‘until all that, I happen to have a tent in a field in Oklahoma. There are a few cows in it, and some horses. You won’t need the clothes.’ He grins now, tilting my chin to him.

  ‘Sounds great,’ I say. ‘We don’t have to kill the horses for food, do we?’

  ‘You can if you like,’ he says, ‘if you do it naked.’

  I meet his lips again, pulling him against me by the front of his coat. ‘Deal,’ I say. ‘Let me just go talk to a man about some fruit, and then I think we should go find a new cave somewhere in Denver.’

  ‘Are you still going native?’ he asks, smiling mischievously.

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see!’ I say, smacking his snowy arm.

  Epilogue

  ‘It’s been six months now since our castaways made it back to reality,’ Ed Bernstein booms from the front of the small studio, and the audience full of die-hard Deserted fans cheers and applauds loudly. The lights are bright in my face and I feel my heartbeat increase knowing millions of people are watching me again, right now. ‘Don’t they look good, fattened up a bit, eating more than rice? How are those cheeseburgers working out for the systems now?’ Ed says, and laughter ripples around the room.

  Joshua and I weren’t going to come to the reunion show, all things considered, but we each got paid ten thousand dollars for the appearance and we figured it would help our project.

  ‘Joshua and Alyssa,’ Ed says, walking round to our seats. ‘You’re just back from volunteering in the jungles of Borneo, is that correct?’ He looks down at the card in his hand, reads from it. ‘You’ve been working to rescue displaced orangutans, regenerate forest and support the local Dayak communities over there? Good work. Sounds like you couldn’t keep away from the great outdoors, huh?’

  I look down at Joshua’s hand in mine on the fabric of my dress as he nods and squeezes my fingers. ‘We’ve got a way to go yet, Ed,’ he says, and I take in his mouth moving, his clean-shaven face, the casual blue collared shirt he’s wearing that tightens with every movement of his arms. I’ve decided I like Joshua in clothes. He looks hot, and plus, it’s always fun tearing them off him.

  ‘There’s a long trip ahead of us,’ he carries on. ‘As some of you know, we’ve been raising money for the Neurological Research Foundation along the way, and we want to thank everyone who’s supported our journey so far. To the fans and friends who’ve been following our blog, your input means everything, thank you.’

  ‘And the treatment’s working out well for you?’ Ed says, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘It is,’ Joshua replies, and Ed puts a hand on his shoulder as a camera closes in.

  ‘We know there’s been a lot of media coverage about your condition, Joshua,’ he says, ‘but this new sense of awareness for neurological disorders has helped many more people speak out and stop suffering in silence. I think a round of applause is in order for Joshua and for Alyssa here, too. Your favorite Deserted couple ever, judging by the poll!’

  The studio erupts and I watch Joshua lower his eyes and his head slightly. I drop his fingers and squeeze his knee over his jeans. His improved memory is undeniable and he hasn’t had a blackout since the treatment started. He hates the attention though.

  Going off the grid hasn’t exactly been possible, seeing as people know us everywhere we go, but we’re sucking it up right now for the sake of making a difference while we can. Exposing his condition on the show has led to all kinds of support he wasn’t expecting.

  ‘One out of every five Americans - that’s about fifty million of us - suffers from neurological damage of some kind,’ Ed continues. ‘There are more than six hundred types of neurological disorders, isn’t that right, Joshua?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I answer for him. ‘We just hope even more people find the courage to talk about it, and we’re excited to see more of the world, too. I’m just getting Joshua here to teach me how to shoot up zombies before we go anywhere too remote.’

  Ed grins and chatters on about our planned itinerary and I feel Stephanie’s hand on my shoulder. ‘You guys are beyond awesome,’ she tells us and I smile back at her, remembering that first day in the jungle, collecting leaves with her. Stephanie was the one who told me you have power as a celebrity. You can make changes - she said.

  Our own money pays for the projects we get involved in now, and supports the communities we travel to and work with, but the money people pay to see our exclusive photos, videos, interviews and written posts along the way goes right back to the Foundation – and so do all kinds of donations. Also, excitingly, I’ve been building a recipe book with dishes and notes from each place. My Indonesian nasi-goreng dish with a Greek twist got over eight hundred thousand blogs hits, and a publisher has already told me they’re interested in the finished book. I don’t really know when it’ll be ready - I have a lot more cooking and eating to do first - but it feels as good to be busy as it does to have my curves back.

  Joshua kisses my cheek suddenly and the cheer gets even louder. ‘I love you,’ he whispers in my ear, so that only I can hear. Stephanie gasps behind us. Guess she heard too.

  He’s been saying that a lot lately, but he only said it for the first time two weeks ago. I was just putting my shoes on in the hut back in Borneo, caked in mud, flies buzzing about my face, ready to go play with another crazy baby orangutan, when he pulled me up by my hands, looked right into my eyes.

  ‘I’ve never said it out loud to you, or to any girl, believe it or not, but I love you Alyssa The Greek. I loved you before I met you, I think.’

  My heart went into overdrive then. 'From a past life?'

  'No, from when I saw you on the cover of In
Touch!'

  I rolled my eyes, looped my arms around his neck, kissed the grin on his face. ‘I'll always love you,' I told him. 'I think it's a curse.'

  'Well, let's not break it,' he said as his hands undid the belt on my shorts in a matter of seconds. The baby orangutan didn’t get any human attention after that for well over an hour.

  ‘Speaking of romance,’ Ed says now, walking over to Stephanie and Jaxx. ‘Love wasn’t all it seemed for you guys on the island either, was it?’

  Stephanie smiles, puts a hand on Jaxx’s arm. I notice his hair is longer, his eyebrows are shaved in the middle again. His plain white, ironed shirt is whiter than Ed’s teeth.

  ‘We’re past all that, now, right Jaxx?’ Stephanie smiles and he nods, although he doesn’t grab her hand back, or even look like he’s past it. ‘He knows I’m sorry,’ she says, flipping her long, styled hair over her shoulder. She looks just as tan, glowing in a bright red, tight dress. She hasn’t disclosed whether or not she’s actually a virgin, but she was definitely playing her ditzy blond girl role better than Journey ever played her spiritual hippy one, that much is for sure. I can’t help feeling impressed all over again at how she had poor Jaxx thinking he’d gotten further than any other guy had ever gotten with her, until he handed over that charm and sealed his fate.

  ‘So, Stephanie, what’s been going on?’ Ed asks her now.

  ‘You know, Ed, I think I’m going to move to Nashville,’ she says and everyone hollers and cheers. ‘My aunt and both my brothers encouraged me - they wouldn’t let me say no. I guess I have the show to thank for that. I’ve been recording a demo.’

  I see Punk nudge her shoulder encouragingly. He’s looking decidedly less nerdy now. The glasses are gone; the sweater’s been replaced with a stylish black T-shirt and he’s kept the shaved head. He looks cute. I heard he has legions of fans now, on and off campus, and a massive following on Twitter.