by J. A. Huss
I lean down and kiss her nose. Then each of her cheeks. I kiss one eye. Then the other. Her forehead. I start fucking her again. Just slow this time. In and out. Agonizingly slow, until she’s lifting up her hips in a demand for more and thrusting against me.
“You’re gonna make me happy forever,” she says, her voice low and throaty with desire.
“Yes,” I promise her. “Yes.”
“And whatever happens, happens.”
“That’s right, babe. We’re gonna let fate take us and no matter how much it throws at us, we’re gonna come out the other side holding hands.”
She closes her eyes, bites her lip, and then we come together.
We must’ve fallen asleep after that because we wake to a boat horn blaring at us.
I lift my head, shield my eyes from the sun, and catch people yelling and screaming as they go by.
They’re smiling and laughing and pointing. And that’s when I realize we’re still naked.
I wave and slump back down, pulling Ellie to my chest.
“You exhibitionist.” She laughs.
“Hey, I still have pants on.”
She slaps me on the shoulder and then turns around so she’s on her stomach. “Is that the island?”
It’s only then that I realize the boat has stopped and we’re just bobbing up and down in front of our destination. “Must be it,” I say. “Should we stay here all day? Fuck a little more, drink champagne, and eat grapes? Or should we go on an adventure?”
“I vote adventure.”
“Me too,” I say.
The perfect day must end in an adventure.
“Let’s see…” I say, looking through all Corporate’s storage drawers. “There’s got to be flashlights somewhere.”
“Are you sure this is safe?” Ellie asks.
“Sure,” I say. I really have no idea. But I’m not gonna tell her that. “West said he took Ethan and Tori on the way here. And Ethan loved it so much, they’re gonna do it again on the way home. If Ethan can spelunk, we can too.” I shoot her a smile of confidence.
“I dunno. Ethan is like Tarzan. That kid can do anything athletic.”
I think about that for a second. He is kinda wild. Then I picture Tori spelunking. “Tori did it too. And she’s what I’d call high-maintenance. You know, ‘OMG, I might break a nail,’ kinda girl.”
Ellie scrunches up her face at me. “I don’t think you really know her.”
I wave that off. I actually can picture Tori spelunking, if only to prove to Weston that she can do it better than he can. “We’ll be fine.”
“Hey, there’s some people coming out. I’m gonna go ask them what it’s like.”
“Sure,” I say. “Meet you down there.”
I find the flashlights, which are actually headlights—leave it to fucking Corporate to be prepared for an adventure—and then I hop onto the dock and walk towards Ellie, where she’s taking to a couple in a boat. They take off before I get there and Ellie is smiling again, so I figure they told her it was safe. “So?” I say.
“They say the entrance is just right over there. Then there’s a red rope you follow into the cave so you don’t get lost, and some steps and ladders and shit. And when you get to the top, you can see like… the entire world. Sounds totally cool. I’m in.”
“Perfect,” I say, not even minding the pun. I take her hand and lead her away. “Let’s go. With any luck we’ll get to the top, climb back down, and be back on the boat fucking and drinking to watch the sunset.”
We walk through some tall grass towards a large, dark hole in the hillside. “I guess that’s it,” I say.
“Looks like it.”
We’re just passing through the entrance, looking for the guide rope, when a shooting pain has me slapping at my neck. “Jesus fuck!” I say. “What the hell was that?”
“What happened?” Ellie asks, panicked. “What’s wrong?”
“I think something just stung me!”
We both hear the buzzing at the same time and look up to see a swarm of bees, or wasps, or fucking horse flies, for all I know. “Run!” I say, pulling her inside the cave with me. We haul ass until it really gets too dark to see, and then we stop, panting and out of breath.
“Holy shit,” Ellie says. “Those people could’ve warned us about the damn bees!”
“I think they were like mutant bees, Ells. I have a huge lump on my neck.”
“Let me see,” she says, putting on her headlight and shining it on my wound. “Ohhhhh,” is her only response.
“What?” I ask. “What’s it look like.”
Ellie just stares at it, her eyes wide.
“Ellie!” I say. “Is it bad?”
She nods her head and then says, “No.”
I laugh. Even though the fucking sting hurts like hell, and I have to press my fingers into my skin to dull the pain. “Which is it, Nurse Perfect?”
She cocks her head at me and her left eye does this little twitch, which is her tell that she’s about to lie. “It’s just… a little red, that’s all. And swollen. And… is that pus? Jesus. How could a bee sting get this bad so quick? Should we go back?”
“Back? For a fucking bee sting? Nah,” I say, shaking it off. “It’s fine. I’m not allergic. It’ll be fine by the time we’re done.”
“Are you sure?” Ellie says, giving my sting the stink-eye.
“I’m sure,” I say, pointing to the red guide rope. “Look, there’s the rope. Let’s go spelunk the fuck out of this cave.”
“OK,” Ellie says. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I got this, babe.”
We walk a little farther in and then notice the ground is squishy. “Is the whole thing wet?” Ellie asks. “Like, should we have on boots or something?”
I laugh it off. “Boots. We’re fine. Just a little sea water. This cave must have an outlet to the ocean, that’s all.”
“OK,” Ellie says as we go a little further, until the water is up to our ankles. “But I think I see… things in that water.”
I follow her headlight beam down to my shoes and see—“Holy fuck!” I grab her and run, pulling her along behind me. “Get on the rocks! Quick! Before those snakes get us!”
I lift her up, then scramble up behind her, panting. “What the hell? Those people couldn’t mention this fucking cave is filled with snakes? What is this? Some kind of wild Indiana Jones adventure?”
“Calm down, Mr. Fraidy-Cat. I think they’re just eels.”
“Just eels?” I say. “Eels?”
“The tide is coming in,” Ellie says. “Look.”
I’m afraid to look. Every time I look at what she’s pointing at, something stupid happens. But I do anyway. Because that’s the kind of man I am. And sure as shit, there’s waves crashing against the rocks. “Where the fuck is all this water coming from?”
“Like you said, there’s some kind of ocean outlet, I bet.”
“Well, that fucking tide had better be low when it’s time to leave. I’m not swimming through eels.”
Elle chuckles. “Come on, there’s the rope. We’re in the right place, at least. We just go up these rock steps and then there’ll be a ladder to get to the top, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Sure.” But nothing those people told us has been even remotely accurate so far. So I’m not hopeful.
“Is this the steps?” Elli asks. I shine my head light and see some giant stacked stones.
“You think?” I ask her.
“I dunno. They just look like rocks to me. But that’s the way the rope goes. So we better follow it.”
So we do. We climb up the steps, which are closely spaced for a while, but eventually they stop being stacked stones and turn into boulders, each one taller than the next, until I have to make a step with my hand and hoist Ellie up to the next one.
When I follow her up, I’m out of breath and I’m getting a very bad feeling about this cave trip. “Maybe we’re not cut out for spelunking?” I ask, laugh
ing.
“Maybe not, Mr. We’re Going On An Adventure Today. But we’re probably halfway up, don’t you think? And I bet the tide hasn’t even gone down yet, so we might as well go all the way.”
The next few boulders have rope ladders to get up them. Ellie shoots me a dubious look. Because ya know what? Rope ladders aren’t all that easy to use.
“I’ll be right behind you, OK?”
I get another hesitant look from her.
“Looking at your ass, wishing we were back on the boat, fucking and getting drunk.”
She looks up. There’s like a teeny tiny light up there. “Is that the top, ya think?”
“Yup,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster. And the whole time we’re doing this I’m picturing eight-year-old Ethan. Tarzan is right. How the fuck did that kid do this? Even with Tori and West’s help? “Come on, I think there’s like an opening up there so we can rest for a minute before we do the final ascent.”
The remaining steps—which makes me want to punch those people on the dock at this point, because these things are giant boulders, not steps—are like eight feet tall and one of them has no rope ladder at all. Ellie shines her headlight around until she finds remnants of rope and sighs.
“We’re not gonna make it, Mac. We’ll have to climb down after all, I guess.”
“Fuck that,” I say. “I didn’t get stung by a killer hornet, wade through a pit of snakes, and then climb up Mount fucking Everest for nothing. We’re gonna get to the top and see the goddamned world if it’s the last thing I do. Get on my back,” I say, crouching down. “Then grab that stump right there and hold on while I stand up. Then you can stand on my shoulders and I’ll push you the rest of the way up.”
“How will you get up?”
I sigh, and look back at the rope remnants. “I’ll throw that up to you, you tie it off on something, and then I’ll climb up that way.”
“Jesus. Is it really worth all this? I mean, how great can that view be?”
“It’s motherfucking spectacular. And we’re gonna enjoy it before we descend back into the evil pit of darkness.”
She laughs. “You’ve never even seen it.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re gonna spelunk the shit out of this cave. If Ethan can do it, we can do it. We’re adults, for fuck’s sake. He’s like… a midget. Now get on my back.”
She does. And she balances on my shoulders when I stand up. But she kicks my sting—bite—whatever the fuck it is, and I feel something ooze out of it. I don’t even want to think about that, so I just grab her ass and push her the rest of the way.
She scrambles over the edge, then I throw the rope up and after what seems like for-fucking-ever, she says, “OK. It’s secure.”
I’d like to say I’m a great rope climber. But fuck it. I’m not. But I make it and then we’re in the opening and the top is right above us.
“I hate to tell you this,” Ellie says, laughing.
“What now?”
“That’s not a ladder.”
I look at where her headlight is pointing and nope. Sure fuckin’ isn’t. It’s just a rope with knots in it. Like the kind of thing you see hanging off a tree limb that’s used to swing over a body of water.
“Shit,” I say.
“And I think we’re been in here a long time,” Ellie says. “Because I think the light from the outside is fading.”
I check my watch. “Five. Hours. You have got to be kidding me.”
Ellie just laughs.
And hell, what else can you do? I laugh too.
That last climb is torture. But she’s doing OK in front of me. And I actually do have a great view of her ass. So I just go with it. We’re about six feet from the opening when I smell something rancid.
“What the hell is that smell?” Ellie asks.
“I dunno, but it’s rank, right?”
“Horrible.”
And that’s when the bats attack.
At this point, we’re just like, fuck it. We laugh the rest of the way up, swatting the bats away as they flutter around us. Ellie screams, “They’re gonna get in my hair!” because that’s what everyone says when bats show up, and then we laugh harder.
We pull ourselves up out of that cave and I vow, as we collapse into the tall grass at the top of the island, that never will I ever spelunk again.
That’s when we see the kid staring down at us like we’re crazy freaks as he opens his mouth and a sucker falls out. “Mommy! It’s a cave monster!” And then he runs away screaming.
“What the hell?” Ellie says. “How the hell did that kid get up here?”
We stand up, walk over a ridge, smelling like we just came out of a… well, bat cave. And see about two dozen people milling about taking pictures of the low-hanging sun.
“Look,” Ellie says, pointing at a sign.
“Cave Trail,” I say, reading the sign. And it’s paved. It’s a goddamned sidewalk. And when we go over to it and look down, we see a nice, easy path filled with tourists making their way up to the top of the island.
We just laugh. And laugh. And laugh. I take her hand and lead her over to the edge of the cliff, and we sink into the grass, and watch the sun as it sits on the top of the water, blanketing it with a cone of orange, and red, and yellow.
Ellie sighs and says, “Some things are worth the struggle, ya know?”
And I say, “Yeah,” as I give her hand a squeeze. “Some things are.”
Chapter Twenty-One - NOLAN
So this is how it went.
I said OK. Because it’s a tiny fucking pig, right? And even though there’s a ton of big pigs the girls were right. The big pigs aren’t interested in the little pig. The little pig is definitely gonna die. So I’m all busting into gonna-save-the-pig mode and shit, walking out on the beach, taking cover behind palm trees when I can, sneaking up on the thing…
And just as I’m about to grab it, the big daddy pig sees me.
And in that same moment, both girls start screaming, “Run!”
I’m like… shit. Fucking pigs can run fast. I never knew that. And halfway into that thought I’m turning, and my feet are doing their thing, and then all pig hell breaks loose! There’s no longer one big daddy pig, but like, eleven of them. All chasing me down the beach, and then I see Five’s girls climbing up these palm trees like a couple of goddamned monkeys—you know how they shimmy up a palm tree? Anyway, they got up into trees. Like they’ve done this a million times and no big deal.
But me? I don’t know how to shimmy up a fucking palm tree, so I gotta keep running for the next tree, which is normal and actually has branches.
And that big daddy pig took my shoe on my way up. Took my motherfucking shoe!
So now I’m down a shoe, I’m stuck in a tree, and a dozen giant pigs are rooting around at the bottom like they’re just gonna wait me out.
I think I’ve heard that pigs eat people. “Hey!” I call to the girls. “Do pigs eat people?”
They just laugh at me. From the safety of their palm trees. Where there are no pigs waiting them out.
So I yell, “Hey! How long will they stay?”
And then Mathilda and Louise exchange little sneaky grins. You’ve seen it before, when one person looks at another person and they have some kind of secret conversation in their minds. And then Louise nods, and Mathilda nods, and then they both start knocking coconuts off the trees, which scares the pigs and makes them go investigate. And then Mathilda yells, “Run!”
And I’m like… fuck that. I’m staying right here in my goddamned tree.
Not to mention I can’t leave them here. Fucking Five will shoot my ass if I get his girls killed by rabid pigs.
So I yell, “No.” Which does nothing for the situation at all.
Mathilda yells, “You run and then throw rocks at them from the other direction. We’ll escape when they go investigate.”
I hesitate.
Louise says, “We do this every day, Romantic. Man up and do your
job.”
Really? She’s like five years old. They let them run wild with insane pigs all day?
“Go!” Mathilda yells again. Louise is still knocking coconuts off her tree, so the whole gang of pigs is busy, so I mutter, “Fuck it,” and jump down, kicking off my other shoe, because what the fuck good is one shoe anyway? And then I look around for some rocks, and start throwing them the other direction. And sure enough, the herd of pigs takes off to go check shit out.
Then like that, in a snap, Louise and Mathilda are scrambling back down their respective palm trees and they burst into the jungle where I’m waiting, laughing like… well, fucking kids.
“That was not cool,” I say in my brand-new stern dad voice. I’m not very good at that voice because Bronte is only six months old, so I haven’t had a chance to really use it yet. So they just keep laughing. “Come on, we’re going back to your house and I’m telling your father on you.”
They snicker even harder now.
“What?” I ask, turning around.
“You have to get us that pig.”
“Yeah,” Louise says. “You didn’t get our pig yet.”
“Your dad is gonna kill me if I get you killed by pigs.”
“Pfffft,” Mathilda says. “Our dad is never gonna know.”
“Yeah,” Louise adds. “Because you’re never gonna tell him.” Somehow she’s got that pointy stick in her hand again, and she thrusts it towards me like she’s gonna take me out with it.
“And we did tell you to run,” Mathilda says. Like this makes everything OK.
“While they were charging me!” I say. “As if I couldn’t figure that out. And don’t point that stick at me!”
“We’re just gonna have to go to plan B, OK?” Mathilda says, like this is obvious.
I sneer at them. Little miscreants. “What’s plan B?”
“We lure them away with food and then take the baby pig when they’re busy eating.”
“Why didn’t we do that first?” I ask. “So much better than run out there and grab him.”
“Because we wanted to watch you run,” Louise says.
“That’s not why,” Mathilda says, shooting her sister a look that says, Shut up, because she knows I’m about to bail out on the whole stupid plan. “It’s because we have to smear mud all over our bodies so they can’t smell us when we leave the food. And we didn’t think you’d want to take a mud bath. So plan A had to come first.”
