“Bianca, I do appreciate the fact that you’re a walking movie machine. You might even be the next Ebert, but right now I don’t give two shits about any of your random movies. This is serious. We need to figure out a plan.”
“I know that. Trust me, I know that. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’m sorry that you chose to sit at a table with me and now you’ve been dragged into my mess.” I pushed past him and started walking quickly away from him. I hadn’t appreciated his tone or words. Movies were my answers to everything. They always had been. Movies had been my teaching guides as I’d grown up. They were easy to fall back on. I often talked about characters from movies as if they were people I knew in real life.
“Wait.” His voice wasn’t humorous anymore. “Don’t walk ahead of me.”
“Are we going to go—”
“Bianca.” His voice rose. “Enough.”
“What?” My jaw dropped open in shock. Was he seriously speaking to me as if I were a kid? Again?
“I said enough. We can’t have you just . . .” He started lecturing me and I felt like a petulant kid as I stood there silently. His lips looked so luscious as he stood there mumbling about something. I’d already tuned him out and was admiring his chest. His abs looked so pronounced, and I had an urge to run my fingers down each ripple. I wonder what he would do if I stepped forward and ran my fingers all the way down? I chastised myself silently at my dirty thoughts. I was about to interrupt him, when I saw something moving in the bushes. I gasped and blinked quickly to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. There were two empty dark eyes staring back at me. I screamed out and the face backed away from sight. My eyes watched the branches shaking in front of me; I felt my heart stop as leaves fell to the ground. I heard a loud thud, and then I screamed again loudly, pushing past Jakob to make my way back to the sandy beach.
I ran back to the beach as fast as I could, my legs moving swiftly, while my mind thought back to what I’d seen in the bushes. “Bianca, slow down!” He chased after me and grabbed ahold of me when he caught up. “Bianca!”
“I saw something!” I gasped. “I saw two eyes looking at me.” I stared at him with wide eyes as I tried to control my breathing. “Oh my God, we’re totally going to die.”
“Bianca!” He took a deep breath and pulled me into his arms. “Take two deep breaths and calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down when Godzilla is on the island with us? Ready to eat me!” My voice was dramatic, and my hands rose to the sides of my face. “I have very sweet blood, you know. Predators can smell me.”
“Really?” His lips started twitching again.
“Yes! I eat a lot of chocolate.” I closed my eyes and took two deep breaths. “I’m not going back in there.” I shook my head and fell to the sand. “I’m not going back. No way, José.”
“Bianca, I’m sure all you saw was a bug or something. Or maybe it was Steve spying on us.”
“Steve has blue eyes.” I shook my head. “And I’d like to know what bug has big white irises and black-red eyes?”
“Black-red eyes?”
“You know what I mean.” I glared at him.
“Not really.” He sat down next to me and leaned back. “So you’re too scared to go back into the jungle today?”
“I don’t want to die today.”
“So you’d rather die tomorrow?”
“I’d rather not die.”
“Bianca.” His voice was serious. “If I could go into the jungle and carry back what we needed without you coming with me, I would. If I felt safe leaving you on the beach by yourself, I would go. Unfortunately, I don’t know where Steve is and I’m scared what he might try to do, especially if he is tracking our movements. We can’t be apart from each other. So I’m going to need you to be a big girl today. I need your help.”
“You’re such a condescending asshole.”
“Thank you, but you don’t even know me yet.”
“I think I do.”
“I could be a lot worse.” His lips were thin as his eyes stared into mine with an intense light. “I could be more than an asshole.” His voice dropped, and his fingers ran down my arm.
“Get your fingers off of me.” I shook him off me and moved back.
“My fingers can’t do as much as other parts of my body,” he said smoothly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I furrowed my eyebrows together, and then my face flushed. “You’re disgusting.”
“Not as disgusting as I can be.” He leaned toward me, and I was almost positive that he was going to kiss me. Instead, his lips moved to my ear and he whispered softly, “Only, you won’t think I’m being disgusting. You’ll be screaming out my name, begging me to never stop.”
I jumped up then and walked toward the jungle. “You’re so inappropriate. You know that, right? I just had the fright of my life and you’re trying to seduce me. Let’s go!” I shouted without looking back at him. “If you need my help, let’s go.”
“I thought that would do the trick.” He jumped up off the ground and laughed. “There’s nothing that scares you more than sex, is there, Bianca?”
I ignored his question and kept walking. Though he was wrong. Nothing about sex scared me. It was what happened after sex that turned my brain upside down.
“I don’t know if we’re going to find any water.” I sighed as we kept walking through the shrubbery. “I’m getting tired and thirsty.”
“I can crack open some coconuts if you want.” Jakob touched my arm. “If we bash them hard enough into the rocks we can split them open. We have to find the green coconuts though, the ones still in the shell. The brown coconuts are hard already.”
“It’s okay. I can wait a little bit.” I shook my head. “It’s weird that we haven’t seen any trace of Steve, isn’t it?” I stared at the gash on Jakob’s face and bit my lower lip.
“I guess.” He looked away from me. “Let’s stop for a moment so you can rest.”
“Thanks.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m the only one who’s exhausted, right?”
“Let’s stop so we both can rest. Is that better?” He gave me a look that made me feel like a little kid, and I turned away. “Wait here. I’m going to go—”