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“Did you eat anything?” she asked.
“Not hungry,” I responded. I didn’t look at her but kept my focus on the task at hand.
“What are you making?”
“No fucking idea,” I snapped. I didn’t really mean to jump down her throat, but I didn’t want her questioning me, either.
“I’m going to get cleaned up.” I watched her look at me out of the corner of my eye, her expression showing her confusion at my behavior. She went
towards the water, and I took out another smoke. When she came back, she tried to get me to eat something, and I told her to fuck off, like the complete and total fuck-head that I was. I was so pissed off at myself, I decided I had to get out of there.
I took off into the jungle, making some lame excuse about looking for something different to eat, and no, I didn’t want any company. I avoided her most of the day, feeling like a total shit for doing so, but I couldn’t help it. Every time I looked at her, my mind replayed her walking away from me. I didn’t end up puking, but I sure as hell felt like I wanted to.
I went to bed early that night, by myself.
* * * * *
“Are you smoking another one of those?”
“Christ, Raine,” I growled when she startled me. I thought by hanging out behind the rocks near the tidal pools on the north side of the beach might have exonerated me from the smoke patrol, but apparently not. I didn’t think she would walk all this way just to find me, but I was obviously wrong. I had been a grouchy son-of-a-bitch since that dream yesterday, and it had repeated itself early this morning. I was trying to work it out in my head, on my own, which wasn’t working. “I’ve had like…six of these today, at most. Shit, I used to smoke three or four packs a day!”
Completely refusing to put the damn thing out, I took a deep drag and blew the smoke out my nose. Despite promises not to smoke around her, I wasn’t going to put this one out. She followed me out here; she could fucking put up with it.
“Are you at least planning on being helpful out here?”
“I told you I’d find some fucking mussels, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you said that yesterday, too.”
“Fuck it.” I took one last large inhale and dropped the end of it in the sand. I stomped over to the nearest rock, reached down below the water, and yanked a handful of mussels out. I tossed them over my shoulder, where they landed at Raine’s feet.
“You are behaving like an absolute child!”
I was and I knew it. It was part of the reason I was hiding out here smoking in the first place. I was agitated, frustrated, and moody. I had come out here to keep myself from taking it out on Raine, but lo and behold, here she was, fucking up my plan. I threw another handful of seafood into the sand before sitting my ass down in the wet sand and lighting another smoke, not looking at Raine. I didn’t want to see how pissed off she was at me.
“Bastian,” Raine sighed. She dropped down in front of me in the sand, my T-shirt dropping a little off her shoulder and exposing her collarbone. I wanted to lick it, but I restrained myself. I didn’t want to fuck her, and licking would definitely lead to fucking. Fucking could lead to…fuck, no it couldn’t, but the fucking dream had left me paranoid of fucking. “What’s wrong?”
I took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm my heart and my nerves.
“What makes you think there’s anything wrong?” I finally said, knowing how fucking stupid it sounded. Bastian Stark, asshole extraordinaire, decided to make an appearance and brought his shouty voice along with him. “Why the fuck do you think I’d want to fucking talk about it, anyway? Can’t you get the fucking idea that I want to be alone?”
Raine shifted back and away from me, and I was most appalled by the lack of shock in her expression. She just looked…resigned. She stood up, turned on her bare heel in the sand, and started to walk away.
The pain rippled through my body, causing me to inhale sharply.
“Raine!”
As soon as she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, I found I could breathe again. I closed my eyes and tossed the rest of the cigarette into the water.
“I’m sorry…I’m just...fuck! I want to behave like a dick and didn’t want to be around you when I was feeling like that.”
Raine regarded me cautiously and then took a few steps closer to me again, sitting herself down in the sand a few feet away. It hurt that she didn’t want to come close to me, but I could hardly blame her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
“How do you know anything’s wrong?” I responded, like it wasn’t fucking obvious.
“You want to know what my first hint was, or do you want the whole list?”
