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She shouldn’t be doing that. If there was anyone who didn’t deserve her tears, I would be that person. My heavy eyes closed again, and I tried to open my mouth. My lips felt cracked and dry, and trying to wet them with my equally dry tongue didn’t make a whole lot of difference. I tried taking a deeper breath – I wanted to tell her not to cry for me – but no sound came out. She should be saving her tears for someone else. My head was still pounding, and though the memories weren’t clear, I knew I had said some pretty fucking horrific things to her.
I tried to gather some saliva up in my mouth to wet my lips again. I paired that up with another breath in hopes of telling her to stop crying for me. I only actually managed to get one word out, though.
“Stop,” I murmured in a throaty, croaky voice. I narrowed my eyes at her and tried to convey that I was completely unworthy of her tears. Obviously what I said and what I meant didn’t come out right at all, and she immediately pulled her hand away from my face and moved a half foot away from me entirely. My hand dropped out of her lap and onto the floor of the raft.
No, I thought. Don’t stop that…
Shit.
Not only had I managed to convey the wrong message, now she thought I didn’t want her to touch me when that was actually feeling pretty good. I wanted her to keep touching me the way she had been, but I couldn’t get any kind of words out to tell her. As a flash of memory reminded me I had been repeatedly throwing up for hours, I realized the main reason for this was some pretty severe dehydration. I needed water.
I tried to push myself up with my hands and immediately fell back to the floor. My head swam, and my fingers were starting to shake a little. I tried again.
“Daniel – please, just stay down. There’s nowhere to go.”
I let myself drop back down and closed my eyes for a moment. I tried licking my lips again, but there wasn’t enough moisture to make any difference. My breathing was still ragged and ineffective, and my stomach felt like it was on fire. I forced a couple of slow deep breaths into my body and opened my eyes to her.
“Water,” I croaked.
She nodded and quickly brought me a cup. She had to hold my head up so I could drink it, but I was too fucking thirsty to care about how humiliating it was for her to have to do that. I managed to get a couple of mouthfuls down my throat before she lowered my head back down. She sat next to me but still kept a little distance between us. I looked up at her and wanted to tell her to keep touching my face like she had been, but even with the moisture from the drink of water, I couldn’t do it. I tried to get the words out, but they just wouldn’t come. With a lot of effort, I managed to reach out with the hand she had been holding so it was a little closer to her. I found the energy to turn it palm up and then looked back into her eyes.
Raine looked from me to my hand and back again. She slowly reached out and took my hand in hers, watching for my reaction. I looked from our hands back up to her face and tried to give her a wary smile, but it hurt to move even that much. I closed my eyes and sighed as she pulled my hand back into her lap, and her soft fingers began caressing the back of my hand.
* * * * *
It was dark when I opened my eyes, and I felt a little well of panic form before I pushed it down and reminded myself where I was. As my eyes adjusted to the nearly pitch black inside the raft, I could make out Raine’s form lying next to me, just a foot and a half away. I could still feel our hands clasped together.
Her fingers were all intertwined with mine, and I tried to remember the last time I held a girl’s hand without actually having my cock shoved up in her at the same time. Hand holding took time, and most of the chicks I had been with recently charged by the hour. The last time I had participated in this particular act probably went back to Jillian, but I quickly put thoughts of her out of my mind before I became downright violent.
I watched as best I could in the darkness as my thumb ran over her palm so I could feel how soft her skin was. Her fingers tw
itched just a bit, so I stopped. I didn’t want to wake her up, and touching her was giving me ideas about other places I could be touching her. Any additional touching was going to lead to an activity that wasn’t the best idea under the circumstances. Conserving whatever meager energy I had left was pretty important at this point. I pulled my hand out from under hers and immediately noticed a strange sense of loss when I wasn’t touching her anymore. I shook my head and pushed myself up to a sitting position.
My head was still throbbing, but not as bad as it had been. It was probably due to dehydration as much as any residual delirium tremens effects, so I reached over and got myself a cup of water. I took the first mouthful, and then I ran my tongue along the inside of my mouth where it felt like raw meat. I must have bit down on the inside of my cheek at some point because it really hurt. My thumb rubbed the skin just under my bottom lip and came away with dried blood.
Fucking lovely.
I grabbed the towel that Raine had apparently put under my head and stuck it out the opening long enough to get the corner wet. I rubbed my face, neck, and hands with it and then washed it out again.
I smelled like I had just spent a couple of days in a sealed up raft, sweating and puking. I tried to wash some of my upper body as well and then used the corner of the towel to clean my teeth off a bit. I finished by washing out the towel in salt water and hanging it up inside the raft to dry.
I looked back to Raine, who was still sound asleep but looked restless. I reached over and looked through the carb bars in the survival kit. There were three fewer bars than the last time I looked which meant – if she had followed directions – I had been out of it for a good thirty-six hours. I took a deep breath and ate one of the bars. I figured at this point I was going to need the energy, and eating the whole thing was probably for the best. I hadn’t had one in nearly two days, anyway.
Two days, which meant it had been three days since The Oblation sank. I checked the flares and saw the last one was gone. I tried not to mentally calculate our chances without signal flares, but I couldn’t really help it.
I grabbed another cup of water, making note of how much was left. I needed to get myself back into shape before I could really start rationing. I probably needed to consider fishing as well. I hoped to God it would rain soon, but not storm.
I heard Raine shift and roll before she sat up and yawned. I didn’t look at her. I was fundamentally embarrassed that anyone – least of all some high society chick I didn’t even fucking know – watched me puke and cry and God knows what else I did while I was out of it. I wasn’t much for vanity, but I couldn’t have looked too pretty through all of that. It wasn’t like I could really avoid her on a ten-foot raft though, so I sighed and sipped at the cup of water for a minute before I finally looked over to her. Aside from looking like she probably hadn’t slept more than an hour, there was a barely visible bruise on her right cheek. My stomach lurched and tightened.
“Where did that come from?” I asked, almost a thousand percent sure I didn’t want to know the answer.
“What?”
“The fucking bruise on your face. What the fuck happened?”
Her eyes flickered away for a moment, and then she looked back to me and locked her gaze with mine.
“You hit me,” she said in the most calm, matter-of-fact tone I had ever heard.
