Page 35 of Return to the Island

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The Island tastes your sorrow

She stood at the stern, watching the island grow smaller as the boat cleared the distance. His arms wrapped around her from the back. Their silence was louder than the catamaran engine, both lost in their own thoughts.

What next? she thought. For some reason, she couldn’t pull her eyes from the island as if when she stopped looking it would all be a dream. The moment it disappeared from her vision, nothing would exist again. He tugged her tighter to him, as if he read her mind. Kissing her shoulder, he spoke.

Want to sit in the sun on the bow? She shook her head.

Too much heat, she replied, feeling exposed by the bright day, but her answer had a double meaning. Had it been too much, too fast? Were they going back, only to return to whom they were? Or were they moving forward, allowing themselves to finally be set free?

Thank you, she whispered to the curve of the hip, the dip of the mountain side, and the hint of breast from the foliage. Thank you for strength and peace of mind. And him. The curse of him had become her blessing. It made no sense, and yet, she would not trade him. Sixty-nine days or twenty-four hours. She would not trade one minute of either.

He tugged at her arm when the island was no more than a sliver, and she followed him inside to a large bench seat along the back of the cabin. He patted the space next to him, and she sat. When he pulled out the book, tears filled her eyes. His rugged voice read to her, drifting in and out, as her head came to his thigh. His fingers toyed with her hair.

“To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you…But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of other roses: because it is she that I have watered;…because it is she that I have listened to when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.” He read the words aloud, but he spoke them to her. A tear escaped.

In her head, she told him he was more than a hundred other little princes. He was hers. She tamed him.

God, I love you, he exploded in a moment of lust.

I wildly love you, she thought, but didn’t have the voice to speak. Fear rattled inside her that they were not headed for a beginning but had shared the end. Returning to the island turned back the clock, only to bring closure to what they had when they were not allowed to finish the relationship at the designated hour.

One year.

How cruel time had been.

The breeze picked up around them, blowing sharply through the cabin. Her hair whipped across her face. It was as if the island sighed, exhausted and exasperated, exhaling her back to where she belonged. Not on the island. Not in his heart. Alone.

She was her own island, adrift in the sea of life. Content, but not happy. Stable, but not firmly planted. Lying in wait like the island they left behind.

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