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“Urine? No. Even the blood part is a myth.”
Now I’ve made it even worse by mentioning more bodily fluids.
“I’m not?—”
“Okay.” I don’t want to talk about this.
We make it back to the shed. The fire is as we left it. I pick up the bowl and shine a light into it to make sure no aforementioned insects have discovered our food. It’s clear.
“I should put these away.”
“Sorry I fell asleep on you.”
“We have to sleep.”
She darts a few feet away, and my instinct is to grab her arm to keep her safe.
She returns with another towel. “We should collect more of these tomorrow. They’ll be helpful in case we get wet or get sick of sitting in sand.”
“And we should redouble our efforts to find working loungers.”
Her laugh is half grunt. “You get to test them.”
“Fair enough.”
She repacks the cooled oysters into one of the trays.
“Should we try one?” Bailey asks. “Make sure there’s some validity to our future best-selling castaway cookbook?”
I consider where my hands have just been and how far it is to a sink. “I think I’m going to wait until tomorrow,” I say. “You’re welcome to.”
“Actually, you’re right. I’m more tired than hungry.”
We head inside the shed to the cooler.
Bailey makes a pile out of life jackets and spreads the second towel over it. “I feel safer in here,” she says. “Four walls and a roof.”
“That’s fine. I’ll watch the fire.”
“Okay.” She lays her head down, but her eyes don’t close.
It’s going to be a fitful night, that’s for sure. I sit at the threshold of the open double doors. I want to make sure the fire is fed enough to at least stay in embers until morning. It would be nice not to have to start over when it comes time to boil water to drink.
And as the hours pass, I find most of them are spent thinking about the woman lying on a lumpy makeshift bed a few feet away.
23
BAILEY
Ican’t sleep.
I watch Rhett’s silhouette in front of the fire. He’s outside the shed.
My pile of life jackets is way worse to sleep on than the towel.
Earlier I dreamed I was cuddled up to Rhett, safe and secure, then I woke up and realized he was gone.
My panic in that moment was second only to the moment in the storm when I curled in a ball in the hut. I thought I was alone then, too.
