Page 91 of The Spirit of Love
“Yes?”
“I want all that. Soon. But first, I’m conducting an experiment. Can you help?”
“You’re asking a man who signed an oath to assist anyone in need on this island.”
“That’s what I thought.” I lift my dress over my head and toss it to the floor. I’m not wearing anything under it.
Sam gets down on his knees. “I can help,” he says, pressing his mouth against me. “I’ve been certified in this.”
After the sunhas set and we’ve disentangled our limbs briefly for a steaming bowl of stew, Sam and I lay in his bed as his fingers draw pictures of Catalina flora and fauna on the bare skin of my back.
“So when do we get the results of your experiment?”
“They’ve just come in. It turns out, I wasn’t imagining the bone bliss your body gives me.”
“I could have told you that,” he says and kisses the top of my head. “Let’s get up early tomorrow morning. We can still go on a hike before sunrise and then we can come back here and I can survey your bones again for any absent bliss before breakfast. Also after breakfast. And maybe mid-hike, too.”
“Good plan.” I roll over to face him and smile. “And I have an idea for something fun we could do after breakfast.”
“More sex?”
“What if we headed to town? Did you get your Jeep fixed yet?”
“That Jeep is totaled, Fenny.”
“Did you get a new car?”
He sits up in bed a little straighter, drawing a few inches away. It isn’t much, but it’s noticeable. Have I said something that upset him?
“I’m still trying to work out the specifics of some things since the accident.”
It’s been a month and he still doesn’t have a car. How has he been getting around?
“But you have a bike, right? I thought I saw one in your shed the last time I was here.”
“Yeah, I have a bike.”
“Great. I borrowed one for this weekend, too. If you want…I have some friends here from LA. We all came over together. They’ll be hanging out at the Harbor Reef for brunch tomorrow. Around eleven?”
He raises an eyebrow, as if trying to figure out where I’m going with this.
“It could be cool if we…”
I trail off. I don’t know why I’m having trouble telling him that I’ve already committed to meeting Olivia and Masha tomorrow. It was Masha’s condition for letting me take the bike, as opposed to the drop-off committee. She said she needed proof of life in the dead zone of island cell reception. Which now seems silly, because of course I’m safe here with Sam, but I don’t want to explain Masha’s reasoning to him. Especially because he seems suddenly a little withdrawn.
“Sam?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Can’t…what?”
“Go to Two Harbors. I don’t go there.”
“The whole town? The only town in this entire vicinity? You don’tgothere?”
“Correct.”
I laugh. “Why not?”
