Naked and Unafraid: Part 2.
No More Walking Away.
Based on a post by inestimable. Listen to the ►Podcast at Steamy Stories.
The night came back to me later in pieces: lightning in the far distance, Bridget and me taking turns keeping Brooke awake and afloat, my legs kicking until they cramped, the smell of jet fuel on the water, my teeth chattering. Once, when I thought I saw lights in the distance, I shouted until my throat was raw. No one came. Not even the Grim Reaper.
Eventually, the sky started to brighten with the arrival of what sailors called the "nautical dawn." The ocean, calmer now that the storm had passed, stretched gray and flat around us. Wreckage floated here and there: a seat cushion, a suitcase, and various bits and pieces of the plane that never made it to New Zealand.
Bridget saw it at the same time that I did. We didn't recognize the "who" but the "what" was unmistakable. "Oh my God," she whispered.
"What is it?" asked Brooke, sounding a little dazed.
"Don't look," Bridget said.
"I can't not look."
"Then look at me."
Brooke did.
The current carried us toward some dark smudge on the horizon. At first I thought it was a cloud bank, but as the sun climbed a little higher, I recognized what it was: land.
I pointed it out to my companions. Bridget briefly closed her eyes as if a silent prayer had been answered. Brooke made a sound that was almost a sob.
It still looked far away, impossibly far. From here, I couldn't tell if it was an island or the edge of something larger. There were cliffs on one side and trees across most of the rest with a pale line that could have been beach. None of us knew where we were anymore. The flight path, the storm, the impact, the current; all of it had turned our precise location into a guess.
"We swim," Bridget said.
I stared at her. "We what?"
"We use this." She slapped the wing panel we were clinging to. "Kick with it. Current's already taking us that way."
Brooke shook her head. "I can't."
Despite her weariness, Bridget's voice was gentle and empathetic. "Brooke. You don't have to do it well. You just have to not stop. If we can get there, we have a chance at surviving this."
Brooke looked at her, colorless lips trembling, then she nodded.
So we kicked. We struggled and coughed and cursed, fighting the ocean for our lives. We swallowed seawater. The sun, high and bright in a stunningly blue sky, beat down on us. We lost ground and gained it. The island seemed to move away whenever I looked at it, so I stopped looking. But the current remained in our favor so I knew it was just a matter of time, if we could hold on.
Bridget kept one hand on the panel and one hand sometimes on Brooke's wrist. I stayed on the other side, trying to steer when waves turned us sideways. My shoulder hurt so badly I thought I might vomit. Not a good idea, considering how dehydrated I was.
At some point the water changed. The swells became rougher but shallower. Waves began to lift and push instead of simply rise under us. We could see the beach now, almost close enough to touch: white sand and black rocks with palm trees leaning over the shore.
A wave took us and hurled us forward. The panel split the water like a surfboard before slamming into sand. My knees hit bottom. Then another wave crashed over us and took me under. I came up choking, hands clawing at wet sand. I crawled away from the water because I lacked the strength and balance to stand. Bridget was on her knees a few feet away, coughing, hair plastered to her face. Brooke lay half in the water, eyes closed, waves washing around her waist.
"Brooke!" Bridget shouted. She scrambled back down and grabbed Brooke under the arms.
I tried to stand, failed, then crawled to help. Together we dragged Brooke beyond the reach of the surf. She coughed suddenly, turning onto her side and vomiting seawater into the sand.
Bridget collapsed beside her. I fell onto my back. For a long time, none of us spoke. We just breathed and savored the reality of still being alive.
Eventually Bridget sat up. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked at me. Her face was scratched. Her lower lip was split. One sleeve of her flannel was torn almost completely off.
"Ben," she said, then crawled to me and touched my cheeks, my chest, my shoulder, almost as if she was trying to convince herself that I was real. "You're bleeding."
"So are you."
"Your head."
"Is it bad?"
She examined it with shaking fingers. "I don't think so. Scalp cuts bleed a lot."
Brooke pushed herself upright slowly. She looked wrecked: pale, shaking, hair tangled with salt, one cheek bruised. Her beautiful white top was torn at the hem and stained with fuel, sand, and blood. Her shoes were missing.
She looked at us, then out at the ocean.
"Are we the only ones?" she asked.
"We don't know," Bridget said. "We survived. Other people could have too. There could be another beach. Another part of the island. Rafts. Debris. We don't know."
She wasn't actually lying but none of us, Bridget included, really believed that.
I sat up, too fast, and everything spun, black spots dancing across my vision. Bridget reached for me.
"Easy."
"I'm fine."
"Your skin is gray."
"I've always been pale."
We took inventory because Bridget made us.
Injuries first. My shoulder was bruised and strained, maybe sprained, but not dislocated. My head had a shallow cut above the temple. My ribs hurt, but I could breathe, so they probably weren't broken. Bridget had cuts on her arms and legs, a twisted wrist, and bruises blooming along one side. Brooke had a deep scrape on her thigh, bruised ribs, and raw marks around the wrist where she had been trapped. No broken bones that we could tell. No one was bleeding badly. Under the circumstances, "lucky" didn't seem like the right word but it probably applied.
Next, what we had. My phone was gone, as was Brooke's. Bridget had hers, dead and cracked, nestled in the soaked pocket of her leggings. Bridget's backpack had made it; sort of. She had somehow kept one arm through the strap during the crash and held onto it despite the ocean's best attempts to rip it away. The thoroughly soaked contents included two protein bars protected by their sealed foil wrapping, a metal water bottle, a compact first-aid kit, a lighter sealed in a tiny plastic bag, a nail file, three hair ties, sunscreen, and a ruined paperback beach book.
Brooke stared at the backpack. "You brought a first-aid kit?"
Bridget shrugged. "It's just Band-Aids and stuff."
"You brought a lighter? You don't smoke."
"Never know when you might need it."
Bridget insisted we move away from the waterline after that, in case the tide came in.
The beach curved in a crescent between black rocks at one end and a thick wall of green at the other. The trees were dense but not impenetrable. They were mostly palms, broad leaves, vines; the kinds of vegetation one expected to find in the tropics. Birds could occasionally be seen through the canopy. Somewhere inland, there was the sound of babbling water. Fresh water, which mattered more than anything. We all heard it at the same time.
Bridget closed her eyes. "Thank God."
We didn't go straight in. Bridget said we needed markers to make sure we never lost the beach, and we had to stay visible in case rescue came, because we needed to believe rescue would come. It was the only hope we had. Planes had black boxes, didn't they? Pilots called for help. Searchers followed transponders, wreckage, and currents. I didn't really know how any of it worked, but I needed to believe there was some invisible machinery already grinding toward us.
We used driftwood to make a huge SOS in the sand above the tide line. It took longer than it should have because we were weak and dizzy. When we were done, we retreated to the shade near the trees to get out of the sun. Bridget cleaned our cuts with water from her bottle, then made us save the rest until we found the stream.
Brooke was sitting with one leg stretched out while Bridget knelt beside her, focused on the wound. Her hands were gentle, even when her face was stern. Brooke watched her and I watched Brooke watching her.
When Bridget finished, Brooke touched her wrist lightly. "Thank you."
Bridget looked at the hand on her wrist then at Brooke. "You're welcome." There was unexpected warmth in those words.
Then Bridget started crying. She turned away immediately, like she didn't want us to see.
"Bridget," I said.
"I'm fine."
Brooke reached for her, then stopped herself. I moved instead, because I knew she would let me. I put an arm around her and she collapsed against me, the dam breaking. I held her with my good arm and pressed my cheek to her damp hair.
Brooke sat beside us, alone. I looked at her over Bridget's shoulder. She looked exhausted, but as she watched Bridget, her eyes hardened with something that looked a lot like jealousy. Without thinking, I reached my free hand toward her. She took it with cold fingers and leaned into me, her own tears now flowing freely.
The three of us sat like that until the crying passed. Then, by late afternoon, we found the stream.
It ran down from rocks behind the trees, clear and cold, spilling into a shallow pool before disappearing under roots as it flowed toward the sea. We drank too fast, desperate to replace all the fluids we had lost in the past twenty-four hours. There were small crabs near the rocks on the beach and clams in the tide pools. Coconuts hung high in a few trees, although I didn't see any on the ground.
So we had food, water, and Bridget's lighter. And we could probably cobble together something resembling a shelter. But, as far as we could tell, there were no other people. No other crash survivors and no one who lived on the island.
As the sun lowered, we returned to the beach and stared at the ocean. It wasn't promising: no planes, no boats, no smoke. Be patient, I told myself, rescue would take time. Days, maybe even weeks. Definitely not hours.
We gathered wood for a fire. Bridget's lighter worked on the fourth try, after briefly scaring us that the plastic bag hadn't provided adequate protection. When the flame finally caught, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. The fire grew slowly, orange licking at dry palm scraps, then catching thicker sticks. Smoke rose into the evening air.
We sat close to it as darkness came. Not because the air was cold but because the light provided comfort and refuge.
Brooke hugged her knees. Bridget sat cross-legged and I lounged with my back against a large rock.
"We should take turns staying awake," Bridget said.
Brooke looked at her. "Do you think there are animals?"
"Listen," I said.
Above the sound of the crackling fire, we heard the chorus: insects, birds, inhuman caws and calls, leaves rustling. We might be the only people on this island but we were most definitely not alone.
I looked at the two women beside me: Bridget, my oldest friend, the girl who stuck by me through thick and thin for a decade-and-a-half, and Brooke, my longtime crush who had once made me feel small with a smile, now looking so lost and lonely.
The first night on the island, I slept in fits and starts. I woke to every pop of the fire, every strong breeze, every snore from Bridget curled on one side of me and Brooke on the other. We weren't touching but we were as close as we could be without doing so.
Near dawn, in the first dim light of the second day of our odyssey, I opened my eyes and saw Brooke awake. She was looking past me at Bridget, and her expression was one of deep affection, maybe even love. Then Brooke's eyes shifted to me. She gave me a smile and I was grateful to see that it was genuine, not sad.
No More Walking Away.
Morning proved that it hadn't all been a horrible nightmare.
At night the island had been firelight, shadows, and noise. In the morning it was sand in my teeth, a headache behind my eyes, one aching shoulder, and Brooke trying to untangle a piece of seaweed from her hair.
Bridget was already awake when I sat up.
She stood near the remains of the fire with her hands on her hips, staring at the beach. Her red hair was a dry frizzed mess around her face, her flannel torn, one sleeve missing, leggings stiff with salt.
"You slept," she said.
"Did I?"
"You made old-man noises."
"I'm injured."
"You always make old-man noises."
Brooke groaned. "Please don't flirt this early."
Bridget and I both looked at her. Brooke had one arm over her eyes. Her voice was rough. Her blonde hair was a tangled bird's nest. She looked nothing like the blonde beauty who had adorned a thousand social media posts. Instead, she looked like a real person.
Brooke shifted, winced, and grabbed at her ribs. Bridget noticed immediately and crouched beside her.
"Still bad?"
Brooke took an experimental deep breath. "It hurts."
"Sharp?"
"No. More like; bruised. Deep."
I remembered Bridget taking a first-aid course back in high school. She had been thinking about getting certified, although she never went through with it.
"Can you stand?"
Brooke tried. Halfway up, she stopped, face pale.
"Slow," Bridget said. She moved over to help the other woman. Brooke's hand rested briefly on Bridget's forearm for balance, and neither of them pulled away fast.
We had a lot to figure out that first full day: shelter, water, food, fire, signal, injuries, poison plants, and maybe even sharks. We also needed to get a better idea of the island's topography and check in case other survivors had washed up somewhere else.
The first problem was water, even though we'd found the stream. We needed a way to carry it and maybe keep some near the beach. Bridget's metal bottle was only one bottle, and three adults could easily go through a dozen fill-ups per day.
So it was time to explore our new home and do a little scavenging. The beach had become the resting place for pieces of the crash by then. Not much useful at first, and thankfully no human remains. We inventoried a torn seat cushion, several plastic panels, a broken tray table, a partially intact suitcase with nothing inside but soaked men's shirts and one shoe, a bright blue scarf, a cracked cosmetics case, and a penknife. We kept the last of those, thinking it might prove useful, if only for opening up mollusks.
Then we found a section of overhead bin washed up near the black rocks. It wasn't ideal; it was bulky and heavy; but it held water if tilted right. We dragged the bin piece up the beach and rinsed it in the stream.
"Not perfect," Bridget said. "But it will do until something better comes along."
The second problem was fire.
The lighter still worked, but Bridget was adamant that we couldn't waste it and she didn't think it had much butane left. "Ideally, we need to keep a fire going at all times. That limits the number of times we have to use the lighter. While no one actually needs to tend the fire constantly, we need to keep an eye on it." We needed dry tinder and a shelter for the fire when it rained. We gathered palm fronds, driftwood, bark, anything dry enough to catch.
My shoulder made lifting hard, and Bridget kept telling me to stop using that arm.
"I'm helping."
"You're helping badly."
By midday, the sun was high and relentless. Our skin darkened and reddened and we moved into shade as much as possible, recognizing that a sunburn would be very unpleasant and possibly dangerous. Bridget, with the fair complexion of her Irish ancestors, was especially vulnerable.
Salt dried on my skin in itchy patches. Every cut burned. My clothes felt like cardboard. Brooke kept tugging at the hem of her torn white top, which had dried stiff and no longer seemed to fit. Bridget's leggings were rubbing raw behind her knees.
On the positive side, I had drunk enough water that my pee had returned to its normal pale yellow color after being a deep umber when I woke up. Brooke and Bridget had determined which leaves were the best ones to use for toilet paper. I took note, since that information would eventually become useful to me too.
The stream pool looked better every time we passed it, not only as a means of slaking our thirst but for bathing. We decided that our drinking source would come from about a dozen yards upstream from the pool, thereby eliminating the possibility of accidentally drinking water we had contaminated from washing.
Bridget was the first one to state the obvious. "We need to rinse off," she said.
"In the pool?" Brooke asked.
"No, Brooke, in the sauna."
I cleared my throat. "I can, uh, go downstream while you two;"
"Are we or are we not all adults?" asked Bridget, clearly losing patience. "I just want to get clean and feel vaguely human again. I don't care if you two see my tits. Modesty doesn't seem like it has much value here."
I know I was overthinking things and that Bridget was right. I had seen naked women before. But those naked women hadn't been my best friend and longtime crush. Seeing either of them naked seemed like a very big thing. And I'll admit I was also a little worried that I wouldn't; measure up. But it was equally true that we needed to get cleaned up.
"We can take turns," I said.
Bridget sighed like she was offended but agreed. "Yeah. Good."
Brooke looked between us. "Fine."
So that became the plan. The pool was maybe thirty yards inland, hidden enough by trees that the beach disappeared from its near edge. It was neither big enough to swim laps nor deep enough to submerge much above the knees but it was more than adequate for our purposes.
Bridget went first. While she was bathing, Brooke and I walked back toward the beach to give her the privacy she wasn't demanding. We sat on a fallen palm trunk facing the ocean.
For about thirty seconds, neither of us spoke, listening to the water splashing behind us. We both stared straight ahead.
"You're being very respectful," Brooke said.
"I'm always respectful."
"But you want to see her, right? And me?"
She made me sound like a pervert. But I wasn't about to deny what was obviously true. I glanced at her and saw that she was smiling, a glint of mischief in her eyes. Even though it was coming at the cost of my embarrassment, I was glad to see this side of Brooke re-emerging.
"I don't mind. In fact, it would be weird if you didn't. And, unless we get rescued really soon, it's going to happen. My clothes are torn to shit and I don't have any spares and yours and Bridget's aren't in much better shape. Unless you're blind, I'm sure you've already seen my nipples a half-dozen times."
Truth was, I hadn't. But now there was no chance that I wasn't going to start looking.
"You and Bridget. I've watched you two for so long, almost never with the best motives. And I've always envied you," she said. "Because she loves you."
I stared at the ocean. "You said that once before."
"At prom."
"Yeah."
"I was right then and I'm right now."
"So where does that put you?"
"I don't know," she said, a little sadly. "Somewhere outside the door, hoping someone lets me in."
Silence returned as I mulled over that thought because as important as Bridget was to me, I couldn't envision just letting go of Brooke.
After a while, Bridget called out, "Okay. Done."
When she came back through the trees, her hair was wet and darker against her neck. She had rinsed her flannel and tank top and put it back on damp, which made it cling to her shoulders and stomach in a way I tried very hard not to notice. Not that such a thing was possible; her nipples had decided that they were going to make themselves very noticeable even with the covering.
Bridget noticed the direction of my gaze. Her cheeks got a little more color but her lips also quirked up in a smile.
"Your turn," she said to Brooke, who promised to be quick.
Bridget took Brooke's place beside me on the fallen trunk, leaving space between us.
"You okay?" I asked. The experience had taken its toll on us all, but Bridget most of all because she had accepted, however reluctantly, the role of leader.
She nodded. "I'm fine. Getting my second wind." I heard the lie in those words almost before she spoke them.
"Really?"
"No."
Bridget leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "I keep thinking I'm going to wake up."
"Me too."
"I keep hearing it."
The crash. She didn't have to say it. I could hear it too: metal tearing, people screaming, the rush of water, the horrible groan of the plane coming apart. It was our shared nightmare and would be forever. It wasn't possible to "just get over" things like that. I would have to learn to live with those memories. We all would.
I noticed that she was absent-mindedly massaging her left ankle and foot.
"Let me do that," I offered. She gave me a smile and pivoted, stretching out her leg and depositing her foot in my hands. I went to work on it with practiced skill. This was not the first time I had given her a foot massage. I knew her pressure points and, even with a faint coating of sand, the contours of her toes, sole, and heel were familiar. She closed her eyes and leaned back her head. At that moment, I noticed just how prominent her nipples were through the still-clinging damp shirt. Until now, I had never considered a foot massage to be erotic but, as my cock started to harden, I underwent a change of perspective. But I didn't stop until she disengaged.
"I was so scared I lost you," she said, then leaned against my shoulder, taking care not to put pressure on my injury.
We sat like that until Brooke's voice came from the trees. "Um. Slight problem."
Bridget sat upright at once. "What?"
"My jeans are stuck."
"What?" Bridget called.
"My jeans," Brooke said, louder and clearly humiliated. "They're wet and torn and stuck around one ankle and I can't get them off without falling on my ass. And Ben, if you laugh, I'll drown you in this pond."
Bridget stood. "I'll help." She disappeared into the trees.
I heard muffled voices followed by a splash and Brooke saying, "Oh shit, now I have nothing left to hide from you." Then laughter.
A minute later Bridget called, "Ben?"
"Yeah?"
"We need the knife."
"The knife?"
"The penknife that we found on the beach. To cut the jeans."
I grabbed the penknife from where Bridget had left it near her backpack and headed toward the pool. I stopped before the trees.
"Coming in," I said, which felt ridiculous. How old were we again?
The pool area was deeply shaded under the green canopy above. It was at least ten degrees cooler in here. Bridget stood knee-deep in the water wearing her damp tank and underwear because she had apparently taken her leggings off again. Brooke sat on a flat rock at the edge of the pool with one leg in the water and one knee bent, jeans twisted around her ankle. Her top was off. Her arms were crossed over her chest, hiding enough to be decent.
I looked at her face. Only her face. Well, not really, but no nipples were visible.
There were moments when a person's body appeared not as fantasy but as fact. Brooke was beautiful; I had known that forever. I had lusted after her throughout high school and she had starred in more than a few of my wet dreams. But seeing her like this, imperfect and vulnerable, was different from catching a glimpse of her in fitted gym clothes. Here, the armor was gone, replaced by bruises, goosebumps, a scrape on her thigh, one wrist marked from the crash, and those blue eyes.
I handed Bridget the knife.
"Thanks," Bridget said.
I turned my back, feeling that was the right thing to do under the circumstances and also because I didn't want them to see the obscene bulge in my pants. So I stood there studying leaves while Bridget cut Brooke free from the jeans. There were little sounds behind me: fabric tearing, water splashing, Brooke sucking in a breath when her bruised ankle moved wrong.
"Sorry," Bridget said. "I didn't mean to touch;"
"It's fine."
"It's not. I'm clumsy."
"It's fine, Bridget."
I did not turn around until Bridget told me I could. By then Brooke had put back on her beat-up top and Bridget was standing at the edge wringing out the ruined jeans which she had turned into homemade jeans shorts. After tossing them to Brooke, she put her leggings back on, although they were wet and clung to her legs.
When she was done, Bridget said, "Ben, you should rinse too."
My clothes smelled like something left in a gym locker for a year. My cuts needed cleaning. My jeans were stiff with salt and blood and seawater.
"I can wait," I said.
"No," Bridget said. "You most definitely cannot. And you're bleeding again."
I touched my temple. My fingers came away red.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Oh."
Brooke shifted in the pool, eyes suddenly worried. "Ben?"
"I'm okay."
Bridget stepped closer. "Shirt off."
I took off my shirt. It took some effort because of my shoulder. Bridget had to help, lifting the fabric carefully over my injured arm. Her fingers brushed my side and ribs. There was no reason for it to feel intimate, but it did anyway.
Brooke watched from the water, but this time it wasn't the queen bee judging the nerd. Her expression was completely different; her interest had shifted like everything else in the dynamic between us.
"You got cute," she said softly.
Bridget's eyes darted over me too, faster than Brooke's but not fast enough to hide it.
I rinsed in the pool quickly, keeping a safe distance from Brooke. I was not normally shy, but in front of these two, I felt more exposed than ever in my life. More than the first time I stood naked in front of my first girlfriend on the night I lost my virginity. I kept my underwear on. Wet as it was, though, it only hid so much. Both of my companions now had a pretty good idea of what I was working with.
The water was cold enough to steal my breath. It stung every cut and loosened all the salt. I ducked my head under and came up gasping. Then dunked under again and rubbed vigorously at my hair and scalp.
Bridget crouched at the edge with the first-aid kit. "Come here."
She cleaned the cut on my head again while I sat on a rock. Her touch was careful. When Bridget pressed a bandage near my temple, her thumb lingered by my cheek. When I looked up at her, her eyes met mine, and in those eyes I saw for the first time that she was no longer trying to hide what she felt for me.
Food became the next mission. The protein bars were long gone, representing last night's dinner. We needed more if we were going to stave off hunger and weight loss. Bridget thought we could gather snails from the rocks at low tide. The tide pools near the black rocks were teeming with small crabs and mollusks; things I didn't know the names of but in the immortal words of Crocodile Dundee, were likely "good eating." Bridget used the penknife to pry limpets off rocks. Brooke helped by collecting them in a broken plastic panel. I mostly tried to catch crabs and discovered it wasn't as easy; or painless; as it looked. Several sharp pinches earned the small crustaceans my grudging respect. It also made me the object of laughter from Bridget and Brooke.
We cooked what we could over the fire that evening. For the most part, it was either burnt to a crisp or underdone and chewy. Sand got into everything. Yet it beat the shit out of the best meal I'd had at a five-star restaurant. (Not that I'd gone to many of those.)
After eating, stomachs surprisingly full, we lounged around and rested, the fire crackling between us. We had survived one day. We had fresh food, water, and fuel for the fire. Most importantly, we had each other.
"We should build a shelter tomorrow," Bridget said, jarring us back to reality.
Brooke groaned. "With what?"
"Branches. Leaves. Whatever usable wreckage might wash up." We didn't like scouring the beach, primarily because it seemed only a matter of time before something more grotesque than a seat cushion would be there, though Bridget pointed out that organic matter would probably become fish food.
"You say that like we're starting a craft project."
"We are. The craft is not dying."
Later, when the fire was lower and Bridget went to refill the water bottle from the stream, Brooke and I were alone.
She pulled her knees to her chest, chin resting on them. Her face was tired and firelit. Without makeup, without the weight of expectations of living up to a reputation, without anyone watching except me, she somehow looked younger than she had in high school.
"I liked when you looked at me back then," she said. "I knew you did, of course. Girls usually know when guys have crushes on them. With you, it was easy to tell, and I liked having that power. I see now how ugly that was, but it was true."
I swallowed. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I want us to start again from a different place. A different dynamic."
Brooke didn't break eye contact. "And because I still like when you look at me, but now it's different."
Before I could answer, Bridget came back with the water bottle. She looked from Brooke to me. "What did I miss?"
"Nothing," I said automatically.
Brooke said, "A little honesty."
Bridget's eyebrows rose. "That's new."
"Yeah."
Bridget sat down slowly. I wondered if she'd heard. Probably. Bridget had always had inconvenient timing and excellent hearing.
The third day, we built our epically bad first shelter. It leaned against two palms near the edge of the trees and was made from branches, palm fronds, and broken plastic from the plane. It looked like a stiff breeze would knock it over but at least it provided shade. And when an afternoon rain came through, brief and heavy, it kept some of the water off us. But "some" wasn't the same as "all" or even "most."
Brooke sat inside with water dripping onto her left shoulder. "I love our luxury resort," she said.
Bridget, soaked beside her, said, "Shut up."
"Five stars."
That afternoon, after the rain, we searched farther along the beach. Our expedition netted two unopened water bottles tangled in kelp, a child's backpack with nothing inside but crayons, a wet sweater that was unlikely to fit any of us, three plastic cups, a small bottle of shampoo, a floating seat cushion, and one suitcase that made Brooke go very still.
We all noticed the pink ribbon on the handle. It was Madison's.
Brooke knelt beside it in the sand. Nobody spoke. She unzipped it with shaking hands. Inside were clothes, makeup, a vibrator, sandals, a hairbrush, a little bag of jewelry, and a framed photo in a plastic sleeve: Madison with her parents and brother, all of them smiling on some ski trip.
Brooke touched the photo, her fingertips tracing Madison's grinning face. Her features didn't change for a while, then she leaned forward and covered her mouth.
Bridget crouched beside her, gently placing a hand on her back. I stood a few feet away, watching helplessly.
"I didn't even like her that much anymore," Brooke said, her voice quavering, the tears falling. "She was my friend because we were; because it was easy. Because people expected it. I don't know. We barely talked this year except about the trip."
"That doesn't mean you can't grieve for her."
"We were so mean," Brooke whispered. "To everybody. For no reason."
That night we used Madison's suitcase for storage. We felt shitty about doing it but we were in a survival situation and didn't have the luxury of adhering to moral scruples. Her clothes were salvageable. Brooke took a pair of shorts because Bridget's penknife seamstress work on her jeans had been ruinous. So Brooke wore Madison's shorts, which fit; and that made her cry harder.
By the fourth day, my shoulder had improved enough that I could more actively help out, especially as we started building Resort 2 point oh. Bridget's wrist was still swollen, and Brooke's limp was less obvious. We started to move more like a unit.
Bridget woke first and checked the fire while I fetched water. Brooke uncovered the SOS, which had become buried by blowing sand, then collected shellfish from the tide pools. We searched for more wreckage in the mornings then rested in the hot middle of the day and gathered wood in the afternoon. At night, we kept the fire alive and talked. Not as much about rescue, although it was always on our minds. But there were no signs of it and no sense getting too low.
On the fifth day, we found real crabs; big ones with a lot of meat. The kind they served in fancy seafood restaurants and charged fifty dollars per plate. They were in a rocky inlet beyond the black stones, where the water was shallow and full of hiding places.
"We can trap them," Bridget decreed.
"With what?" Brooke asked.
Bridget looked at the bits of wreckage we'd carried, then at some vines hanging near the trees. "Stuff."
The first trap failed, as did the second one. The third trap caught one crab and then broke apart because I lifted it wrong. Bridget stared at the ruined vine basket in my hands and shook her head sadly. Eventually, though, we figured out a crude system with woven vines, bits of plastic, and snail bait. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. The system netted us two crabs by evening and three the next morning.
Substantive food changed our moods. Although it was true that we were still stranded, injured, grieving, and filthy, hunger stopped pressing on every thought. We could start to think beyond the next hour.
The stream became part bathroom and part laundry. At first we kept taking turns, making a show of respecting privacy. But after days of this, it became less realistic. Brooke and Bridget didn't care. I was the only holdout, somehow equating my reticence to give in with being respectful. They thought I was a prude.
The first time I saw Bridget fully naked was an accident. I'd gone to the stream for water, thinking she was back at the beach with Brooke. She wasn't. She was in the pool, standing off to one side, rinsing her hair using a giant clam shell as a water dipper. Her eyes were closed so she didn't see my approach.
For a second, my brain refused to understand what my eyes were seeing. This was Bridget. My Bridget. The girl who had stolen my hoodies, thrown apples at my head, defended me from Brooke, and once laughed so hard she snorted milk through her nose. And she was naked.
She looked leaner than I'd ever let myself notice, with strong shoulders, a flat stomach, and narrow hips. Hers was the kind of body built by years of running. The sun had darkened her skin a lot in just a few days, and there were more freckles than before, scattered across her chest and ribs. Her tits were small; exactly what I would've expected from someone built like her; but seeing them uncovered sent a surge of awe and arousal through my body. They were firm and high and tipped with coral-pink nipples that were as hard as they had been when I noticed them under her wet top.
I had known Bridget for most of my life. I had seen her sick, sunburned, furious, laughing, sweaty after races, half-asleep on my dorm-room floor. None of that had prepared me for this or for the raw surge of arousal I felt.
My eyes continued to drink in the details of her body. There was a nest of red-brown hair between her legs, less neat than it probably had been before the island. And those bruises on her hip and one thigh looked worse up close; ugly purple reminders of the crash.
And as I looked, my body did exactly what a guy's body does when he sees a naked girl. There was nothing I could do to prevent it and precious little I could do to hide it.
Then her eyes opened and locked onto mine. For maybe one second, neither of us moved, then I turned so fast my foot slipped in the mud.
"Shit!" I yelled as I went down hard on one knee.
"Ben?"
"I'm not looking!"
"Bullshit."
"It was an accident! I thought you were at the shelter with Brooke."
I was facing a tree now, staring hard at the bark. Behind me, water splashed. Bridget didn't say anything for a second. Then she laughed. There was no hint of embarrassment; it was an amused chortle.
"Oh my God," she said. "Your reaction! Are my tits that surprising? Or maybe you've never seen a true redhead?"
"I; I;" I took a deep breath to compose myself. "Actually, you're my first redhead."
"Turn the fuck around. You have my permission to look."
So I turned around and looked. With permission granted, I no longer felt like I was creeping. She was radiant, her smile wide. She even posed for me, turning around so I could get a good look at her magnificant ass. My mouth was dry, all saliva gone. My cock was at full mast, contained by boxers that did nothing to hide its size or state.
"Take as long as you need."
Eventually, the show was over. She got dressed while I stood there, eyes glued to her. She hadn't stopped smiling through the whole thing. I put myself in her position: the person she had loved in secret for so long, upon seeing her naked, had gotten visibly turned on. And, in that moment, I realized that Bridget's unrequited love might not have been so unrequited after all.
That's when Brooke's voice came from somewhere behind us. "Are you two done playing peek-a-boo, or should I come back?"
I turned to see Brooke standing on the path with an armful of wood, one eyebrow raised.
"It was an accident," I said.
"Sure."
"It was," Bridget insisted.
"I believe you."
"You absolutely do not," Bridget said.
Brooke's eyes twinkled. "I believe parts. I guess this means that I'm the only one who hasn't seen your pussy."
Bridget proceeded to flash Brooke and that caused all three of us to break into laughter.
The first time I saw Brooke naked was not an accident. The day after my first look at Bridget, Brooke decided to rinse off in the pool while Bridget and I sorted through the clothes we had just finished washing. We were trying to string up a drying line with vines. Bridget was working beside me, tying vines between two branches while Brooke splashed in the water. I had assumed she was still in one of Madison's too-small tee shirts and a pair of panties. I was wrong as was about to become abundantly clear.
"Ben, can you hand me the shampoo?" she asked from the middle of the pool.
I picked up the container from the nearby rock where she had left it, turned, and took one step before I noticed what was before me. Brooke stood waist-deep in the pool, arms dangling by her sides. She was unquestionably putting herself on display for me, letting me see what I had been too timid to ask for. So I saw Brooke, and she saw me seeing her.
Her tits were full and round, exactly the shape I had pictured way too many times over the years. Not enormous, not cartoonish, just beautifully proportioned. Her rosé nipples were thick and hard, fatter than Bridget's and equally suckable. Below the waterline, where the surface lapped at her hips, I could see enough to know she had stopped maintaining the careful perfection she probably kept back home. A soft triangle of blonde had begun to grow back in. That somehow felt more intimate than if she had been perfectly groomed.
My body reacted the same way it had with Bridget. Brooke noticed the reaction in my shorts; how could she miss it? Her eyes lit up with an unexpected sort of glee. And I remembered something she had said a couple days earlier: "I still like when you look at me, but now it's different."
"Jesus Christ," muttered Bridget, seeing the same thing I was seeing. But the smile she wore belied the harshness of her tone. "Ben's just had his mind blown twice in two days."
"I'm not complaining," I said. Understatement of the year.
That night, we all sat closer together than we previously had. For a while, our conversation focused on practical things: crabs, firewood, how to build a better shelter, if smoke from the fire was visible from the air, and whether we should explore inland. Then the topics became more personal. It was true confessions time.
"I had a crush on you," Brooke said, not looking up to meet Bridget's eyes. "In high school. I didn't understand it. I mean, a girl? I just knew something about you made me angry and I kept looking at you. And then I'd get mean because I didn't know what else to do."
Bridget stared into the fire. "Like when little boys pick on girls they have crushes on?"
Brooke gave a little laugh. "I know; pathetic."
"It's not pathetic," Bridget said.
Brooke looked at her. "I'm sorry," she said.
"You said that already."
"I know. I'm probably going to keep saying it."
The firelight moved over Bridget's face. She looked tired, beautiful, and scared. We were all out of our depths, but Brooke more than either Bridget or me.
"I hated you," Bridget said. "And that's not hyperbole. If someone had handed me a loaded gun pointed at your head, I would have pulled the trigger."
Brooke's eyes lowered. Her voice got softer. "You were the only person who didn't act like I was special."
"Because I saw through you." She then turned to me, her expression open. "Ben, there's something I need to tell you. Our friendship; well; it was more, at least on my side. I had a crush on you," she said. "A bad one. An all-consuming one."
"I know," I said quietly. "Or at least suspected."
Her face changed; a flash of embarrassment, followed by something like anger. Her deepest secret hadn't been a secret at all. "Since when?"
"Prom. Maybe before."
Brooke halfway stood. "Maybe I should;"
"No," Bridget said.
Brooke froze.
Bridget didn't look away from me. "No more people walking away in the middle," she said. "We're here together. We face things. Feelings, naked bodies, whatever;"
"I'm sorry," I said.
Bridget's eyes shone, but she didn't cry. "I'm fucking tired of everyone being sorry. I mean, I'm not tired that we're admitting things but just hearing those words over and over;"
I flinched. She saw my reaction and softened a little.
I took a breath. It hurt my ribs. Now it was my turn. "It's no surprise that I was infatuated with Brooke. I guess most guys in school were. You both certainly knew it. But with you, my best friend since Mrs. Malloy's class, I never examined the attraction. I kept it at arm's length and focused on the unattainable Brooke. Because if I messed up what I had with you, I'd lose you. And I couldn't stand that."
Bridget stared at me for a long time. "That's the most honest you've ever been," she finally said.
Brooke sat back down slowly. Her eyes were wet. "I don't know where I fit in this," she said.
"I don't either," Bridget admitted. "But you absolutely do fit." Bridget reached across the small space between them and took her hand.
Brooke stared down at their joined hands like she couldn't quite believe Bridget had done it.
I sat there, watching my best friend hold hands with the girl who had once hurt us both. And watching Brooke hold on like she was afraid Bridget might change her mind. What did I feel? Too many things. Relief, desire, perhaps even a smattering of jealousy, and a twinge of something deeper.
Brooke looked at me with a question in her eyes. Bridget looked at me too, with another question; or maybe the same one.
So I reached out and put my hand over theirs. No one moved away. We sat like that until the fire burned low.
The next morning, Bridget woke with her head on my shoulder and Brooke's fingers tangled loosely with hers. Brooke stirred, noticed the situation, and did nothing to change it. For a few minutes we stayed exactly where we were, listening to the waves and birds and the soft morning crackle of the fire.