“So if nothing happens by then,” I said, “and you don’t have any symptoms, you’re okay, right?”

“I think so.”

I closed the datebook and put it back in Anna’s suitcase.

“Let’s just get back to our regular routine,” she said. “I don’t want to dwell on it.”

“Sure, whatever helps.”

She should have been an actress instead of a teacher. By day, she put on quite a show, smiling like nothing bothered her. She kept busy, spending hours playing with the dolphins or helping me with the house. But she wasn’t eating, and she was so restless in bed I knew she was having trouble sleeping.

I woke up when she crawled out of the life raft one night two weeks later. She always got up at least once to throw wood on the fire, but she usually came right back. She didn’t this time, so I went to check on her. I found her in the lean-to, staring at the flames.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t sleep.” Anna poked at the fire with a stick.

“Do you feel okay?” I tried not to sound anxious. “You’re not running a fever, are you?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m fine, really. Go back to bed.”

“I can’t fall back to sleep unless you’re beside me.”

She looked surprised. “You can’t?”

“No. I don’t like it when you’re out here alone. It makes me nervous. You don’t have to put wood on the fire every night. I told you it’s no big deal for me to make one in the morning.”

“It’s just a habit.” She stood up. “Come on. At least one of us should be able to sleep.”

I followed Anna into the life raft and after we lay down, she covered us with the blanket. She wore shorts and my T-shirt, and as she settled into a comfortable position, her bare leg brushed mine. She didn’t pull it away when she stopped moving, and neither did I.

We lay in the dark, legs touching, and neither of us slept for a long time.

She agreed to stop getting up in the middle of the night and one morning a couple weeks later, after I built the fire, I said, “Anna, I wish you could time me. I bet I made this in less than five minutes.”

“Well, now you’re just showing off.”

She laughed when she said it though, and as we got closer to the date I circled in the datebook, she seemed to relax a little.

When five weeks had passed, I held her open palm in my hand, and traced the scar left behind with my thumb. “I think you’re going to be just fine,” I said. And this time, I really meant it.

She smiled at me. “I think so, too.”

She polished off three fish for lunch that day.

“Are you still hungry? I can catch more.”

“No thanks. I was starving, but I’m full now.”

We swam for a long time and we worked on the house until dinnertime. Again, she ate more than she’d eaten in weeks. At bedtime, she could hardly hold her eyes open, and she fell asleep seconds after I lay down next to her. I fell asleep too, but I woke up when Anna curled up next to me and rested her head on my shoulder.

I put my arm around her and pulled her closer.

If she had gotten sick, the only thing I could have done was watch her suffer. Bury her next to Mick when she died. I didn’t know if I could make it without her. The sound of her voice, her smile, her– those were the things that made living on the island bearable. I held her a little tighter and thought if she woke up I might tell her that. She didn’t though. She sighed in her sleep, and eventually I drifted off.

She had moved back to her side of the bed by the time I woke up the next morning. I was building a fire when she climbed out of the life raft.

She smiled at me, stretching her arms over her head. “I had a great night’s sleep. The best I’ve had in a long time.”

“I slept pretty good too, Anna.”

A few nights later, we were lying in bed debating our favorite top ten classic rock albums of all time.

“The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers is my number one. I’m knocking Led Zeppelin IV back to the fifth spot,” she said.

“Are you high?” As I started listing the reasons why I disagreed – everyone knew Pink Floyd’s The Wall should be number one – I farted. The breadfruit had that effect on me sometimes.

She shrieked and immediately tried to escape through the door of the life raft, but I grabbed her around her waist, yanked her backward, and pulled the blanket tight over her head.

It was a little game I liked to play with her.

“Oh no, Anna, oh my God, you better get out from under there,” I teased, laughing. “It must smell horrible.” She struggled to free herself, and I held the blanket down even tighter.

When I finally let her out, she made gagging noises and said, “I’m gonna kick your ass, Callahan.”

“Really? You and what army?” She probably weighed about a hundred pounds. We both knew she wasn’t kicking anyone’s ass.

“Don’t get too cocky. One of these days, I’ll figure out a way to take you down.”

I laughed and said, “Oooh, I’m scared, Anna.”

What I didn’t admit, though, was that she could have brought me to my knees with one touch of her hand, if she put it in the right place.

I wondered if she knew that.

***

“I’m going to take a bath,” Anna said, when I got back from the beach. She gathered the soap and shampoo and her clothes.

“Okay.”

After she left, I noticed we were running low on firewood. I took my backpack and shoved all the sticks I could find inside it. The sun dipped lower in the sky and the mosquitoes buzzed around me. I walked away from the thick canopy of leaves, not paying attention.

I stepped out of the trees and looked up in time to see Anna walking into the ocean, naked.

I froze.

I knew I should go, just get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t. I ducked behind a tree and watched her.

She dipped below the water to get her hair wet, then turned around and walked back out. She looked incredible, and her tan lines framed the parts of her body I liked the most. I slid my hand inside my shorts.

She stood on the beach and washed her hair, then waded in to rinse the shampoo. She walked back out, rubbed the soap between her hands, and washed her body. After sitting down on the sand, she shaved her legs and then went into the water one more time to rinse.

What she did next blew my mind.

When she came out, she looked around and then sat down facing the shore. She had brought the baby oil, and she poured some in the palm of her hand and put her hand between her legs.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

She lay back with one leg straight and one leg bent at the knee. I watched her touch herself, my own hand moving a little faster.

Though I did it almost every day, when I was alone in the woods, it never occurred to me that she might be doing it, too. I kept watching, and after a few minutes she straightened out her bent leg and arched her back. I knew she was coming and so was I.

She stood up, brushed the sand off, and stepped into her underwear. She pulled on the rest of her clothes and gathered her things. When she turned to leave she stopped suddenly and looked in my direction. Hidden behind the tree, I didn’t move, waiting for her to walk away. Then I fled, sprinting through the trees, away from the beach.

“Oh, hey,” I said when I walked up. She was standing next to the lean-to brushing her teeth.

She took the toothbrush out of her mouth and looked at me, tilting her head to the side. “Where were you?”

“Getting wood.” I unzipped my backpack and dumped the sticks onto the woodpile.

“Oh.” She finished brushing her teeth and yawned. “I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll be in soon.”

Later, as she slept beside me, I replayed the images of her naked body and her touching herself in my head like a movie I could watch as many times as I wanted. I wished I could kiss her, touch her, do whatever I wanted to her, but I couldn’t. The movie played in my head, over and over, and I didn’t get any sleep that night.