Occasionally Dex would check on me, shake my leg, to make sure I was still conscious.
Finally I felt him slow the boat down, heard him flick a switch and come out from behind the wheel. He picked me up, the blankets falling away, and took me downstairs.
The heat was going full blast and the lights were all on. In a dream–like state I noticed my iPhone lying on the table as he took me into the front bedroom. He had shut the door so the room was the warmest.
He lay me down on the bed, brought out another pile of linen and sleeping bags from the closet as well as a bunch of towels.
“I don’t care if you think this is inappropriate,” I heard him say through shivers. I turned my head and saw him stripping down to his boxer-briefs. His body was shiny and translucent from the cold, every inch covered in automatic convulsions. He came on top of the bed and started to pull my jacket and top off.
“What?” I mustered.
“Trust me,” he said. He took off my boots and pants as quickly as he could until I was also just in my underwear. Then he lay down beside me and pulled all the blankets and towels over us. He pulled me right up to him and wrapped his arms and legs around me and held me tight. I was too sluggish to protest and I knew I wouldn’t have anyway.
He held me until I started to feel again. At first it was the shivering, then the terrible never–ending cold. Then we both began to calm down. The heat between us was warming us over, trapped beneath the blankets in the warm room.
I was able to think more clearly. I was able to feel my body parts again. I was very aware of his bare skin on mine. I looked up at his face. He looked relaxed, relieved, but didn’t loosen his grip around me. Our mouths were close. His breath smelt like saltwater.
“Who is driving the boat?” I whispered carefully.
“Autopilot,” he said, looking into my eyes. “I’ll go up and check on it in five minutes.”
I closed my eyes and brought my face into his neck, burrowing it. He cupped his hand behind my head and held it there.
“We made it,” he murmured.
I started to cry. It was all too much for me to take. It always would be. I didn’t know how much I could keep going.
“I’m scared, Dex,” I mumbled between sobs.
“I know.”
“I don’t…I can’t live like this. Why do I have to see these things? Why do they come after me? What is it about me?”
“We are putting ourselves at risk by doing this…”
“No. It’s always been like this. I know it has been. I feel like I can’t tell what’s a dream. What’s real. I’m going crazy. I have to be. What if all the world is inside of my head?”
“It’s not, Perry. It’s not.” He held me tighter.
“What if I really am alone?”
“Baby, you aren’t alone. I’m here.”
“I’m so scared. I don’t want to see these things anymore. It makes me want to tear my brain out. I don’t know what’s real. How can I tell what’s real anymore? What’s real, Dex? Tell me what’s real.”
He put his hand on my face and looked at me with the most magnetic, impassioned spark in his dark eyes. “I’m real. This is real.”
I closed my eyes in gratitude, my heart filling up, the warmth radiating out from there and soaking up my nerves. He kissed my forehead and pulled me back into him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Is your phone charged yet?” Dex asked me.
We were sitting in a late–night diner in the outskirts of Victoria. It was 2 a.m. and the place was empty except for an old man who nursed a cup of coffee at the counter.
We must have looked like quite the sight. We were both dressed in Zach’s leftover sailing gear; the blue and red vinyl Helly Hansen suits were the only things left on the boat that were dry. It looked like we had come in from an epic, wild sailing race and in some ways, it was kind of true. Luckily, the jackets were so long on me that they covered up the crappy bandaging job we did on my wrists from Dex’s car’s first aid kit.
After our body temperatures returned to normal, Dex went back up top and steered the boat back into the marina. It didn’t take long at all. It was amazing how close the island really was to civilization, yet when we were there, it was like another world altogether. A world made up of humanity’s darkest misdoings and the most shameful nightmares of our souls.
As soon as we docked, I ran to the shore and literally kissed the ground. I was so overcome with so many different emotions, but the strongest one was just transcendent relief. We really had made it. We were back in amongst the living and we were alive ourselves.
We packed up our stuff as quickly as we could and brought it up to Dex’s black Highlander, another sight I almost cried at. I hugged the car, so grateful to see something from our other life, something solid, real and familiar.
We had driven through the streets looking for some place to gather our strength before the morning came and we would have to explain to Zach what happened. The boat was fine despite everything, but Dex would probably have to replace the Zodiac, which wasn’t going to be inexpensive. The money didn’t seem like a big deal after everything we had gone through, but it was nothing to sneeze at either.
The other issue was that not only had Dex’s iPhone drowned when he went to rescue me from the coffin, but we lost the backpack with the Super 8 camera to the depths of the sea. The only concrete footage we had, the only footage that was really spectacular and proved we weren’t full of shit, was now resting at the bottom of the ocean, alongside the library books about the island. They were probably the only books in publication too. Maybe that’s where they all belonged. Their watery grave.
Dex wasn’t sure what to say to Jimmy about the loss. He was going to see what he could salvage from the other cameras before he brought them on the boat. There was the scene with the deer in the night, and a few other instances that might be compelling enough to make an episode out of them. We would have to wait and see. And of course the intro we shot, my red low–cut shirt, the setting sun over the beach. My goodness, that seemed like another lifetime.
I got up from my seat and looked at the iPhone, which was charging at the wall outlet beneath the counter across from us. It was powered and the texts from Ada and my family were coming in one after another. I just didn’t have the energy to deal with them.
I sat back down and took a sip of my hot peppermint tea. “Give it a few minutes. Too many texts coming in.”
“You should tell your parents you’re alive,” he said. “I have a feeling they’ve put an APB out for me.”
“It’s the facial hair, I’m telling ya.” I smiled, even though his beard was taking away the rapist qualities of his moustache.
“I’m serious,” he said and I could see he was. “They must be worried sick about you. Go call them now.”
“It’s 2 a.m.”
“They aren’t sleeping.”
I sighed and unplugged the phone. It had enough juice for a quick call. I went into the women’s washroom for privacy and dialed.
My dad answered right away.
There was a lot of yelling and crying and screaming and sobbing and lecturing. Not only from my dad, but from my mother and from Ada as well, who was also up and worried sick. I couldn’t tell them the truth. Well, I could tell them the truth but I knew it was pointless. So I told them an abbreviated version of the truth. Zodiac deflated (mysteriously), phones had died, storm came in, yadda yadda.
I knew that once I arrived at the house tomorrow, I would get the same lecture, yelling, crying all over again, and I’d once more have to explain my whole story. But I would be home and that was the most important thing of all.
“By the way. Happy Birthday,” my dad said before he hung up. “We love you.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, feeling teary. “I love you guys too.”
I staggered out of the bathroom, a weight lifted from my shoulders, and handed the phone to Dex, pressing it into his hand.
“Now it’s your turn. You have a family now. Call your baby mama and let her know you’re dandy, capiche?”
He sucked on his lip, probably thinking of excuses why he shouldn’t. But he nodded and got up. The responsibility must have started to sink in.
He left the diner at the front door and stood outside, lighting up a cigarette and putting the phone to his ear. I couldn’t read his face from the fluorescent glare inside.
He was on the phone for only a few minutes. He puffed on the cigarette, the smoke rising around him and floating away into the night. He stared across the parking lot, transfixed by nothing in particular, thinking about who knows what. Then he stubbed out the cigarette and came back inside.
He hooked the iPhone back up to the charger and sat back down at his seat.
“I think I’m going to quit smoking,” he said brightly.
I cocked my head at him. “OK. Well, good. What brought that on?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I had started thinking about how I would have to change if I was going to be a dad. Smoking just didn’t seem…appropriate.”
“Fair enough,” I said, my heart still lurching about at the mention of his impending fatherhood. I tried to hide the feeling but it was there whether I liked it or not.
“How is Jennifer?” I asked, trying to sound breezy.
“She’s great, actually,” he said taking a slurp of his coffee and grimacing. He waved over the waitress, pointing at his cup for another refill. “She’s not pregnant.”
“Uh…” It was the only word I could form in response to that bombshell.
“Yeah, she’s not pregnant,” he said quickly and with a smile as the waitress refilled his cup. She caught the tail end of that and was giving him an unimpressed look. He noticed, grinned at her and winked.
She shook her head and went back behind the counter to read her Hello! Canada magazine. Dex looked at me. “I’m telling you. Waitresses find me adorable.”