"Until Tonight"
Here, our Author attempts to explain the emotional backstory behind the sudden shift from Season 1's adorableness to Seasons 2 and 3's romantic indifference.
Set during "A Nose By Any Other Name," the Season 1 finale.
I actually got really really sad writing this because it's entirely plausible that something like this could have happened during this episode and ruined everything (especially considering Mary Ann didn't know what Gilligan overheard and would've expected their date to go on as planned).
A full moon hung low in the sky. The mammoth sphere lit the lagoon, glittering on the water that lapped gently against the shore, beams of light piercing the treetops to speckle the sand.
She paced the beach anxiously, moonlight patterns dancing across her body as she wore a path into the sand along the waterline. She finally sat down on a rock by a tall palm plant and immediately jumped up again upon realizing that she couldn't see the trail that led back to camp from there. She tested the other rocks along the beach until she found one that offered a perfect view.
Anyone – or, specifically, someone – heading down to the lagoon would be greeted with the angelic sight of a beaming young woman perched on her boulder, backlit by the luminous moon and glowing with ethereal brilliance.
She waited there, watching the dark jungle, for only a moment before she got to her feet again and resumed her restless pacing. Her mouth moved very faintly as she muttered silently to herself, experimenting with the appropriate words and concocting fantasies about how the night might proceed. She had done the same thing before entering his hut earlier that afternoon to ask him on this walk, secretly happy that her friends' plan gave her an excuse to propose this meeting.
She had gone off-book only once, accidentally blurting out that she always had liked him, but he didn't seem to notice. Just like he didn't seem to notice when her roommate came right out and told him she had a crush on him a few months earlier. But he was easily confused and particularly distracted that day by the challenge of finding a bat-eater on a tropical island.
She sighed and rubbed her wrist, regretting for a moment that she hadn't borrowed a watch from someone. She gazed up at glowing night sky and tried to determine how sailors used to be able to tell where they were and what time it was simply by glancing into the heavens. She'd have to ask him about that.
Not being able to conclude anything other than that it was absolutely gorgeous and that she wished he was here to experience it with her, she turned and wandered back to her rock. She sat down and kicked off her shoes, burying her feet in the warm sand. She leaned forward on the boulder to watch her pink painted toenails disappear under the pure white grains. She raised her legs and the sand slid between her feet, forming a tiny mountain on the beach beneath her.
She dropped her feet, crushing the mountain, and took a deep breath, letting it all out in one long restless sigh. She pushed herself off the rock and took a few steps into the lagoon until the warm tropical water lapped around her ankles. She rested her hands on her hips and watched the horizon futilely, invisible in the black of night beyond the reach of the bright moonlight.
He stood at the top of the hill leading down to the lagoon, breathing laboredly through his severely bruised and swollen nose. He noticed that he was now producing a comedic whistling noise every time he exhaled so he switched to breathing through his mouth, finding nothing funny about the situation at hand.
He watched her stand in the lagoon, shafts of moonlight caressing her shoulders and the curls in her hair, and had to remind himself for the twentieth time not to go bounding down the hill to join her like he was supposed to.
He stood at the mouth of the well-worn path, indecision keeping his sneakers rooted firmly to the ground. His conversations with the women this afternoon had turned one of the worst days of his life into one of the best. And then – a date!
She told him that she always had liked him (the others were right!) and she asked him on a date and gently transferred a kiss from her lips to his inflated nose with her finger and he almost died right there in the middle of his hut. His first real date!
In school, popular girls asked him out only to laugh hysterically when he worked up the courage to say yes. He showed up to the junior prom to discover the girl he was supposed to be meeting there with another guy. He didn't go to senior prom at all and he had been stood up more times than he could count.
But she was supposed to be different.
She defended him and complimented him and ran to him – of all people – at the first sign of trouble. She kept him well-fed and listened to his stories and held his hand when he was sick.
But she also got frustrated with him and dropped him at the first sight of muscular surfers. And now she had lied to him about how ugly he looks with his new nose and asked him on sham dates.
He was used to this kind of good-intentioned deception from the others, but sitting behind the rock with his fish trap earlier that day listening to the women vow to keep up their charade, he felt the familiar heartache flare in his chest. Only this time it was so much worse.
Until tonight he had forgiven her minor indiscretions. No one was perfect, although he used to think she came pretty darn close.
After tonight he would be more careful.
He flinched as a branch cracked somewhere near the trail and she turned hopefully. She seemed to stare directly at him for a moment and he watched anticipation and then disappointment cross her face as a bird crashed from the canopy and arced gracefully around the lagoon before disappearing above the waterfall.
She sighed and wandered back to her rock, unintentionally collecting sand on the bottom of her wet feet. She slid back onto the boulder and pulled her feet up in front of her. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees, staring up the dark hill.
She'd give him a few more minutes.
Neither of them moved for almost a quarter of an hour as he watched a parade of familiar emotions process across her features: lingering hope of his late arrival, brief worry that something had happened to him, realization of what was occurring, and then anger followed quickly by short-lived resentment and, finally, devastating heartbreak.
This was a progression he was well acquainted with.
His chest ached slightly in understanding and she lowered her forehead to her knees.
When she finally looked up again after what felt like an eternity, the moonlight glistened on her wet cheeks and he had to remind himself for the twenty-first time not to dash down the trail to the lagoon.
Instead, as she slowly, shakily wiped her hands under her eyes, he turned away and returned to camp.