Two days after returning from being rescued, they went to visit one of Shannon's friends. Cindy and she had been close; in fact Shannon had considered her one of her best friends before she'd left to travel the world, but they'd stayed in touch, even while she hop scotched around the globe. They pulled up to the front of her house and knocked on the door. The man who answered indicated that Cindy was waiting for them by the pool.
When she saw them, she jumped from her chair. "Hey you guys, I can't believe you're here. We all thought we'd never see you again! This is incredible!" She hugged them both. "Sit, sit," she lead the way to a shaded table.
They settled themselves and waited anxiously for the questions. "I heard that you guys are a couple now! What's up with that? Is it true?" They were relieved; she just wanted the juicy gossip. At least she wasn't asking about the island, they still weren't prepared to face questions about that.
"Yeah, yeah we are, and we have a son, Andrew, he's three months." Shannon answered, kicking off her shoes, "but tell me what's be going on around here!" she deftly steered the conversation away from them. "Are Judy and Mike still going out?"
As the conversation continued in the same vein, Boone found himself tuning out the girly chitchat, growing increasingly antsy and hot. He kept looking towards the pool, wishing he were in the cool water, instead of sitting in the heat.
Finally Shannon, fed up with his fidgeting, turned to him, "For fuck sakes, then, go in the goddamn water and stop bitching about how hot you are! Christ, you're driving me mad!"
Cindy was startled. Boone hadn't said a thing about wanting to go swimming.
He turned to her, smiling, not even acknowledging Shannon's seeming non sequitur. He just appeared relieved at being excused from their conversation, "I don't have a suit with me; do you have any spares?"
"Yeah, there's some in the pool house, just pick one," she answered, still wondering about Shannon's unusual outburst.
Minutes later he emerged from the pool house and dove into the water. They watched him for a while, playing in the pool. At one point he grabbed one of those inflatable whale toys and was trying to get onto its' back. He obviously hadn't been paying too much notice to the size of the suit he'd chosen; the one he was wearing kept slipping down. After it had slid down for the tenth time, Shannon yelled at him, "Hey, Boone? We really don't want to see your naked butt. If you want to moon someone do it on your own time." He smiled at her and grabbed at the shorts pulling them up again.
Cindy watched him for a minute, "I'd almost forgotten how incredibly good looking he is. You are so lucky! Of all of us, you, obviously, are the last one any of us would have expected to end up with him. Of course you knew how we all wanted him to notice us, ask us out, but all he wanted was you, it was so obvious, the way he looked at you. It's like fate, the way it turned out, you guys together. We never said anything to you but we all realized that your hatred for him was feigned. That is we all realized, except you, we all knew that you were in complete denial. I'm sorry, but we all talked about it behind your back, how you felt about him. But it all turned out all right after all. Look at who he ended up with, you were the one who won that lottery."
"Jeeze, you make him sound like some prize, and me like some loser," Shannon hadn't realized that all her friends had known how she'd felt about him, but she, herself, hadn't.
"Well, isn't he?" Cindy sounded a little jealous.
"I guess he is," she smiled thinking about how special he was to her. "You know, I didn't even realize, I mean admit to myself, how much I loved him, 'til I almost lost him. Even the night he died, I was still in denial," she closed her eyes, feeling the tears form She hadn't meant to talk about the island, but she hadn't even been paying that much attention to the words she was saying, she was just thinking about how much he meant to her and the words came out before she stopped to think about how they'd sound.
"What? The night he died? What the hell are you talking about?" Cindy seized on the absurdity of what she'd said.
Shannon hadn't meant to reveal that much, she'd just been rolling the memories around, talking as the thoughts formed in her head and moved on. She blinked back the tears, "It was nothing, there was an accident, it turned out fine, obviously," she gestured towards Boone, undeniably alive and playing in the pool, she tried to dismiss the catastrophic event, knowing that the truth, even the truth as she guessed it, would sound completely insane.
"You must get so jealous when other women look at him," she didn't delve any deeper into the incident Shannon had referred to. From the tears Shannon was fighting, she could see that it was obviously very painful for her friend.
They hadn't been back long enough for that to have happened, so she imagined what it would like, how she would feel. "No, I don't think I would. Actually, the more they looked at him, the more satisfied I'd feel knowing that he's exclusively mine." She knew that even if another woman did look at Boone, he'd be completely oblivious to it anyway. The idea of his straying was ludicrous.
"What's it like, being with him, the way you are now?" Cindy wondered.
Shannon though about giving her some pat answer, but then reconsidered. What she felt for him deserved better, so she spoke from her heart. "My hands itch to touch him. Look at him. Even now, I want him so bad I can taste it. If I could, I'd roll him up in a ball and carry him inside me forever. Safe and mine, forever and always, only mine. When we're apart all I can think about is how much I want him, how much I need to touch him, to hold him. God, I love him! How could I have ever tried to convince myself that I didn't? You really want to know what it's like to love Boone Carlyle?" she stood and walked toward the pool. Reaching the steps at the shallow end she walked directly into the water. He saw her coming and turned to her. When she reached him, she laced her fingers through his hair and pulled his head towards her. He shook his head and looked towards Cindy, obviously protesting, however ineffectually. She kissed him hungrily, and slipped her hand between them, undoing her shorts and pushing them down in the water. She pulled his bathing suit down, and then her own underwear. She slipped her arms over his shoulders, crossing them behind his head and lifting herself onto him. Cindy watched while they had sex right in front of her. Holy shit, she thought! Though she'd seen some of her friends do far worse, this was like primal sex; she could feel the heat of their passion from where she sat. When they were done, Shannon slid her legs down him and pointed at her discarded clothes on the bottom of the pool. He pulled up the trunks he was wearing and slipped under the water, retrieving them for her. She redressed herself and exited the pool. She sat back down in the chair she'd earlier vacated. "That's what it's like."
"Jesus, Shannon, that's incredible." Cindy couldn't possibly image the intensity of it. She tried to compose herself, "What are you guys going to do now?"
"I don't know. Boone'll think of something," she had complete faith in his never-ending ability to make things right for her.
"Is he going back to work with his mother?" Cindy questioned, still trying to get over the display she'd just witnessed.
"No, he's made it pretty clear to her that that's not going to happen," Shannon responded.
"How'd that go over? I sure wouldn't have wanted to be the one to tell Sabrina Carlyle that!" Cindy was amazed that he was going to abandon such a lucrative career, and piss off his mother. From what she'd heard she was quite a shark.
"She hasn't really said that much about it, and even if she did, he's made up his mind, what, really can she do?" They'd discussed his decision and she understood exactly what his reasons were. To him, what he'd done before now seemed empty and unsatisfying. Not only that, but the crowded city held just too many more people than they were willing to deal with, they both just wanted something smaller and more manageable. They just wanted to be together.
Soon after that, he'd gotten out of the pool and rejoined them at the table, "Sorry about that little display earlier," he apologized, his cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
"Don't sweat it. Believe me, far worse has been done in that pool than that," she dismissed his apology.
Shannon excused herself to use the bathroom inside. Cindy thought she'd try something and asked him the same question she'd posed to Shannon, "What's it like, being with Shannon?"
He didn't even hesitate. Answering honestly he said, "I want her to hold me. I want to fall asleep in her arms. The need I have to feel her holding me forever is so incredible. She completely consumes me. It's like flying too close to the sun, or being a masochist and thrusting your arm into a thorn bush. God, I need her to let me love her, I need her to want me." He closed his eyes briefly, thinking about her. He laughed, "I haven't actually put it into words before, sorry that that just came out so…melodramatic. I sound like such a wuss."
Christ, Cindy thought, what if everyone felt love so deeply?
When Shannon rejoined them, she felt like she absolutely had to share what she'd learned. "Um, look, I asked you guys each the same question; what's it like being with each other?" They looked at her, not sure they wanted to hear what she had to say. "Shannon, you want to possess him, and Boone, you want her to. What you had to say about each other was incredible. Everyone should be so lucky. Jesus, I hope I'm just half as lucky."
They smiled at one another, neither one surprised about what they'd revealed to her.