An hour and a half later, they were headed toward the beach. It really was the beach, too, and they were mercifully close. The trick would be finding the part of the beach where the boat was going to meet them. "At least we'll be close," Sara said hopefully. "If nothing else we should make the 2:00."
He nodded. "I hope we make this one. "
"Yeah, me too. Damned wild pigs."
"Beach sweet beach! Oh yes oh yes oh yes!" Greg walked up to the ocean and looked up and down the beach. "We're actually really close. It's less than a quarter mile that way."
Sara whooped and threw her arms around him. "We did it! We made it back!"
As predicted, Ed was aboard the shuttle boat. "You two look like you been pulled through a keyhole. What happened?"
Greg looked at Sara and grinned. "Well, it started out as a simple hike. At some point we took the wrong trail at a fork..."
"Then we took two more turns, thinking we were still on the trail..." chimed in Sara.
"Then we got chased totally off that path by a wild boar..." Greg waved his arms wildly, quite into the story.
"By then it was way too late to catch the boat back, so we walked downhill until it got dark, made camp, got up early and headed out..." added Sara.
"And here we are," finished Greg with a flourish.
"Well, I'm glad. Alice is climbing the walls. Had to give her a Xanax before I left. She was making herself crazy."
Greg smiled at Sara. "We were fine. Really."
"We were. We found our way out, no real problem."
"Well..."
"No, Greg. Really. I felt totally safe the whole time."
"Except when that wild boar was after us."
"Right. Except for that."
"So you two went and had yourselves an adventure." Ed cackled. "Young love thrives on such. Now you got a good story to tell your grandkids one day."
"So what are we going to do with the rest of our day?" Greg sat on the edge of Sara's bed, placing one hand on her back. She was laying on her stomach, her freshly-washed hair a mass of damp tendrils at her neck.
"Right now I feel a pressing need to vegetate for a bit."
"Sounds like a plan. Scoot over."
She glanced over at him, a smart comment about having a bed of his own ready to slip from her lips, but instead of saying it she just sighed and wordlessly moved over to make room for him. He slid in and pressed close, one arm and leg thrown over her, his face nestled into the curve of her neck. "Mmmmm, this was a good idea. I'm still tired."
"Me too."
He sighed. "This is nice."
"We should take a nap."
"We should. We have a whole week left for adventuring; we should rest up."
It was close to midnight when Sara finally woke up. Greg was wrapped around her as completely as humanly possible, his face pressed to her throat. They were facing each other, their legs and arms tangled together. She smiled into the darkness. She liked this way more than she should. With a sigh she closed her eyes and drifted back off.
It rained the next day, so they spent it playing chess, talking, and watching movies borrowed from Alice. At bedtime, Sara bid Greg a good night and crawled beneath the covers. Ten minutes later the covers lifted and a warm body curled around her. "Night," he whispered into her neck. And that was how it went from that point on. Greg now slept with her. It was wonderful, but she was going to have a very hard time adjusting to sleeping alone once they got home.
"I like sleeping with you," he whispered their last night on the island. "I'm glad you're letting me."
"I like it too," she whispered back.
Now she stood alone in her apartment, unpacking her things. Tonight was her last night away from work. Greg had dropped her off several hours before, and already she missed him. It was strange how quickly he'd become central in her life; they'd been friends for years, but somehow something had shifted. Things had changed, and she longed for his presence.
Later, tossing and turning restlessly in her cold, lonely bed, she felt his absence like a toothache. This emptiness, this loneliness was the price for all those warm nights in his arms. It was one thing to sleep alone when you didn't know what you were missing, quite another to experience the rich luxury of loving arms, then have to return to a cold solitary bed. She wasn't good enough at self-deception to be able to deny the truth - she was in love with him. The awareness crept over her in waves. Somehow she had fallen headlong in love with Greg Sanders, and there wasn't a thing she could do to change it.
Greg counted the ceiling tiles over his bed for the forty-third time. The last two weeks had been ecstatic, but now he was back to life alone in Vegas. He missed her beyond words. He missed her smile, her laughter, her keen mind, her warmth pressed softly into his arms as he courted sleep. He should never have crawled into bed with her; now his own words echoed in his head - "I could get used to this." Addicted was probably a better word. He definitely should've seen this coming.
He was in love with her - nothing new, really; he had been for a long time. Something had changed, though, and now he was in deep, deep trouble. Now he'd had a little taste of what life with her would be like, and he wanted it all, needed it all. What sealed his fate was the nagging awareness that maybe things weren't entirely one-sided any more. He sighed and rolled up out of the bed. Heaven help him, he might lose her entirely, but he had to try. He couldn't not try, not now.