Chapter III

I surprise-visited Owen one evening after work. His front door was unlocked (I'd have to talk to him about that), so I let myself in. He wasn't anywhere inside the house, even though his car was outside. I saw some movement from the small sliding door that led to the backyard. He was there, high up on his ladder, continuing his cabin that was actually coming along nicely.

"Owen!" I called, but he didn't turn.

I was much closer when I called him again, but there was still no response from him. I had to tilt my head towards him to see he was wearing some wireless headphones. Jeez. What if a dinosaur was right behind him? Or someone with a gun? He brushed his arm across his forehead, wiping away the sweat, but even with the movement he still didn't see me. I had to give a gentle kick to his ladder to grab his attention.

"What the—" He stopped himself as soon as he saw me. "Claire?"

"No, it's Lucille Ball," I said sarcastically.

"I didn't know you were coming."

"That's why it's a surprise visit."

"What a nice surprise it is." He climbed down the ladder. His entire face was reddish, glistening with sweat. His plaid shirt sleeves were rolled up all the way, revealing more sweat and dirt on both his arms. I couldn't believe that even like this, he was still handsome. I'd say even more so. A tall, well-built man practically drenched in sweat—what was there not to like?

He took off his tool belt and set it aside. But then he just looked me up and down for a few seconds.

"What?" I said, feeling exposed again.

"Let's go inside," he said.

We went inside, but if I knew anything about him, it was that he had more to say. He had that furrowed-brow look, his lips set in a straight line, as if he was both in deep thought and trying to look deep into your soul. And he managed to look deep into mine most of the time, which annoyed me and intrigued me at the same time. How did one get so good at reading other people?

Once we were inside, he said, "Claire, don't take offense to this, but… You look terrible."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh? How could I take offense to the loveliest of compliments?"

He pulled out a chair from his dining table and sat down. I cringed. He was dirty. Did he not care that his chair would be dirty now, too?

"You're going to dirty up your chair," I said.

"Stop," he countered. "Stop changing the subject." He sighed. "Claire, you look awful."

"So I've been told." That panicky feeling started rising in my throat. I felt like he was about to tell me everything he knew about me that I tried to keep secret. Hidden. My heart was hammering against my chest. I didn't know how he had this kind of effect on me.

"Look at you," he said. "Are you eating? Are you sleeping? You have to take care of yourself."

"I'm not dead, Owen," I snapped. "I'm just fine."

In that moment, I realized what I had just said. So did he. It was an extremely poor choice of words on my part, but it raised suspicion on his end. He got up from the chair and came over to me. I was too stunned to take a step back. Idiot. "That's not funny," he said seriously.

"Never said it was," I said.

"I'm worried about you."

"Don't."

"Come on. You even look like you've lost some weight."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"Not if you're starving yourself."

"Who said I'm—" I stopped myself under the guise of not arguing anymore, but come on. I wasn't starving myself, but I might as well have been. "This is not why I came here." I sighed, wanting to move past the conversation. I couldn't tell if Owen wanted to or not, though; aside from the concern, his face was hard to read. We both fell silent for a moment.

"Did you come to see me work on my cabin?" Owen said after a few moments. "Because I have a nice butt?" He smirked in that playful way he sometimes did.

I smiled. "I just thought I'd visit," I said. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"Well, I suppose I can order some pizza," he said.

The night was mostly uneventful, but I was just happy to spend some time with him. I was able to take my mind off myself for a little while and just be distracted. We ate pizza and watched Netflix. We couldn't decide what to watch (we never liked each other's suggestions), so we settled on The Office. After we got tired of watching too many episodes, he told funny stories of his childhood while we played Uno. It was an interesting night, nonetheless, and when I realized the time, it was too late to head home. So I gave myself another excuse to be near him: I just asked if I could spend the night.

I had nothing but my purse with me. Owen didn't mind, of course (I'd have been worried if he did), and I took a shower shortly afterward. My favorite part was wearing one of his t-shirts as a nightgown. It smelled like him, distinct and wonderful. Like men's Old Spice body wash and an interesting wood smell.

It seemed like the second his head met the pillow, he was out. And, I mean, I understood that. He'd been in the sun for a while, I guessed, and possibly running other errands during the day. My entire body felt physically exhausted. My arm and leg muscles ached, and my eyes felt a hint of heaviness, but I couldn't fall asleep. I grew more and more frustrated as I attempted different positions: on my side, on my back, on my stomach, on my back with the pillow over my eyes—nothing worked. I listened to Owen's steady breathing and wondered how some people just had that ability to fall asleep so quickly. He was on my left-hand side, still in the same position he'd been in when he got in bed. Incredible.

I crossed my legs and uncrossed them. Got in a fetal position and then went back to lying flat with my arms extended at my sides. Eventually, the constant moving slowly roused Owen from his sleep. I had no idea how much time had passed since we'd gone to bed, but his voice was deeper and laced with sleep: "Claire?"

I did my best to mask my own voice, to make it seem like I'd also been sleeping. "Hmm?"

"Why are you moving?" he half-mumbled.

"Huh?" Again, acting like I'd just woke up.

"You're moving a lot."

"Sorry," I answered.

He went quiet afterward, and I thought he'd fallen asleep again. I thought he might have been sleep-talking, not that I knew if he had a history of doing that already. I mean, every now and then, someone said something seemingly silly while they were halfway between sleep and full consciousness. But then he turned to face me. His eyes were squinted, like it was a struggle to open them. He was looking right at me, and I thought he caught me pretending to have just woken up. My eyes were wide open—heavier now from exhaustion, but still open.

His hand found mine under the covers and tugged lightly. He was now lying on his back, signaling me to come closer. I moved over until my head was tucked under his neck, my hand resting on his chest. He was so warm. He didn't say anything else, and after a few minutes I tilted my head slightly only to see he was out like a light again. And it must've helped because I dozed off a little while after.

I was dreaming with him. I was back in the island with the volcano erupting. We were running, always running, for what seemed like forever. I knew I was dreaming because I knew what would happen next. But the Claire in my dreams didn't know this wasn't really happening; it was almost as if I got to watch a scene of myself play out, knowing things weren't going to turn out well, but unable to go in and change anything.

It was just the two of us. Sometimes the dream would play out exactly as everything happened. Sometimes certain details changed and one of us would be missing. This time, I was in the gyrosphere again, but Franklin wasn't there. It was just me and Owen. We rolled off the cliff, as it always went down in my dreams when I happened to find myself back there. I was silently pleading him to rescue us; in real life, he'd had both a gun and a knife, but here, he never reached for it. Dream-Owen didn't seem to be aware that he had tools that could save us.

We were completely submerged underwater in a matter of seconds. I started to panic, even though Owen didn't seem to have a sense of urgency. I was kicking the gyrosphere's door, but my movements were weak and drawn out in the water. I had no idea what Owen was doing beside me, but a tightness began to press down on my chest. I knew I didn't have time. When I looked to my left, his eyes were closed, and he wasn't moving.

I didn't know what to do. Try to save him? Try to save myself? I had no idea how I could possibly save him if I couldn't get myself out first. By the time I thought to reach into his pockets to search for any weapon, I realized I couldn't hold my breath anymore. So I inhaled the water around me.

I woke up in another infamous cold sweat, gasping loudly and nearly jolting out of bed. Owen only stirred a little, but otherwise, continued sleeping. Incredible how someone could sleep through that. I had to take a moment to compose myself. When I looked at the time on my phone, I realized I'd only been sleeping for about three hours. It was kind of an improvement, but just barely. Slowly, I edged out of bed and left the room. I needed to go outside and get some fresh air.

The crickets were alive and thriving in the night sky. I sat down on one of the cheap Walmart lawn chairs that was right by the door that led to the backyard. It overlooked Owen's cabin, and past that was a forested area, followed by mountains. I'd never stopped to think about how beautiful and peaceful the mountains were. I always preferred the cityside over a secluded place like this, but I could see why Owen lived here. It made me wonder if I could see myself living in a place like this. It wasn't exactly what I envisioned as my ideal place, but it wasn't bad either. We weren't too far away from civilization, so I could compromise.

In that exact same moment, the ground trembled unexpectedly. I froze. My immediate thought was an earthquake, but I knew that wasn't it. A few seconds later, the ground trembled again. I got up from the lawn chair, as if that somehow would help me hear better. The ground trembled once again, and behind me, I thought I saw something moving inside the house. I didn't know what to attend to first, but I figured Owen was awake, so I'd tell him about the weird noise.

I stepped back inside the house, but he wasn't in the living room area. I looked inside his room, but he wasn't in there either.

"What the hell?" I said to myself.

I looked all over his house, but he wasn't there. His car was parked outside when I checked through the window, but he was nowhere to be found. My palms were starting to get sweaty. Where the hell was he? And why was the ground still trembling? I made my way back to the backyard and followed the sound as best as I could. It was coming from behind the forest area. I made it up to the cabin when a rustling in the tall trees stopped me.

A brachiosaurus stepped out from behind the trees, and I took more than a couple of steps back, trying not to trip over any part of Owen's unfinished cabin. I momentarily forgot about him as I stared in awe at the beast before me. It wasn't like I'd never seen one before, but at two in the morning in someone else's backyard when I was really sleep deprived wasn't exactly the ideal situation to stumble across one.

He nibbled on the trees, taking almost an entire bunch of leaves into his mouth. When I got mostly past the initial shock, I knew I needed to find Owen. There was no telling where this thing was headed next. I didn't want Owen to be crushed by a giant beast whose path seemed to include this small house and a very vulnerable far-from-finished cabin.

I sprinted back across the yard, but before I even made it inside the house, the cabin came crashing down. I was, once again, stopped in my tracks. I turned around, only to see a mini dust storm form around the area the brachiosaurus had just demolished. Owen was going to be so pissed about this.

As luck would have it, the door that led back inside the house was locked. I banged on it.

"Owen!" I called, but to no avail. "Owen, open up!"

The brachiosaurus was heading my way. Not that slowly, but surely. Every pounding step it took shook me to the core. It never occurred to me to go around the house, because that kind of stuff never did come to mind in situations like these. Rational thinking flew out the window pretty quickly. I kept banging on the door as a fuzzy feeling started overtaking me.

"Owen!" I screamed, the octaves in my voice going up until it was just a shrill. "Owen!"

And then I found myself back on the lawn chair, startled. My neck was resting on my left shoulder, and it ached the second I moved it. It was still dark outside, and Owen's cabin was still in one piece. I felt disoriented for a moment. Was that all really just a dream? It felt so real, so vivid. The dinosaur destroying everything in its path and coming for me—and it was all just a dream. I stretched my legs and my arms, both relieved I wasn't being chased by a dinosaur and just sick of having dreams like these what felt like every night.

I hadn't quite had a dream like this one, but it seemed that I was reliving my days in the island—moments in particular—over and over. It was so draining to lie awake for what felt like forever, finally doze off, only to wake up from a nightmare. And what's worse was that anytime I did wake up from a nightmare, I'd really only been sleeping for a short period of time. When I went back inside the house and looked at the time on my phone, all this had happened within the span of an hour.

Fuck my life, I thought bitterly. I could never win, no matter what. And there was Owen, now facing the side of the bed I'd be in, snoozing away peacefully. If he was ever plagued by nightmares, he never showed it. He never said a word. But whenever I spent the night, he was never tossing or turning or mumbling in his sleep; he never woke up abruptly, panting or screaming. Maybe he just had an ability to push thoughts away when it came to sleep or control his dreams or something. Maybe he didn't go to bed every night thinking that the reason this entire chain of events happened was because of him. I don't think he carried that guilt with him. Lucky him if that was the case.

I envied his ability to put his head on the pillow and be asleep almost instantly. I crawled back into bed with him, and again, he only stirred, but didn't wake. I moved onto my right side, facing away from him. Closed my eyes and let some tears fall. In the morning, we'd wake up—him feeling refreshed and me feigning it as best as I could. He'd ask me if I slept well, and I'd probably say something like, Yeah, you? just to shift the attention away from myself. We'd go on about our day, and he wouldn't know I drowned trying to save us after we fell off a cliff. He wouldn't know I saw a dinosaur in his backyard, one that crushed the cabin he was working hard on.

It was fine. Completely fine. As I brushed a tear away, I thought to myself that he wouldn't have to put up with me and my bullshit for much longer. This would be over soon enough.

Thankfully, I'd manage to sleep some for the rest of the night, although I'd certainly had better night sleeps. When Owen woke me up in the morning, I could barely open my eyes. They felt so heavy. He came around a few times to wake me, giving my shoulder a light shove to wake me up. I knew he was doing it, but I was so tired. I'd open my eyes for a few seconds and then doze right off again. At one point, he sat at the edge of the bed and ran his fingers lightly through my messy bangs and hair.

"Claire," he said softly, "wake up. You have to go to work."

I opened my eyes again, but I felt so incredibly exhausted. I knew I couldn't bring myself to go to work. Not like this. I forced myself to at least sit up and that was a struggle in and of itself.

"Did you sleep well?" Owen asked.

"Yeah," I lied, voice deep and groggy. "You?"

"Yeah," he said. Then paused. "Sure you slept alright?"

"Of course. Just a little tired right now." Which was the understatement of the year. I got up and took a shower, but since I didn't have any spare clothes, I had to wear the exact same thing I wore the day before. Yet another reason to not go to work, or at least my brain figured as much. I didn't tell Owen this, because I didn't want him to worry over nothing.

As I was preparing to leave, I noticed him watching. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him sending glances my way, as though he was worried I'd do something out of the ordinary. I pretended not to notice and just went about my business.

He walked me out the door and to my car. Before I got in, he pulled me to him and kissed me. We hadn't quite done this for what seemed like a while, and I realized it was long overdue. He caught me by surprise, but I leaned into the kiss and put my arms around his neck. When he pulled away, he said, "We should do something this weekend."

I didn't want that kiss to end. "Like what?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, like…" He shrugged again, his mind thinking of things that normal couples did over the weekend. Couples hadn't come back from an island where death lurked in every single corner. "Like go to the park, or bike down a trail. I don't know. Why don't you just print an itinerary?"

I mock-smiled at him. "Ha, ha. Very funny. Why don't you think about it and let me know?"

"I suppose," he said. "Now, go. You'll be late for work."

I went straight home. The day went by so slowly, I almost wished I'd gone to work instead.

I kept thinking about Owen's comment about printing an itinerary for us. It was one of the things he didn't like about me when we went on our first ever date. I was an organized person back then, prided myself in things like that. I liked to plan out everything that would get done for the night, and he was more of a go-with-the-flow kind of person. He just rolled with things as they happened. But as I thought about us doing something, or going somewhere in the weekend, I didn't care. I didn't care to have anything planned. I didn't care about what it was we would do. It would happen, and that would be it.

I didn't have a desire to keep anything organized anymore. My own home backed me up on this, too. I had plates in the sink that had been sitting there for more than a few days already. In my room were tossed clothing I couldn't be bothered to hang. When I got home from work, I'd take my clothes and throw them on the floor, or the bed, or whatever was close enough. The old me would not have had a speck of dust hit the floor unless I knew about it. The old me would have had this place tidied up as if it needed to be presentable for someone at all times.

I didn't want to be home. It felt so empty and so lonely here. No one really visited me here unless they needed to come for a specific reason. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't actually even have friends. No drinking buddies, no support group, no book club friends, at least. Nothing. It was just me here, and my life at work. And now Owen, but nothing with him was exactly official-official yet.

What are you doing, Claire? I asked myself. Why don't you just end things now? Why wait any longer?

But I mean, all things took time to cook to perfection, so to speak. Even taking your own damn life, especially when all the little details mattered.

A/N: Sorry if this chapter (or this whole fic, tbh) sucks. I don't really know why I'm still writing, lol oh well