Free Micah's Island by Shari Copell

loved me. I had all
the time in the world to work on teaching him to say it. 
     

Chapter
Twelve
     
    Change is inevitable. I know that. Life
throws you curves, and you have to be able to react and adapt to them.  I just
wish the curves we were about to be thrown wouldn’t have been so cruel and violent.
    It took me a while to get over eating
the poisonous fruit.  It was about ten days before I really started feeling
like myself.
      Micah and I spent that time cocooned
in a haze of love and sex and each other.  We had a couple of those wicked
purple lightning storms during that time, and we rode them out huddled together
under the arbor.
    During the five weeks I’d spent with Micah,
I’d never seen a ship near the island.  I’d never seen a jet vapor trail in the
sky. Other than the two of us, I’d never seen one other freaking sign of
humanity.
    I heard it early in the morning, just as
the sun was starting to rise in the sky after one of those storms. 
    A helicopter.
    It sounded so strange to my ears, so
incongruous to the sounds of paradise around me, that at first I thought I was
dreaming. But it grew louder, and I knew it wasn’t a dream.
    I partially rolled over and looked at
Micah behind me. He was out, his mouth open, his face slack with sleep. I
cocked my head to the side and listened again. The sound was unmistakable—the
pulsing heartbeat sounds of helicopter blades whipping the air. I felt sick. 
    Did anyone care enough about me to be
looking for me? I wasn’t sure. Why else would someone fly a helicopter over the
island though?
      Had anyone else survived the wreck of
the yacht? Surely not.  I’d barely survived it.
      Could it be the Coast Guard? Should I
run out onto the beach and wave my hands in the air?  What would become of
Micah if I did that?  I couldn’t take him back to Tiago. He certainly would
never survive the kind of civilization I’d come from.  I wasn’t sure I
could go back to that kind of life either.
     It didn’t take  me long to decide. We
both needed to stay put and stay here, where no one could ever hurt us again.
    I prayed that the canopy of palms we
were under would be thick enough to hide us from view.  I lay still, my heart
pounding, until the sound of the helicopter faded into the distance.
    ~***~
    The helicopter troubled my mind for a
few days, but I soon pushed it aside.  There was too much to do.
    We gathered food, fished quite a bit,
and scavenged the beach for useful things that had washed ashore.  I found a
pair of boxers that would’ve fit him.  When I held them up to show him, Micah
ran away from me as fast as he could, making a really funny, high-pitched
screaming sound.  I nearly split a gut laughing!
    Some of the debris we found was from the
yacht I’d been on.  There were quite a few seat cushions with that distinctive
purple and green flower pattern, bits and pieces of plastic, nothing terribly
large. The yacht must have busted up into thousands of pieces as it sank.  I
felt very lucky to be alive. 
    We spent the afternoon at the pool.  I’d
intended to shave my legs, but I’d forgotten to grab one of the Bic disposables
to bring with me.
    “I’ll be right back,” I told Micah, who
was floating on his back.  He gave me a smile and watched me wrap my sarong
around me.
    I grabbed a razor and was making my way
on the smooth path from our house onto the beach when I saw it.
    There was a dark brown and gold yacht
anchored about a half-mile away from the island.  I blinked a couple of times
and shook my head.  It shouldn’t have been there, but my eyes wouldn’t stop
seeing it.
    It wasn’t as big as the one that carried
me away from Tiago.  It was one of the smaller luxury yachts, still sleek and
expensive, but much faster on the water.
    My eyes dropped from the boat to the surf
in front of me.  There was a small inflatable skiff pulled up onto the beach. 
    My brain had a little trouble processing
it.  I mentally stuttered,