《Stranded [harry styles] ✓》5
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"Jules, you are aware that he looks young enough to be your son?"
She's still ogling the lifeguard.
And he's totally aware of it.
He looks incredibly uncomfortable; even from here I can see the pink tinge in his cheeks. He keeps looking at us and then pretending he's looking at something else. Smooth.
"The young ones are far more...thrilling." She rolls her 'r'.
I want to puke.
Instead I spit my drink back into the cup.
"As if you just said that!" I exclaim, practically snorting with laughter now. I wedge my cup into the sand beside my towel, not fancying drinking my own spittle. "It all makes sense now."
She peers over her glasses at me, finally tearing her eyes away from the poor guy.
"What does?"
"Why you never got married!" I chortle. "Faithful is most definitely not a trait you're familiar with, Jules."
"Meh." She shrugs and slurps on her cocktail.
We sit in silence for a long time and I wonder if I've hit a nerve. Jules' wild lifestyle and lack of settling down has never been a conversation we've approached or one that my parents have ever discussed in my presence.
"Now he's a bit dishy!" Her overexcited squeal breaks into my thoughts.
I look up and squint at the figure wading out of the water. His skin is spattered with tattoos and he's wearing a cap backwards on his head.
I recognise him.
"That's Harry Styles." I laugh. I think of my friend of Addie and her One Direction plastered bedroom walls. She'd kill to swap places with me right now. I consider texting her.
"Harry Styles?" Jules repeats. She clearly has no clue who he is.
"He was in One Direction." I inform her. "He's doing his own thing these days."
I'm surprised I know so much information. Boybands have never really been my thing and 'What Makes You Beautiful' didn't ever make it onto my iPod. Clearly Addie's rambling 1D facts made themselves at home in my brain.
"He's famous? And rich? And " Jules is grinning broadly now. Plotting, I imagine.
"How funny that he's on the same beach as us. No one even seems to have noticed." I realise that the swarms of girls that should have been surrounding him are nowhere to be seen. It's almost as if nobody recognises him.
"Ah well, more room for me to see clearly." Jules smirks.
It's one of those situations where you feel like you should go and say hello and get a photo just to be able to say you've seen/met a celebrity. Except I'd feel like a total fraud given that I've never really appreciated anything he's done. But then again, would Addie kill me if she knew I'd been so close and hadn't done anything about it?
I decide to ignore both Harry and Jules and go back to staring at the sea. The sun is warm on my skin and I settle back onto my towel. I feel my eyelids growing heavy; even flickering closed for a brief second. But a scream interrupts me.
"What the hell is that?" Jules asks. She sounds worried.
I throw my glasses off and see her pointing up at the cloudless sky. People have started to get up off their towels and have also craned their necks upwards. I do the same.
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There's a plane.
Quite common in this part of the world, I would imagine, especially with the tourism. Except this plane is smoking. And it's not flying straight.
It's heading straight for the ocean.
"Oh my God." I breathe, hauling myself upwards and covering my mouth with one of my hands.
Jules is frantically tapping away on her phone, putting it next to her ear, looking at it, tapping it again.
She can't get through.
"Jules, they're going to crash!" I cry.
And then I'm drowning.
The balmy sand beneath my feet has gone; replaced by absolutely nothing.
I'm kicking frantically in an endless vat of murky water, my arms flailing madly.
Every breath I attempt to take is just another mouthful of salt water filling up my lungs instead.
Jules is nowhere to be found. It's just me. Alone.
I call her name but it comes out in a stream of bubbles.
I don't even know where the surface is...
"Jules!"
I'm bolt upright.
And completely and utterly dry.
I clutch my throat - which once again feels like sandpaper - and try to stop myself from hyperventilating. I was dreaming.
No, I was having a nightmare.
My forehead is slick with sweat and my heart is thudding painfully in my chest. I try to focus on my surroundings.
I appear to have thrown what looks like five plain t-shirts off of myself in the process of launching into a sitting position and I seem to be perched on top of a palm leaf. It's not entirely comfortable but it beats chafing against the sand. A large metallic object looms over me and I realise, as promised, the plane door is leant up against a tree.
I don't remember setting all this up.
In fact, I don't really remember anything other than hauling the damn thing out of the water.
Did Harry do all this?!
The same Harry that I saw wading out of the sea just moments ago?
I turn my head to the side and see him lying a little way from me. He's facing away, sleeping on his side on a palm leaf with his legs sprawled out beneath him. He's made a pillow out of the hats and a duvet from the beach towel. He's changed into the board shorts I had discovered in our suitcase raid; they're canary yellow which initially is a little garish for my tired eyes but the more I look at them, the more they suit him.
If it wasn't for his incredibly burnt shoulders and the fact we're sleeping behind a plane door, I'd think we were just sunbathing.
I really wish we were.
I spot our other finds next to him, as well as the bottles of water which he's dug into the sand - presumably to keep cool. I decide to wait until he wakes up before I help myself to my 'three sips'.
I rub my eyes and realise that my headache seems to have settled. There's no longer that incessant pounding and I don't feel like my skull is going to cave in anymore.
Hallelujah!
I haul myself up from the palm leaf and steady myself standing upright. My muscles are stiff again but whether that's residual discomfort from the crash or the result of sleeping in the same position for a long time - I'm not entirely sure. I stretch and step around the plane door, squinting at the sunlight that's already blaring down onto the island. I haven't seen it dark here yet and it's hard to believe that it ever could be.
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My stomach growls hungrily.
Another obstacle for Harry and I to conquer...food.
I really wish I had paid more interest to the 'Discovery channel' and watched all those documentaries on survival rather than mocked them. I still find the prospect of Harry and I getting off this island entirely unrealistic and I feel like I only have myself to blame for that.
As I make my way out from under the trees and into the open space, I notice something on the shoreline. Numerous somethings. There's about five and they're all sprawled out in awkward positions and if I didn't know any better I'd say they were-
"Sarah, don't go any further!"
It's Harry calling from behind me. I can hear his footsteps pounding in the sand to catch up and I'm surprised at how quickly he manages to appear beside me. Until I realise that it's because I have frozen on the spot. Just as he suggested.
He wraps a hand around my left forearm and tries to tug me back up towards our shelter but my feet remain anchored in place.
"Harry." I say quietly.
"Yes, Sarah." I know he's not replying. He's answering my unspoken question.
My question regarding the 'somethings'.
My question regarding whether they are washed up bodies.
Bodies.
I turn away from him and retch violently but nothing comes up.
Of course. I've barely eaten or drunk anything in hours.
This time I let him lead me back to the plane door. My knees sag and I collapse onto my palm leaf sheet into a sort of slumped kneeling position.
I feel absolutely traumatised.
"I'm sorry you had to see that." Harry says apologetically. I look up to find him wearing the most distressed expression.
"Why are you sorry?" I ask in disbelief. I feel almost angry at him for insinuating that any of this is his fault. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
"I know." He replies and pauses for a moment before he speaks again. "But it's not a sight I would have wished on anyone and I'm sorry you had to see it alone."
He's definitely got to be one of the most selfless people I've ever met. First with burying the bodies, then building the shelter alone and now this.
"Thank you for the shelter." I change the subject and point at the door perched up against the tree neighbouring me. Harry's lips tug into a petite smile.
"Some of us haven't got time to sleep all day." He jests. I know he's joking but my forehead still mashes into a disappointed frown.
"Sorry about that." It's my turn to apologise. "What happened? I don't remember much after we got the door out of the water."
"Dehydrated, I think." He shrugs. "You start going on about drumming? And then the next thing I knew, you'd gone down like a sack of spuds. I ended up just building the shelter around you."
How embarrassing.
"Ah, right. Well, thanks again for that." I'm too humiliated to look him in the eye. "Any chance we can have our three sips?"
Harry laughs and I look up.
"I've got something to tell you!" He announces proudly, a grin stretching across the expanse of his face. "But we can still drink."
We wrench the water bottles out of their sandpits and I go to unscrew mine, too thirsty to put much thought into whatever news Harry could possibly have to share with me.
I get a good look at my bottle before I continue. It's full.
I look at Harry - his bottle is full.
I haul the other two out of the sand - they're also full.
"Harry, I'm know I had a funny turn but we definitely drank something yesterday. How can these bottles be full? Please tell me you didn't replace it with salt water." I grimace.
Harry continues grinning broadly.
"That's what I need to tell you." He licks his lips, excitement clear on his face. "I've found drinking water."
I almost drop my bottle in response.
"What!?" I exclaim. "When? Where? And...how?" I work my way through the interrogatives.
"While you were snoozing." He beams and takes a swig from his own bottle. I do the same. "I decided to venture further into these trees, thought I better keep myself occupied so I didn't get worked up again."
I nod as I take a drink, staring at him intently.
"I found a pool of fresh water."His mouthful spills out of his mouth and trickles down his chin. "I could have cried when I saw it."
I bet. I probably would have done.
"So we can just fill the bottles up there?" I ask excitedly.
"Yep!" He confirms, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "And bathe. I even washed my hair last night."
He points at the mop on top of his head. I hadn't noticed before but it's actually looking like hair again rather than a massive clump of matted dreadlock. The thought getting some clean water through my hair and feeling even partially more human again fills me with a ridiculous amount of happiness.
"You've honestly made my day." I sigh and want to burst into tears. He watches me warily.
"What's wrong?" He hesitantly brings his bottle back up to meet his mouth as he waits for me to answer.
"I'm just struggling to feel at all optimistic about this situation we're in and you've been amazing so far. You just seem to know exactly what to do and I'm so useless!" I utter. Harry shakes his head.
"That's not true, Sarah."
He's being too nice.
"But it is. I have cried a ridiculous amount, been sick, fainted and left you to do all the work and now you've discovered something else that I'm going to benefit from." I throw my spare hand up in the air and allow it smack against my leg on the way back down. "I am the worst person to be stranded with. Ever."
Harry throws his head back and laughs. He sounds genuinely amused.
"Don't forget that I had a big hissy fit and refused to open the suitcases." He reminds me. "You were pretty badass at taking hold of that situation."
"Until I also freaked out and you had to take over!" I retort. We make eye contact and laugh.
"Regardless," he tells me. "We've found ourselves in a terrible situation and we're working together to survive it. There is no 'looking ahead' out here, Sarah. We've got to take each day as it comes, ok?"
He's right again. He's always so right.
"Ok." I agree, just as my stomach growls again. "But only if you get me breakfast."
Harry opens his mouth to speak; an amused expression lighting up his face. But he's cut off by the loud thump of something landing in the sand behind us.
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