Gill, Igg and I's Land

Since we'd become an item, we hadn't had sex, but we'd begun kissing a lot. So that morning, as she sat there fishing and smiling back at me, I knew we were going to end up lying in the soft grass and exchanging lots of slow wet kisses that lasted for hours.

As I stared at her, she absentmindedly brought one of her hands slowly up her side until her long fingers rested on her bra covered breast. She tugged one of the lacey cups and then the other downwards releasing two spectacular pale tan breasts with dusky rose colored nipples. Even as I watched, the nipples stiffened and stood up. She lifted her heavy breasts and pointed those nipples in my direction.

That was when teleportation came into existence. One second I was sitting on the grass about ten feet away from her. The next second I was in her lap sucking those nipples and I had no memory of ever touching the ground anywhere between us.

I tried my best to lick every inch of that succulent flesh and I sucked those nipples hard enough to pull milk from them. All of a sudden she gasped and said, "Rob."

"I have no intention of stopping," I said. "I want you so badly."

"Not even for that boat," she said.

"What boat?" I asked. I was on my feet and looking out at the water and she was right. It wasn't very big but it was moving. I ran to the mirror and flashed the beam off of the boat. At first I thought that it would go right by but it slowed and then Ella and I started jumping up and down to signal them. The boat turned in towards us. Gill had heard us yelling and he ran over. As the boat approached the cliffs we saw that it was a very small motor boat. It was probably no more than ten feet long and there were already three people aboard it.

Igg and Dana came running over, they'd heard Ella and me screaming. In her excitement, Ella had neglected to cover up and Igg's eyes almost rolled back in his head.

We decided that we could only send one person back with them. It was immediately decided that it should be Gill. They wanted me to go but I declined. Gill could let the authorities know about the boat and its registration number and insurance information and all of that type of crap. They also radioed our location to the coast guard, but cell phones simply didn't work in that area.

"Why didn't you go?" asked Ella as we watched Gill go off in the boat.

"And leave you?" I asked. "Never gonna happen."

"Good answer," she said.

As Dana and Igg disappeared again to do whatever it was they did when they weren't around, Ella and I headed for the other side of the island.

As soon as we got there they all gathered around. Before we had even begun to speak, I heard a small gasp. I looked up and saw that Natalie had noticed that Ella and I were holding hands.

"Where's the food?" asked one of the nerds.

"You'll have all the food you need soon," I said. "We've been rescued."

"What?...How?" asked Dave.

"The mirror," I said.

"Ella and I were on the cliff fishing, when she noticed a boat. I used the mirror to signal it. The boat was too small to take more than one person, so we sent Gill. They're going to send back a rescue boat."

They were all excited. And we heard plenty of talking about the first thing that some of them wanted to do when they got back. There were also other things being said.

I heard someone ask if Ella always sat around in her underwear. I also heard someone ask what we were doing on the cliffs alone in the morning. "Who cares," said someone else. "It's over we're going home."

A little over two hours later I was leaning against the rail of a Great Lakes rescue ship. As I watched the island slowly recede, I could still make out the area we set up camp in. I wondered what would become of our little lean-to.

"A dollar for your thoughts," said the tiny voice beside me. Its clipped British accent made the mis-quoted phrase even more special.

"My thoughts are worth at least five dollars," I said.

"Can I have a guess first?" she said. "That's a lot of money, especially for a poor librarian."

"Okay," I said.

"I've been talking to Dana. She's back with her friends. She and Igg got together and had a talk. He explained to her in a very nice way that what they had will always be special to him but it was just something that happened while we were on the island. It would never survive in real life. She told him that she absolutely agreed with him and that he was too old for her. So she's going back to being a bar-hopping whore and he's going back to his wife. The island was an interlude nothing more," she looked at me as she said it. I nodded my head.

"Is that what you were doing?" she asked. "Were you trying to figure out a nice way to tell me?"

"Something like that," I said. I watched as she tried and failed at keeping her face composed.

"I was just thinking that after we're married, we should rent a boat and come back here for our honeymoon. Only I can't decide if we should invite some of our friends along. And, of course, if we have kids we should bring them here someday. And, of course, the kids I already have might want to see it, depending on whose side they take in the divorce and..." The next thing I knew she'd flung herself at me so hard I almost fell over the railing. Somewhere in that tangle of arms and legs our lips locked together for the briefest of instants before I heard the sound of someone clearing their throat.

I turned and saw Natalie standing behind me.

"Ella, is there a chance that I might talk to Rob for a while?" she asked. Ella just nodded.

"I'll go and try to console poor Dana," she said. "Is she on the list?"

"Definitely," I said and the germ of an idea was forming in my mind.

"Rob, what's going on?" she asked. "You haven't said more than ten words to me since you let me find out that you knew what I'd done. We need to talk about this. I spoke to Dana while we were on the island. She told me some things that just don't make sense. I think that you have the wrong idea about what happened here."

"Natalie, as soon as this boat hits the dock, I'll be filing for my divorce. If you telling me what you want to say saves me time, let's do it. It just means that we won't have to waste time doing it later," I said.

"Okay, Rob, I don't know how you found out, but yes I did cheat on you before we got to the island. But I had quit on my own and decided to dedicate the rest of my life to making you happy. That was why we went on that God damned boat in the first place. I wanted us to fall in love all over again. I had quit, Rob. I wasn't ever going to do it again. That has to count for something," she said.

"It does," I said, and she smiled. "It counts for nothing. Mathematically, zero is something. What else were you going to say?"

"Well, you know that Troy forced all of us to have sex with him and the other guys and..." even as she said it she knew that I knew that she was lying.

"Nat, how do you think I found out about you screwing Troy and you cheating on me?" I asked.

"Dana told you, right?" she said.

"No Nat. You told me," I said.

"Before you sided with Troy against me, which was the same thing you did with the Captain, I was there in the bushes. I saw you suck him off and I saw you fuck him. I heard you tell him about your cheating. It's really funny that a guy that I can't stand the shit out of cared more about our marriage than you did. I heard him ask you, "What about your husband?"

"Rob, I was scared," she whined. "I wanted the best chance of surviving."

"Yeah well, you picked the wrong one," I said.

"And I suffered for it, Rob," she said. "They treated us like whores. Ella only had to have sex with you. She probably enjoyed it. They passed us around like party favors whether we agreed to it or not and those two nerds are sadists."

"Natalie, Ella and I haven't had sex yet," I said. "I think we're going to hold out until we're married."

"You can't be serious," she said. "You're not seriously thinking about really divorcing me?"

"That's the plan," I said. "Just like Steve and Edie."

"Rob, Steve and Edie are nothing like us. They haven't been married for as long and they don't have two kids to explain it to. So okay, I had sex with some guys. The whole time that I was messing around with Edie, it was all in fun. It was only sex. And there were no permanent partners. It was just random nameless sex and I always came home to you. I never embarrassed you and I never did anything with anyone we know."

"So what?" I said.

"So it was just as much your fault as mine," she snapped. "I had twenty years of waiting around on you. Every day I was stuck in that house while you went out and worked. I was bored. I felt like less than a person."

"Tell that shit to Oprah or Doctor Phil," I snapped. "After our divorce is final, write a book and go on The View, but don't give me that bullshit. It's such a cliché. I went out every day and busted my ass to give you the things that you wanted. I bought a house in the neighborhood that you wanted to live in. I bought you the car that you wanted to drive. When you ask for shit like that, you have to pay for it. My part of paying for it was working my ass off to make the payments. Your part was keeping our house taken care of and watching the kids. If you wanted a change or you wanted to get a job yourself, all you had to do was say something. All you needed to do was say "Honey, I want to get a job and help out." Even if your job only paid for daycare for the kids, it would have been pretty much breaking even. You can sit here and tell me all of these bullshit excuses but you couldn't tell me that you were bored?"

She looked at me like she'd never thought about that.

"Well, what you're doing isn't the same thing that I did," she snapped. "I had a few innocent, meaningless flings with some guys that I can't even remember. You went out and found a woman to replace me with."

I laughed.

"Are you laughing because you don't see things with Ella as being serious?" she asked. "Okay, how long do you need with her before your wounded pride will allow us to get back together?"

"Natalie, Ella would never be able to replace you," I said. She smiled. "Ella is younger than you are, smarter than you are, prettier than you are, built better than you ever were and the biggest difference and most important thing is that she believed in me. Before we ever met, she listened to me and to Troy and she chose to be on my side, when my own wife didn't. And as far as time goes, I want the rest of my life with her."

"What will we tell our friends? What will we tell the kids?" she whined. "I don't want to end up like Edie."

"You can tell them whatever you want," I said. "I'm going to tell them the truth."

As soon as we hit the docks, the race was indeed on. I'd already told Natalie that I intended to keep the house so she needed to make other arrangements. And since she couldn't afford the mortgage anyway without a job or substantial alimony, she agreed. She decided to move in with her parents and to pick up her things on Saturday.

I got into my Mustang and drove home. While I was there, I called the same divorce lawyer that Steve had used. Steve ended up paying Edie next to nothing and that was what I hoped for as well. I had another trick up my sleeve. Actually I had two.

While I was taking care of splitting the bank accounts and canceling all of the credit cards that Natalie used, she took a different tact. She called our kids and told them a bunch of truly ridiculous lies. She got her own lawyer and tried to fight every settlement I proposed. We got counseling. Even our therapist was shocked at Natalie's actions. The counseling was unsuccessful but it did eat up eight weeks. As a last ditch effort to avoid going to court, we went into arbitration. I finally realized what Natalie was trying. Edie had taken Steve to court and tried to rape him in the divorce. She figured that if she couldn't save their marriage, she'd get as much money as she could. Then she'd use that money to go ahead and screw all of the guys she wanted anyway.

The judge hadn't given her nearly as much as she'd expected and even then it was limited to two years. After a few months of screwing around as much as she wanted, Edie discovered that being a full time whore really wasn't as much fun as she'd thought. She was also lonely and running out of money.

Natalie had seen that and she was trying something different. She was doing everything she could simply to delay the divorce for as long as she could. Her thinking was that if she could hold out long enough, I'd take her back. She also had our kids, her parents and lot of our friends that she'd told the same bunch of lies to trying to convince me to work things out with her.

I begged her to accept one of my settlement offers just so we could get it over with. The arbiter grew frustrated with Natalie's behavior as well. He finally just asked her what she wanted, figuring we could use that as a place to begin the negotiations. Natalie kept making the most outrageous demands and saying that if she couldn't have them, she wanted to stay married. One of her demands was for two million dollars a year for ten years. Since I make less than a hundred thousand dollars a year, it was ridiculous. The arbiter wrote a note to the judge about Natalie's behavior and remanded us to court.

Natalie didn't realize it but going to court was the worst possible thing for her and the best for me. Our kids, who are adults, came to court. Neither of them had spoken to me since Natalie had filled them with her garbage.

There in the courtroom, in front of our parents and our children, Natalie made her last stand. The first witness my attorney called was Natalie's ex-friend Edie. By the time Edie was done outlining the things Nat had done behind my back, my son was angry and my daughter was crying. Neither of them believed Nat's story any more.

When my second witness was called Natalie sank down even further in her chair. She got her lawyer to try to stop Troy from testifying but the judge wanted to hear what he had to say.

By the time that Troy was done outlining all of the things that Natalie had done on the island even I was stunned. The judge used every bit of leeway he had in determining the settlement. According to the state guidelines all assets had to be evenly divided, but he was allowed some wiggle room on how that was done. I'd already given Natalie half of the checking and savings accounts and allowed her to keep any and all of the things in the house that she wanted. He let her keep her car, allowed me to buy her out of the mortgage and gave her a grand total of one dollar a week for two years for alimony.

Natalie had already spent the money from our checking and savings accounts that she'd been given so it put her in dire straits. Since we'd taken out a second mortgage to put both kids through college we didn't have very much equity in the house. Natalie had to pay her own legal fees and while her lawyer had stretched out the divorce at Natalie's behest, he was still charging her for his time. Natalie ended up in the hole.

Our house was worth one hundred and ten thousand dollars. We owed thirty on it. We owed another forty on the second mortgage. That meant that our combined equity in the house was forty thousand dollars.

I gave Natalie twenty thousand dollars. She owed her lawyer twenty two thousand. To help her out, I offered to pay her all of her alimony at one time. I gave her five crisp twenty dollar bills and sixteen quarters and walked away from her.

Almost six months to the day that I walked out of court, I was back at the docks. As Ella and I looked at the huge boat docked there, she squeezed my hand. "Dad, Ella," someone screamed from behind us. My daughter, Susan, came running up and hugged both of us. She introduced us to a small quiet man, who turned out to be her boyfriend, and went aboard the ship. Her grandparents on both sides were already aboard. I was still shocked at the fact that I'd remained relatively close with Natalie's parents but they were, after all, the grandparents of my kids.

Igg and his wife smiled down at me from the upper deck. I shook my head and Ella elbowed me.

"Be nice," she said. Dana arrived with a guy who looked like and was Gill. There would have to be an explanation of how they got together later. Troy and Dave arrived and both were escorting nice looking college girls. The events on the island had done a lot to turn both of their lives around. The nerds had arrived solo. My son was already on the island. He'd chartered a helicopter and flown there, it was part of our back up plan.

The only people who'd been on the island with us, that weren't attending, were Dana's three friends. They all felt that they had been treated badly there and didn't want to remember it. And, of course, Natalie wouldn't be there. Not that she hadn't wanted to. But since our divorce Nat wasn't doing well. Most of the men she hooked up with weren't very nice and she'd received a few bumps and scrapes. There was also the fact that the money from her job as a receptionist didn't pay very well so she couldn't afford a nice dress. The biggest reason, though, was because she was in jail. She'd felt betrayed by Edie for her testimony in court. Edie, on the other hand, had felt abandoned by Natalie during her own divorce, so though they were birds of a feather, they very rarely flocked together anymore. A few nights ago they had however flocked to the same bar and got into a fight over the same guy. The judge gave them each a week in jail, for damaging property, disturbing the peace, mutual counts of assault and public drunkenness."

As the big ship left the dock, a second smaller ship followed us at a distance. I wanted to see our little island again. I wanted us to get married there and while everyone else slept in comfort on the boat, Ella and I would spend the first night of our honeymoon in our lean-to. Then we'd take the chopper and fly back to be on time for our real honeymoon in Vegas.

"A dollar for your thoughts," said Ella beside me. "Ooh, I don't have to pay for them anymore. In a couple of hours, we'll be married and we'll be together forever. I'll never do anything to lose you. I love ya too much."

"I could listen to you talk forever," I said. "But actually I was thinking back to just before the fight with Troy over you on the island. Remember what I called the place?"

"Yeah you called it Gilligan's island," she said laughing.

"No, what I said was Gill, Igg and I's land. Maybe the three of us should find out about buying it?"

"Maybe not," she said. But we did live happily ever after.

The end