Ever thought of an adventure? Lost in the world — surviving on coconuts and fish, stranded in the jungle.
Five college friends. Two completely different love stories. And what happened at the end?
This is Part 1 of the novel Love on Fridays. Five college friends. Two completely different love stories. And what happened at the end?
A small black scorpion crawls across the hot sand of a lonely jungle beach, searching for food. Its sharp claws move slowly, carefully.
It reaches something — the thing has pores in it and short hairs coming out of the pores, with a few tiny water droplets here and there. The scorpion starts climbing it, soon settling for a nice spot to bite.
“HAAA!”
A young man in his early 20s wakes up, shouting out loud, feeling a strange sensation on his right hand. He keeps shaking his hand violently.
Luckily, the scorpion gets thrown away to a distance.
He stands up and tries to open his eyes, but the bright white light from the sun doesn’t allow him to fully open them. He quickly covers his eyes with his left hand.
He can still feel a weird sensation of something crawling on his right hand, and he’s feeling the warmth of the hot red sun all over his body — irritating and hot!
He starts walking into the jungle for some shade. There are giant Oak trees, Palm trees, Mangroves…
The forest is getting denser and darker as he goes.
Tired, he finds a flat rock, places it near the trunk of a big tree, taking the support of the trunk. He slowly tries to sit on the rock, then leans back onto the trunk to support his spine.
“It is more like a chair now.” — He says to himself.
Within a few minutes he becomes fully conscious, out of sleep.
So many thoughts struck his head:
“Boat—Ship!”
“Alone—People—Friends—Family—Dad—Mom—My Love!”
“Survival—Food—Water—Death!”
“Snakes—Venom—Wild Animals”
Fear creeps in thinking about all these things at once. His heart starts pounding with anxiety and hopelessness.
He recalls his father, takes a deep breath to empty his mind.
He picks up a stick with his right hand, clears a small area in front of him with his foot.
“Let me note down a few things!”
“What is the most important thing that I need now?”
Water. — He writes it down with the stick.
“What else do I need to survive in this wild?”
Food. Shelter.
“How can I make it out alive from this place?”
A boat that could sail for one hundred miles!
While writing this, the stick breaks and he starts to think back—
“Not possible, for real…” — with grief deep inside.
He stands up—
“I am never gonna make it out of here!”
“Always give it another try, son!” — “A man never quits!”
Lines his father used to tell strike his head whenever he thought of quitting something, whether it be football or school.
“Ooof…”
He lets out a long sigh, thinking of the idea that he may have a chance — maybe one in a million — to make it out alive.
As time passes, the hot weather drains all the water in his body.
“I AM THIRSTY!”
“If I continue sitting idle like this, I will probably die of DEHYDRATION!”
“NO—No—no”
“That is the worst way to die…”
“But, how do I get water, in this forest?” — “Let me think…”
“Science 101 – We can drink water after boiling it”
“Right!” — “But I don’t have an induction stove here!”
“right…” — his inner voice continuing in a lower tone.
Okay, what else? How else can I get water?
“Drink the sea water?” — “I will die even faster from dehydration.”
He keeps thinking for some time and something strikes his head.
“Transpiration!” — “Yes! Transpiration it is!”
“If I could find the right plants with big leaves that let out water vapor, I would be good.”
Mack starts searching for some plants and trees — the ones with big leaves so that he gets more water.
“Yeah! There you go buddy!”
He finds a tree with branches low enough; he quickly takes a plastic bag from his pocket.
“I need to tie this thing tight!” — “Oh, there you are”
He finds a vine plant.
“Wait! Let me check something.”
He stomps hard on the ground, sending a warning tremor to drive away snakes and other creatures.
“Now we’re good”
He then takes a sharp stone and cuts some vine.
“This is some perfect rope to tie!”
He covers a big bunch of leaves inside the plastic cover and ties it backwards to the same branch with the vine and seals it completely.
“I feel like I am killing someone with a plastic cover on the head.” — “Movies, huh?” — he says to himself.
“Okay! My water would be ready in the next three hours…maybe…”
Mack keeps checking it every five minutes—
“Come’ on… It has been an hour, and I barely see any water in this!”
He heads back to the beach to collect anything useful. He walks for a long distance to reach near some rocks where there could be something stuck — something useful that came by the waves of the sea.
He finds two thin plastic water bottles—
“Oh, thank God!”
He washes them both in the sea water and takes them back with him.
While returning, he finds a big broken tent—
“So, they left this behind, great…”
His mind starts to recall his past.
Glimpses of the Past
The ship rose out of the sea like something unreal — all white steel and glass, glowing against the falling sun.
Mack stepped onto the deck with steady calm, though inside him something surged. Eight months ago, he had been an intern working late nights; now he stood aboard a private corporate vessel as the youngest Associate Director in the company.
The air smelled of salt and polished wood. Soft jazz floated through the evening. A steward handed him champagne before he could fully absorb where he was.
“Congratulations, sir,” the man said.
And Mack almost laughed at the word. Sir.
As the sky turned molten gold, Chairman Mr. James McConnel called for attention. Conversations quieted instantly. James spoke without theatrics, but with weight. He spoke about discipline under pressure, clarity in chaos, execution without excuses.
Then he turned slightly and gestured toward Mack.
“Some people grow into leadership over decades,” he said. “Some arrive ready. When he works, he goes into what I call beast mode.”
The applause that followed was strong and sincere. James lifted his glass toward him.
“To the future.”
Mack managed a composed thank you, though his pulse beat hard in his ears. It wasn’t ego he felt — it was validation. Earned. Solid. Real.
Later, when the celebration softened into music and movement, Mack stepped aside to the railing. The ocean stretched endlessly into darkness, the ship slicing through it with quiet power.
He pulled out his phone out of habit. No signal.
He stared at the blank screen for a moment and murmured softly:
“How are you, Jenny? It’s been long since we talked.”
He imagined telling her everything — the speech, the applause, the ridiculous luxury of it all. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and returned to the lights and laughter behind him.
The night felt victorious. The future felt open.
And as the ship moved steadily toward the island somewhere ahead, Mack stood in the glow of success, unaware that this was the last evening the world would feel this certain.
“Not a good time to recall” — he says to himself and shrugs it off.
He folds the tent into a small bundle and takes it back into the jungle.
It is already evening; the sun is about to set soon. He hasn’t made any fire yet.
He opens the plastic cover tied to the tree.
“WHAT! It is just droplets!”
The boy gets angry and frustrated; he still carefully gets all the water into one of the plastic bottles and drinks it—
“…not even a full sip.”
Soon it gets dark.
“Forest sucks when it is dark!”
“I AM STILL THIRSTY! AND HUNGRY!”
He clears a small area inside the jungle and wraps the tent around himself to cover all his body to keep him safe from any nocturnal beings.
“Good night, Mr. Jungle! See you tomorrow!”
He slowly closes his eyes and tries to sleep.
After some time, his stomach starts making sounds.
“I am hungry…” — In a low sleepy but awake voice.
Mack is walking in the beach area anxiously, holding his stick from the day before.
“This is not at all working! I wouldn’t last more than a week or two like this, maybe a month by God’s grace”
“I DO NOT WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS!”
Then he starts thinking—
“What to do? What to do?”
He then looks up.
“YES! Coconuts!”
“But I don’t know how to climb – Maybe I can give it a try – Do I have an option?”
He walks near a straight, tall, big coconut palm tree. He looks at the top—
“That is some fresh coconut breakfast for today”
He puts the stick he is holding to a side.
“Easy, easy, Mack! You can do this!”
He wraps both hands around the rough trunk of the tree and tries to hold it tight—
“Ouch! It’s so sharp.”
“Keep going!”
He then jumps and wraps his legs around the trunk, trying to hold onto the tree.
“Now this is a perfect HUG! I Love you Ms. Coconut”
Jenny comes to his mind—
“Okay, let me rephrase it, I love you as a friend Ms. Coconut”
He is stuck like that for a few seconds.
“Now what?”
“Okay, okay, I need to move up, let’s try this.” — “Left hand up a step, right hand up a step, tighten the grip with both hands, left leg up, right leg up, hug tight again”
“Yes! It is working”
He looks down for a moment, scared—
“Mack, don’t look, don’t look”
“Oof! I am tired” — breathing, He looks up — “Holy shit! It has been an hour, and I am not even halfway there”
“Too slow Mack! Faster, faster!”
“Believe in yourself!”
“Believe… Aah!” — breathing heavily — “Okay, almost there”
“For my mom” — “For my dad” — “For Jenny!”
He finally reaches the coconuts, but the issue is there are only three coconuts that he can get from this angle, and one of them looks old and brownish.
“Three should be fine”
He embraces himself, tightens his grip and opens up his right hand for a coconut.
“Haaahn!”
He finally holds a coconut. He starts grabbing it to a side so that it cuts off, but nothing useful.
“Okay, let’s try again – Full force”
He pulls it to his side way too hard.
“Woah!”
He starts to lose his grip, but the coconut doesn’t come off.
“Let me roll it” — “Revolve like the earth”
He keeps rotating the coconut around itself.
“Yes, that is it!” — “Let’s try another one”
He plucks all the three coconuts and throws them down, one after another.
“MISSION COCONUT SUCCESS” — “Well done, Mack!” — he praises himself.
He slowly grabs his strength and climbs back down as he climbed up, finally landing two feet from the ground.
“Great! The trip back was easy somehow!”
Mack collects the three coconuts and takes them back to his tent area. He uses a sharp stone and a round rock to break one open.
“Hit, Hit, Hit!” — “Tuck!” — the sharp stone reaches the shell of the coconut.
A few drops of coconut water spill out! Mack carefully drinks all of it, in a hurry of course—
“OH! THAT IS SO TASTY!”
He then cuts open the shell for the soft white flesh. As the coconut is still green, there is not much meat inside, but for Mack it is a treasury. He breaks open a ripe one too.
“This is some really good food!” — “Thank you, God, for creating coconuts, they’re just awesome!”
He is satisfied.
“I can live, I can live here for a hundred years!” — “With Ms. Coconut, Mr. Sharp stone and Mr. Rock!”
That night, as strange sounds creep through the jungle, Mack thumps the ground to keep the snakes away — first with his right hand, then his left — until, hours later, exhaustion finally outweighs his fear and he drifts into sleep.
The story continues in Part 2 — Home Sweet Home.
