The Moment of Letting Go

by J. A. Redmerski

  “Not that pays what this job pays me,” I say. “Event coordinators in general don’t make the kind of money that I make. I got lucky landing my job. I just don’t want to lose it.”

  Luke smiles and shakes his head.

  “A lucky fluke landed me this job; it’s always in the back of my mind that an unlucky fluke will also take it away.”

  “A lucky fluke?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I could only go to college long enough to earn an associate degree. And when I got out, I was prepared to spend years working my way up from the bottom somewhere. But a friend knew a friend who knew a successful friend—my boss—who needed an assistant immediately. I met Cassandra and she liked me enough to offer me a job and I took it without hesitation. Within six months I was already near the top of the Harrington Planners ladder—a total lucky fluke.”

  “Well,” Luke says, pursing his lips, “I doubt luck had everything to do with it; you had to be doing something right.” He smiles and I return it in thanks.

  Then he gets up and grabs my hands from the tops of my bare knees, pulling me to my feet.

  “We’re going swimming,” he says. “And we’ll talk more about this later … like on the day your vacation is over and you’re standing at the gate in the airport about to kiss me good-bye.”

  “Wow, you really think highly of yourself, don’t you?” I can’t keep the laughter from my voice.

  “Damn straight!” he says and pulls me along beside him. “Before these two weeks are over, I can guarantee you three things.” He holds up three fingers as we continue onward toward the water. “One”—he holds up one finger—“you’ll never want to go back to San Diego once Hawaii is done with you.” He holds up two fingers. “Two—that photography love of yours will start to take the place of everything else in your life. And three”—he wiggles three fingers and we stop on the beach where the water can pool around our feet—“you’ll kiss me at least once before you go home.”

  I blush hard and it feels like my eyes are bugging out of my head. “I might peck you on the cheek or something, but—”

  “No,” he says, smiling and quite serious, “it’ll be a full-on, tongue-dancing kind of kiss.”

  I smack him playfully on the arm—something is fluttering around inside my belly.

  “Geez!”

  Luke grabs my hand and pulls me out to the water with him, where we swim and hang out on the cliffs until late in the afternoon. People come and go throughout the hours, sometimes leaving us with Alicia, Braedon, and a few of their close friends to have the area to ourselves for a while before more people show up in intervals.

  “Backflip!” someone says just before Luke jumps into the water for probably the twentieth time.

  And every time he does it, it ties my stomach up in knots. But there’s something about him that I can’t quite figure out when I watch him leap off the edge of that cliff; it’s not overconfidence or showing off or recklessness, but something deeper, more profound. Maybe it’s a sense of freedom, or a natural high that consumes him while he’s in the air, as if he had been born with a pair of wings that only he can see. But the more time I spend with him, the more intrigued I become. Sure, he’s gorgeous and funny and polite and all the kinds of things—so far—that would make my mom love him to death. But what intrigues and excites me more is how he kind of makes me want to jump off that stupid cliff regardless of how scared I am of it.

  ELEVEN

  Sienna

  After nightfall Luke and I head to the barbecue at Alicia and Braedon’s place. It’s a tiny house just minutes from the beach, and apparently someone else other than them live here as well, because I can smell the food already cooking from the backyard as we walk up. Voices carry around the side of the house, laughter and conversation that may or may not be accompanied by alcohol.

  “Luke!” a voice calls out when we step outside into the backyard from the back door of the house. A girl, about my height but maybe a little shorter, springs to her feet from a lawn chair and falls into his arms. She has blond hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her head, and she’s really fit, like she works out regularly; little knot-like muscles flex in her biceps as her arms hang about Luke’s neck. She’s cute, more tomboy than girly girl, but not so tomboy that I feel like I have nothing to worry about when it comes to Luke—she’s actually kind of adorable.

  I stand next to him, coiling my fingers together down in front of me, my eyes straying from them and toward the fresh-cut grass, instead. But then suddenly Luke’s hand hooks around my waist and he pulls me closer.

  “Kendra, this is Sienna. Sienna, this is my good friend Kendra.”

  She smiles at me close-lipped, her brown eyes studying me for a brief, secret moment that usually only other girls can detect. She glances at Luke once, and something passes between them before she looks back at me.

  “Hi, Sienna,” she says, her smile slowly lengthening.

  “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”

  We don’t shake hands, but it doesn’t seem necessary. And I don’t detect any territorial vibes from her. I take that back—actually I do, but I can’t place it. It doesn’t feel like jealousy, but something else.

  With his hand still at my waist, Luke walks with me down the steps and to the concrete patio laid out in a circle shape over the top of a large portion of the grass. A red grill with a dome-shaped lid just like the one my dad always cooked on during the Fourth of July holiday stands on four legs on one side of the patio. Delicious-smelling smoke billows from the vent at the top and from the sides. A dozen other lawn chairs are set here and there and all of them are occupied.

  A guy with a shaved head that has a painful-looking scar running along one side of it raises his arm in the air at Luke. He gets up from his lawn chair with a beer bottle wedged between the fingers of one hand. He’s wearing a pair of black cargo shorts and a pair of black flip-flops and has several black hemp—or leather, I can’t tell—bracelets around his wrists.

  He steps up to us and he and Luke do that weird man-shake where they bump fists and whatnot.

  The guy looks at me with a big, close-lipped smile, and then back at Luke—there’s an awful lot of inner dialogue going on around here and I’m starting to feel seriously out of place.

  “Sienna, huh?” the guy says with a grin and reaches his hand out to me. “I’m Seth, Luke’s best friend and roommate—he wouldn’t know what to do with himself without me.” He looks between us, still grinning.

  Luke play-punches him against the arm.

  “Yeah right, man,” he says, smiling and shaking his head. “I think it’s the other way around.” He looks right at me. “Really, it is the other way around. I rescued this guy from a very troubled time in his life and now he owes me.”

  I chuckle.

  Seth laughs and takes a quick swig from his beer, balancing the bottle neck between his thick, rugged fingers. “You’re so full of shit,” he says.

  Luke looks at me—his hand has not only remained on my waist, but it just squeezed me tighter—and smiles. “We’ve been best friends for about six years,” he says. “And Kendra, she’s part of our family.”

  Kendra, who has been standing with us the whole time, smiles hugely. She has a lot of freckles, just like me, splashed across her nose and cheeks.

  “Your family?” I ask Luke.

  “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” Kendra says. “So how long are you in Hawaii for?”

  I was hoping she’d elaborate.

  OK, so everything about me screams tourist. Great.

  “Two weeks,” I answer.

  Luke is beaming standing next to me. “I had to talk her into it,” he says, and Kendra and Seth exchange a look.

  Then they look at me.

  “Did he manipulate you?” Kendra says in jest. “He’s good at that. You gotta be careful around this one.” She grins at me.

  “All right now,” Luke says and walks with me to the patio. He leans toward my ear and whisp
ers, “Don’t let them get in your head; they’re worse than they try to make me out to be,” but it was hardly low enough they couldn’t hear him.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I smirk up at him.

  Braedon comes walking from around the side of the house looking like a linebacker with four more folded lawn chairs in his hands. Luke’s hand finally slips away from my waist and he takes two of the chairs from Braedon, unfolding them with a snap and setting them side by side on the patio. Some other guy comes walking down the back steps and goes straight over to the barbecue grill, lifting the lid with a giant spatula in his other hand; smoke billows in big puffs into the air as it escapes the confines of the lid. The meat on the grill sizzles and pops as he begins flipping the burgers over.

  I hear the shuffling of ice inside a nearby Igloo chest as Luke reaches inside and pulls out two bottles of beer. He pops the lid on one and holds it out to me.

  “Thanks.”

  He pops the lid on one for himself and we sit down at the same time in the two empty chairs.

  “So are you not here with anyone?” Kendra asks in her chair across from us. “I mean, in Hawaii,” she clarifies.

  “I was,” I say. “Actually I was here on a job, but after the job was over, I decided to make a vacation of it.” I glance over at Luke sitting next to me and we smile at each other. “He did kind of talk me into staying,” I admit, and then with a smile, I add, “Not that it was very hard to do.”

  Kendra and Seth catch Luke’s eyes again, but I pretend not to notice. Pressing the bottle to my lips, I take a small sip.

  Music plays from a stereo inside the house, funneling through the screens on the open windows, but it’s not obnoxiously loud, and none of the people here are obnoxiously drunk. It’s more a social gathering than a wild party and I’m glad for that—I’m no angel and like to party every now and then, but with Luke, I just want to hang out and keep things cool.

  Luke and Seth start talking about some guy on Kauai who just bought a new hang glider, but he makes it a point to keep me from feeling excluded by interjecting a comment to me about it every now and then. Really, it’s not necessary, but I think it’s sweet of him to worry about me like that and want to make sure I feel comfortable. All of us talk for a long time—though I talk less than anyone because I’m not from around here, am not familiar with surfing or hang gliding or hiking the Pipiwai Trail or even with the everyday conversations, but still, Luke makes sure I never feel excluded. At one point, his hand finds its way to my thigh, where he pats it for a moment, smiling over at me, and then moves it away.

  I don’t want him to move it away, but I guess it’s too soon to be suggesting something like that, especially in front of other people, two of whom—Kendra more than Seth—happen to be watching Luke and me with overly curious glances that make me more and more uncomfortable as the evening wears on. I’d much rather have Alicia as my company, but she’s been pretty busy playing casual hostess and sitting on Braedon’s lap since we arrived.

  The guy doing the grilling takes the burgers off the fire and stacks them in a large mound of steaming meat on a platter. Without him having to sound the dinner bell, everybody gets up in intervals to make themselves a plate.

  “What do you want on your burger?” Luke asks me, standing from his chair.

  I start to get up, too, but he stops me. “No, I’ll make it for you.”

  “Just ketchup,” I say, smiling up at him.

  “Potato salad and baked beans?” he asks.

  “Just potato salad—thanks,” I tell him, and he smiles and goes off to make our plates.

  “So where are you from?” Kendra asks once Luke steps out of the way.

  “San Diego. Lived there all my life. What about you?”

  “I was born in Hawaii,” she says. “Honolulu. But I’ve lived most of my life in California. Haven’t even been in Hawaii long enough to call myself a local.” She chuckles lightly.

  A bout of silence fills the space between us for a moment.

  I sip on my beer just to be doing something.

  “So,” she speaks up, “did you and Luke meet over at the resort? That’s where he usually meets girls”—she sort of chokes down the beer she just swigged from the bottle and waves her hand in front of her face rapidly—“I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

  Actually I think you did.

  I look at the grass, my feet, the strange little insect crawling across the patio beside my shoe, and then back up at her. I swallow nervously and place my beer between my thighs, glancing across the patio at Luke standing next to a table where the bowls of beans and potato salad and bottles of condiments are placed.

  Finally Kendra leans her back against the chair with a long sigh.

  “Look,” she says in a low voice, “let’s just forget I said that. It totally came out all wrong.” She laughs lightly. “So is Luke going to take you hang gliding?”

  My eyes get big.

  I laugh a little. “Uh, definitely not,” I tell her, shaking my head. “He couldn’t even get me to jump off the cliffs when we went swimming earlier.”

  That seems to have silenced her, though I don’t know why. She just stares across the short space at me with a sort of surprised yet vacant look.

  Luke walks up then with a plate in each hand. He hands me one carefully and I place it on the top of my legs and thank him with a smile.

  “What, are you afraid of heights, or something?” Kendra finally asks as Luke is sitting back down next to me.

  I notice them glance at each other again—that’s starting to annoy me a little, not to mention making me very uncomfortable. But this time the look that passes between them is something more serious. Kendra’s eyes are slanted with confusion and maybe concern—if I knew her well enough to decipher her expressions, that’s what I’d call it: concern.

  Luke looks as though he wants her to stop talking altogether.

  I dig a plastic fork into my potato salad and poke it around in there to distract myself, until finally they look back at me with smiles as if no secret conversation had just passed between them right in front of me.

  Finally I answer, “Yeah, actually I am pretty afraid of heights. Planes. Bridges. Ferris wheels. If it’s more than ten feet off the ground, I’m uncomfortable with it.”

  Kendra stuffs the edge of the burger into her mouth, and I get the feeling it’s more to keep her from saying something Luke doesn’t want her to say. She chews happily, a big smile plain on her face as her jaw moves around.

  Luke does the same, but he’s not smiling so much as he is beginning to look as uncomfortable as I feel.

  I notice Seth, from the corner of my eye, talking to a dark-haired girl standing next to the back door. He tucks his index finger behind the elastic of her bikini bottom, just below her belly button, and snaps it back. She giggles flirtatiously and pulls away. My player radar is still working at least—I was beginning to think maybe it stopped somewhere between seeing Luke through my lens and meeting him for the first time. Could Luke be playing me? I had started to think that, but decided that he just doesn’t seem the type. But this Kendra girl—I’m convinced that something at least used to go on between the two of them, and I may not be Luke’s girlfriend, but it doesn’t make me any less anxious, or feel any less out of place.

  I stand up and set my plate in my chair.

  “Mind if I use the restroom?” I ask, looking down at Luke.

  He gets up immediately, setting his plate in his chair like mine, and he takes my hand.

  “Yeah, let me take you inside and show you where it’s at.”

  We leave Kendra on the patio and I feel like I can’t get away from her fast enough. Luke’s hand tightens around mine as he leads me up the lanai and into the dimly lit house.

  “I’m sorry about Kendra,” he says as we make our way through the kitchen and into the hall. “She’s harmless though, I promise. Just ignore her if she starts talking too much. That’s what I always do.”


  Did you two used to have a thing? I want to ask, but feel like it’s not really any of my business.

  “It’s all right,” I say, and we stop outside an open door. I hear the toilet running faintly inside. “I do want to get back to my hotel before it gets too late though, if you don’t mind.”

  Luke’s face falls and his shoulders rise up and down with a sigh. I step up and place the palm of my hand on his hard chest and gaze into his eyes. He looks down at my hand and is just as surprised that it’s there as I am.

  “I’m having a great time,” I try to reassure him. I let my hand slide away. “I’m just really tired after surfing and swimming. Honestly, I haven’t had this much excitement in one day in a long time.”

  A grin passes over his lips. “I find that hard to believe with that crazy job of yours.”

  I smile and press my back against the wall, trying to put some space between us. The smell of some kind of air freshener from the bathroom rises up into my nose briefly. I don’t like it. I’d rather be smelling Luke.

  “Work excitement and vacation excitement are two entirely different things,” I say.

  He squeezes his lips in thought, nodding in agreement. “Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time,” he says.

  It gets quiet then and a moment lingers between us as we just stand there in the hallway, together and alone. It feels more like we’re quietly feeling out the other, wanting to try the one thing we’re both afraid it’s too soon for. We both know it. We can both see it in the other’s eyes—I want him to kiss me and he wants to oblige, but neither of us is willing to go that far yet. But the attraction is undeniable. Yes, I want him to kiss me. My skin tingles beneath the surface with his closeness and I can’t stand it. I mean I can. I quite like it. But I can’t believe the effect Luke is having on me so soon. He’s like a magnet and I can’t pull away from the attraction fast enough.