“I’m sorry.” He greased his shaft in one light stroke, then he dipped his fingers and lunged forward onto the bed. Kalani spread his legs, not saying anything at all— because he didn’t need to say anything, did he?—and Ori crawled up the bed and knelt, seated on his heels, between Kalani’s thighs.
His hands shook.
He wanted this so bad. He’d wanted it all his life. It was all he ever wanted, and now it was happening and—“I don’t think I’m gonna last very long.”
Kalani’s eyes were still glazed with pleasure as he overhand stroked his own cock. “Yeah? Let’s see how quick I can—I can m-make you…”
He wrapped his legs around Ori’s waist. No, Kalani wasn’t going to make it easy to last, and his challenge was such a familiar part of their fighting, their play, that a new surge of confidence swept through Ori. He sank forward and pressed his slippery fingers down between Kalani’s legs, circling the rim of his spit-wet hole. Kalani’s whole body arched off the bed, his hands twisting knots in the sheets. “Do it. Do it. Stop fucking around!”
Well, if Ori was about to come like a teenager, at least his sparring partner wouldn’t be far behind. He forced two fingers down to the last knuckles and fucked Kalani with them quick and hard. It still wasn’t enough. He bent his body at the waist until he could catch one of those dark coral nipples in his mouth. He licked and sucked it, relishing the feel of Kalani’s hands brushing over his hair in search of a grip. Ori crooked his fingers, and yes, there it was, that slick nub of flesh that was the root of Kalani’s pleasure. Not just feeling it. Controlling it, and as Kalani let out a strangled howl, he left off, pulled out, grabbed his dick and gave Kalani what he wanted. No more fucking around, just shoving into his sweet tight hole, not too hard not too slow, just fucking right and the heat and the love in his eyes oh God yes yes…
He’d always imagined Kalani was too special for this—like Ori needed candles or something to do right by him—and the countless sticky dreams he’d ever woken ashamed from were visual, abstract. But being inside Kalani and fucking him in an animal frenzy…it was pure sacred revelation. Kalani’s body rising against him, Kalani’s hands desperately clinging to his back, Kalani’s legs wrapped around his hips, Kalani’s hoarse cries urging him harder, harder, harder.
“Yes.” Ori found that balance deep in his core and vaulted into a rhythm so fast his heart could barely keep pace. He’d pushed his body to the limit many times, but never like this, never tortured with release like this, every inch of the hypersensitive skin of his shaft thrilling at the friction. But he could do it. For Kalani.
No more cries of harder. Under his mouth, Kalani’s throat seemed to vibrate, and Ori realized he was humming, low and urgent. Propping himself up on an elbow, Ori used his other hand to reach between their bodies and give Kalani’s dick an arrhythmic jerk. He watched Kalani’s face, the way his eyes squeezed shut, his lower lip caught between his teeth.
I did this to him. I took him to this place.
Up against this, all of his failures seemed so damn small. Kalani panted his name and came in his hands. Tightened around his cock almost painfully, and he felt like a god. He fell into Kalani one last time, so deep that the hammer-pounding of his hips only pushed them both over the sweat-slippery sheet and slammed the mattress against the wall.
Together. Not an inch left to claim.
He burrowed his face in Kalani’s neck gratefully and came. Pumped him full and deep and let the simple, primal victory of that distract him from how very very complicated this really was.
Chapter Six
2006 He hovered free for a fraction of a second until the wave brought its punishment crashing down. The brutal giant fist pushed him far below the roiling surface, down to the dark and quiet. With just enough oxygen in his lungs to keep from panic, he waited, drifting, feet floating skyward, until the fury above him was spent.
He flipped, then, and broke the surface into the world of the living, full of sun and spray and roaring noise, grabbed his board and paddled for shore. “Saw you get air, brah,” said Kalani. He was standing in the shallows, holding back for now. He didn’t reach out to slap Ori on the shoulder, and his smile seemed more reserved than usual.
“Wasn’t worth it.” Ori shook his head. He’d dropped in too late.
“We’re going to the North Shore tomorrow for da kine wave. Me and Noelani and Ryan and maybe one of his cousins. You coming?” “I’ve got a thing tomorrow.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. He needed fresh water. “An army recruiter thing. He’s got a contract to show me.”
“Oh.” Kalani’s face closed off, and he hugged his board to his side.
“Well I—” Ori floundered. That familiar urge to make Kalani happy all the time welled up in him, and he scrambled to add, “I haven’t made any decisions on it yet. I dunno, maybe I won’t see him at all. I haven’t made up my mind. Just wanna keep my options open, right?”
Give me a reason to stay , he wished he could beg and then felt guilty. Shouldn’t friendship, days spent on the North Shore in the surf, be reason enough? Ori was so selfish.
“You should just go,” Kalani said, a strange hurt in his voice. “Don’t want to disappoint your old man. Gotta get a Purple Heart or else you’re junk, right? Don’t let mehold you back. Give ’em.” He tucked his board under his arm and slogged back toward the shore. At the last minute, he turned, eyes squinting against the sunlight—or at least, that’s what Ori consoled himself with. “So what, right? You go, see the world, be a big hero, I’ll still be here when you get back. Righthere.”
Ori looked down into the water, studying its foam and swirl as if he could read the pattern of his future there. He dug his toes into the cold, clean sand. “Yeah.” He looked up again. “Hey, I think Noelani’s waving at you.”
Kalani went to her.
* * * *
2011 They couldn’t stay how they were, no matter how much they wanted to. Ori was heavy even when he wasn’t sated and spent to the point of becoming a deadweight. So they wrapped their arms around each other and rolled. Ori slipped free of Kalani’s slick body but threw a leg over Kalani’s hip to make up for the loss and keep him close
It was way too muggy to lie together all tangled like this, but Ori wasn’t planning on letting go anytime soon. He settled against Kalani’s body and closed his eyes, tempted to feign sleep. As if that would discourage Kalani.
“Anela’s right,” said Kalani. “She’s right, and you’re wrong. I’m not coming back.” His voice was low and strained, but there was no doubt in it, none at all. “I don’t understand.” Ori was close to crying. He did understand, at least a little bit, but oh God, he didn’t wantto. “Is this—please, Kalani. Stay. Stay.” He wrestled in Kalani’s grasp, tossing from side to side aimlessly as if he could keep Kalani anchored to this world by finding the right leverage
“Stop it. Shhh.” Kalani stroked the top of Ori’s head and stilled his flailing. “Ori, please. Is this… Is this really what you want for me? This half life?”
“But you’re real. You’re here. I feel you.” He’d left a mark of himself inside Kalani. Wasn’t that real—the sticky mess of the sheets? The fragrance of cocoa butter and musky sweat?
“Only for you, Ori. I walk more than ten feet away from you and I’m gone again. My aunt, my cousins, my whole family can’t see me. I can’t…I can’t even go to a fucking store and buy a soda, you know? I might as well be a fantasy.”
“So we fix it. We get you out of the coma. We bring you back, one hundred percent.” So many stories, he remembered Yvelise saying. If it happened before, it could happen again. “Tell me how. I’ll do anything.”
“I know you would.” Kalani turned his head aside. Ori couldn’t help but think that ‘anything’ wouldn’t be enough. “But this isn’t a fight you can train for, Ori. I—I can’t argue right now, okay? And besides, you fucked me so hard I lost my mind, so maybe we can just enjoy that. I’m sorry I even brought it up.” He met Ori’s
gaze again and smiled, tentative at first, then broad and brimming with happiness. “Really. What they do to you in Iraq, assign you to the porno brigade or something? Goddamn.”
“No. I just got inspired.” Ori wondered if his skin was light enough now to show a blush. Part of him understood Kalani was trying to throw him off, placate him, and he wasn’t going to follow that trail. “What, are you asking me to killyou?”
“God, no. Just don’t stand in the way. They take out the tubes, and…my body does what bodies do. Maybe that’s why I’m here, to make you understand that I need to be free. I was supposed to haunt you or something, and instead I got horny and jumped on top of you. Shit. I’m sorry.” He sighed, his grin crumbling a little but not vanishing entirely, not yet.
Make him happy again. “If that’s what you want,” said Ori, “I can go talk to Anela.” “It is. And then afterward, I want you to take care of yourself better, okay?” Kalani raised his hand to Ori’s lips to cut off his next agonized argument. “We’ll talk later. When you walk out of this room, I won’t follow, but I’ll come again when it’s night. I promise.”
* * * *
He had no intention of killing Kalani and no intention of letting him die either, but Kalani didn’t need to know that. Ori looked over his shoulder nervously, wondering if he’d been followed here, to this tiny plate-lunch shack tucked next to Anela’s grocery store, half hidden behind a nail salon, and if invisible ears would be eavesdropping. No, he couldn’t worry about that. He trusted Kalani.
Even if Kalani couldn’t trust him. Fuck letting him die. Ori would find another way, and Kalani would come to understand, and change his mind, and forgive him, and then they’d spend the rest of their long lives gratefully making up for lost time.
Anela settled down next to him at the counter. She wore her work apron, a teal polyester affair with a flowery logo and a badge with her assistant manager title. They hugged, lightly this time, not like in the hospital. “First things first,” she said before he could speak. “You need to eat. You look thin. They’ve got a great loco moco here.”
“Been eating prison food. So maybe we better ease me back into the grinds, okay?” He ended up with a fish plate of ahi poke and lomilomi salmon, eating slowly to savor the complicated blend of cool salt, fiery pepper, and pungent spice. Anela had eaten one of the hamburger patties and both the eggs off the towering rice mountain on her own plate while he’d only cleared a small corner of his. It was a miracle he’d even eaten that much. The constant anxiety had done a number on his appetite, not that he’d ever let her see that. Another bite.
If she noticed, she didn’t let on. “I always have to eat this fast. Fifteen-minute break is all I can afford. So tell me how you feel about Kalani.” Ori flinched at the double meaning. “I got to warn you, I thought about this a long time, so if you think you can change my—”
“I’m kind of undecided right now. I thought I knew what was right. Then I saw him. Things changed.” Anela wiped her mouth and gave him a sympathetic look.
God, if only he could trust her. He always had, growing up. She’d raised six kids of her own and as many who weren’t, including Kalani. She was tough but fair, never panicked in a crisis, so maybe if he laid it all out for her… No. This ghost business was a step too far.
“It must have been a shock, seeing him like that,” she said. “And I know you feel guilty. Please don’t.”
Ori took a deep breath and forged on with his strategy. “One thing that would help is if I could talk to his blood relatives. I mean, not to get their say,” he quickly added as Anela’s eyebrows tightened, “but just for…for closure.”
“What would you tell them?” asked Anela, not sympathetic anymore but not particularly hostile either.
I didn’t think this far. “Just to let them know what Kalani’s life meant, maybe. And give them a chance to say good-bye. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I feel responsible.” He seized on Anela’s words of insight. “It’d be like making up for when I wasn’t there.”
“And in exchange for this, you’d come over to my side?” asked Anela, not bothering to sugarcoat anything. “Let Kalani go on?”
Ori nodded, miserable.
“Okay then. You know his mother, Malia, and me, we had the same godmother. Her family moved around a lot. Last I heard, they were in Texas. She didn’t get along with them. Kalani’s dad grew up on the Big Island, and that’s where he met Malia and she had Kalani. When the accident happened, the police helped me get in touch with them on the phone. With Kalani’s grandfather. And he pretended he didn’t even have a grandson. I cursed him out. What kind of Hawaiian turns his back on his own people like that?” She shook her head, tsk-tsking to herself like it was a minor disappointment. “I feel bad saying this, what with Kalani where he is, but…that was his life. Just one sad story after another, you know? Like a soap opera.”
Ori remembered times when Kalani would hide his head in his hands, like the year they first met, when little Yvelise asked him innocently why he didn’t have his own mother. But for the most part, Kalani shrugged his bad luck off his strong shoulders and kept smiling through it all. “He had you,” Ori said. “That was…that was good.”
She shrugged, the gesture curiously reminiscent of Kalani. “I did the best I could. I wish I pushed him harder to college. So akamai, you know, he could have done it. I had the love. I just didn’t have the time or the money.” She picked at her last grains of rice. “His grandfather’s name is Moses Lihilihi. He lived near a town called Kukuihaele. If you go there and find him, tell him I still think he’s a fucking coward, but if he comes to see Kalani one last time, I might half forgive him.”
“Yeah,” Ori said. “Okay.”
“But I mean what I said about sad stories, Ori. You go back there, ask questions, you might find a few things you didn’t want to know. Maybe a few things Kalani would prefer you didn’t know.”
Ori felt a wave of dizziness as the enormity of his task started to reveal itself. He’d thought he could trace the link to the supernatural, maybe enlist the aid of someone who knew what the fuck they were doing—the Hawaiians called them kahunas, he knew that much—get Kalani’s spirit back into his body, then he’d wake up and it would all be okay again. He wouldn’t have to die, to move on to whatever afterlife was waiting for him, or be doomed to exist only for Ori. But this went beyond a few days of half-assed PI work; Ori would be digging down into layers of history, a part of Kalani’s life he hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Ori. He understood Anela’s warning. What he was doing was a betrayal, an invasion of privacy. It might increase his guilt, not relieve it.
He had to take that risk. Kalani’s lifewas more important than Ori’s moral integrity. His tattered, dubious, seen-better-days moral integrity.
“Thank you,” he told Anela solemnly. “I’m going to the airport right away.” “Finish your lomilomi first,” she said and offered him a simple, unguarded smile.
* * * *
Flying into Hilo and renting a car meant a big hit to his bank account, which, after a year in prison and another sitting around waiting to stop being crazy, wasn’t looking so great in the first place.
If he ran out of money, he had absolutely no idea how to make more. Fighting for pay took a lot of contacts, a lot of time investment. Beg, borrow, or steal, he had to keep searching. He tightened his fingers around his rental’s steering wheel and tried not to worry about the long run.
He drove north up the windward coast of the Big Island. The late-afternoon sun was hidden behind towering volcanic peaks to his left, but the reflected light from the ocean to his other side was powerful enough to light the world. It made the misty air glow, made the green of the cliff-hugging rainforest impossibly bold and vibrant, even eye searing. Where he would have seen gas stations and strip malls on Oahu, the Big Island had long uninterrupted stretches of coast too vertical and wild for humans to profit from.
It was a bad land for tourism. A good one for d
ope growing, or so he’d heard. He imagined Kalani as a little boy playing in these woods, knowing through hearsay which fields to stay clear of but not knowing why. Clambering over the rough terrain on coltish but sure legs. Looking east as the rain clouds rolled in from the ocean.
Getting a four-wheel-drive car would have been a better idea, he realized, as the GPS sent him inland, up a steep incline. As it turned out, the house was on a paved street, although the street’s lip had no guardrail and hung precariously over a sheer drop into a knife-thin little valley. He tugged the handbrake extra tight when he parked, turning the tires of the car for the first time since his driver’s test.
He wondered if Kalani had ever come here searching for his past, had ever stood in this spot. Ori tucked his hands into his pockets, staring up the long broken trail of a red-dirt driveway. The yard was lush and overgrown, foreboding and half-wild. It looked like nobody’d lived there for years, as if the house itself wanted to make a poetic statement about the passage of time and how you couldn’t go back.
He walked halfway up the driveway before slowing, stopping, and cursing. The windows were boarded. Even from this distance, he could see the ragged remains of a foreclosure notice stapled to the front door.
The red dirt would have shown recent tracks of tires or feet. There was nothing. The sense of failure crashed over him so hard he nearly fell. He’d been taught to track terrorists miles through the desert, but he couldn’t find one old man in his own home state.
“What you doing up there?” someone called from far away.
Ori went back down the driveway, walking slowly and keeping his hands by his side.
A truck was parked next to his car. One of those crazy jacked-up Toyota pickups, chromed out where it wasn’t splattered with red mud. A skinny Asian guy with a suspicious look on his face leaned out the driver’s side window.
Belleau, Heidi & Vane, Violetta_Hawaiian Gothic Page 5
