by Piper Lennox
I just had to prove I could handle it.
“No, I’m taking it. He didn’t tell you?”
“No,” Mollie answered. “But I haven’t seen him today, so....” She shrugged. There was probably more going on there—I’d warned Kai: no tourist comes without some drama—but I had bigger fish to fry, that day. As if to emphasize this, my phone rang.
I nodded goodbye to Mollie, then her friend. Something about her eyes made it so hard to look away.
A couple days later, I saw her again.
She was sprinting down the beach towards Kai and me. We’d been surfing all morning. I wondered if I was dehydrated, delirious from the sun, when I saw her bathing suit bouncing the way it was.
I glanced around. Judging from the rest of the beachgoers’ stares, and Kai’s bright red blush, I wasn’t imagining it.
While she wheezed to Kai that his tourist girl was about to board a plane any minute now, I watched the bead of sweat roll from her neck, across the perfect plane of her collarbone, and down between her breasts. I put my hands in my pockets to adjust myself.
Kai passed me his surfboard and asked me to take it back to our house with mine, so he could book it out of there. We watched him run.
“Let me help,” she said, suddenly. She took Kai’s board from me and propped it in the sand. “I’m Tanya, by the way.”
“Luka.” I held out my hand.
“I know.”
Instead of shaking, she slipped just her fingers into mine, like she expected me to lift them for a kiss. I almost did.
We made small talk as we started up the beach to the road. Her hip bumped mine now and then while we walked, but I couldn’t tell if it was on purpose.
“So,” she said, “you own a company already at...what, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-one, actually. But...no, I don’t own it yet. Depends on if my dad likes how I’m running things. And if he actually retires, the way everyone’s telling him to.”
“You think he might change his mind?”
“About retiring? No. Now that he’s said yes, my mom will make sure he follows through. She’s been retired from the place ever since the franchise happened.” I felt too chatty, suddenly, and decided to shift the conversation to her. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What do you do for a living?”
“Oh. When my lease is up in July, I’m moving to New Jersey. Big reporter job.”
“Wow, really?”
“No,” she snorted, hitting my arm. “I’m a brand-new graduate. You think I’d land something awesome right off the bat?” Her expression got serious again. “Just an assistant job. But I can work my way up in a year or two. Hopefully.”
“So you want to be, like, a newscaster?” She was certainly beautiful enough for television, that combination of classic and exotic—olive skin, black hair, those big green eyes—that I imagined producers would love.
“No, print journalism. Like a newspaper.”
“Didn’t know newspapers still existed.”
She bumped me with her hip again, hard enough to make me stumble, and I laughed. When she couldn’t fight it anymore, she did, too.
We dropped the surfboards off at my house, then turned around and followed the road back. A flock of birds chirped overhead in scarily close-to-unison timing, but she just tilted back her head and listened, mesmerized.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she sighed.
“Yeah.” I looked up, trying to see it all as she did. It was easy to take the beauty of Kona for granted, when you saw it every day. “It is.”
“You know,” she said, when we got back to the resort, “I gotta say: you look as good in a rash guard as you do in a suit. Not many guys can pull that off.”
I looked down at myself, honestly forgetting, for a moment, that I wasn’t in work attire. “Shit. I was supposed to change at the house—I’ve got a meeting.” I looked up at her. For one very stupid second, I expected her to offer to walk back with me.
Instead, she started for the front of the building, taking her sunglasses off her head and winking before she slipped them on. “Guess you’d better hurry, then.”
The sway of her hips in that tiny bathing suit stayed with me all day.
I’d hooked up with a tourist here and there, especially as a teenager, but knew better than to make a habit of it. Noe had gotten attached to one just about every summer from age twelve onward, and it never ended well. And now here was Kai, doing the same thing with a girl he’d known only a few days.
Not that local girls were much better. In middle and high school, I had the unfortunate habit of being everyone’s first. Nicole Lee and her cousin Margie: first kisses. Pria, Ella, and Staci: first time getting to second base. At least half of the girls I slept with throughout senior year: first time. Almost every single one latched onto me like a tick, until I made it abundantly clear I wasn’t looking to be anyone’s boyfriend. My parents were high school sweethearts, which was fine for them—but that didn’t mean I had to tie myself down early, did it?
And it wasn’t just them. Nicole’s parents, the Kalanis, the Harlowes: so many people in Kona fell in love early and dug themselves into a rut, right then and there. And they were happy with it. That’s what got me. How could they be so sure of themselves, that young?
So when I asked Kai to get me Tanya’s number, it wasn’t anything romantic. I didn’t want her as a girlfriend.
I just plain wanted her.
After her final night in Kona—our first time together—we lay in bed and watched the sunrise, counting down the minutes until she had to leave for her flight home.
“I’m going to be honest, here,” I told her, kissing her hand the way I almost had on the beach. “That was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
She smiled. “Same, actually.” As she sat up, her hair brushing my face, I ran my hands along her breasts again and remembered the way they bounced in her bathing suit, the white sun illuminating her skin.
“Maybe we should set up some ground rules, though.”
This was a surprise, but in a good way; I’d been thinking the same thing. If she came back for Christmas, the way she was apparently already planning to, and if we did turn this into an ongoing friends-with-benefits kind of deal, rules would be a must.
“Agreed.”
“In my experience,” she said judiciously, “there are three areas where people cross the line from casual into clingy. One: they message and call way too much. Like, no offense, I’m not dating you, so I don’t give a rat’s ass if you had a bagel for breakfast.”
I laughed. “Good idea. Okay, limited texting.” I paused. “What about...sexting?”
She thought about this. “That’s fine. I mean, that’s still within the parameters of the arrangement, right?”
My nod was quick. I wanted to hear the rest of her drawn-from-experience rulebook.
“Okay, two: getting jealous.”
“I won’t get jealous.”
She narrowed her eyes, skeptical.
“If anything,” I went on, “I’d ask you to describe how your hookups were...then tell me all the ways I could do it better.” My hand found its place between her legs again. Her sex was still sensitive; she swatted me away. “What’s the third thing?”
“Lack of communication.”
“What? How would a lack of communication be considered clingy?”
“It’s not, but it leads to that—when you don’t know what’s going on, anything could be going on. We’re adults. We should have the decency to let each other know if we’re involved with someone else for anything more serious than a hookup. Like, if I get a boyfriend, or you get a girlfriend, we should tell each other, so we know the arrangement’s off. Or on pause. Common courtesy.”
“Sext, don’t text,” I said, holding up one finger, then a second. “No getting jealous about the other’s sex life or dates or whatever.” I held up a third. “Have the courtesy to let each other know if anythin
g changes.”
“Yep. That’s all of them.”
“Can I add a fourth?”
“Yes. This is a collaborative effort.”
I smiled. My hand traced the soft but defined angle of her jaw; my thumb brushed her cheekbone. “I’m like you, I prefer keeping things casual—but I do like building to things a little. Would it be totally out of line if I wanted to take you on some dates, when you’re in town?” When my palm cupped her ear, drawing her face closer to mine, I could feel her pulse point. “Is that allowed?”
Tanya closed her eyes as we kissed again. “Yeah...I think that’s okay.”
“Hi.”
I freeze with the inventory sheets in hand, halfway from the infinity pool to the kitchen entrance. The sound of her voice is like honey and acid at once.
“Hey.” I flip through the papers again. “Where’s your fiancé?”
“Luka, will you at least look at me, please?”
Don’t be petty. There’s nothing worse than a sore loser.
But what did I even lose?
“So.” I turn and roll the papers into a tube, stuffing it into my back pocket. “Engaged.”
“The only reason I didn’t tell you,” she rattles, “is because it just happened last night. Like, literally twelve hours ago. I thought it would be better in person.”
I squint at her and run my tongue along my teeth, pretending to think. “No...no, I’d say this feels much shittier.”
Her shoulders fall as she sighs. “I’m sorry. Okay?” She folds her arms across her chest. “But you,” she says, “are breaking a rule. Don’t get jealous.”
“And? You’re breaking a worse one: good communication. Remember that?”
Her arms loosen. She looks away.
“Are you happy with him?”
“What?”
I nod upward, to the top of the building. I saw them go up to their room together, after their meal was over and a few drinks were shared. He was all over her.
“The fiancé,” I prompt. Mimicking time; I fold my arms, too. “Are you happy with him? Do you actually want to marry him? Because you’ve been with him...what, can’t be more than six months, right? Unless you were hiding it from me as far back as Christmas.”
I see her jaw clench. “I wasn’t.”
“So, yeah—six months, tops. Not very long to know someone before you get engaged, if you ask me.” I pull the roll of papers from my pocket, tapping her shoulder with it as I step around. “But you didn’t.”
“Hey, don’t walk away.” Her footfall matches mine: fast and stabbing. “You’re right: I should’ve told you about Oscar as soon as I knew things were going somewhere.”
“You know what gets me?” I stop in front of the employee entrance to the kitchen and pivot, peering down at her. “The fact you not only didn’t tell me about the guy, but then came here, to my resort, to celebrate your engagement.” I steady my eyes on hers. “I gotta hand it to you, you’ve got the biggest balls of any woman I’ve ever met.”
“Luka, come on.” While I wind through the kitchen, dodging rushes of suds and scalding water while the line cooks spray down the floor, she grabs my elbow. I don’t slow down. “I said you were right. I apologized. And as for being here with him, I didn’t want that to happen—believe me. He surprised me with the tickets.”
“Ah. Same time he surprised you with the ring, I bet.”
She’s quiet. I stop when we’re out of the kitchen, in the small hallway that leads to the wine storage.
“No,” she says, finally. “He...he gave me the tickets a few months ago.”
My anger doubles. That burn in my stomach is back.
“I’m sorry for that, too.” Her whisper catches as she tucks her hair behind her ear. She folds her arms again.
“You didn’t answer my question.” When those green eyes flicker back to mine, I repeat, “Are you happy with him?”
“I’m not unhappy with him.”
“And you really think that’s the same thing?”
I unroll the inventory sheets and start counting the wines we’ve got left. This is Jake’s job, but he’s been fudging numbers too much lately. One part of this job I definitely hate: writing evaluations about people I consider friends.
While I work, she grabs a step stool from the wall and sits. It takes everything in me not to tell her she looks beautiful in that red dress, hair falling in wisps around her face, makeup tinged with some kind of shimmer that catches the light.
“I lost my job,” she says, suddenly.
The pen slips from my hand, but I catch it. I look at her. “When?”
“Yesterday.” She purses her lips. As soon as I see even one tear, I’m kneeling beside her, pulling her into my shoulder. Forgetting all about rules.
Six
Tanya
My mother was weak.
It sounds horrible, and I wish I could say otherwise about the woman who raised me all on her own—and maybe I would, if she’d actually done it. But for as long as I can remember, men appeared and disappeared from her life as often as stray cats in our apartment complexes.
Not just her life. Mine.
There weren’t many: four that I can really remember, who resurrected their promises and efforts just long enough to get both our hopes up, until I was old enough to know better.
Patrick, the widower: broken but wealthy. He was the father of one of my classmates, but I never bothered telling my mom that. They didn’t last long enough, even when he encored the next spring.
Owen, the chef: dishonest and arrogant. I still remember the time he cooked us bruschetta from scratch and told me, as I helped myself to a third helping, “When I marry your mom, I’ll cook like this every night.” I almost told him the truth, that it didn’t even taste good. I was just that hungry. We’d been out of groceries since the morning before.
Wesley, the banker: immature and sleazy. He was almost forty but dressed like a frat boy outside of work. Faded tees, too much gel, and those plaid Aeropostale shorts I hated enough on all the boys at school. When I stayed home sick with cramps during my first period, he sat beside me on the couch and massaged my feet until I kicked him in the jaw. They broke up the next day, but I never did find out if it was because of me.
And, last but not least, the ultimate magic act—the man who vanished and resurfaced like flowers on wire, who could throw my mother down to rock bottom and bring her back to himself in an instant, like a yo-yo, with nothing but the flick of his wrist.
Alastair, the Brit: powerful and handsome.
My father.
I was four, the first time I met him.
“Look at you,” he whispered, and I couldn’t tell if he was proud or disappointed, even though he was smiling as he stooped to my level in our new living room. We were always moving, which made me wonder how these men my mother dated kept finding us.
“Don’t just stand there, Tanya.” Mom was smiling like it was Christmas. Actually, not like Christmas; that year, she’d spent the morning crying because she couldn’t afford to get me presents. But the way people on television smiled during Christmas—that was the face she made.
“Yeah, don’t be scared,” the man said. He had dimples, like me. “Come here, come hug your dad.”
That first time, he stayed almost a year.
He rescued us—or at least, that’s what my mom kept sighing in happiness, the day we moved out of our cockroach-infested townhouse and into a real house, painted bright blue on a street with a sidewalk. He spent the summer teaching me to ride without training wheels, something none of the other kids on the block could do yet. We never ran out of groceries, while he was there.
I don’t remember the day he left. Just waking up and him being gone, and my mother curled on the sofa, wearing her bathrobe inside-out.
That was when Owen showed up. Mom met him when he changed a flat tire for us in our new apartment complex, a one-room place even worse than the townhouse. He didn’t rescue us, but he did make
things easier, for a little while.
The next time my father arrived, I was seven. Like before, he moved us into a better house. He enrolled me in private school, where they bumped me back a grade because I wasn’t reading fast enough anymore.
Patrick was next, in random weeknight binges that lasted a year, although he was never meant to be permanent. Mom had a job by then, at a craft store near my new—and free—school. We still had the house my father got us the second time he was around, so I didn’t mind having friends over to do homework or paint our nails. We jumped on my bed to boy bands and read copies of Cosmo, stolen from someone’s older sister.
At twelve, right after Wesley the pervert left, we were back to an apartment. “I feel good about this one.” Mom’s shaky promise didn’t exactly inspire confidence, especially when I realized we’d be sharing yet another bedroom.
“Food stamps?” Alistair asked, when he came around again. He cursed and punched his steering wheel. Whether he was angry at my mother for being so unhinged, or himself for leaving in the first place, I couldn’t tell.
I was thirteen that winter. By that point, I knew my dad’s attempts to renovate our lives were born of guilt. For Christmas, he gave me five-hundred dollars and a stack of romance novels by my favorite authors.
I was honestly touched he bothered to learn what I read. But I also knew, even as I hefted the weight of each book onto my shelf in our new home (a nicer apartment, but not a house, this time), even as I hid the money and told my mom I’d spent it on new clothes, that he’d been gone soon, and whatever I felt for him now wouldn’t last.
“Get your fucking life together, Elle.” Alastair’s accent turned from a rolling hillside to an ink-black mountain peak in moments like these—the moments he snatched back the praise and approval you couldn’t help but work so hard to gain.
I couldn’t even blame my mother for the simpering way she served him dinner on a tray in his armchair every night. Meat and potatoes, always; none of the bargain-bin pasta and fresh-to-frozen food we were so accustomed to eating that we couldn’t stop, even when times were good. I didn’t hold it against her that she dressed in his favorite outfits and discarded the rest, always showered and dolled up for him when she didn’t even bother for me, or for her job, in the months he wasn’t there. I didn’t think she was weak, back then, for how he snapped his fingers and she’d be at his side, ready to do anything he asked. Because I did it, too.
