by Piper Lennox
I pull my knees to my chest and sip my drink. “They had an older brother, and apparently the whole thing was supposed to go to him.”
“Had, or have?”
“Had.”
Tanya lifts her glasses and looks at the door Luka went through. “Damaged management material, huh?”
“Stop, Tan. I’m being serious, here.” As concisely as I can, I explain Kai’s dilemma: his brother’s death, the business transformation, and how trapped he felt in the heir-to-the-throne lineup.
“Not that this isn’t fascinating,” she interrupts, when I near the end of the story, “but why do you know all this? And why do you care? I thought it was just a fun vacation hookup.”
“It was. Is.”
She laughs through her nose. “Spoken like a true liar.”
“Even if I do like him,” I relent, as I lie back and tent the magazine over my face, “it doesn’t matter.”
“Because you’re leaving soon.”
“Yep.”
“And because,” she adds, “it’s not like you’ve got four days left to get to know each other, see where things go, and at least try and figure out if there’s a connection worth preserving.”
I hesitate. “Exactly.”
She laughs again. “You’re hopeless, Moll.”
“Look,” I sigh, my own passionfruit-scented breath blasting back at me from the magazine, “you don’t know the whole situation. It turns out he does this with a bunch of tourist girls.”
“And?”
“And...I don’t want to be just another tourist girl and get used like that. I’m done being used. Damian did it once already. I’m not putting up with it again.”
“Well, first of all: if this really was just a vacation hook-up, you wouldn’t care about the other girls.” Tanya pauses, letting her supposed wisdom sink in. “And second: how do you know he’s hooked up with other tourists? Didn’t you say he hadn’t had sex in, like, two years?”
“Right, because guys never lie to get girls into bed.”
“What I’m asking you is, did you get any actual proof he does this kind of thing? I mean, did you ask him?”
“I didn’t have to. I heard his brother say it.”
“You heard,” she says, and I can tell she’s sitting up, leaning closer to me, “as in, you actually, literally heard his brother say, ‘Kai hooks up with tourists.’”
My answer stutters out. “I mean...basically, yeah.”
Tanya doesn’t talk or move for so long, I almost get curious enough to look at her. But not brave enough. Eventually, I hear the chair scrape the wood of the deck as she lies back down.
“If I were you,” she says, “I’d go ask him directly. Whether it’s just four days or if it turns into long-distance, it’s stupid to go on nothing but assumptions. That’s what the old you did, and it never ended well.” She pauses. “Actually, if I were you, I wouldn’t care in the first place—I’d just be in it for the sex. But I know that’s not your thing.”
“Long-distance isn’t an option. We agreed, no strings. I don’t want strings.”
Tanya laughs again, then yawns, rolling over onto her stomach. “Don’t lie to me, girl. You’re not good at it.”
Kai
“I think you should tell him.”
“Mom.” I sigh and stare down into my coffee. If I look at her face, she’ll convince me. She always does. “There’s no point in telling him right now. It’ll just stress him out.”
“You boys underestimate your father a lot, you know. He might surprise you.”
“Or,” I say, putting little arc-shaped dents along the cup’s rim with my thumbnail, “he might fly into a rage, have another stroke, and wind up in the ICU. Again.” My face flushes; I almost said “in the morgue” but, thank God, remembered I’m not talking to Luka, who shares my irreverent humor during times of stress. Mom, not so much.
She puts her hand on my knee. Always with the touching. Moms must know it’s our weakness as their kids, no matter how old we get—the one thing, other than seeing them cry, that can make us cave.
“He still thinks he’s signing everything over to you when he gets out of here. He’s building it up in his head, right now.” She touches my chin, making me look at her. Her fingers are cool.
“As far as he knows,” she adds softly, “you want to do this.”
I close my eyes. “I know, Mom.”
She lets her hand drop and picks up a magazine from the particleboard table, apparently standard-issue in waiting rooms. It’s silent for a while, except for the bubbling of the water cooler and occasional crinkle as she turns a page. I know she’s waiting, not reading.
“We have it worked out, though,” I say after a minute, and she closes the magazine. “Dad didn’t officially name me the owner yet, or even the interim owner. Which means we’re not doing anything wrong letting Luka step in.”
I look at her. She nods, telling me to go on.
“Luka’s going to run things until Dad gets out of here, so he can see how great he’s doing and how much he loves it. Then we’ll tell him.” I let out a breath. Now it’s my turn to wait.
“If that’s what you want to do.” She opens up her magazine again.
I groan and put my head in my hands, elbows on my knees. “Mom.”
“I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” she says. “I’m only telling you that your father—who I’ve known for much longer than you have, keep that in mind—can handle the news now, instead of later.” Cue the knee-touch again. “And I think the sooner the truth comes out, the better.”
“You know him as your husband,” I point out. “It’s a totally different ballgame when he’s your dad. As far back as I can remember, he drilled it into us that this business was all that mattered.”
“Funny, I never heard him say that.”
“He didn’t have to say it. He lived it.”
Mom closes the magazine again. This time, she tosses it back onto the table.
“Kai, look at me, please.”
I do.
“Do you know why your dad got the franchise? And why I agreed to it?”
I study her. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it seems like there are more lines around her eyes than there were a few days ago. “No.”
“Because he felt guilty.”
Even though she’s totally serious, this makes me laugh. “Right.” Guilt is not something my father knows. Placing blame? Easy. But guilt, or owning up to mistakes? Never.
“It’s true.” The glint of her wedding band hits my eye as she turns it, nervous, like she isn’t sure if she should say what’s already coming out. It’s not like her.
“After your brother died,” she whispers, “your dad felt a lot of guilt for making him work so hard. All the training, the business school....” She inhales, blinks, and exhales, keeping the tears back. It’s been years since I’ve heard her talk about Noe. The last time, to my memory, was a few months after he died, when she accidentally called me by his name. She didn’t stop crying for days.
“Your dad thought the resort was the easiest way to keep the family business going.” She looks from her ring back to me. “He didn’t want to put you under the same pressure he did Noe, running everything yourself. The franchise...well, to him, it seemed like the best way to still give you the business, without the stress of actually doing it on your own.”
The news sinks into my chest and settles there, refusing to dissolve. “I would have wanted it before, when it was still just ours, but...but not the way it is now, always expanding and so many rules—”
“Which your father doesn’t know. Don’t you think he should?”
“I can’t believe he feels guilty.” I look down at my coffee again, ice cold. “Noe loved working there. He didn’t go to business school because Dad pressured him—it was just...who he was.”
She gets up and takes my coffee from me before I can argue, already starting across the room to make me a new cup. “Maybe he sho
uld know that, too.”
Eighteen
Kai
Mercifully, Dad’s asleep when I go in to visit, which gets me off the hook for at least one more day. When I tell Mom this, already swinging my car keys and backing up towards the elevator, she rolls her eyes. But she doesn’t try to change my mind.
The evening is windier than the forecast called for; a storm is supposed to pass by us without incident, but the clouds painted across the moon, blotting it out as I head to the parking lot, say otherwise.
Raindrops start smacking the windshield. Instinctively, I almost pass our house to go to the resort. Big storms mean all hands on deck, literally—every employee gets called in to tie down tables, stow umbrellas in closets, and close the outdoor bars like fortresses under attack.
Then I remember: I don’t work there anymore.
It’s one of two things I keep forgetting, then remembering suddenly. This one makes me feel relieved. The other depresses me, over and over again.
Last night, when I told Mollie we weren’t anything serious and she didn’t protest, I forgot all about the truck in the employee lot (which Luka had to fetch the next morning, while I slept off my hangover) and walked home. Every step transferred the force into my brain, pounding against my skull.
“We aren’t anything.” It was true. I’d said it first, after all. It was what we’d agreed. And the only option we had, anyway.
So why did it hurt so badly to hear her say it back?
Even worse than missing her is knowing she’s with Damian at any given moment. She’d rather be with a guy who treated her like crap than one who treats her well. Just because he’s the one who’ll still be there when she goes home.
She didn’t say that, I remind myself. Other than the kiss you saw, there’s no proof she’s even with him.
Still. There’s no proof she wants me instead, either.
The rain’s stronger now. I have to turn the wipers on to full blast to see even a few feet in front of me. I can barely make out the rocks that line our driveway.
It’s so bad, in fact, that I almost hit her when I pull in.
“Mollie?” I ask, like she can hear me. I cut the engine and hurry out, motioning for her to follow as we duck through the rain to the side porch. While she shakes the rain off the magazine she was using for coverage, I dig out my key and lead her into the kitchen. I remember, briefly, that this was the same door I carried her through the night we met.
How was that only three days ago?
Without even discussing it, we go to my bedroom. It’s weird, how easily we both slipped in here. I’ve already forgotten which one of us shut the door.
“Here.” I pass her the towel from the hook on my wall. She thanks me and dries off, wringing out her hair.
“Thought paradise didn’t get storms,” she says.
“Paradise doesn’t.” I sit at my desk and kick off my shoes. She takes a seat on the edge of my bed, the towel balled up in her hands, just as lightning cracks behind her. It lights up her silhouette and the ends of her hair like a firework. “Hawaii does.”
Mollie
Well, this is going great.
We’re sitting here, silent, glancing at each other every now and then between awkward coughs and God knows what hitting the sides of his house, thrown around by the storm. He doesn’t even seem to notice.
“So, um,” I start, twice, and take a breath each time to say more. Only I don’t know what to say, so we just end up in silence again.
“I missed you,” he blurts, when I’m about to start and falter a third time. I look at him, my heartbeat wild, face so close to smiling.
“I missed you, too,” I whisper. Now comes the hard part. “But, what happened last night...it wasn’t what you thought. Damian kissed me, but I didn’t—”
“No, it’s okay...you don’t have to explain yourself. And I shouldn’t have assumed what I did, anyway.” He combs his hair, still wet, with his fingers. “It isn’t like, you know...I have any claim on you.”
“Yeah.” My hand stretches out across his bedspread, feeling the pilling of the fabric. Like grains of sand, rolling under my fingertips.
Just ask him, I urge myself. It’s easy: have you been with other tourists? Is this normal for you?
Did you lie to me?
But the words don’t align the way they’re supposed to, and I feel myself getting defensive. Because if he answers yes, I at least want to have my fists up, ready to block. I’m tired of getting blindsided by guys.
“Besides…it isn’t like I’m the first.”
Kai’s quiet. Outside, something falls over and crashes against the back door, skittering along the siding with the wind.
“What do you mean, the first?”
“I’m just another tourist.” I pull my knees against me. My feet are still muddy, even though I left my flip-flops in the kitchen and walked across a handful of accent rugs to get to his room. There’s a small, petty joy in knowing I’ll leave prints on his floor. Some mark to force him to remember me, after I’m gone.
“It makes sense, actually,” I add, when he still doesn’t say anything. “You meet a lot of girls, working here, so you do the whole no-strings thing a few times each summer.” The wind shifts. Whatever hit the house before hits it again.
“Wait a minute,” he says finally, holding up his hand. “You think I just hook up with every girl that comes through here?”
Now, in his phrasing instead of mine, it sounds crazy. “Well...not every girl, but—”
“That doesn’t even make sense. I’m not the one who suggested this vacation-only thing. You are.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t.”
“Then what are you saying?” He gets to his feet in the small strip of space between the desk and bed. “Because it sounds like you’re accusing me of playing you—which I’m not. And even if I were, if you really were okay with the fling arrangement…why would you care who else I’ve been with?”
My brow creases. I remember Tanya pointing out this same fallacy to me, just before the clouds gathered over the resort and I started my walk here. No answer came to mind then, and only part of one does now. “Because no-strings or not…I don’t like being lied to.”
“You weren’t.”
“So you’ve never gotten with another tourist?” I stand, too. There’s something weird—defeating, almost—about being seated while the person you’re arguing with towers over you. The bed stretches between us like a battlefield. “Not even once?”
He stops, words halfway out of his mouth. “Not in the…sleazy, womanizer way you’re describing,” he stammers. He pulls his hands through his hair. I get a flash of his tattoo and remember how, just a day ago, the sight of his muscles flexing like this made me swoon.
Okay: they still do. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to show him that weakness now.
“I wouldn’t lie about not having sex for two years just to get you in bed. That’s not the kind of guy I am.”
“It was just a question,” I say coolly, pretending to pick a hangnail, even as my conscience reminds me it wasn’t a question at all. It was an accusation.
“And what, you’re Miss Innocence?” he laughs. “Using me to make Damian jealous?”
“Using you?” I don’t know if my voice is rising now out of anger, or just to be heard over the storm. “Is that really what you think I did?”
“Well…do you really think all that about me?”
“I don’t know what to think about you,” I remind him. “We’re only in this for, what, four more days? And we agreed—”
“If you say ‘no strings’ one more fucking time,” he says, “I’m going to lose it.”
“But that is what we agreed, Kai.” My voice breaks, just a little, but I don’t lower it. I don’t dare. Because if I do, I’m not sure I could keep talking at all.
“At the end of this week, I’m getting on a plane, I’m going home, and you’ll still be here.” My volume stays high, but I soun
d calmer. And I should be: these are just facts. I’m not saying anything we both didn’t already know. “Things will be exactly like they were before we ever knew each other.”
Outside, lightning double-strikes: once overhead, a bright and encompassing light—and once more far away, like it’s touching the ocean.
“And really,” I go on, “when you get right down to it, do we even know each other now? Is it really that crazy of me to think you might have done this with some other girls before I came along?”
“Yes,” he snaps, raking his hands through his hair again, “because you do know me well enough to know I’m not like that, and—and because every other girl who comes through here hasn’t been anything like you.”
For a second, the storm is quiet. It sounds like it’s moved on, but the darkness and gentle thrum of rain on the roof give it away. It hasn’t left. It’s just waiting.
Kai’s breathing hard. He shuts his eyes.
“I don’t want this to end,” he whispers.
“Me, neither.” My confession leaves like a sigh of smoke, filtering into the space between us. “But it has to.”
Kai starts to nod. He brushes his thumb across his lips, then stops. He looks at me.
When he climbs onto the bed and takes my face in his hands, kissing me harder than he ever has, the storm erupts outside again. This time it’s a triple flash, the lightning splitting into tangents and finding contact points like his fingers on my skin.
And when he pulls me down into the sheets, I imagine the ocean, thrashing and wild against the shoreline. In storms like these, even the moon can’t push and pull the tide: the wind is in control.
All the ocean can do is churn and tumble with the rhythm; all the moon can do is watch. And together, while they fight the forces and struggle to regain their strength, they wait for the storm to pass—for the wind, something smaller than themselves but so much more powerful, to leave them be.
Nineteen
