“Is that true? But the coffee is real, right?”
“Do you really want to talk to me about island agricultural production?”
I looked down at my own mug of maybe-Kona coffee and shrugged. I didn’t know why I was talking to him at all, and I didn’t give a shit about where coffee came from. It tasted terrible with the pineapple, anyway.
Nate took a sip and I studied him. I mentally compared every man to my brother, Brooks, and Nate maybe wasn’t quite as tall. But most guys weren’t, because my brother was about six inches over six feet. Brooks’ kids with his stilt-like fiancée were going to be fucking giants. But this guy grimacing over the mug of the coffee I’d made was definitely up there in the height department, too.
Nate wasn’t quite as wide as my front door-sized brother either, but all of him looked big and hard. Muscled, from the biceps below his t-shirt sleeves to the abs I had been studying earlier. He had scars on his arm below the bicep I had admired, making the skin look a little ropey, like something had seriously hurt him. And he kept his dark hair very short, like a crew cut—like someone in the military. There were a lot of bases around here so maybe he had been in the service and that was how he had ended up with the injuries. His face was…I thought of the word. Stern, for sure. Severe. His jaw could have been cut out of a block of stone. Handsome? Yeah, definitely. The scar on his cheek and the abraded area around his eye didn’t detract from that at all. They made him somehow more interesting.
“How long are you staying here?” he asked, and looked up with the eyes that usually glared at me. They were very dark, almost black, with little lines of grey running through them. “You bunking off your grandmother indefinitely?”
“I can stay here as long as I want,” I told him, my temper flaming. “What difference does it make to you?”
“Why are you so goddamn prickly?” He put down the mug and got back under the sink. “That coffee was terrible, too. You don’t know how to make it.”
I had the urge to pour the hot liquid down the drain, right over where is face currently was located as he worked on the disposal. Screw him, I wasn’t prickly. I slammed down the mug on the counter and went to find my running shoes.
I drove out fast from my grandma’s street, racing past the security guard in his little shack as he stood up and frowned at me. I eventually parked near a trailhead and ran a few miles on a bumpy path through an old lava field, until the heat making the air shimmer above the smooth, dark rocks made my mind start to waver, too.
Nate wasn’t there when I got home, sweaty and red and tired. So fucking tired. I made myself swim anyway, and later, when I strained my neck to look in the mirror after my shower, I thought my back was better. Not so frighteningly burned and not so snake-scaly. I wandered through the quiet house. Now was the time that I usually made myself do yoga to calm my mind but I didn’t feel like it, and it wasn’t working anyway. I looked again in my grandmother’s library, with all the books on economics, historical conspiracy theories, and a large section on calico cats. She was a weird old lady. I picked up another heavy volume on Keynesian economics because I kept hoping they would help me to sleep. I went outside in the shade and got comfortable, ready for the thick, boring book to put me out so I could rest for a while.
A few hours later, though, I was still awake, and I had learned absolutely nothing about economics. My mind had started to wander and I couldn’t control it. So when I heard more thumping coming from the kitchen, I ditched the econ book and went to see what was happening, even if he thought I was prickly.
Thumping and cursing. “Mother…”
I sat at the kitchen island and listened to the swearing and watched him from the chest down, the muscles in his arms flexing, that tan sweep of stomach where his shirt rode up. I didn’t think he knew I was there, but when he emerged from the cabinet, he wasn’t surprised to see me.
“Hello,” I told him, saying it first.
Nate nodded, turned on the faucet, then flipped the switch behind the sink. The disposal purred to life. “I got the missing part and it’s installed. I’m done with your list, unless you came up with any extra vital repairs.”
No. I had looked for more, too, but there was nothing. I shook my head.
He started to wipe his hands on his shirt but then stopped himself. He looked marginally nicer than the other times he had come over, in that there were no holes in his clothing now. “Are you going out tonight?” I asked. “You look…” I trailed off. Nice wasn’t the word, and neither was dressy or in any way stylish. “Clean.”
He laughed, and it startled me so much, I jumped. It was just a clear, happy sound, and it didn’t seem like it could have come from his stern face. “Clean,” he repeated when he stopped. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He turned and opened the drawer where my grandma’s housekeeper kept the kitchen towels to dry his hands.
“Well?” I prompted.
“I am going out. It’s Friday night.”
It was? I hadn’t been paying attention, and since I hadn’t been looking at my phone, I wasn’t even aware of the date. “Right,” I answered, “Friday night.”
Nate watched me as he rubbed the towel over his fingers. “What are you really doing here in Hawaii?”
“I’m on vacation.”
“On vacation by yourself. Indefinitely.”
I got up and started walking away. “Bye.”
“Hang on, Scarlett Pimpernel.”
I did stop, because I didn’t know what the hell that was.
“It doesn’t look like you have any plans, besides sitting in the house by yourself on a beautiful night. You can come with me.”
“Oh, can I? Really? What an opportunity,” I said, batting my eyes.
“It is for you. Hard to believe that I even asked.” Now he looked me over. “You seem ready to go. Let’s head out.”
I looked down at myself, too. Old shorts, a tank top that had seen better days. Flip flops—no, here they were called slippers. No makeup, hair in a ponytail. Back at home it would have taken me at least two hours to get ready. “Ok,” I said slowly. “I guess I could go with you.”
He walked out, and was I supposed to follow him? I stood there for a moment, then grabbed my bag and my slippers flip-flopped across the floor to the door.
Nate was sitting in the cab of the dusty blue pickup I had seen at the curb in front of the house, but now it was rumbling and jerking as it idled. He reached across and rolled down the window. “Were you waiting for a written invitation? Get your peeling ass in the truck.”
Huffily, I flipped my shoes faster across the pokey grass of the neatly sheared lawn and settled myself on the Mexican blanket that covered the seat. “You’re an asshole,” I informed him. “That’s not how you speak to a lady.”
He shifted the car into drive as I looked for a seatbelt. “Fucking A, you sound just like your grandmother.”
“That’s what she said when you told her to get her peeling ass in your truck?” I asked. I gave up on the seatbelt.
“It was more the tone. The stick up your ass,” he explained. I gave him the finger and he pointed at it. “She never did that at me.”
“I’m sure she wanted to, but she has arthritis.” And Nate laughed again. I looked out the window so he didn’t see me smile in response.
We rumbled past the gatehouse at the end of the street, and the uniformed guard waved at Nate. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“A bar.”
“A bar?”
“That’s where people go to drink,” he elaborated. “Alcohol.”
“I meant, which bar? We used to go out—” I stopped.
Nate glanced over at me. “I guarantee you’ve never been to this one. Mostly locals.” He paused. “Who’s ‘we?’ You said ‘we used to go out.’”
“I came here a lot while I was in college. My grandmother let me come with my girlfriends.” Until we had trashed the house one too many times, and the prior property manager had gotten tired of cleaning
up the messes and told on us. I was only allowed to come again this time because my mom had begged for me. I flushed a little, thinking that I owed her for making this happen.
“I thought maybe you meant that guy you mentioned.”
“What?” I sat up straight. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Brooks. You thought I was him when I was trying to get your sick ass into the tub.”
“Oh.” I relaxed. “Brooks is my big brother.”
“Hm,” he grunted.
“We used to come here as a family, when we were kids. But not for a long time.”
“Who’s in your family?”
“My mom, my older sister and my brother. My parents’ friends, the Marches, usually came too. My dad died a long time ago and we didn’t come back here after that. I certainly never went to bars with Brooks. If you want to talk about a stick up someone’s ass—”
“Always,” he interrupted me seriously.
I ignored this. “Brooks is ridiculous. He’s a bossy know-it-all. I don’t know how his fiancée can take him. But she likes the whole damsel in distress thing, and my brother is into Prince Charming, so I guess it’s a match made in heaven. Lanie is just…” I trailed off. She was dependent, that was Lanie. But then again, my brother depended right back on her.
“Why are you doing that?” Nate pointed at my hand, and in the light of the setting sun, he could clearly see me digging my fingernails into my palm. “You don’t like your brother’s fiancée or something?”
“No,” I said, and sighed. “She’s not personally terrible, I guess. She has this thing that I was rude or something to her in high school. She made it some kind of federal case and caused a bunch of problems.”
“You were rude? I’m shocked,” he said flatly, and I flipped him off again. Lanie had driven my brother away from me, the bitch. All Brooks had done since they got together was talk about Lanie and how great she was and why couldn’t I see it, and why had I been so mean to her, what was wrong with me? Nothing was wrong with me and Lanie was weak. I had apologized and done her a big favor, helping her out with her job, so I called us even.
“My brother really loves her,” I tried to explain, and when I breathed in, my throat caught and made a funny click. I really loved my brother too, and now I didn’t have him. Nate glanced over at me again. “Whatever. What about your family?”
“I’m delighted that you care enough to ask. I don’t have any. They’re all dead.”
“That’s pleasant.”
He shrugged. “It’s true. Mother and father gone, grandparents too, no siblings. I have some very distant relatives in Norway but I don’t know them.”
“How did your family end up in Hawaii?”
“Sugar plantations, way back when. My ancestors came over here to work, like a lot of other people. And they stayed.”
I thought again about staying. I could stay, I told myself, then answered in my head that no, I couldn’t. “You never wanted to leave?” I asked.
“What’s better than here?” he answered. We didn’t talk again until we pulled up in front of the bar, in the middle of a rundown strip of little shops. The bar was, to put it nicely, dank and dirty. My slipper stuck to the floor and I could barely see Nate to follow him, because he still didn’t have any manners to let me go in front of him, ladies first.
“Joey.” Nate stopped in front of a small table and shook the hand of the man sitting at it. “Meet Scarlett. From California.”
“Scarlett from California, pleased to meet you,” the man, Joey, said. He didn’t get up and Nate sat down next to him without offering me a chair.
“Sure,” I answered offhandedly, because why would I pretend to be polite either in this dive bar with these two troglodytes? They talked about some mutual acquaintance and his new truck for a moment, then Nate stood back up.
“Beer,” he said laconically. I had no idea if that included me, if I was ever going to get anything to drink and if I should watch it being poured from the bottle just in case.
“Hey Jedi, make it three,” the guy Joey called after him, and Nate gestured back at him, waving him off. “Otherwise, maybe he’d get one for himself and screw us over,” Joey noted to me. “He’s a real asshole.” But he was smiling as he said it.
“What did you call him?”
“Our whole platoon called him Jedi. He ever do that mind trick thing on you? Like he’ll answer a question and you didn’t know you’d asked it? Or take the words right out of your mouth?”
I nodded slowly. Nate had done that, and also, I was right about him being military. “Is that how you guys are friends? You served together?”
“Yes, ma’am. Hooah.”
I had no idea what that meant. “What did they call you?” I asked.
His face froze a little and he swallowed. “Rabbit. Because I was fast, and when we did PT runs, everybody would chase me like I was the lure at a dog track. Yeah, Rabbit.” He looked away for a moment. “How about you two? How do you know, uh, Nate?” Joey gave me a once-over.
“I know him from around,” I said.
“What are you doing here from California?”
This guy was as bad as my mother with the questions. “What do most people do in Hawaii?” I responded. “I’m on vacation.”
“And you hooked up with Jedi?” He looked extremely skeptical.
I didn’t answer and we sat in silence until Nate came back with the beers. He plunked three bottles on the table. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” I said pointedly, and he nodded.
“What do you do back in California, Scarlett?” Joey asked me, and I shrugged.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Joey. She already doesn’t like you,” Nate told him.
Joey laughed at that. “Why not?”
“Why would anyone like a grunt like you?” Nate asked. Now they both laughed. “Remember the staff sergeant who used to ask all the newbies their names just so he could say that he didn’t give a shit what their mothers called them?” He gestured at me with his beer. “That’s like Scarlett. She doesn’t give a shit.”
“That guy was something. RIP,” Joey said. They clinked bottles.
“How do you know that I don’t give a shit?” I asked, angry. I did, sometimes.
“I mean that you don’t care how you treat people,” Nate explained. “You could tear off their heads and piss down their necks, it’s all the same to you.”
This after I had just told him thank you? “No, it isn’t all the same to me, and maybe it’s just you whose head I want to tear off. Suck on that, Jedi.”
Joey laughed so hard he started to cough. “I like her a lot,” he told Nate. “A keeper.”
I looked at the beer. I hadn’t seen the cap come off it. I waited until Nate took a sip from his and then I switched our bottles.
“What?” he asked me, then his one eye narrowed, a lot. “Do you think I put something in there?” When I shrugged again, he took my beer and chugged. “There,” he told me. “It was factory-fresh.”
Good. I took a sip too, from his former bottle. “I’m cautious.” But I had gone ahead and hopped in his old truck, and now, here I was in some nasty bar with two men I didn’t know. And they had taken the seats with their backs to the wall, so I was just exposed. I looked over my shoulders, because anyone could come at me from behind.
Nate grabbed the edge of my chair and with one arm, pulled me around the table until I was sitting next to him. “I don’t like sitting like that either,” he explained, and he had known what had made me nervous. Maybe he was a Jedi.
Joey and Nate talked a lot, and ate plates of greasy food which I declined, and Joey drank a lot, too. As the night wore on, I stopped after my second, and Nate after his third, but I watched one beer after another disappear down Joey’s throat and the bottles filled the top of our table. They didn’t do things like clearing the empties at this crappy place. After a while, he started to get sad. He told me about his old girlfriend,
or maybe she had been his wife. “I fucked it up, and I can’t fix it. She’s moved on from me,” he said. His eyes misted over.
“Better off without her,” Nate put in. “You’ll be ok.”
“Nah. I’m not myself without her. I’m nothing. Because I fucked it up.” Joey really looked like he was going to cry. I patted his shoulder and he hugged me suddenly, making me jump in surprise, but I didn’t shove him away. He let me go and rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. “Do you know what I mean, Scarlett? Did you ever have that with anyone?”
“Me? No.” He waited for me to say more and I felt the urge to continue. “I was engaged, but I never felt like that.”
“Why did you want to marry him, then?”
“I didn’t,” I said baldly. “I broke it off.”
“You put him right where I am,” Joey said. “Made him miserable.”
“No, because he didn’t feel that way about me, either,” I defended myself. “We only decided to get married because we had been together for a while and we got along. He thought it wouldn’t be so bad to be stuck with me.”
“He wasn’t too bright, I guess,” Nate remarked, but then he put his hand on my shoulder briefly, like he had done before when I was in the tub. I was sorry when he moved it away.
“My fiancé’s family pushed him hard to marry me. His dad wanted my grandmother to go into partnership with him. It was all a business deal, actually.” I had found out all that a few days before our engagement party. Mats had been just a pawn in his parents’ bigger game to get in with my family.
“That’s worse than where I am,” Joey said. “Because at least I had something once.”
Yeah, great. I tilted my bottle, rolling the last drops around the bottom.
Nate put his hand back on my shoulder. “Time to go, kids. Joey, you drunk jackass. Can you stand?” He held out his hand to his friend and Joey took it. He lurched to his feet unsteadily as Nate pulled him.
“Maybe I had a few too many beers,” Joey acknowledged.
“Yeah, one or two or ten,” Nate agreed, and Joey laughed. “You ready?” Nate asked me.
Lovely You Page 3
