“Nah, I’m not one of those.”
“Well, that’s good to know”—I smile over at him—“because that would’ve been a disappointment.”
His lips spread into a soft grin as he looks out at the ocean.
“I thought the surfing here was supposed to be insane and dangerous, like you see on TV?”
“Oh, it can be,” he says. “Mostly in the winter around here, and over at Laniakea. But give it time, you’ll see some big waves. I like surfing when the storms roll in, myself.”
That takes me a little by surprise.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
He shrugs. “Sure, I guess it is, but I’ve done all right.”
“Don’t you worry about getting struck by lightning?”
He chuckles and I feel myself turning red—clearly I know nothing about surfing.
“I’d be more worried about getting my leash tangled on a reef, or getting knocked unconscious and drowning.”
I feel my eyes springing open wide in my face.
“Oh, well, yeah, that definitely sounds dangerous—ever been in a situation like that?”
“Nah,” he says, shaking his head. “Nothing major.”
I nod, taking his word for it, but a faint twinge of uncertainty lingers.
I listen to the waves crashing against the shore and the breeze combing through the trees behind us. I reach up and wipe underneath my eyes again; tiny flakes of dried mascara come off onto my fingers. Suddenly I’m not feeling so confident about how I must look. I could check myself out in the camera on my phone, but to let Luke see me doing it would be embarrassing.
“Sometimes I wish my job was a little more laid-back like yours seems to be,” I say.
Luke looks over, his arms dangling casually over the tops of his bent knees.
“What do you do?” he asks.
“Event coordinator,” I answer. “Weddings. Parties. All things crazy and hectic and ridiculously expensive.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, I like it,” I say with a nod. “I must thrive on the chaos, I think.” I laugh lightly, shaking my head just thinking about it, because I’m not sure that’s true. “And there’s no shortage of chaos, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” He smiles softly, and it kind of melts me a little inside.
“Well, it pays well,” I go on, feeling a strange need to justify my job more than I thought I already had, “but … well, it’s just been a disaster this time around.” I leave it at that. I’m still not ready to think about the other problems I should be fixing right now with the Denningses’ wedding. I’m having such a strangely pleasant time sitting here with this attractive stranger. On a beach. In Hawaii.
This is how a trip to Hawaii is supposed to begin.
He smells good. Not like saltwater or overwhelming suntan lotion, but like soap and toothpaste and heat. To keep from looking at him longer than I should, I gaze down at my toes buried partially beneath the sand, my painted toenails poking through against the tiny grains.
I hear him sigh lightly next to me and I worry that it’s because maybe I’m boring him. But then he glances briefly toward the hotel and I get the feeling he’s got somewhere he has to be soon—that’s better than boredom, I suppose.
“How long are you here for?” he asks.
“The wedding is tonight and I have a plane to catch tomorrow afternoon back to San Diego.”
The softness of his face fades a little. He nods.
“That’s too bad,” he says, not looking at me.
He glances over with a smile but doesn’t look at me for long. Then he stands up. He reaches his hand out to me, and this time I accept it without reluctance and he pulls me to my feet.
“It was nice meeting you, Sienna, but I need to get back. I’ve got an appointment in ten minutes.”
My gut is twisting. I don’t know why, but I don’t want this to be good-bye. It’s too soon.
I nod shortly and with disappointment, but I try not to let it show on my face. In just a few minutes I was able to push all of the disastrous problems and the stress caused by them down into a place where it had no control over me. And I’m not ready to part with that power yet.
“Hey,” I say suddenly, “what did you mean earlier when you said to let it go? I mean, it’s self-explanatory, I guess, but why did you say it?” He could’ve easily just said what most people say: I hope you feel better, or ask me if I’ll be all right just before he walks away, but he didn’t, and it intrigues me.
Luke pushes his hands down into the pockets of his shorts, his tanned, muscled arms stiffening against his sides as he draws his shoulders up. The wind moves through the top of his tousled hair as he looks at me, quietly at first. I get the feeling he doesn’t want to leave as much as I don’t want him to.
“If you decided to stay longer,” he says, “I could show you.”
I blink, vaguely stunned by his words that, once again, intrigue me to no end.
“Show me?”
“Yeah,” he says, his face beginning to brighten again. “It’s one of those things that can’t really be explained.” He shrugs.
And here I thought I was just asking him to tell me mostly for the sake of conversation, to keep him around a while longer. I never anticipated anything thought-provoking from such a simple thing.
I sigh. “Well, I wish I could”—I really wish I could—“but after Hawaii, it’s off to Jamaica for me.”
“Wow,” he says, “you must do a lot of traveling; it’s a shame you can’t enjoy the places you see a little more.”
Understatement of the year.
“Yeah, I admit that’d be ideal, but at least I get to see the places. Most people never do. I can’t complain.”
He shrugs again, and I get the feeling he disagrees with that statement but doesn’t feel right about admitting it.
Then he looks up momentarily in thought.
“Hey,” he says, “if you get any free time before you have to head out, come find me on the beach and I’ll give you a free lesson.”
Stepping up closer with my shoes dangling from the fingers of one hand, I smile lightheartedly. “Don’t I have to schedule an appointment first?”
He winks with a playful grin and it makes my heart leap.
“Nah, I think I can fit you in,” he says.
My face flushes with heat, my eyes straying downward momentarily.
“All right,” I say, “if I can break away long enough, I’ll take you up on that offer.” In my heart I know the chances of that happening are slim, but it’s the thought keeping the smile on my face. “But no dangerous stuff,” I add sternly yet playfully.
He puts up his hands. “No way,” he says with a big smile. “I’d take care of yah.”
I smile back at him.
Luke says good-bye, his hazel eyes—same color as mine—bright with warmth and sincerity and mystery. And as he walks away, I stand paralyzed with confusion and regret. Confused by a strange need deep in my chest that wants to know him more, but regret for accepting that I have to ignore it. He drifts farther away over the white sand beach and back toward the ocean and out of my life. And with his absence, as though I’ve awoken from a dream, the real world comes back with a vengeance, reminding me that I have a job to do and that this wedding must be absolutely perfect. I already feel the anxiety creeping up at the possibility that it won’t be.
FIVE
Luke
Does she have a friend?” Seth asks with a hopeful grin.
I step out of my running shoes and make my way into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door.
“Not with her,” I say, leaning over into the fridge in search of my leftover pizza from last night.
“What about the girls she was with?”
“She’s just here for a job. Did you eat my pizza?” I rise from behind the refrigerator door and look at Seth expectantly.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you wanted it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I close the door with a package of smoked turkey in my hand instead and take it with me to the counter, where I get to work on a sandwich. I haven’t eaten since this morning, and here it is at sundown and my stomach aches with hunger. I usually get a bite to eat at the resort, but I couldn’t risk running into Sienna again.
That’s not a good idea: She’s beautiful and sweet and motivated—exactly the kind of girl I could get myself in a world of trouble with, especially since she also seems the cautious and careful type. I consider myself a cautious and careful kind of guy, but not every aspect of my life follows those rules.
“Sorry, man,” he says. “Next pizza’s on me.” He always says that.
I leave it alone and finish making my sandwich and then begin to scarf it down standing up.
“She doesn’t seem like your type though,” Seth says, sitting at the bar with his feet propped on the spindle of a bar stool.
“How do you figure that?” I ask with my mouth full.
Seth reaches up and rubs his hand against the back of his shaved head. “She just seemed kind of … full of herself. Hot, sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a girl like that.”
I look at him oddly.
“You know what I mean,” he says. “She just isn’t the kind of girl you usually go for.”
Confused by his judgment of Sienna, it takes a second to realize why.
“I’m not talking about the one who walked up to me,” I say and swallow down another bite. “Sienna’s the one she was talking to after she stomped off. Long, dark reddish-brown hair. Rockin’ body. Carrying a camera.”
“Oh.” Seth nods. “That makes sense, then. I was startin’ to wonder about you, bro.” He laughs. “But you’d probably be better off hookin’ up with the stuck-up one anyway, considering your predicament.”
I take a water bottle from the fridge and move past Seth through the kitchen. He follows as I make my way outside onto the lanai. I sit down at the little round table and set my water on top of it.
“I don’t have a predicament.”
“The hell you don’t.” He laughs again and sits down in the empty chair. “I’d say denying yourself the simple pleasures in life because of your conscience is a predicament. Have some fun once in a while. That’s the one way we’re different, Luke—you care. I don’t.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “There are a lot of ways we’re different, Seth,” I correct him, sporting a grin. “Don’t make me crack the list open again.”
Stretching my legs out before me, I slouch my back against the wicker, my arms resting along the length of the chair arms with my hands dangling over the ends.
Seth shakes his head, a big close-lipped smile stretching his features. I don’t elaborate. He knows as well as I do that we are as different as night and day when it comes to women. And life in general. But I used to be just like him. I don’t regret it, but I don’t miss it, either. Most of it, anyway.
“So what are you gonna do?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I shouldn’t have even talked to her at all, to be honest. It opened a door I probably shouldn’t have opened.”
Seth looks at me from the side. “Then why did you?”
“I don’t know,” I say, thinking on it. “Maybe I was just looking for something to be wrong with her—makes it easier.”
“Yeah, that’s healthy,” he quips. “And did you find anything? I bet you didn’t—there wasn’t anything wrong with her from where I was standing.”
Absently I shake my head no, chewing on the inside of my mouth, thinking about my brief one-on-one with Sienna. “Not a thing,” I answer. “Which is what worries me.”
“You are messed up, Luke.” Seth scratches his head where his scar has been healing. He had an accident on our last trip to El Capitan, which was a close call. Got staples in his head from the top of his right ear and stretching around the back of his scalp. Now he just keeps his head shaved because he says he likes the look.
“Hey, I agree with you to some extent,” he says, “but if you can’t get close to a girl you like, then at least allow yourself a piece of ass every now and then.” He puts up his hands briefly, palms forward. “Not tryin’ to be in your business, bro, but if I was in your shoes, I’d have carpal tunnel in my right hand by now.”
I laugh lightly and put the water bottle to my lips again.
He slumps forward and then props his elbows on his thighs. “Maybe you should check out this girl from the resort,” he says.
“Who knows. You might be disgusted by her and then everything’ll be all right.” He chuckles.
I shake my head, smiling.
“Well, if you change your mind, let me know.” Seth stands up and raises both arms high above his head, stretching. “I’ll find someplace to go if you want the house to yourself for a while. Anything to get my best friend laid.”
“You’d even move out?” I jest, just before swigging down the last of my water.
Seth’s eyebrows draw together. “I don’t love yah that much,” he says and laughs his way back into the house.
Then he pops his head around the corner. “I almost forgot,” he says. “Kendra will be over early in the morning—thought I’d warn you.”
I raise my index and middle fingers from the chair arm in response. “I’ll be sure to lock my bedroom door tonight.”
The screen door cracks lightly against the wood frame as it bounces closed behind him.
Kendra. Love her to death, but the most obnoxious alarm clock I’ve ever had the displeasure of being awoken by.
Gazing back out at the ocean, I let the scene with Sienna from earlier today play though my mind again. I see that long, flowing skirt clinging to her petite form and her soft hair draping her shoulders. Her cute feet covered by those not-so-sand-friendly heels. Her dimpled smile and the mascara smudged all over her face that I didn’t have the heart to point out to her—it didn’t make any difference to me anyway. She’s a beautiful girl, and sweet enough and with just the right amount of confidence, from what little I know about her, that she could have spinach in her teeth and I’d still find her beautiful.
But maybe Seth’s right. Maybe Seth’s lifestyle with women isn’t so bad after all. I try to tell myself that from time to time, in times just like this when I’m trying everything in my power to convince myself that I need to back off. I always think about why Seth is the way he is and I can’t help but agree with his philosophy. He shut himself off completely from relationships when his fiancée dumped him. He loved that girl, and she loved him, but all of us—me, Seth, Braedon, Kendra, and Landon—knew it would happen. Because it always does with guys like us: Most girls who don’t share our lifestyle of extreme sports can’t handle it and usually take off in the other direction, the safe, “normal” direction, the second they find out what we do.
I tilt my head back and shut my eyes, inhaling a deep breath. What if Sienna goes looking for me tomorrow on the beach? Damn, I wish I hadn’t talked to her because now I’ll feel like shit if she does look for me and I’m not there. I don’t want to come off as a dick by standing her up.
Defeated by my even stronger conscience, I accept the facts: It’ll never work with a girl like her, and I’d be more of a dick to pursue it.
There’s a far-off pounding muffled in my head, like the sound of a hammer drilling a stubborn nail into a wooden beam. I groan and roll over, covering my head with a pillow. My mouth is dry and I can taste my breath, hot and sour and fetid. BAM! BAM! BAM! The pounding is getting louder. And then a familiar voice follows: urgent, a little rough, though tinged with femininity.
“Luke, I need my green backpack!” I hear from the other side of my bedroom door. “Have you seen it?”
I wake up fully, grabbing the pillow and pressing it firmly against my face as a low, guttural groan of protest rumbles through my chest. With my eyes closed, I see a visual of where I last saw that green backpack and then want to ki
ck myself for not taking it out of my bedroom yesterday when I thought about it.
“Luke?” Kendra calls out again. “Come on, I know I left it over here. We can’t find it anywhere in the house.”
A swath of cool air brushes my face as I pull the pillow to the side. My eyes crack open a slit at first, instinctively wary of the possibility of blinding sunlight beaming through the curtain on the window above the bed. But it’s still early, the sun just barely making its appearance in the sky, bathing my room in a soft gray hue. My eyes open the rest of the way, but my body is having a hard time catching up.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“All right! Hold on a sec!”
I toss the sheet off and crawl out of the bed, scanning the floor in search of my boxers. When I find them, I stumble trying to put them on in a rush.
Kendra’s backpack is sitting on the floor beside the door, mocking me. I snatch it up by one of the straps and open the door, holding it out to her.
“How did it get in your room?” Kendra asks, standing in the doorway. She slides it off my fingers and hangs it on her arm at the elbow.
“You put it here,” I say, still trying to wake up. “When you came in to complain about your roommate.”
I keep my position blocking the doorway, hoping she doesn’t try to come in. I just want to go back to bed.
“You don’t want to come with us?” she asks, frowning.
“I can’t. I’ve got stuff to do today.”
I raise one arm, propping my hand above me on the doorframe. Kendra makes a face when my eyes reopen after a long, drawn-out yawn.
“Gah! You need a Tic Tac,” she says, wrinkling her freckle-sprinkled nose.
I reach out and fit my hand at the back of her blond head, pulling her toward me; the top of her ponytail pushes through my fingers. I press my lips to her forehead. She smiles, but pushes me away playfully.
“You stink,” she says, grinning. “Come on, get up and take a shower and come with us. You never hike with us anymore. I hate it.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I’ve been three times in the past two months.”
“But still,” she argues, her plump lips pouting, “you don’t go often enough and that’s just like never to me.”