2019

I had never actively wished for a brother, but Keali'i made me believe it wouldn't be so bad.

Kanani met him not long after she had graduated high school and it was like they were always meant to meet. That fated day at KCC went down in history as the day my sister realized she liked the idea of settling down with someone if it was the right person. And truthfully, even from the beginning, we had always believed him to be the right person. He treated her well, made her laugh, and was all around a good person to be around. There wasn't much more any of us could ask for.

I hated to admit it but I sometimes liked being around him more than my sister. For obvious reasons, we had far fewer disagreements between us, but that could probably be chalked up to not being around each other as much. Maybe if he lived with us, I wouldn't feel the same. Maybe he'd push my buttons and I'd charge full force like I did with Kanani instead of making strategic retreats.

At the end of the day, he often felt like a mediator between my sister and me. And on those days when I couldn't stand to be around her, being around him instead felt like a compromise. I could always see the pieces of her within him and feel like I was close to her even when I wasn't.

He picked me up from work a lot since Kanani and I shared our car and he worked on the same side of the island as me. More often than not, we grabbed dinner together or saw a movie since we both liked a lot of the same kinds.

The part of my brain that didn't stop overthinking everything wondered if he did it because he actually liked being around me or if it was because he felt bad. He never made me feel guilty about not being as present as I wished I could be, but that didn't mean he wasn't thinking it. He could have made it his mission to bring me out of my shell more, and doing things with me outside of the house could have been part of that plan. I had to remind myself often to not get stuck in that mindset, not believe that I was a puzzle everyone else was trying to put back together.

"How was work?" Keali'i asked after waiting for me to close the passenger door.

"Shit."

He shifted the gear, placed his hand on the back of my seat, and turned so he could reverse out of the parking spot. Unlike the rest of the island of O'ahu, the two of us seemed to be the only people who refused to back into a parking space ever. It felt like our only little club.

"Give me something a little more to work with, please."

I considered all my options, then decided that Keali'i would find a way to work it out of me no matter what route I used in an attempt to escape from my bad mood.

"Three of my deliveries went out today and had problems with them," I explained. Pressing a little too hard on the button, I rolled down the window and welcomed the gust of fresh air that rushed in immediately. After spending an extra forty-five minutes helping out a customer who ended up not making a purchase—furniture was a big price tag so I didn't blame them for waiting on it, but that meant potentially losing out a sale to someone else when they came back and I hated that—I was ready to not spend any time indoors. "They straight up just dropped a dining table as they were lifting it out of the truck. And I know my ass wouldn't be able to carry that but they just tried to play it off like nothing happened! Like, what? You think they're not gonna notice the giant crack in the table? So annoying."

If it wasn't so late, the beach would have been nice. I settled for the open window and did my best to not imagine flinging myself out of it while the car was in motion.

"That sucks," he said. "They probably call and bitch you out too."

"They think me forwarding them to customer service is me trying to dump them on someone else and I'm like uh, no? I literally have no way to send out a service truck so you need to talk to them? Exhausting."

Leaning back in my seat, I kicked my legs out and closed my eyes. With my hand draped out of the wind so it could catch the breeze, it was easy to imagine the tension in my body releasing into it, dissipating as easily as it had built up inside me.

"Maybe some shave ice for the road?" he asked, and he didn't need to ask twice.

...

Kaneshiro's Shave Ice—never shaved ice in Hawai'i, as I was taught very quickly growing up—was a small family-owned shop on a side street in town, which was one of two locations that they owned. (The other was in Haleiwa next to their surf shop.) Kanani had brought me there one day when we had ditched school because she found out it was owned by a married lesbian couple and who could ever say no to that?

Since Haunani claimed to have more self-restraint, she usually watched the Haleiwa store while Nick went into town more. The latter had been caught closing shop early too many times so she could hit the waves on those days when they called out to her. While I was a casual surfer who would never survive working in a surf shop, though I guess I would eventually learn if I tried, I likely would have ended up in the same scenario as her. Working in a place where I never spent money myself proved to be useful as far as my wallet was concerned, and I also wasn't enticed to jump ship in the middle of the day.

(Generally speaking, I was enticed, but I never went through with it since I valued having a paycheck.)

Luckily for us, it wasn't that much of a detour, technically speaking, even though it still required us to jump off the H1 at one of my least favorite exits for no particular reasons other than I always seemed to catch the red light directly after even if I wasn't the one driving. Whatever the case, we were happy to sit at it when it meant two right turns and one left turn later and we would be right at heaven's front door.

Nick looked like she had an even worse day than I did, and that was saying something since one of my customer's threatened to drive to the store and throw the absolutely incorrect and not at all what I ordered sofa pillow at my face. (She sent me a photo of it.) (I emailed a picture of the matching floor model sample back to her and didn't receive a response.)

"The universe really said fuck y'all today, huh," Keali'i remarked after greeting her.

Nick and I shared a look before she said, "I'm also on my period so I get bonus points."

"Damn." I grabbed a pack of hi-chew from a box next to the register. "I wanted to hold my wallowing over everyone else. How am I supposed to do that now?"

She looked between us. "The usual?"

We nodded and she turned around to make our shave ice.

"Isn't Lei supposed to be graduating this year?" She asked with her back turned toward us.

"If she doesn't keep ditching school, then yes."

Nick laughed as she started pouring liquid gold-colored syrup over the mound of ice in her hand. Keali'i always ordered the piña colada flavor.

"Eh, she'll come around. They always do."

"That's what everyone told me before I dropped out and got my GED," I laughed.

Since working at the shop was second nature to her, Nick finished making both shave ice cups in no time. Keali'i paid without asking and dropped a few dollar bills into the tip jar with a Maneki-Neko figurine in front of it. Once we were armed with our sweet treats, we trekked back outside and, without expressing any verbal communication, sat on the curb in front of his car.

Keali'i had a great way with words and an even better way without them. Conversations with him never felt forced as he was able to ease you into them naturally instead of feeling like you were being backed into a corner.

A peaceful quiet lingered between us as sounds of our island trickled in around us—a bird up in a tree, cars zooming past on the freeway, the doorbell chime from Kaneshiro's. Once we had gotten about halfway through our desserts, he finally spoke up.

"Nani and I were thinking about going to Disneyland this year," he said casually. "Maybe in December when they have all their Christmas shit up."

My nose crinkled. "Why?"

He looked at me and laughed. "'Cause we've both never been?"

"That's so... random. Isn't it for kids?"

Keali'i shoved his shoulder against mine. "Don't get all childless millennials on us."

"You said it, not me."

"Do you want to go?"

I stared at him. "Go where?"

"To Disneyland," he spoke slowly. "With us."

I waited a few seconds, and then promptly returned to eating without answering until he threatened to take it back and eat the rest. "Thanks, but I have zero interest in going to Disneyland."

"Then where do you want to go?" he asked. "Name anywhere. Anywhere you've always wanted to go."

"I'm just fine right here."

It wasn't that I didn't dream of visiting other places. I knew there was so much of the world to see, and I prided myself on being someone I believed would always be a respectful visitor, but I spent so long not believing I would ever have the chance to do so that I eventually gave up on it. I loved my people and our home, and I wanted to build as strong of a relationship with it before I attempted to go anywhere else.

"Not even New Zealand?" he teased.

"Aotearoa," I said. "That was a cheap shot."

"It's a genuine question," Keali'i laughed. "Figured that would be at least one place you'd go."

"Well, sure. But we're not planning a trip to Aotearoa this year if that's what you're suggesting."

He waited to take another bite of shave ice before continuing. "Nani's pretty set on Disneyland. Which I think you'd enjoy if you stopped letting yourself fall backward all the time."

I rolled my eyes. "That's not what I'm doing—"

"It wasn't a question." I knew it wasn't but I didn't like being called out on my shit, either. "She thinks the whole family should go as a late graduation present for Lei. We've never gone anywhere."

Despite my lack of interest in this discussion, I liked how comfortable he felt considering himself part of the family. It was the truth. A truth I willingly acknowledged over other truths.

"I see what you're doing."

He grinned happily like the devil luring me to the underworld. "I don't know what you're talking about."

If it was their plan all along, they could have sprung it on me at the last minute so I had no choice but to go along with it. Contrary to my inclination for solitude, even I wasn't terrible enough to turn down a family vacation celebrating our youngest sister's high school graduation.

"Thanks for tonight," I said, holding up my now empty cup. "And for the shave ice."

"It's okay to take breaks, you know," Keali'i replied. "Breaks are good. Necessary. Just make sure you don't stay away for too long, yeah?"

...

Regardless of how many fights we endured or passive-aggressive comments we made toward each other in the morning, my sisters and I could always count on the ocean bringing us back together.

I counted on mornings like this one. While music smoothed away any lines of worry and running quieted any restless thoughts, calm moments with my sisters, especially spent in the water, were what made my heart grow and reminded me of what I was made of.

We all found ourselves waking up and moving early that morning, something that didn't seem to happen as often anymore. If it did, it was on a weekday when we all had work or school and were busy passing each other in the house like faceless cars in a stream of traffic. Today, none of us had commitments yet, not for a few hours, so, wordlessly, we all decided to go onto the beach.

In spite of all the world threw at me and how heavy my soul felt under the weight of it, I always understood how blessed I was to live beside the water, and living in an area untouched by tourists meant the only blemishes that existed here were a result of nature itself. I had feared that one day I would become too accustomed to the gentrification—destruction—of my favorite places on the island and forget what they even looked like, but coming home reminded me of what once was. What our people would always fight to maintain.

We changed into our swimsuits which had a permanent home on our front porch where we often left them to dry after we finished swimming. Our boards were left in the garage today as we wanted to enjoy the water on our skin, and the best way to do that was to have it wrapped around us like a second skin. Hawai'i was still waking up, so we had enough sunshine to know it was a clear day, but not enough to feel any real heat, which meant the water was cold as we dipped our toes inside.

The Kahananui daughters formed a line on the shore with me standing in the middle, a few inches taller than Kanani and even more above Leimomi. (We suspected she might outgrow Kanani one day too.)

One look was shared, passed between our beating hearts and the fabric of our ancestors, before we ran into the waves, braced for whatever came back at us.

As soon as I hit the water, I dived until I could feel the sand scraping against the tips of my fingers, just inches below my stomach, and continued until I pushed off and back to the surface where I broke free. My sisters were already bobbing along, and they each smiled at me, water dripping from their faces. Those faces that would always feel like home and the most very special parts of me.

Faces in which I saw my father. The same father I saw reflected back at me every time I looked in the mirror.