2019

It wasn't that I had been avoiding him, but it had been a couple of weeks since I ran out of his show.

As ridiculous as it was since I had been the runaway while he was left to defend the adoring crowd on his own—not quite alone, exactly, since everyone else was there, but I recognized there would be some opinion about me leaving—I was a little thrown at the zero attempts to get ahold of me during those two weeks. I had no reason to be upset, and I wouldn't necessarily say I was mad, just confused. Nikau seemed determined enough at that point to keep whatever we had going, even if neither of us could definitively say what it even was or if it was anything.

Then, one day, Kanani came into my room and demanded I reach out to him because she was tired of shielding texts from him asking if I was okay.

She left without an answer.

It only made me feel worse for doubting that he cared, but I was the only one to blame. I couldn't push people away and expect them to keep coming after me. After a while, even the most loyal of people had a breaking point where they could no longer keep pushing. Nikau hadn't been in my life for long, but he would have been better off just cutting me loose and saving himself the headache of dealing with me.

Thankfully, at least, he didn't show up at work. On top of the already present embarrassment of having to deal with my feelings for him, I didn't have it in me to add the office ladies fawning over him on top of that.

I should have expected him to show up eventually. After two weeks, I had gotten too comfortable with the idea that he might have finally been ready to forget about me. Finding him talking to my mom in our living room after coming home from work was a surprise, but less so the more I thought about it.

The sight of Nikau Reed inside Hale Kahananui was something I had to get used to.

"Is anyone else thirsty?" I asked as a way of greeting them. After I dropped my bags down near the door and hung my car keys up on the hook above, I dragged my feet into the kitchen where most of the room was cast in early evening shadows.

Mom looked like an angel with a soft filter while Nikau appeared in contrast. Not quite the opposite in the devilish sense, but it was clear this wasn't his home. He sat straighter and took up less space. After spending my entire life doing the same myself, whether I was at home or elsewhere, I recognized it immediately. The only difference was that he did it because it was what most individuals were taught to do when they visited someone else's home for the first time.

"I'm so sorry, Nikau, I forgot to ask if you wanted something earlier," Mom directed at Nikau. "Water? Juice? Beer?"

"Water's fine."

I brought over three glasses, handing one to Mom and placing the other down on the table next to Nikau.

"Have you been waiting long?"

He shook his head. "Maybe like twenty minutes or so."

"You could have texted." I didn't always recognize the way my words sounded to everybody else, so I hoped he didn't take that the wrong way. It was a genuine response with no intended snark.

"So you could come up with an excuse?" Mom sipped her drink. "Sure."

"Funny." She was in a good mood. I could take the potential humiliation for that reason alone. "Do you want to—"

I angled my body toward the stairs. As much fun as he might have been up to getting information out of my mother, he didn't come here to hang out with her, and, as much as I loved my mother, I wasn't about to have this conversation with him in front of her.

Nikau stood up, thanked my mother for keeping him company, and followed me upstairs. Kanani wasn't home yet and Leimomi was spending the night at Micah's so we didn't have to worry about awkward encounters in the hallway.

His name had been making rounds on O'ahu ever since his show. To say he had been well received would be an understatement, and it wasn't just in Hawai'i either. Nikau had been trending online after his rendition of Let's Get Married and All My Life went viral, along with one of his original songs. Even with the shit quality of someone's phone, he sounded like—like a fucking star. Born straight out of the ocean and formed amongst his friends in the galaxy. I didn't know how he handled that kind of attention, even if it was more than deserving, and even if it meant getting noticed by familiar faces in the industry. Maverick had shouted him out, and MARS' band account on Twitter even retweeted one of his videos. I think the lead singer Stevie also reposted something on Instagram.

For a second, that was the version of Nikau that I was looking at since that was the only version of him I had seen in the past two weeks. He glanced around the room, soaking up the remnants of my soul that had been strewn around it, and I wondered what he must have felt watching a crowd screaming at him, for him.

"What do you think?"

He didn't turn around when he answered. "You can smell the ocean from here. Like you're standing right next to it."

"Not far from it, to be honest."

"Do you swim often?" he asked.

"Almost every day."

Nikau pointed at the sheet music haphazardly dumped onto the dresser. "More than you play, then."

"I'm going to assume that was more of a statement rather than a question."

His shoulders shook lightly as he laughed. "Yeah."

Despite it being the beginning of summer, a cool breeze rolled in through the window as I sat down on my bed. He could either sit on it as well or take the desk chair, I didn't mind either way. I was just tired after spending most of my day on my feet since it was a busy afternoon with an endless rotation of customers due to a surprise pop-up sale. As soon as he left, I was going to soak my feet in some Epsom salts.

"How was your day?"

I shrugged. "Alright, I guess. Could have been worse."

"But it could have been better," he suggested.

I didn't want to admit it, and I certainly wasn't going to out loud, but seeing him did make it better. "Could have been."

"Anthony and I were nursing hangovers. It wasn't pretty."

It wasn't often that someone like Anthony had to suffer the unfortunate side effects of getting shit-faced since he held his liquor fairly well, but it was funny when it happened. I could already imagine him groaning, begging Nikau to find a bottle of Advil or his favorite honu doll he didn't like to tell people about. (We knew.) (We all knew.) (If memory served me right, it was meant to be a heated pack for menstrual cramps.)

"Where'd you go?"

"I kind of don't want to say."

I raised a brow. "Club 939?" I asked jokingly.

"What is that—"

"Nothing. Where?"

He hesitated. "I think it's called... Duck Butt."

I laughed at his expression. "Oh, I love Duck Butt. Their soju is so good."

"Name could use an upgrade."

As I leaned back, I kicked my legs out. "Kanani celebrated her twenty-first there. They have that drink where they bring out a half watermelon filled with watermelon soju and a bunch of straws. Her friends tried to shove her face in it."

"Was that friend named Anthony? He mentioned an... incident like that but didn't give any names."

"The one and only."

Jumping back into our usual groove was too easy for two people who had something so obvious hanging between us. There might as well have been a flashing red sign that read SHE RAN OUT ON YOU. And it was the truth, even if I had tried to rationalize it to myself, that I was running away from the song and not him. But if that was the truth, I would have eventually found my way back to him.

Instead, I ended up in another guy's bed. That said something, even if nothing happened between Kaipo and me that night except trying to steal the covers from each other. Not that it should have mattered in the first place, but I reminded myself of that in my head. Nothing happened.

"Can I just say I'm sorry and we move past this?"

He turned around then, his face scrunched in confusion. "Sorry?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"What do you have to apologize for?"

I didn't want to do this all over again. "For leaving in the middle of your set."

"Were you supposed to stay overnight or something?"

"Well... no."

He pulled out the chair and sat on it backwards so he could face me. "Then you don't have anything to apologize for."

"I... think I do."

"I don't."

"Can you just let me say sorry?" I huffed, closing my eyes.

He stayed quiet for a few moments and I tried to focus on the backdrop of crashing waves outside. They weren't loud, but I clung to what little noise I could to distract me. "Okay, apology accepted."

"Thank you."

"Not that I want it but—"

Despite my insistence on making myself out to be a bad guy, I laughed at him and watched as his mouth rose into a soft smile.

"Seriously, I didn't come here to confront you. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay."

"I'm fine." As fine as I could be, which I wasn't sure was saying much.

"You're sure?"

No. "Yes."

He didn't look entirely convinced, but the circumstances weren't ideal for pushing me further, and he did say it wasn't his intention to confront me so that was likely the only reason he accepted my answer. It helped ease him back into the Nikau I had known instead of the one the world seemed to think they knew.

"Okay."

"Okay."

"So—"

I didn't give myself the time to reconsider when I asked him, "Do you want to go check it out?"

He tilted his head. "Check what out?"

"The beach." Even though he caught glimpses of it while dropping me off that first night and then earlier when he showed up here by himself, it wasn't quite the same as experiencing the waves touching your toes. If there was nothing else I thought I could give him, he could at least experience that. "It's probably nice and cool right now."

"You want to go swimming right now?"

I rolled my eyes. "No, just your toes. It feels nice."

He thought about it for approximately three more seconds. "Okay, sure."

The two of us went back downstairs where my mom had made herself scarce, probably hiding out in her room. With most of the lights in the house off, save a few for when Kanani came home, I felt like teenagers sneaking out of the house. The sun had mostly set aside from a sliver still peeking out above the horizon. It gave Nikau an ethereal glow when I glanced up at him for the briefest second on our way down to the beach.

It was quiet. Quieter than usual which said something since we lived in a quiet part of town. As we walked up to the shoreline, just before the lapping waves kissed our toes, I held my head up, took a deep breath, and exhaled until I thought all the air had escaped my chest.

"This is stunning," he murmured, afraid of ruining the moment. "How do you ever leave? I feel like I'd want to stay here my entire life if I could."

"I think that's the beauty of these kinds of places," I replied. "They mean something because you have to leave and the excitement of coming back to it holds more weight than if you were to stay still."

"But you like staying still, don't you?"

I shrugged and stepped further into the water. "I don't know if I can describe what I do as being still. I think I'm more stagnant than anything."

"Aren't those more or less the same thing?"

"Maybe. Maybe still is taking a breath and stagnant is not having the strength to remember to breathe."

He looked as if he wanted to say something but decided against it. Instead, he shook his head with a soft chuckle. "Now that I think about it, you're kind of intimidating."

I was taken aback. "Me? Intimidating?"

"Yeah." Nikau stepped up beside me, not quite close enough to touch but not far enough away that I couldn't reach out to him if I wanted to. "Not intentionally. I know you don't realize it, but you've got this mind... it's creative and introspective, but it's also dark and incredibly sad. When people are around you, they don't always know which version is coming out to play, but they stay because they accept you either way, even while knowing you could dance circles around them if only you realized how capable you are."

I couldn't process the thought of someone forming that kind of opinion about me after five months. It sounded like something a person said after spending a lifetime getting to know a person. And even then, the person he was describing, the captivating enigma, was so far from anyone I thought I could ever be. I couldn't even say I went out of my way to hide myself because I understood I wasn't someone people actively looked out for to start with.

The sand felt cool beneath my skin as I lowered myself to the ground. Nikau followed shortly after, keeping the same distance apart, and yet, he felt closer than before as if the rest of the world was slowly drifting away with each passing second.

"I really... I don't want to scare you away, so feel free to ignore this, but I really want to kiss you," Nikau said. "I've wanted to for a while. But I feel like if I push too hard you'll shatter beneath my fingers and I don't want that."

I closed my eyes and turned the rest of the world into white noise.

"Sometimes I wish someone would toss me out to sea. Sometimes I think the only reason I don't do it myself is that I remember a singular moment where I felt pure joy and I actually believe I can feel something like that again. But it's scary, too. Because I think of that moment and then remember that I'm still lost and start to resent it for making me believe there's something more out there."

In an instant, Nikau was right by my side with his arm around my shoulders. He pulled me close, pressing a kiss to my temple before allowing me to bury myself into his chest. I wanted that comfort. I had spent too long drowning myself in pain when all I wanted, all I really wanted, was to escape.

"You'll get there again, I promise." He kissed my forehead again. "I promise you that."