Katerina and I are a block from Calum's house when we hear footsteps. We don't make anything of it at first, but the next thing I know, I hear my name being called. My shoulders go rigid as I recognize immediately who it is—I couldn't forget her voice even if I tried.

The two of us turn around slowly and watch as Emmie jogs toward us. She stops a few feet away and pauses to catch her breath. That's when I notice she has a towel in her hand.

Emmie opens her mouth but seems to think it over and shuts it again before holding the towel out to me. "I swiped this from Calum's linen closet."
Hearing her voice again feels like another drink in my face, but this time my heart takes the brunt of the hit. The taste still lingers on my tongue, and though I try to swallow it away, it leaves a bad aftertaste. I can't tell if it's from the drink itself or the embarrassment.

I didn't realize how loud a silence could be but the one between us is catastrophic now that we're in the quiet suburban with only a street light illuminating us. It feels like we've been transported back to a time in our lives when we were all happy, a time that feels foreign now.

"I'm sorry about Heather," Emmie continues as she stares down at the sidewalk. "I told her she needed to behave herself if we saw you tonight but she obviously didn't listen."

"No shit," Katerina grumbles and I nudge my elbow into her side. She doesn't hide the grunt. "What? That was such a bitch move and we all know it."

Emmie is quick to agree and I hate myself for it. "It was. I can't even begin to describe how sorry I am. Y–you didn't deserve that."

"But I did." My voice falters as I speak but it's quiet enough for both of them to hear. I don't pay attention to Katerina's head swiveling over to look at me in disbelief because all I can do is stare straight forward, right at the girl who used to feel like the other half of me and is now just somebody I used to know. "We all know I deserved it. You were just too afraid to throw the drink at me yourself two years ago."

Her lips become a hard line and her facade shuts down. She's pulling away from me even as she remains in place.

She should be pulling away.

She should be running.

She should be in Seattle because at least Seattle doesn't have the backstabbing ex-best friend that fell in love with her boyfriend.

"It wasn't—" she begins to say before hesitating.

It's almost comical. What could possess a person like her to run after me without knowing what she wants to say? She's a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it; I somehow reduce her to this mess.

"I know it wasn't as simple as you're making it out to be in your head. I may not have understood that before but that doesn't mean I'm going to just be okay with you getting a drink thrown in your face. What kind of friend would that make me?"

Getting angry is easier than admitting my heart still burns, and each second she stands in front of me is acid pouring over wounds reopened.

"It makes me feel like a shittier friend, knowing I did what I did and yet you still stand here and defend me." I puncture the words through the air hoping they'll send her running in the other direction. "Thanks for the towel but you shouldn't be running after me."

"So, what?" Her voice juts out like a knife against my chest. It hurts less than the one I stuck in her back those years ago. "You want me to keep hating you, is that it?"

The breath I release is shaky. I let it out because it's the only sort of release I can allow myself. I'll play the role of antagonist if it means pushing her towards something more deserving of her forgiveness.

"What I want doesn't matter, Emmie." I look her straight in the eyes and feel her resolve shrink away with every word. "I want a lot of things I shouldn't. You of all people know that." This causes her to flinch. "Do yourself a favor and pretend like I don't exist anymore because all you're going to get is more hurt."

She stomps away before the last word. I feel more than see Katerina's astonished stance as the silence falls over us again; this one is more painful than the last.

...

Home is that place where we grew up. For me, it's a townhouse painted blue with a brown roof and a set of creaky stairs. It's a complex of dozens of other townhouses that look exactly the same. There's a patch of grass in the middle next to the cluster of mailboxes. A few playground fixtures sit nearby, untouched because all the kids have grown up now.

Home is also the apartment I share with a roommate who spends so little time in it that it feels like I live by myself. Katerina is the only one who comes over anymore. She sees the dip in my sofa from where I spend way too much time. She sees the stack of bowls piling up in my room and puts them in the dishwasher for me because she loves me that much.

What people don't say enough is that home can be a person.

It can be the girl with red lips that flirts with guys that aren't her boyfriend, but she doesn't realize this. Or maybe she does and just likes the attention. She makes everyone feel like they're worthy of love, even when they know they don't deserve it.

Home can be the guy we weren't supposed to fall in love with because he didn't belong to us. But we fell anyway, somehow slow and fast into a burning pit of desire that sets our bodies ablaze until there's nothing left but the ashes of a love that should have never been.

The home I'm staring at right now feels like the only one I deserve. Then I realize it was the one I was born into, so it's not like I did anything to deserve it. It was just always there for me, but I'll take what I can get.

"Anthony?" I yell for my brother through a pounding headache. The kitchen is a mess but I rifle through the drawers, looking for a bottle of Aspirin.

"Kaulana went out to get breakfast," my dad explains out of the blue. The heavy morning silence is eradicated by my father's appearance, and I hear the scratch of his favorite chair sliding away from the dining table before he sits down.

I can't remember the last time he called us by our first names. Our Hawaiian names used to be reserved for when we got in trouble; now it's the opposite.

"Why are you in a mood?"

I let the drawer rattle a little too loudly when I close it in defeat. "Why do you always ask me that when I come here?"

"Because you always have a stink face when you're here, Wailana. Don't act like I don't see it. I helped make you. I know every one of your faces."

I'm quiet as I reach into the fridge and pull out a can of soda. The top pops open with a satisfying sizzle and I guzzle down the beverage like it'll give me some sort of courage. If only it were spiked with a little Patrón, maybe I would have the willpower to say everything on my mind.

"E ʻōlelo mai iaʻu I ka meli," my father speaks with an authority I can't question.

"Emmie is back in town."

My dad shakes his head and places his arm down on the table. "Tell me something I don't know."

I look at him over the top of the soda can. "How do you know she's back? I didn't tell you."

"Kaulana acts like he doesn't care but he does," is his explanation. I don't know what it means but I can deduce my brother told him about Emmie's return. I would question how my brother knows but that isn't as surprising. "Is she the only one back in town?"

He doesn't know the whole story as I didn't have it in me to share it with him, but my father knows enough. There's been an elephant in the room for the past year and everyone sees it. Hell, the way they talked about Zachariah around me shifted even before everything imploded. My family can't hide anything from each other.

"No, she's not," I murmur, afraid that saying it louder will somehow make it more real. As if the words I whisper manifest into reality and not the other way around.

We were never a family of free-flowing emotions; we operate in subtleties and indirect declarations of love. I know he's struggling with finding the words to comfort me.

"Wailana," my father warns before diving into the deep end.

I envision him younger, with less speckled hair and a smaller width to his belly, waiting in the water for me with open arms. I'm a young babe with wildly curly hair that gets in the way so I push it out of my face with childlike frustration. My swimsuit is bright purple and glistens against my body from nervous sweat. He's ready to catch me but I see the waves coming closer to shore and feel like they're miles above me. I'm too scared to go in. But my dad waits for me, and promises me he'll always be there to catch me. He'd never let the waves pull me under.

"When did he return?"

He doesn't mention Zachariah's name because he knows its hold over me. I hate that it does.

"Why do you give him that kind of power over you?" he continues as if it's that simple.

I sigh and pull out the chair across from him. This kind of confrontation happens every time I come here. It's not that I don't like my father; I hate that he's not afraid to call me out on my shit.

"It's not that easy," I tell him and it feels like a weight pressing down on my chest. "You don't choose who has power over you."

"Bullshit. You control your mana and who has it over you. If you don't want him in your life anymore, you get rid of him."

"He got rid of himself. And then decided to come back." I'm exasperated but I don't flee because it just reminds me of my resemblance to him. We're more alike than I want to admit. "I can't control that."

"You can control how he makes you feel."

"That's not how love works."

My father scoffs. "This moping isn't love, Wailana. You need to move on with your life. Not," he gestures vaguely, "doing whatever you're doing now."

"If love means searching for her in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey then I don't want that either."

It's a low blow; I know this. It doesn't stop me from saying it, and it doesn't make me take it back when my father disappears into his dungeon. I'm once again left alone, waiting for someone but not knowing who. I tell myself it's my brother because he helps me take my mind off of things.

I debate if I'm desperate enough to go to the McDonald's across the street for breakfast instead. I would wait for the dim sum place to open up but it's so tainted by the memory of him that I haven't brought myself to return in over a year.

After an hour of waiting for Anthony to come home, I decide to cut my losses and head back to my apartment. There isn't any noise coming from my dad's bedroom so I don't bother saying goodbye.

When I push open the front door, it's blocked by something hard, and a pained groan echoes back at me. I'm ready to drop my stuff back inside at Anthony's late arrival when I swing it open and realize it isn't him.

Zachariah curses under his breath as he shakes his hand in the air, his knuckles slightly reddened.

"Seeing him here again up close where the green in his eyes swirl around my face feels like the swell before the climax of a symphonic piece.

"Alexandra."

I close my eyes briefly at the sound of my name falling from his lips. It still sounds sweet, like it was given to me just to hear him say it.

"What do you want, Zachariah?"

His jaw ticks. I still remember the way his skin feels against my hands like smooth marble. Even now when he looks like he's been hit by a train, Zachariah is a work of art that deserves to be admired.

"I wanted to check if you were okay after last night. I figured you'd come here."

I pry my eyes away from him and find something else, anything else, to look at, and I settle for the backdrop of those all-knowing skies. They're turned gray and murky since I've driven here.

"I'm not a problem you need to solve, Zach."

He steps forward out of habit; we always gravitate to each other without realizing it.

I back away because I can't stand being this close to him. Luckily, he takes the hint and preserves the distance. It's not much, but it's enough that I don't feel the need to slam the door in his face.

"Just because things went down the way they did doesn't mean I stopped caring about you."

His words echo what Emmie said to me last night. They describe a version of me that deserves their care but this version doesn't exist anymore. All they're doing is making the guilt I've harbored for two years resurface like a dirty secret I've tried to hide at the bottom of the ocean.

I close my eyes tighter as if I can blink away all of my problems if I try hard enough. "I don't need you to care about me. We've moved past that."

"Have we?" he half scoffs, half laughs. "Is that what this is right now? A new us?"

"I don't know, Zach!" I throw my hands in the air and laugh humorlessly. "Since you ran to the Big Island a year and a half ago, I'd say this is the best we could ask for."

"I didn't come here to fight with you. I care about you. This isn't us." Zachariah lets out a deep breath. "Please just tell me you're okay."

"No, I'm not okay, Zach. I haven't been for a while. And there is no us anymore. There never was." The words tumble out of me without my consent. He's the last person I want to spill my guts to, but he's also the person who gets me most in the world and it means I can't control myself. "I lost the two most important people in my life because of some dumb mistake I made and I'm just...ready to move on. I can't do that if you show up unannounced in my life like we still have any sort of claim on each other."

He's silent for a moment; it feels like hours that we stand feet away from each other, our hearts even further apart.

"You might think denial is closure but it's not going to happen. And the sooner you realize this..."

He takes a step back and turns around before he stops himself, swiveling back with an expression far less concerned than when he first saw me.

"We were something. Because if we weren't, this wouldn't hurt so much."

"So says the person that tried to solve his problems by running. If that doesn't scream denial then I don't know what does." My eyes are hard and cold. "If we were anything, maybe you wouldn't have run away."

"You pushed me away, remember?"

"I didn't do a good enough job if you thought it was a good idea to show up here. Spare me the trouble and don't remind me of that mistake again."

I push past him, careful to not let any part of our bodies touch. I don't want to spend an hour in the shower trying to scrub myself clean of him again.

When I pull my car out of the parking spot, I don't look back.