"I can't believe you talked me into doing this," I groaned, balancing my phone on my shoulder.

I stepped out of the car and waved bye to Anthony. He drove away and I made my way up the steps of the unfamiliar house, hearing the echo coming through from the other end.

Two versions of Zachariah rang out as he replied, "It's 'cause you love me," and opened the door.

I dropped the phone into the palm of my hand and ended the call while I slipped off my shoes.

"We'll see about that."

He ushered me inside, placing his hand on the small of my back as he guided me through the house. It reeked of cigarette smoke and alcohol, but, thankfully, we weren't planning on staying long.

We landed in a living room full of people scattered about. I recognized a couple of guys Zachariah played music with, but most of them were unfamiliar.

One of them stepped up to us with his hand outstretched.

"This is Makana. I don't think you two have met."

I accepted his handshake. "I don't think so. I'm kind of a social shut-in."

He laughed nonchalantly. "Kind of expected if you're Zach's bestie."

"Please tell me he doesn't use the word bestie."

Zachariah elbowed me. "So what if I do?"

"I think I'd have to reevaluate our entire relationship."

Makana maneuvered an arm between us, using the leverage to pull me away from Zachariah and toward the drinks.

He waved his hand in the air with a flourish. "What's your vice of choice?"

"Anything but vodka."

"Your wish is my command." He grabbed a red cup and poured a double shot. "I don't think I've seen you around before."

The liquor sent a shot of warmth straight down my throat which landed at the pit of my stomach. "Like I said—social shut-in. And Zach doesn't go out much anymore. He's one of the few people that can drag me out of the house."

Makana laughed, his hand drifting forward to pour more into my drink. As slyly as I could, I shifted my hand away.

"You two should come out more," he said.

Call it a woman's intuition, but something about this guy rubbed me the wrong way.

"Life kind of sucks but we try to when we can."

He turned to lean against the table, facing me. "What kind of work do you do?"

"Bartender and waitress."

"Ah," Makana opened his mouth as if something clicked in his mind. "Like Zach."

"More or less."

"Interesting."

"What?" I deadpanned. "Have you not met people in the service industry?"

"That's not it." Without warning, he stepped closer.

I would have moved if I had any room but a chair on the other side blocked me.

"It's interesting how similar you two are."

"It isn't that uncommon to know people who do the same thing. That hardly makes us the same person. And you just met me."

"Oh but the way he talks about you—" He smiled at me like he held onto a secret nobody else knew. His relation to Zachariah was a mystery, but he had to be close enough if Zachariah talked about me at some point. "But I guess if you're his ex-girlfriend's best friend that makes sense you two would get along."

I wasn't sure how to respond.

I walked away and found Zachariah standing in the kitchen talking to one of the girls I'd seen sitting on the sofa when we first walked in.

"Makana get you something to drink?" he asked. As if on pure instinct, his arm lifted like he was calling for me to come closer.

I naturally found myself moving closer until only a couple of inches separated us, and it was that short distance the girl hyper-fixated on.

"Among other things," I answered.

The attention Zachariah might have been paying the other girl had effectively been put on the back burner upon my arrival; the uneasiness in my voice rang out to cause some concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just overthinking."

Zachariah wanted to question further, but the other girl made herself known with a cough far too dramatic to be authentic.

"Oh, this is Cherie. We went to Kaimuki together."

Cherie pressed her cheek against mine, blowing a kiss into the air. "It's so nice to meet you. Zach's talked a lot about you."

Her tone made it clear she didn't find it nice to meet me, and she was displeased with how much Zachariah mentioned me.

"I hope he admitted I'm much better than him at beer pong and Super Smash Bros."

By the look on her face, it'd seem like I wished her cat had been run over.

"Right," she drawled. With a flip of her hair, she sent him a tight smile before departing with a trail of Viktor & Rolf perfume trailing behind.

I turned to Zachariah who was blissfully unaware of the moment that'd transpired.

"I'm all for not pitting women against each other, but some people are a walking stereotype."

Zachariah laughed, "What?"

I motioned at the space in which Cherie had disappeared. "She's into you. Which means she's very much not into me."

It amazed me the way the most magnetic people in life were entirely unaware of the effect they had on others. Whether he realized it or not, Zachariah drew attention to himself like a singular light in a dark world, and we were all moths fighting to get closer to him.

Even more impressive was that he didn't realize this was a side effect of his newly single status. Somehow, he'd managed to keep to himself in the months since the breakup. It was just a matter of time before he got entangled with someone else. Maybe being in another relationship would make it easier to juggle my friendship with him and Emmie.

"I think you're doing that overthinking thing again." He tapped the top of my head, leaning in as if to listen for an echo.

I swiped his hand away. "And I think you're oblivious to someone being so blatantly into you."

Zachariah looked inside my cup. After confirming I had been given a proper drink, he nudged it to my lips. "Drink up, bub."

"Stop peer pressuring me." I did what he told me to anyway and knocked back the rest of the drink, wincing at the taste. "Why the fuck do we do this to ourselves? Who are we trying to fool here? Alcohol tastes disgusting."

He wiped at a drop of tequila left behind at the corner of my mouth. "You wouldn't be saying that if they'd offered you wine."

"That's because wine is superior in every way."

He draped one arm around my shoulder and grabbed the cup from my hand, discarding it on the counter before he pulled me out of the privacy of the kitchen, even though part of me wished we could stay there by ourselves. He'd convinced me to come tonight, but I would've been happier sharing a bottle with him back home.

"Just be social for a few hours and then we can swipe something and go back to the house, okay?"

I looked at the group of strangers in front of me, already wishing we were there. "Fine. But you owe me for this."

...

If someone asked me what we did whenever we went to Waikiki for the night, I couldn't give an interesting response. Most of the time, we just walked around, occasionally stopping to chat before moving on to another spot at which we could talk some more. An endless cycle of doing nothing but somehow laughing the entire time.

The fact that I was stuck in a group where I didn't know most people's names and had quickly forgotten the ones I'd been introduced to meant I wasn't nearly as talkative as I might have been if I were with my normal crowd.

To Cherie's annoyance, I clung to Zachariah for most of the night. Between sips of tequila from the flask he hid in his jacket, we walked close enough that we bumped into each other every other step. At some point, he had to pull me aside to avoid getting run over by a bunch of guys traveling in the opposite direction and we didn't part for a good fifteen minutes.

Makana directed us into an ABC store before the cut-off time to buy alcohol. Mostly everyone entered the store with him, but Cherie, Zachariah, and I all waited outside.

"How old are you again?" Cherie asked.

"Twenty-three," I answered. "You?"

"Twenty-four." She smiled at our friend sitting between us. "We were in the same class."

I nodded, honestly uninterested. "Cool."

"How long have you known each other? I don't remember hearing much about you when we were at school."

She managed to establish they'd known each other long as if it mattered to anyone but her. Zachariah was as uninterested if the way he leaned away from her and closer to me was any indication.

"A little over two years now." I looked inside the store and saw everyone huddled around the alcohol section. They weren't coming out any time soon. "How did you two meet?"

"Oh! We had chemistry freshman year."

"Wow."

Cherie was a decent person, I was sure. Everything about her seemed harmless but otherwise misguided, which was unfortunate because she might've been the most tolerable one in the group otherwise. Some things couldn't be helped and I didn't care enough to set things straight so she'd stop worrying about someone who wasn't competition.

"You're best friends with his ex, right? Emily?"

"Emmie," I corrected.

Zachariah's hand, the one draped behind me across the back of the bench, played with the fabric of my shirt. Steady, it said.

"Must be hard to stay friends with both of them, huh?" Cherie turned her head to the side as if genuinely curious and not trying to stir up something. "Unless you're not friends with her anymore."

"I'm pretty good at maintaining multiple friendships at once, actually," I deadpanned.

Was tonight just another episode of me overreacting? Or was I right to be suspicious of the reasons why Zachariah was friends with these people?

"I couldn't do it," she laughed. "At some point, you have to choose between them, right? And, well, we know how hard it is for guys and girls to be friends."

I made a mental note to take back what I'd thought about her being the most tolerable one. I was convinced I was in some rom-com where the random girl showed up in the middle of the movie just to cause trouble. That would've been the more tolerable alternative instead of whatever she was playing at.

"What do you mean? We're friends," Zachariah interjected, looking straight at her.

I choked on my spit.

Cherie stammered over herself, flustered. Her cheeks turned a bright pink shade. It was almost enough to feel bad for her.

"We're different," she sputtered nervously, attempting to pick herself back up from the friendzone Zachariah dropped her into. "Most people can't be friends."

"I guess if we were to assume the whole world was straight and that we weren't capable of thinking with our brains then sure, men and women can't be friends."

Cherie looked dejected and muttered something about wanting to get a drink after all. She skipped away into the store, leaving us to ourselves.

Zachariah turned to me with a guilty look on his face. "Maybe you're right."

"Of course I am." Glancing back, I saw Makana staring at us, though he turned away as soon as he realized I'd caught him. "They're not that bad but honestly, why are we hanging out with them?"

"Everyone keeps telling me I need to get out more. They wanted to hang out so I said fuck it, let's go."

"Everyone can shut up. Do whatever you want."

"You're just saying that because you want to go home," he laughed.

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I held up my wrist. "It's been a couple of hours now. Can we Uber back to your place yet?"

His eyelids drooped down as the night carried on and the alcohol hit him harder, but I knew he wasn't ready to go back quite yet.

Zachariah took a deep breath of salty Waikiki air and, without warning, jumped to his feet, holding out his hand for me.

I stared at it.

He shook it in front of my face. "Come on, let's take a walk."

"All we've done is walk," I whined. "Time to go home, please."

He lowered himself to eye level. His eyes studied mine, using every ounce of persuasion he had in him. "I want to sit by the water for a few minutes. Then we can go."

His bed, which I'd come to miss, called my name, but he looked so desperate I had to agree. I clasped our hands together, letting him yank me up. He pulled me through the crowd and along the sand to a spot on the beach out of sight.

I felt bad for people that didn't live near the beach. Walking along the sand and hearing the gentle splash of waves against the shoreline was one of the best feelings I'd ever known in the entire world. Few things could lull me to sleep the way a Hawaiian beach could. It felt like being put under a spell from which I never wanted to wake.

Zachariah pulled us as far into seclusion as we could while still within reaching distance of the water. Only a few inches of space kept our toes from getting kissed by the ever-flowing water, but the moonlight reflected off the small crests like a sea of diamonds glimmering just for us.

Zachariah leaned back against his hands while I rested my elbows on my knees. We let the silence simmer for a few beats, enjoying the peaceful serenity dancing around us under the starry sky.

"We don't come here enough," he said quietly after a while.

I looked back at him with a smile. "Yeah, 'cause it's the worst beach on the island. The only people that come here are tourists."

"Not here—the beach. I used to go all the time when I was younger but I just stopped for some reason."

"Same," I replied. Looking out at the water, I thought about all the times Anthony and I would drag our dad somewhere so we could spend the entire day under the sun, with a cooler full of passion orange juice and a bag of spam musubis. "My dad used to call me a fish because I only came out of the water to eat."

"That's you now but with your bed."

"I remember one time when we went to Bellows and I got stung by a Portuguese man o' war. When I was crying while the lifeguard tried to give me something to help with the pain, my brother had gone down to the water and found one he was convinced had stung me. He stabbed it with a stick and left it in the sand like a tombstone."

"Ah yes, fond memories of animal cruelty."

"Hey, that little shit had it comin'."

"Okay," he played along, "whatever you say."

"Have you talked to your dad lately? You said he used to surf."

Sometimes it was easy to forget Zachariah had problems with his father because he talked about his even less than I talked about mine.

I remembered going over to his mother and stepfather's house last year for the former's birthday dinner. Emmie was supposed to go, and it would've been her first time meeting his parents, but she came down with a cold and couldn't, so he asked me to take her place instead since they had extra space.

His stepfather showed me around the house before dinner started. Their beachfront property had the most calming ambiance from the water, and the salty air made my hair frizz, but it reminded me of how beautiful Hawai'i could be. Even a house in a small part of a mundane neighborhood could feel like the most stunning corner of the world.

A myriad of pictures lined the walls and he did his best to describe the memories that filled them. At some point, we reached a frame of Zachariah and his father from when he was four. The two of them looked so alike I could have easily been looking at his father when he was younger, if not for them sitting side-by-side. Zachariah would never admit it, but I knew every time he looked in the mirror, he saw the father that left him and his mother all alone and was afraid that he'd turn into him, though I knew that would never come to fruition.

Maybe that's why we connected in a way that couldn't be explained. I looked much like my father and had the same fears I'd inherited all of his flaws with none of his attributes, like the way my father was unapologetically Hawaiian and made sure the world knew.

Zachariah leaned back in the sand. "He promised he would teach me. Didn't happen."

"Do you still want to learn?" I murmured.

He shrugged as if he couldn't be bothered either way, but the real answer was written all over his face.

"Would be cool." When he didn't look at me, I nudged his side. "What?"

"I'll go with you," I said. "We can pretend we're tourists and take lessons."

He laughed at me; his smile glimmered under the moonlight. "Do you think they won't know you're from here? 'Cause they will."

"Whatever. There's no shame in learning something new. I bet we could do it."

There was no doubt in my mind Zachariah would be able to pick things up quickly, as I'm sure his skills as a skater would come in handy. I, on the other hand, would take longer to learn, but I'd be willing to put in the work if it allowed me to spend more time in the water.

"In fact," I joked, flicking my hair over my shoulder and onto the sand, "maybe I'll be so good you'll have to chase after me before I catch all the good waves."

Zachariah grew an even bigger smile that reminded me of the one his father wore. Maybe his father wasn't a good person, I had no way of knowing, but I'd like to believe we weren't all black or white. Maybe one day Zachariah would look in the mirror and see how good and pure and beautiful he was.

"We both know I'll be the one chasing after you."