Would they ever be a real couple?
Was there another woman in his life?
She was terrified to ask. Then she would get off the phone and curse herself as a coward for never bringing it up.
What evenwerethey?
With so much uncertainty coloring the rest of her life, Akemi felt even more driven to build something steady. And she wanted to do it right there in Hawaii, surrounded by people she knew she could always count on.
Akemi thought of the empty space beside Paradise Books and imagined what it could be. She summoned her courage. It was time to take action.
While Kaleo napped in the shade near Claire and Jasmine, Akemi edited and polished her business plan. She emailed it to a print shop in Hilo, and they swung by to pick up a professional-looking copy on the way to Pualena.
When the girls stopped in town for shave ice, Akemi strapped Kaleo into his stroller and set off down the road to speak to Auntie Kua.
It was time to make the leap.
10
Laurie
Laurie sat out on her lanai one balmy evening, tired and content.
The sun had nearly reached the western horizon, and themaunacast its long twilight shadow over Pualena. The foliage around her was dark green, and the flowers seemed to glow their brightest in the last light of day.
Mia was playing in the yard with Auntie Mahina’s granddaughters.
Lulu and Kiki had become her two best friends after a year of attending Pualena Playschool together at the community center and then playing at the Madeira place all summer. Laurie was deeply grateful for the childhood she was giving her daughter, full of family and friendship and books and nature.
She felt proud of herself.
The bookshop was eking out a profit, and her freelance work online brought in enough money to pay her bills – including a modest rent, in spite of Auntie Mahina’s insistence that it wasn’t necessary.
It felt good to contribute something to the household that had been so generous to her, and it felt good to stand on herown two feet. She wasn’t a charity case.
She was a true part of the community, able to give just as much as she took.
And she was proud of that too.
When ‘Iolani joined his cousins in the back yard, a new thrum of awareness moved through Laurie’s body. Kekoa was out there somewhere, beyond the hibiscus bushes and ice cream bean trees that veiled her little cottage from the main house.
Her kind, broad-shouldered friend was never far from her thoughts lately.
Laurie felt an urge to go and seek him out, but she resisted it.
For most of the past year, they’d had an easy friendship. Kekoa didn’t flirt with her the way he had when she first moved home. She had made it clear that she wasn’t open to any sort of romance, and he had respected that.
Now, though, there was a new undercurrent to their friendship.
Maybe it only existed in her own chest. Kekoa had relegated her to the friend zone a long time ago, at her insistence. And he had been a good friend to her.
The best course of action would be to let this crush of hers run its course.
Laurie rarely met anyone she was attracted to; it was rare that anyone got past the walls she had built around her heart.
Occasionally someone caught her by surprise. It had happened a time or two throughout her marriage, a Deaf man with bright red hair being the most notable occurrence. But he was married – she had met his wife first, actually, through an ASL dinner club that ran once a month in Waimea – and so had she been.
So she had kept her distance, had never so much as smiled athim once she realized her own feelings. She kept her composure even when community gatherings brought them together, and eventually those feelings had faded away, along with all the confusion and urgency and angst that they had brought her.