Chapter Two
Kelly
The smell of smoked chicken and teriyaki sauce wafted through my senses as I soaked in the sun's warmth, its rays beating down on my face. My nieces’ and nephews’ happy screams were audible as they ran through the sprinklers my mom had set up that afternoon.
I synced my breath with my Australian Shepherd, Ted, as he cuddled beside me.
“Uncle Kelly!” a small voice blasted into my bubble, startling me out of my daze.
My eyes shot open and adjusted to the bright daylight. Ted jumped off me, and I rolled my head to the side, but refused to get up from the hammock I’d been swaying in for the last fifteen minutes.
My seven-year-old nephew, Kai, was standing no more than two inches away from my face. “Mom said it’s your turn to set the table,” he said with a slight smirk.
“No way!” I sat up, trying to peer into the kitchen that was right off the back patio.
“Kalani! You know it’s your turn to set the table!
” I shouted, knowing full well that my sister was ignoring me.
I heard no response and grunted as I left my calm oasis, which had been far away from the craziness that was my family.
“Kalani!” I bellowed as I busted through the open sliding glass door. I saw only black dots as my eyes adjusted to the sudden change in light. It took a second before they focused on a pair of dark brown eyes I didn’t recognize.
“Aloha, Kelly,” Kalani, my older sister, said as she grabbed my wrist, trapping me in her clutches. “This is my friend, Alana,” she said, as Alana shyly waved at me.
Alana appeared to be Filipino with shoulder-length bleached hair, an unnatural-looking blonde with dark roots poking out. She was tiny, looking like she might only come up to my belly button, and even more concerning, she looked young. Far too young to be hanging with my thirty-six-year-old sister.
I glared down at Kalani, fuming, as the fire in my eyes matched hers. “Nice to meet you.” I turned back to Alana, flashing her a quick smile. “Kalani, I need to show you something.”
I practically dragged my five-foot sister out into the backyard. “Kalani, what the actual fu—”
“No bad words, Uncle Kelly Belly,” my five-year-old niece, Malia, scolded as she walked around me and back to the sprinklers.
“Yeah, Uncle Kelly Belly,” Kalani laughed, “no bad words.”
“What are you trying to pull tonight? It’s Sunday dinner, and I just want to eat in peace.”
“Who says I’m up to anything?” Kalani threw her hands up as if she were getting arrested. Her dark brown hair swayed in the wind while her mocha brown eyes shone with mischief. “I can’t invite my beautiful, educated, single friend to dinner?”
I rolled my eyes and pushed my hands through my dirty-blonde hair, the complete opposite of my sister’s. “I’ve told you before. I’m not interested in anyone you want to set me up with.”
“Oh, come on! Cut the crap. Do you want to get married and have a family of your own?” she said, dropping the innocent act.
“I want to get married eventually. But it’s going to be when I want to and with whom I want.”
“That bullsh—”
“Nuh-uh,” I cut her off. “No bad words,” I smirked as I threw her words back at her.
“Real nice, Kel. Can you do me a favor and please give this one a chance?” She pleaded. “Alana is a good girl. She wants to get married, she loves dogs, and she’s a nurse!” Kalani spewed out information about this woman as if she were applying for a job.
“Where did you even meet this one?” I knew I sounded like a dick, but this was the fifth woman my family had tried to set me up with this month alone.
“We met in yoga last week—”
“Last week? Are you serious? You don’t even know her!”
“She seems very nice! I overheard that she and her boyfriend broke up a few months ago. She’s available!”
“And she was so easily convinced to come and meet me? How old is she?”
“Umm...” Kalani stumbled for a second. “I don’t know,” she begrudgingly admitted.
“You don’t know. Cool, this all makes perfect sense. She looks like she could be eighteen years old.”
“She doesn’t look that young!” Kalani protested. “She’s a nurse, so we know she’s at least finished college. I would say she looks to be around twenty-eight.”
“Want to bet? I’m going to say she is twenty-two. Final guess.”
Kalani hesitated for a moment, and I smiled triumphantly. She saw this and stood a little taller. Kalani had always been too stubborn for her own good.
A dinner bell rang through the house, and the children screamed in delight, running towards the house while we remained locked in our stare-down. My gray-blue eyes didn’t back down from the fight in hers.
“The usual bet?” she asked, cracking her knuckles like we were going to start MMA fighting.
“The usual and The Price is Right rules.” I threw out my hand. On The Price is Right, you lost if you guessed higher than the correct answer, even if your guess was closer. “She’s twenty-two.”
“She is at least twenty-six,” she hesitated one second more before clasping my hand and squeezing it. “The only way you’ll find out is to come and sit down for dinner. Talk to her. Get to know her. You don’t deserve to be alone anymore.” Her eyes were sad as she hugged her arms close to her body.
I frowned. I’d never wanted to make my family worry about me. “You know I’m happy, right?”
“Shush, you don’t even know what happiness is. When you have a few keikis and someone to share them with, you’ll understand.” I laughed at her use of the Hawaiian term keiki, meaning children.
“Have you ever thought that maybe kids are just not in the cards for me? Maybe I’ll be single, Uncle Kelly, who spoils everyone.”
“You do enough spoiling as it is.” She shook her head.
“Kalani—”
She cut me off, saying, "You'll thank me when you find out you actually like this girl," her tone indicating she would not argue further.
“I doubt I will be thanking you. I’ll sit down and have dinner, but I’m not hanging out any longer than I have to.” Her shoulders sagged a bit as she looked away from me. It was clear that wasn’t the answer she was looking for, but it was the only promise I could make.
Kalani had crossed a line by inviting Alana to Sunday dinner. My status as the only single Iona sibling meant that others set me up on more blind dates than I could remember over the last few years. I thought Sunday dinners were a safe place, but apparently, I couldn’t escape them here anymore.
I sat down at my usual spot at the nine-foot round table, right where I had etched my name into the wood of the table. I was eight at the time and didn’t get to surf for two months after my mom had found it.
I looked over to my brother, Kahale, as I tried to telepathically beg him to sit next to me, but Alana swooped in instead, her arm grazing mine as she sat. It sent a chill down my spine, but not for the reason she was probably hoping for.
Kahale shrugged nonchalantly as he slid into the worn red leather booth next to Emily, his wife.
Dad took Kalani’s youngest, Hazel, and sat her in the high chair next to his seat at the end.
Kalani gathered the remaining four young children to sit at the small pop-up table my mom had set up when the family was over.
Kai slid in next to Tutu, my grandmother, where she was silently laughing at me from across the table.
Her eyes crinkled at the corners with delight.
Had Kekoa, our oldest brother, been here, we would have needed another pop-up table for his six children. This qualified as a small gathering for our family.
“Kelly!” Alana’s high-pitched voice said a little too loudly next to me. “Your sister tells me that you’re a veterinarian.”
“Yep,” I said as I shoveled some rice onto my plate. “Sure am.” I avoided eye contact.
Unphased by my short response, she carried on. “You know, when Kalani mentioned she had a single brother, I didn’t expect you to be blonde. Or so...white.”
I stiffened slightly at her comment, but laughter erupted from my family. I forced a small smile back onto my face, but the tension in my shoulders remained.
“That’s because Kelly is adopted,” Dad interjected in his booming voice as he airplaned food into baby Hazel’s mouth.
My dad was a gentle soul, but had the loudest voice and laugh I’d ever heard.
Well over six feet, he was taller than most native Hawaiian men in town, and he towered over my four-foot-eleven mother.
“Does he look Hawaiian to you, missy?” Tutu laughed with a thick native accent. Tutu was a native term for grandma. Her actual name, Ailani, meant “chief” in Hawaiian, and she lived up to it.
“Is blonde even a real hair color for a grown man?” Dad said the same joke I’d heard my whole life. I gripped my fork tightly while trying to keep my smile in place, just like I had all these years.
“Oh, I didn’t know,” Alana seemed uncomfortable as she searched for the right thing to say. She turned towards my dad. “Uncle, where did you guys get the name Kelly? I noticed that ‘k’ is the first letter of all your kids’ names,” she said.
It was common for people to address their elders as ‘Uncle’ or ‘Auntie’ in Hawaii, even if they weren’t related. I couldn’t place why right then and there, but it didn’t feel genuine coming out of her mouth.
“Well, the others all have ‘k’ names because there are a lot of traditional Kanaka names that start with ‘k’. It was important to us to stick with traditional names, but it’s just a coincidence that Kelly’s name starts with a ‘k.’ Kelly already had a name when he found us. ” My dad said nostalgically.
Our family consisted of the four of us: Kekoa (the oldest son, but acted more like a father), Kalani (the only girl and therefore a princess), Kahale (only one year older than me, and also my best friend), and Kelly (me; the sad and desperate one).
“He found you?” Alana sounded amused.