10. Laurie
Laurie
Laurie sat out on her lanai one balmy evening, tired and content.
The sun had nearly reached the western horizon, and the mauna cast 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 her own 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 at him 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.
Kekoa was not married. He was completely unattached, as far as she knew. That made her feelings harder to ignore. But still, she tried.
That was the wisest course of action, surely.
She lived on his parents’ land, in the house that he had built. Auntie Mahina treated Mia like just another grandchild. If they started something and it didn’t work out, the fallout would be too complicated.
But what if it did work out?
She shoved that thought aside again and again – but it kept popping back up.
Sometimes, hope could be as stubborn as a weed.
Laurie took a deep breath and refocused on the document in front of her. It was a dry assignment, a memoir written by a man who had never done much of anything – but he was paying her double what she usually charged, and so she forged ahead.
Some time later, the wooden boards beneath her feet vibrated with a steady drumbeat. She looked up from her screen to find Mia waving at her through the wooden railing of the lanai.
It’s almost dark, she told her daughter. You should come inside.
“Auntie Mahina’s making popcorn for a movie night with Kiki and Lulu and ‘Io,” Mia said and signed. “I’m invited but she said to ask my mom. Can I go? Please?”
Sure, Laurie signed reluctantly.
She loved their cozy evenings together just the two of them, but she didn’t begrudge her time with her friends. She was glad that Mia was so loved and held by their community.
Thank you! Mia signed.
Come home as soon as the movie’s done.
OK! She turned and ran off through the garden.
Laurie sighed and went back to her work. Then a dark shape loomed in her peripheral vision, and her head snapped up again.
“Burning the midnight oil?” Kekoa asked, walking into the circle of light cast by one weak bulb above her head.
“It’s not exactly midnight,” Laurie said.
“Might as well be.” He smiled goodnaturedly as he sat down on the top step. “Once the sun’s down, I’m ready for bed.”
“What are you doing here, then?” She left her chair and went to sit next to him, angling her body towards his so that she could still read his lips.
“I’ve got your new drive belt. Or – you do, actually. I just put it into your car.”
Laurie felt her face soften as her frown of concern melted into a smile.
“Thank you.”
“No big thing.”
“It is, though.” She held his eyes – and for once, he was the first one to look away.
“Could have been,” he conceded. “If it broke up on the saddle road or something. But putting in a new one ahead of time was easy enough.”
“I appreciate you.” Laurie reached out and took his hand.
Kekoa froze, looking down at their hands. Her slender fingers looked so delicate next to his broad, calloused palm.
Her hand was pale after so many months in the bookshop, almost ghostly against his warm brown skin.
She didn’t want to be a ghost anymore. She didn’t want her entire life to be about other people’s stories.
She wanted to live out a story of her own.
She wanted to feel something.
Her fingertips explored the strong calluses of his hands, and everything that she had spent days trying to convince herself of fell away.
Sitting there beside him, her knee resting against his tree trunk of a leg, her arm absorbing the warmth of his, felt right in a way that she couldn’t talk herself out of anymore. She didn’t want to.
She melted towards him, drawn to the warmth of his skin and the pleasant sawdust smell that clung to his clothes.
But Kekoa didn’t bend. He sat straight as a plank, frozen in place.
Then her nose brushed the skin of his neck, and he jumped to his feet.
Laurie gaped at him, as startled and disoriented as if he had just yanked a rug out from under her.
“What are you doing?” His voice, low as a distant thunderstorm, came through clearly even without her hearing aids on.
He had the lowest, most resonant voice she had ever heard. She could hear it – could understand it – better than any other voice that she knew. It came through so clear that it seemed to bypass her ears and cut straight to her core.
Laurie loved his voice.
But her thoughts were so muddled that she couldn’t find her own.
She rose to her feet and moved towards him, seeking that cozy warmth she had felt all through her body just a moment before – but again, he stepped back.
“I thought…” She trailed off.
What had she thought?
Nothing, really.
For once, she had been operating on pure feeling instead of thinking things through.
“I don’t want to be your rebound, Laurie.” His voice was low and tightly controlled.
“Rebound?” she repeated. Her cheeks burned with a sudden embarrassment. “It’s been a year!”
“Yeah. And you haven’t been on a single date.”
She gaped at him.
“I can’t be your first fling after a twelve-year marriage,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “You mean too much to me.”
“What are you trying to say? You like me too much to be with me?”
Right, he replied.
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Laurie, I love you.” His voice was low and intense, and he accompanied the words with signs.
Again she reached for him, and again he stepped away.
I don’t understand, she signed in frustration.
“I can handle just being your friend. But if we were more than that, and it didn’t work out… I don’t think I could go back to being friends. It would hurt too much.”
Laurie wrapped her arms around herself, wishing that he would just hold her.
She closed her eyes and tried to find that cold, logical voice in her head. The one that had been saying exactly what Kekoa just did. But it was nowhere to be found.
She felt only longing – and a fierce sense of despair that had risen up in response to his unexpected rejection.
His hand came to rest lightly on the side of her jaw, and her eyes flew open.
“Laurie…” He said her name slowly, his eyes focused on her lips. “If I taste you once, if I hold you in my arms, I’ll never want to let go.”
He broke off and stepped back, looking her in the eyes.
“I’m one bad decision away from falling madly in love with you.”
“Are you saying that falling in love with me would be a bad decision?” She tried to make the question light, like a joke – but her throat was so tight, she knew that there was no humor in her voice at all.
“Only if you don’t feel the same way.” His voice had gone so quiet that she had to fall back on reading his lips in the dim light.
It was difficult to stare at his mouth, at his day-bright teeth and the hard line of his jaw, without wanting to close the distance between them.
She had ignored this simmering tension for an entire year. She had gotten very good at pretending that it didn’t exist at all. She had maintained a careful distance, always.
But now… just a few seconds of contact and a few minutes of honesty, and there was no putting that monster back in the box. She felt a fierce longing to go to him, to feel his hands on her skin again.
Laurie was a rational, logical person.
She had never burned for someone the way she did in that moment.
The feeling was overwhelming. She didn’t know what to make of it.
She didn’t know what to say, and her heart sank as she watched Kekoa’s face fall.
“I don’t think you feel the same way about me that I feel about you,” he said.
She opened her mouth, but her voice was stuck in her throat.
Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. How could she possibly know?
He’d said that he loved her.
Did she love him? Was that what this was, this wanting?
Or was it something more fleeting, less trustworthy?
How could she know if they never tried?
“I want you,” she said, her voice faint.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“That’s not– I don’t just– I want you in my life.”
“I want you in my life too.” He softened, some of the tension melting out of his shoulders. “Laurie, I’d marry you tomorrow.”
She took a startled step back.
“See?” He smiled sadly and gestured at the distance between them.
“See what?” A sudden anger rose up in her chest, burning away some of the haze that had addled her brain. “It’s marriage or nothing? That’s crazy!”
“I’m not trying to rush you. I haven’t pushed you at all. I had resigned myself to just being your friend.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“No.” He put his hands in his pockets. “It’s not.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I’m not a complicated man.” His smile came back with most of its usual warmth, and her anger melted away. It left grief in its wake, stinging her eyes, and that was even worse.
“I think you are.” She brushed the tears from her eyes, feeling frustrated.
Kekoa closed the distance between them in one long stride. He took her face in both hands and kissed her soundly.
A shock went through her – and then she melted into him, all her worries subsumed by a sudden warmth, no words in her head at all. It was a peace unlike anything she had ever known.
Then, just as suddenly, he stepped back again.
The cool night air rushed in, and Laurie shivered.
“I can’t do casual, Laurie. Not with you. And if you’re not ready for a relationship, I get it. I won’t push. But I can’t handle anything in between. My heart can’t take it.”
He stood there for a moment more, like he was waiting for her to speak. But she had no words. Her hands hung useless at her sides. They longed for the warmth of his waist, where they had rested just moments ago.
“You don’t feel the same way,” he said sadly.
“How can I know?” she asked.
Did any two people ever feel the exact same way about anything?
It didn’t make sense.
If he meant marriage, then no. She wasn’t ready for that. They hadn’t even been on a date. But how many hours had they spent together the past year? As many as most people who were formally dating each other, surely?
But what about their children? Nothing was as simple as he wanted to pretend.
She stood rooted to the earth as her brain roared back to life with all of its anxieties, all of its questions.
Kekoa seemed to take her confusion as a confirmation. There was a quiet grief in his eyes that tore at her heart.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered, tears pricking her eyes.
“I don’t want to lose you either. But this – you and me – I can’t do this halfway. If we start something, Laurie, I’m all in. I’m crazy about you. I need to know that there’s at least a chance of something real.”
It’s real to me, she wanted to say. But she was so full of feeling that she couldn’t find her words.
Kekoa seemed to take her silence as a confirmation. He nodded once, then turned and walked away.
As she watched his back recede into the darkness, Laurie was filled with an immediate regret. She went to the porch steps and sat down, curling into herself.
Maybe this was for the best.
She wanted him desperately, but how could she know if that would last? How could she know they would be good together? What made her think that she could make him happy?
She didn’t want to upend their lives.
She didn’t want to ruin their friendship.
And she was terrified that she already had.