18. Akemi
Akemi
“Check this out,” Akemi said, turning her computer towards Oakley. “Someone’s giving away a whole playset for free. We just need to go and dismantle it.”
They were sitting in the café on brand-new chairs, ordering the rest of everything that they would need before they opened. Kaleo was running circles around the play room. It was still mostly empty, but Noah had installed a baby gate to keep him contained.
Oakley peered at the screen and pursed her lips. “I don’t think there’s enough room out back.”
“It’ll fit,” Akemi said confidently. “We just need to take out a couple of the bigger bushes.”
“Take out the bushes?” Oakley exclaimed.
“Yeah.” Akemi cocked an eyebrow, bemused by her sister’s reaction.
“But they’re so pretty.”
“There isn’t exactly a lack of pretty bushes in Pualena.”
“It’ll throw the whole aesthetic off.”
“The aesthetic?” Akemi repeated. “Of the backyard?”
“It’s a lovely, quiet, secluded space. If you start ripping out bushes, the whole vibe changes.”
“We need room for kids to play. That’s the whole point! Functionality matters more than vibes.”
“Design matters too. That’s what creates the feel of a space. It’s what makes people want to come, and it’s what keeps them coming back. If you sacrifice looks for functionality, people won’t want to linger here.”
“I’m not trying to pave paradise, Oakley. You can still have your flowers and fairy lights. I just want enough room for a play set. It will double our functional capacity on sunny days.”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
“There we go.” Akemi grinned. “Boardroom talk cuts straight to your heart.”
Oakley rolled her eyes. “Come on. Let’s see exactly how much space we’ll need. You bring Kaleo, I’ll grab the measuring tape.”
They went out and measured the space, and it turned out they wouldn’t have to sacrifice more than a scraggly Hibiscus bush and some overgrown weeds.
“We should ask Zoe to help,” Oakley said, rolling up the measuring tape. “She could make quick work of all this. Maybe trim back this podocarpus hedge too, give us some more space.”
“Now you want to get rid of more greenery?” Akemi teased.
“I’ll use it to hang my fairy lights,” Oakley shot back. She stretched and yawned. “I’m going to make myself a cappuccino. You want one?”
“Always.”
Kaleo was chasing chickens again, and Akemi followed him through the yard. She called Lorenzo and flipped the camera outward to show him their baby running through the grass.
“Ma che bello,” he crooned.
“How are things over there?” she asked, flipping the camera back around.
“Ciao, bella. Things are okay. My father will come home from the hospital tomorrow.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m glad he’s well enough.”
Lorenzo nodded. He looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes.
Going back and forth between Italy and Hawaii was no small thing.
And yet, selfishly, all she wanted to know in that moment was how soon he would be back.
She held off asking and caught up with Kaleo instead, holding the phone so that he could see his father’s face and hear him talk. That held his attention for about a minute, and then he ran after the chickens again.
Akemi and Lorenzo chatted for a while – about the tours he ran there, and about the café that she was opening – as she followed Kaleo around the joint backyard that connected the nascent café to Paradise Books.
Finally, she had to ask.
“When are you coming back?”
Lorenzo’s expression shuttered. “I don’t know yet.”
She nodded, unsurprised.
“I’m doing everything I can,” he said.
She wished that she could believe him.
They said their goodbyes, and the space between them felt as wide as the Earth… which was, in fact, the exact reality of their situation. He was a world away.
A moment later, Oakley came to find her.
“Go drink your cappuccino while it’s still warm. I’ll stay with Kaleo.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m just tired.”
“That’s what the coffee’s for. Go on, get.”
“Okay, okay.” Akemi gave her sister a wan smile. “Thanks.”
“Come on, nephew.” Oakley scooped Kaleo up off the ground. “Let’s go bum some board books off of Auntie Laurie.”
Akemi walked back over to the café. Her mind was fuzzy with exhaustion, and she wasn’t sure that the coffee would do much good. What she really needed was a good night’s sleep – but Kaleo had new molars coming in, and neither one of them was resting well.
If things were different, she would fly to support Lorenzo in Italy. For most of her life, she wouldn’t have thought twice about jetting off to Florence. Now, though, it was all that she could do to get through the day.
She needed his support in Pualena. She needed him to be where he kept saying that he wanted to be. And while she couldn’t resent him for going off to support his parents instead… maybe some small part of her still did.
She missed him. She wanted to be there with him… but not as much as she wanted to be right where she was, held by her family, building something that she believed in.
That had always been her problem; she’d always wanted to be in five different places at once. Now, even when her wanderlust had finally calmed, she still felt split between two places on opposite sides of the globe.
This chapter of her life was for putting down roots. Flitting around the world wasn’t as easy as it used to be, and if she chose to settle somewhere else, she couldn’t just hop on a plane for a week at home with her family the way that she used to.
But she also couldn’t build anything real with Lorenzo if she only saw him two or three times a year.
And did she really want Kaleo to grow up without his dad?
The whole thing was a mess.
She drained her lukewarm coffee in three gulps and then went to find her son. Kaleo could always pull her back to the present moment. She resolved to enjoy her time with him and stop worrying about a thousand possible futures.
The first year of his life had flown by so quickly, despite how long some of the days and hours had felt. She knew that the rest of these early days would go just as fast.
Someday she might decide to move him to Italy – or maybe even someplace else that wasn’t even on her radar yet. In that moment, though, she knew that they were exactly where they needed to be…
She just wished that her son’s father was there with them.