Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JOEL
A few days a week, I started doing double runs. One before work and one after. Part of the whole stay busy thing. A creature of habit, I ran the same route every evening. I would head north out of the apartment building and head along the canal until it dumped me out by the Hawaii Yacht Club. From there, I would run through Ala Moana Regional Park and down to Point Panic, a park that had great views down the coastline to Diamond Head. Sometimes I turned right around, and other times I sat on the grass and meditated.
Tonight when I headed back, I ran down Kalakaua Avenue despite it being full of tourists eating, shopping, and wandering in and out of their fancy beach front hotels. I patiently wove through them, mentally determining if I had any leftovers in the fridge calling my name or if I should get something to go—all the smells along the avenue were tempting.
As I finished up, I ran down the Waikiki wall jetting out into the ocean and let my legs dangle over the side while I watched the waves. A handful of surfers sat on their boards, hoping for one last wave. Tiki torches lit up along all the restaurants, offering a romantic patio setting.
All of it sucked.
I peeled my phone out of my harness and scrolled back to the text I had gotten from Natalie at the beginning of the week, kayaking on the river. I hadn’t expected to hear from her again after I hadn’t returned her calls or texts and definitely wasn’t expecting to receive a photo. Ever.
The immediate punch to the gut was a surprise. I got the text as I pulled up to a clinic, and responded without really paying attention to what her text had said. I just sat there and stared at her face. I knew I missed her, but seeing her made me miss her on a whole new level. It wasn’t a photo of us from one of my friends. I’m grateful, though, we had that gift—a few frozen moments in time of the two of us together. This ached in a new way because it was a photo of her, in her element, in her town, living her everyday life. A slap-in-the-face reminder she wouldn’t be coming back.
That brought up feelings of resentment: she sent me a photo for what? To throw in my face exactly what I’d accused her of? I was her vacation fling, her rebound. She came to the island, had a fun time with a stranger, and was now showing me she was happy to be back at home, living her life, and didn’t need me to be a part of it. Shaking away my initial reaction, I reread her words and appreciated her thinking of me long enough to send this. She took this photo just for me. There had to be something to that. I couldn’t go down that road though and create a hypothetical. After two deep breaths, I had turned off my phone and went into the clinic.
Sitting on the wall this evening, watching the waves, I pulled up the photo again and felt numb. Our brief text exchange showed me being friendly, sprinkling in a little humor. I was grateful that one can text any emotion they want to convey without the recipient knowing the reality. Sadness turned to anger, which turned to numbness again. She never replied and even though I had told myself not to wish for anything, a part of me had.
As much as I wanted to be oblivious to the date on the calendar, to the event she was probably busily trying to finish prepping, I couldn’t. Stupid was my middle name. I punched out a quick text to Natalie, despite it being late enough she would probably not even see it until morning, tapped my earbuds back on, and found “Ho Hey” on my playlist.
Pound.
Pound.
Pound.
I should go home. It was dark.
On autopilot, I took off running my morning route, song on repeat, lost in my thoughts and needing to burn more anger.
Back at the apartment, I showered and grabbed my keys and wallet. It was much later than I realized, but I needed to eat. Ordering take-out from the nearby Korean food truck I took Natalie to didn’t cause any kind of visceral reaction. That felt like progress.
But everybody knows what they say about progress: one step forward, two steps back.
The TV kept me company while I ate. Once finished, I grabbed the thriller I’d been reading off of my bedside table and popped open the lone beach chair on my balcony.
The night was sticky, and I could hear air conditioning units in overdrive all around me. People loudly conversed on the streets, cars honked, the city was always going at full blast. Across the street at the zoo, they were holding another after-hours fundraiser, and tonight’s cover band was a tribute to Queen. I smiled; at least it was better than the last band they got.
I found where I left off and tuned out the sounds around me. An hour later, I landed on the last page and a small piece of paper fell out, almost slipping through my balcony bars to the street below. Catching it in time, I paused. That wasn’t my handwriting.
Joel:
You’re off with the sharks, and I’m here collecting your requests. I just wanted to leave you a little surprise for when you finish your book. Thank you so much for this week. You have saved my soul in ways you’ll never know. I can’t even begin to think about what’s going to happen when I leave in a few days. It seems so unfinished to just look back and think, “That one time in Hawaii . . .” and know you only existed in that part of my story and not as a more permanent part of my life.
Too much? Oh man. Okay, done now.
Red
P.S. hope you enjoyed the book. Looks too scary for me.
I read the note once, twice, three times.
“That one time in Hawaii.”
Isn’t that what I’d accused her of saying when using me as a good vacation story? She said I saved her soul—I knew what that meant. She had hit her rock bottom and she felt I was the one to pull her out of the rubble. Less than twenty-four hours before I saw her for the last time, she took the time to share that story with me. Then I was a huge jerk. We both could have communicated better, however, her wound was fresh. She was in survival mode, but I’m past that point in my own story now. I knew better.
I fixated on the word permanent. Maybe she really did have to go back and fix things at work, and I had been less than supportive about it. There was a chance she wasn’t choosing her job over me—she was giving her job her all because that was who she is. She was going to leave here anyway. Her fundraiser hit some snags, and she had to deal with it. And I said some awful things.
The way she froze when I used that line on her about being a good story, did she think I had found the note already? I needed to fix this. Soon.