Chapter 7 #2
“Who’s your friend?” he asks, turning toward her. Alana, tall and composed, brushes sand from her legs and extends a hand.
“Alana,” she says with a calm smile, and I swear I see his grin widen.
“Alana,” he repeats, clearly enjoying the taste of the name on his tongue, then looks back at me. “What are y’all up to?”
“Watching you feed ducks,” she answers before I can come up with something that doesn’t make me want to walk into the ocean. I whip my head toward her with what I intend to be a withering glare, but her giggle says I’ve missed the mark.
“Oh,” Theo laughs, glancing back at the water. “Yeah, these are my guys. I know I’m not supposed to—fend for themselves, ecological impact, etcetera.” He shoots me a look. “Holden already told me. But they’re cute. I caved.”
Holden told him not to feed the ducks.
I glance at Theo, waiting for some sign that he’s joking.
There isn’t one.
Which means Holden, apparently, has opinions about bread and waterfowl. Strong enough opinions, in fact, that Theo has absorbed them as law. I should find this ridiculous. I do find it ridiculous. But underneath that, annoyingly, is something harder to dismiss.
Because every time I try to keep Holden where I’ve placed him—cold, entitled, all sharp edges and inherited authority—some small, inconvenient detail slips through and ruins the architecture.
Apparently, I don’t know him half as well as I thought I did.
A few short minutes later, the three of us are walking along the beach, headed toward a café Theo swears is the best on this side of the island.
I tried to argue, pointing out that we’d barely been on the sand for twenty minutes, but Alana shut me down with a single glance and a remark about my UV limit.
“If you don’t want people calling you Freckles by next week,” she said, “you need to pace the exposure.”
She’s not wrong. Since arriving in Hawai?i, the freckles have multiplied with alarming enthusiasm. Theo just laughed and promised the café would be worth it—freckles and all.
We pass through an alley lined with surfboards—row after row, each one taller than seems reasonable for a single human to handle on open water.
Some are wrapped in thick canvas bags, others exposed to the elements, but all of them are chained in place with heavy-duty padlocks.
The sheer height and number is… impressive.
A kind of orderly chaos that could only belong to a surf town.
Theo watches me take it in, that signature grin tugging at his mouth, and when we stop in front of a tall white board with a deep denim-blue stripe running down its center—outlined with the tiny silhouettes of every Hawaiian island—he rests a hand on it.
“This one’s mine,” he says, with the pride of someone introducing a family heirloom.
It’s even more striking up close. What I thought were sun-bleached scuffs turn out to be etched designs—delicate wave lines, abstract forms of marine animals, and shapes that look like they’d been carved over years.
It’s worn in the way things get when they’ve been used often and never treated carelessly.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. Alana nods beside me, trailing her fingers up the length of it.
“Is this the one you use for competitions?”
“God, no.” He laughs. “This thing would snap in half on the North Shore. It’s just for Waikīkī—fun waves, small swell, long rides. It’s basically a cruiser.”
He launches into a quick explanation of the surf scene here: how competitions are typically held on the island’s west and north shores; how boards vary depending on conditions, length, and shape; how a longboard like his wouldn’t survive serious reef breaks.
Alana jumps in, already a few steps ahead. “I’m sure you know, with all your ocean wizardry, that the North Shore gets its monster swells thanks to the winter storms out in the North Pacific, right?”
I nod, letting her go on. She’s in her element.
“The fetch from those storms hits the reefs at just the right angle—and boom. Pipeline. Barrels bigger than most houses. Maya and Soren go sometimes when it’s clean. I’ll go too, but only to get humbled.”
Theo’s brows lift in surprise, his mouth parting slightly. It’s the first time I’ve seen him at a loss for words since I caught him explaining the chemical complexities of cheddar.
“You surf the North Shore?”
“Not well,” she says with a shrug. “But yeah.”
They slip into an easy exchange—talking breaks, fins, reef cuts, and the different kinds of leash cords—and I let their conversation fill the space between us. It’s oddly comforting, hearing two people speak fluently in a language I haven’t learned yet.
For once, I don’t feel the need to lead or explain or fill the silence. I just walk next to them, taking in the scent of salt and sunscreen, the chipped tile storefronts, and the open shutters spilling music onto the street.
After maybe half an hour, we finally reach the spot Theo’s been raving about. And okay—credit where it’s due—from the outside, it might just be one of the most charming places I’ve ever seen.
Alana gasps. “How have I never noticed this before?”
The squat brick building is painted a powdery blue, with a mural wrapping one wall: a geometric wave curling into a blazing orange sunset, all bold lines and saturated hues that make it impossible to look away. It feels like someone distilled Honolulu into paint.
Theo chuckles behind us, then casually drapes an arm over each of our shoulders. “Come on,” he says, steering us toward the door. “I didn’t drag you here for the mural.”
Inside, it’s far more compact than the exterior suggested, but brimming with so much personality I can’t help grinning.
The walls are lined with graphic tees bearing pun-heavy slogans like “Bean there, done that”, and the café is furnished with an eclectic mix of mismatched booths and chairs.
My favorite touch, though, is the gallery of framed wildlife photos—each more absurd than the last. A Hawksbill sea turtle glaring murderously at the camera, a monk seal with cartoonish googly eyes, a dolphin mid-smirk like it knows something you don’t.
And then—
“Oh my god.” I stop in front of one of the frames, pointing.
It’s a painted rendering of a Day octopus, almost identical to Damon, except the colors swing between biologically plausible and fully unattainable—spatters of jewel-toned blues, oranges, and purples trailing across the arms. But it’s the eyes that get me.
Expressive, unblinking, deeply familiar.
It’s the same look Damon gives me whenever I show up holding his favorite shrimp puzzle: vaguely skeptical, begrudgingly intrigued.
“Wait, Coralie, that’s literally made for you,” Alana says. “You should buy it.”
I want to. Honestly, I do. But funneling money into the self-actualization tier of Maslow’s hierarchy feels fiscally irresponsible when I’m still wading through the lower ones.
“Maybe I’ll come back on my birthday,” I say, offering the octopus one last look before we migrate toward the counter.
Theo orders the works—a full plate of fried eggs, tater tots, and biscuits with a side of avocado, an iced brew so large that it’s sure to burst his bladder, and a macadamia nut cinnamon roll that could double as a flotation device.
Alana, still in recovery from the breakfast mountain, opts for a passion fruit and watermelon smoothie. I order an iced ube latte and an almond-chocolate croissant—because croissants will forever remind me of home.
“Follow me,” Theo says, balancing his cardboard food container and drink. Alana and I exchange a glance, then trail after him through a narrow side door that appears to lead back outside.
It does—and somehow, this place keeps outdoing itself.
A narrow courtyard opens up behind the building, shaded by a canopy of artificial leaves and crisscrossed with strands of warm string lights.
A long wooden table—easily fit for twenty—runs the length of the space, flanked by mismatched benches like the world’s most informal symposium.
We settle at the far end, and Theo taps away briefly on his phone before setting it aside and diving into his plate like he’s been waiting for this all morning.
“So, Theo,” Alana says, adjusting her straw with a flick of glossed lips, “how long have you lived in Hawai?i?”
“Born and raised,” he says around a mouthful of tater tot. “Well—born on the slopes of Haleakalā, moved to O?ahu with my mom when I started high school.”
Alana and I blink in tandem, both of us clearly having assumed he was just another California transplant living out his surf-boy fantasy.
He catches the look and grins. “Yeah. I get that a lot. Not being able to tan past this point doesn’t help my case.”
I laugh, because I know the feeling. I could spend a decade on this island and still look like I wandered in from a Nova Scotia postcard.
“Do you stay on campus?” I ask, resting my chin on my hand. There’s something undeniably fascinating about him—like he shouldn’t be this easy to talk to, but somehow is.
“Nah. I have a place in Hawai?i Kai,” he says, and when I clearly don’t register the geography, he adds, “other side of the ridge behind the university.”
“Wait, you commute?”
He shrugs. “Twenty minutes, give or take. Holden usually drives us.”
There’s a beat. “Holden?”
His smile curls. Slowly. “Uh-huh. We live together.”
He doesn’t blink as he says it—just lets the statement hang in the air like a very well-placed comma.
“You’d like it,” he adds, more casually. “We’re ten minutes from the Makapu?u tide pools. Great spot for the creepy crawlers you’re into.”
I blink. “How do you know what I study?”
He offers no answer—just spears another bite of biscuit and gives me the most insufferably knowing look I’ve ever seen worn without irony.