by Simply BWWM
She told herself that she should be settled by then, and should have made new friends and have some sort of life figured out by that point. He hadn’t hesitated at all. She had asked him to come for the first two months, and he had accepted immediately. He would be there for her, and he was, right from the airport in San Francisco where they had left the mainland together, and they would be together until he left her two months later.
His interior design consulting company had done so well that taking two months off wasn’t going to hurt him, and he had promised her that his assistant could certainly look after things while he was gone, and whatever the assistant couldn’t do could be handled electronically over the Internet and video calls. She couldn’t have been more grateful to him for the sacrifice that he made for her.
Jeffrey flagged the flight attendant down and ordered two glasses of wine for them. She returned with them right away, and Jeffrey handed one to Nicole. “You know, there’s just one thing I don’t understand about Paul,” he said thoughtfully as he sipped at his wine.
“What’s that?” she asked, tipping her own glass back as well.
With a furrowed brow, Jeffrey turned to face her. “Well, he’s a stock market analyst. He could do that from anywhere. He could do that from Hawaii just as easily as he could do it from San Francisco. Didn’t he think about that? I mean, why the big ultimatum? Weren’t you the most important thing in his life?”
She sighed long and low. “I thought I was, but I guess not. He said I either take the job in Hawaii or I stay and keep him. That was it. He refused to leave his life there. He wasn’t willing to consider anything else. Not even a long-distance relationship. Paul said if he’s going to be in a relationship, then he wants his woman in his bed every night, not some painful, drawn-out, long-distance thing that is more work than pleasure.”
She shrugged. “I guess he’s right, and you’re right, because if we really had meant that much to each other, then we would have found a way, wouldn’t we? But we didn’t. I chose the job and the move clear across the ocean to Hawaii, and he chose to stay in San Francisco. Both of us chose to let go of each other and hold on to other things. That sounds to me like we just didn’t care enough about each other or our future together to try to make it work, even though we probably could have found some way to do that if we had really wanted to.” She gave another slight shrug.
“Then you made the right choice, and you shouldn’t keep running it over in your mind. No good is going to come of that. Just let it go, and when we step off of this airplane, you set your mind on your future and put all of your thoughts and energy and focus into that. You can make it a success here, a big success, but not if your head is tied to anything or anyone back on the mainland, in your past. It’s time for a new chapter. So, look forward to that, and I’ll be there with you every step of the way.” He gave her a warm and tender smile and she returned it to him.
“Thank you, Jeffrey. I love you.” She was relieved to have him there with her, for more reasons than she could count.
For the remainder of the flight, she talked with Jeffrey about other things, and he did his best to keep the subjects of conversation on lighter, happier topics that kept her breakup and new job from her mind.
When the airplane landed, they walked off of the craft and out into the open-air airport, feeling a rush of warm humid air wash over them, smelling of flowers and seeming like silk on their skin. A woman was waiting for them by the luggage carousel with a placard bearing Nicole’s name. Nicole felt a wave of relief wash over her when she saw it. It was nice to be welcomed and to have someone ready and waiting to meet her in her new home.
The young woman, who was in her early twenties, grinned widely at them and reached out to them each with a beautiful fresh flower lei in pinks and golds. When she had placed the leis around their necks, she nodded to them. “Aloha!” she said in welcome.
“Aloha!” they both echoed back to her. Jeffrey was positively beaming.
“I’m Tia,” she told them, reaching her hand out to shake their hands. “I’m your new assistant, Nicole. I’ll be working for you at the office.”
“Oh, great!” Nicole smiled at her brightly. “I’m happy to meet you. Thank you for being here to pick us up!”
Tia helped them with their bags and walked with them out of the airport to the parking garage. “It’s part of my job, but I’m really excited to do it. I couldn’t believe that they got you to work for them. It’s wonderful! What a boon for our office!”
“I was thinking the same thing, though,” Nicole told her happily, “how great it was that such a good company wanted me to work with them. I guess we are a good match.”
“Match made in heaven,” Tia replied, and she pressed the button on a key fob that popped the trunk of a brand-new convertible.
“Nice car!” Nicole admired it appreciatively.
Tia grinned at her. “Thanks! Glad you like it. It’s yours.” She and Jeffrey piled the bags into the trunk, and Tia closed it easily. “This is your company car. We thought since you were coming all the way from the mainland to live here, we might as well spoil you a bit, and by we, I mean Ed and Dane, and I pushed them to do it, but it was done, and that’s great.”
“This is my car?” Nicole stared at the pretty misty light green convertible.
Tia nodded. “Yes, but I’m driving you to your house initially so that you can get a look at the area while I’m driving and figure out where you are before you get behind the wheel. It’s easy. You’ll get it right away.”
They got into the car, with Tia behind the wheel, Nicole in the passenger seat, and Jeffrey in the back seat, and they took off. Tia pulled onto the highway, and Jeffrey leaned forward between the two ladies and spoke loudly enough that they could hear him.
“Can you answer a question for me please?” he asked hopefully.
Tia turned her right ear toward him while she kept her eyes on the road. “Sure! Shoot.”
“If this is an island, then how can there be three interstate highways on it? I mean, by the very definition of the word, an interstate should go between more than one state… interstate. These three highways don’t even go between islands, let alone states. How can there be an interstate highway here?” He had been puzzling over it since he had told Nicole he would go with her and actually took a look at a map of O’ahu, one of the eight Hawaiian Islands. It was the only one of the eight islands to have interstate roads, and the whole thing had been a complete mystery to him.
Tia nodded and laughed. “That’s actually a good question, and it has an easy and good answer,” she replied as she shifted lanes and checked all of her mirrors. “It’s nothing more than funding. See, if Hawaii has an interstate road, then we get federal funding. That’s it. It doesn’t matter that the road doesn’t actually connect to another state; as long as it’s called interstate, then the state gets the funding. That’s all there is to it.”
Jeffrey’s mouth fell open slightly, and he shook his head and leaned back into his seat, marveling at the twists in logic of the government.
They traveled along the highway a short distance until it became a road that wound east along the southern end of the island, and the commercial areas gave way to schools and residential neighborhoods. Tia entered a neighborhood called Hawaii Kai, and she drove up into the foothills of the mountainside there.
Nicole could not believe her eyes; it was so beautiful all around. The sea sparkled in the sunshine, dark blue, sky blue, aquamarine blue, with shades of dark green here and there. The mountains seemed to shoot straight up out of nowhere, and the range was covered in verdant greens, overflowing with flora and fauna.
The clouds that came in off the sea seemed to be caught along the southern mountains, and a few of them hung there and wept their raindrops onto the hillsides, where the sun turned the drops into rainbows. Nicole felt like she had left earth somewhere along the line and somehow found herself in another world, somewhere that was nothing like the earth;
it all seemed so perfect and foreign to her.
Tia pulled the car into a driveway of a pretty house that had no fence and seemed to just spread right into the neighbor’s yards on both sides. They stepped out from the car, and all three of them clearly heard the call of an old woman sitting in a wicker chair on the deck of the house next door.
She waved to them and called out again. “Aloha! Come over!”
Nicole and Jeffrey shared a quick glance and a smile, and Tia obediently left the car with Nicole and Jeffrey right behind her as they crossed over the thick green grass and beneath a big flowering Plumeria tree. The blossoms scented the air so incredibly that Nicole almost stopped for a moment just to close her eyes and breathe them in. She thought that if beautiful had a scent, Plumeria blossoms would be it.
They went up onto the porch, and the old woman grinned at them. She was missing a couple of teeth, but her smile was so radiant that she made all of them smile right back at her, feeling her warmth and friendliness right away.
“I’m Aola,” she announced to them. “Who you?”
They all introduced themselves, shaking her hand. The woman might have been old, but she had a firm grasp.
“What you doing here today?” She waved over at the house next door, bright with curiosity and inner happiness.
Tia answered, “Nicole and Jeffrey have just moved here from the mainland. Nicole is my boss. I’m bringing her to her new home here.” She looked at the older woman with a great deal of respect.
“You moving in next door?” Aola asked with piqued interest.
Nicole nodded. “We are! It looks like we’ll be neighbors!” She was glad that she was going to have someone friendly next door.
Aola nodded. “You moving in next door, then you come over all the time and see Auntie. We talk.” She was grinning, giving them a directive. It wasn’t a request, though it was so sweetly put that they all grinned back at her.
“Auntie?” Jeffrey asked curiously.
“You call me Auntie.” She nodded to them.
Tia turned to them with a wink. “On the islands, all older ladies are Aunties, all older men Uncles. If the islanders are about the same age, we call them braddah and sistah. We’re all connected. No strangers here, except the ones who fly in and fly right back out. All the islanders are one.”
Jeffrey’s eyebrows shot up, and he turned to look at Nicole, impressed. “We’re in already! Fabulous!”
Auntie laughed a belly laugh then. “Jeffie, you make Auntie laugh so much! You come over and make me laugh all the time. I feed you.”
Jeffrey grinned. “If you’re going to feed me, I will be over all the time!”
The old woman laughed again. Tia gave her a smile. “I’m going to get them settled in. Good to meet you, Auntie. Aloha!”
Auntie waved at them, and they headed back over to Nicole’s new house. “So, the company leased this for me?” she asked, looking at it and thinking to herself that there was no way that she wasn’t dreaming.
“Yes. They leased it for the year, so it’s yours. I think the owner was willing to give you an option to buy at the end of the lease, if you want it.” She helped them with their luggage and gave them a tour of the home.
There were four bedrooms, a big dining room, a large kitchen, two full bathrooms in the main hall, two private bathrooms in two of the biggest bedrooms, a living room, an office, and in the back, a swimming pool with a view of the ocean that neither she nor Jeffrey could begin to wrap their minds around.
Tia walked out of the kitchen to the back patio where the two friends were standing by the pool taking it all in. In one hand, she had a bottle of champagne, and in the other, three glasses. She popped the cork and poured for them, and they toasted each other with grins on their faces.
“To home sweet home, in paradise,” Nicole spoke out, and the other two echoed her with their cheers.
Chapter2
When Nicole and Jeffrey had freshened up from their journey, Tia reminded Nicole that her interview was coming up fast. She picked up the keys to the convertible.
“I’m going to drive you to the office, and then the car is all yours. You’ll remember how to get to work and how to get home. Make sure you give yourself extra time in the morning; traffic on the highway is pretty thick at rush hour.” She turned and headed out of the door, and Jeffrey and Nicole followed her.
“So, what are we going to want to do around the island right away?” Jeffrey asked with keen interest as he looked around at the neighborhood, the mountains, and the view of the sea.
They got into the car, and Tia started the engine. “Well, there are the tourist spots, Pearl Harbor and a few other places, but if you want to see it like a local, then you’ll want to explore the windward side, that is the east side, all the way up to the north shore. Go to Haleiwa and stop in at Matsumoto’s for shave ice. That’s a must.”
Jeffrey leaned forward again from the back seat. “Shaved ice? Is that like a snow cone?”
Tia turned and looked at him fully. “Shave ice. There’s no D on the end of it. It’s present tense. Shave ice. I know it’s grammatically incorrect, but that’s island speak. Shave ice. Yes, it’s like a snow cone. It’s gets hot here. Shave ice and mochi ice cream are two of the best ways to stay cool.”
“Shave ice,” Jeffrey repeated. Then, he tilted his head and looked at Tia again. “What’s mochi ice cream?”
Tia pulled off of the road into a little convenience store, and they waited in the car for her. A few minutes later, she came out with three cups and handed two of them to Nicole and Jeffrey. Inside the cups were three doughy looking balls: one pink, one yellow, and one orange.
“Mochi is made from rice paste. So, that’s rice paste on the outside. The inside is filled with ice cream. It’s a little ice cream ball. Everyone has different flavors. These are mango, pineapple, and strawberry. I never get enough of these things,” she added as she popped the mango one into her mouth and began to chew it.
Jeffrey and Nicole followed suit, and both of them loved the chewy outside and the flavor filled creamy inside. “I don’t think I’m going to get enough of them either.” Nicole grinned as she reached for her second one. “Thank you!”
Tia nodded and smiled at her. They headed to the office which was back at the heart of Honolulu, only one block from the beach. Tia parked the car, and Jeffrey stood on the sidewalk with Nicole for a minute. He took her shoulders in his hands and looked intently into her eyes.
“I’m going to go see what kind of trouble I can get into. You go up and show them what an incredible rock star you are. Good luck and remember that you can’t really blow this; they already gave you a house and a convertible. Now, all you need to do is find out what’s behind door number three.” He gave her a grin and then hugged her tight, and she hugged him in return.
“Thank you so much for this, Jeffrey. I love you.” She meant it. She felt that she might never have meant it more than she did at that very moment.
“I love you too, honey. Now, off you go. Go dazzle them. Tia, I’m heading off to find booze and ice cream. Thank you for everything!” He gave her a quick hug too, which she was delighted to get, and then Jeffrey sauntered off down the sidewalk with a bounce in his step and a whistle on his lips.
Nicole grinned and Tia looked over at her. “He’s amazing.”
“Yeah, he really is. He’s my best friend. When I told him that I was coming out here, he offered to help me move out, and I asked him if he could stay for a couple of months. He said yes right away. I’m so lucky!” She sighed with a smile, giving him one last look before she turned to look up at the tall building before her.
“Are you ready?” Tia asked with a bright grin.
Nicole nodded. “I am. Let’s go do this.”
They walked in together and took the elevator to the fourth floor. When they stepped out, and Tia headed off to the right. “We have the side of the building that faces the bay, which is perfect. It’s a pretty coveted side o
f the building, and it costs a lot more, but the guys didn’t seem to care; they were both all about the experience. Work is a place to fulfill the soul, not drain it,” she announced, speaking the last part with a deeper voice, as if she was one of the men to whom she was referring.
She reached a desk and stopped there. “That’s actually why I started working here.” She smiled thoughtfully.
“The view?” Nicole asked curiously as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Tia shook her head. “No, the company philosophy. It’s great to be in a place where they care about the employees more than anything else. I mean, the bottom line is a priority too, but it’s not the first priority.”