by Eden Butler
Keilen was a distraction for Lily as well. The winds outside picked up, circulated around the restaurant, and Lily shuddered, rubbing her palms along her bare arms.
Keilen didn’t miss the movement. “Cold?” he asked, leaning closer toward her, as though more than a decade hadn’t separated them. As though it was perfectly normal for him to be so close.
“A little, but I’ll survive.” She closed her eyes when he brushed his fingers down one arm. The movement felt good, familiar, but Lily reminded herself that this was too fast, that Keilen wasn’t the boy she’d left in the parking lot all those years ago. He was someone else entirely. So was she.
“The hair on your arm is standing on end.” He came so close then that Lily’s neck warmed from his hot breath. “I…can warm you up if you want.”
She couldn’t help the mild snort she released at that, and Keilen at least seemed to realize how eager he sounded. She raised her eyes, learning back, out of his reach to watch him. “Oh, I bet you could.”
Despite the mild amusement that surfed between them just then, there came a moment when everything slowed and quieted. Lily had felt it once before, the first time Keilen had kissed her. Her universe went still just looking at his face. So much had changed in him. So much remained exactly the same. Lily wanted to mark the differences, see where he was different, to measure how he’d changed. Mostly, she wanted to keep still in the look he gave her. She wanted to hold the flood of memories coming to her just then, cherish them because she knew the feeling they invoked might never come again.
“Why is it so easy for you to make me act this way?” Keilen’s voice was low, soft and Lily let herself get lost in the tone, in the warm rhythm of his words. There was a tease there, the smallest flirtation that reminded her that once Keilen had been the dream. Her dream.
“How am I making you act?” she asked, not keeping herself from enjoying the feel of his touch over her arm, down to her wrist.
“Like I’m twenty-three again. Like I could forget everything just to keep that look on your face.”
He was impossible to resist. Despite everything she wanted, all the things she ran from, Lily found that ignoring Keilen would never be possible. There was too much sensation, too much emotion wrapped up in him, in that smile, in the warm gaze he moved over her face.
The movement around them shifted and realization came back to her. “But we’re not kids anymore and this isn’t Tommy’s,” she reminded him. There were clinking flatware and laughter that made its own music. There was an audience around them, curious stares she only remembered when Keilen stretched a finger to touch her cheek. “This,” she said, tugging on his wrist so he’d lower his arm, “this would not be good. Not right now.”
The smile held, followed by the smallest nod, and Keilen sat back, stroking the smattering of hair on his chin that seemed to be trying to grow into a beard. “No, not right now.” Keilen nodded again, as though there was a decision he made for himself and then glanced across the restaurant, nodding at Ano and Zinnia.
“What do you make of those two?”
She could say a thousand things, all of them concerns, but kept her opinions to herself. Zee’s earlier frustration seeming to have passed, her niece and Ano looked so happy together, dancing close, stealing kisses with every downbeat that came across the speakers.
“They seem happy.”
Keilen took his glass, smiling behind the rim. “They are. I’ve watched them close these past few months. Looks real enough to me.” He finished off his Mai Tai and set the glass on the table, the moisture from the wet bottom absorbed by the linen tablecloth. “They have a lot in common. Both lost their folks, both loyal to the family they have left.”
Lily went on watching them, wondering if it was only their losses that drew them together. “Is that enough?” In her periphery, Lily noticed Keilen staring at her. “Loss and loyalty? Is that enough to sustain them? Shouldn’t there be more?”
If he disagreed, Keilen didn’t say. Instead, he laughed, pushing back from the table to reach out a hand toward Lily. “I got no answers for you.” That scent wafted around her again, when he leaned down to speak in her ear. “I’m no expert on relationships, but I know when I see something good.” He cleared his throat, shooting her a smile that made her face heat. “I also know we never got to finish our last dance. Want to try again?”
“That would be a bad idea,” she said, taking his hand despite her words.
“You’ll do it anyway?”
Lily shrugged, letting Keilen bring her out to the center of the dance floor. “I have a tendency to do the worst possible things for myself. Why stop now?”
“There she is,” he said, pulling her close, smile wider, dimples dented as though he’d only caught a look at the real her. It made the smallest warmth creep over her chest when Keilen looked at her like that. “I wondered if I see you being reckless. It’s been a while. Time makes us strangers to ourselves.”
She considered him a moment, agreeing but only offering him a nod. She fit perfectly against him when he held her and a flood of emotions came back to her. She hadn’t felt them in years, not with anyone aside from this man. “But this island, home, it reminds us.”
The song was familiar, something sweet and slow that Lily couldn’t quite place, but she hummed along with it anyway, letting Keilen led, letting him brush his fingers too low on her waist because it felt good. The entire day had.
Zee might be reckless with her decisions, she might be making a mistake committing herself to a pretty boy she didn’t know that well, but she looked happy. She seemed content, a feeling Lily hadn’t felt in years.
Until now.
Until Keilen took her hand and reminded her of what she’d left behind all those years ago. He felt solid and safe. The shape of his body and the pressure of his large hands against her back reminded her what it was to be cherished, even if it didn’t last. It was a single dance, something that didn’t meant a thing at all, but it made Lily a little drunk. It reminded her how easy it was to let herself feel. How simple it could be, to let go, to forget there were worries waiting for her on the mainland.
“You still feel good,” Lily whispered, half praying he hadn’t heard her. It was more of those loose words leaving her mouth before she gave them much thought. But he had heard her, that much she could tell. Those four small words worked like a spell, moving Keilen’s arm to tighten around her, his fingers to fist in her shirt. And when his mouth brushed against her neck, Lily thought she could forget everything, right in that moment.
It would be easy to let it all go. Those worries about her career, about the stalker, were things, situations out of her control. In New Orleans, there were stresses that came with the job; loneliness was the only reward. Money was fleeting. It filled no voids and even the work Lily had long believed she loved had grown tedious and unsurprising. If she thought too hard about the bad in her life, away from the island, away from her niece, then she could half convince herself that running away would be easy.
There was a lot she could have in Oahu. There was a lot to take. At least, that was what her imagination told her. That’s what hope did to you when you let your guard fall.
“Lily?” Keilen said, weaving his fingers between her loosening braid, playing with the thick strands until she pulled away from him to stare at his face. “You still feel good too. You feel better than good.”
He waited for her; a hopeful look she recognized as an invitation. He wanted her to take it. He wanted Lily to take everything he offered and she would, she thought. There needed to be only a half a second to weigh the good and bad of tasting Keilen Rivers after all this time. But it was a half second too long and whatever hopeful thoughts she had, shattered the closer he came to her, the sweeter the sensation of his breath on her face felt. A half a second was all it took, he was right there and then, he wasn’t.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a loud shrieking voice came, followed by Keilen behind tugg
ed back. The voice got louder and Lily felt her stomach twist as Malini Wilson glared at her, her grip on Keilen’s arm tight and unrelenting. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my husband?”
Chapter Eight
At midnight, Welo Ridge slipped somewhere between heaven and sea. It looked the same to Lily, as she sat on the balcony overlooking the shoreline at Ano and Zee’s modest cottage. There were flecks of purple and a haze of light and color as the moon slipped into the water that reminded Lily of nights with Liam and her mother when they were young, singing into the stars of things they dreamed and hopes held tight. She thought she’d never return. Not to this land, to this home.
“Dr. K bought it ten years back,” Zee had explained as Ano wound his car up the long drive, straight into a newly constructed cottage that mirrored a larger home across the three-acre lot. Both homes were turquoise blue with white trim. Both housed large porches and floor-to-ceiling windows that could be opened during the rainy season to let the soft spray drift into the lower rooms and cool the temperatures. “He mentioned that the state wanted to demo it and swore it would be a good investment.”
But Ano had taken only one of the properties, the new one where he and Zinnia lived. Lily watched the other larger home from the balcony, a little shell shocked that Zinnia lived across from the old place—the same home Lily had grown up in before her mother’s death, before Liam and Ellen sold the family home to keep Lily from her grief.
“He lives there?” she’d asked her niece when blatant curiosity had overtaken her warranted indignation at Malini’s intrusion.
“When he’s not at the hospital.”
“He’s renovating,” Ano had supplied, slipping his car under the large carport next to his cottage.
“Yeah, but he’s been renovating for a good three years now,” Zee offered, as Ano pulled Lily’s bag from the trunk before she could grab it. Her niece beamed at her fiancé and led Lily into the house. “I’m not really sure what he’s doing there.”
“Maybe he’s getting it ready for his wife.”
“Tu kai,” Ano had cursed, a small laugh between his words. “Keilen’s not lolo. That Malini is da kine hungry for money. Everybody knows it. They’re not married anymore. She just hasn’t let that in her head yet.”
But Keilen hadn’t stopped Malini from yelling. In fact, Keilen had pried her grip from his arm and moved her to the back of the restaurant. Lily only caught snippets of words, most of them insults, but still understood that whatever relationship Keilen had with Malini wasn’t over.
A small grunt worked in Lily’s throat when she thought about the entire fiasco of a night. The mood had been right. The feel of him, the reminder of what might have been still lingered in the air, and Lily had nearly been convinced that things hadn’t changed that much. She’d even toyed with the idea that there could be a life on the island; one that gave her more than money and success.
“This is all we have in the fridge,” Zee said, sliding down next to Lily to hang her feet through the balcony railing like her aunt’s. The woman took her niece’s offered bottle of Blue Moon and had two long swigs down before Zinnia sat down fully. She waited a moment, following Lily’s gaze at the cottage across the property.
“My mom hung that trim herself,” she told Zee, pointing at the fish scale siding that lined midway through the siding under each window. “She wouldn’t let your dad help. He was twenty then and was in this phase where he thought because he was ‘man of the house’ that meant he needed to take charge of the upkeep.”
“And Granny wouldn’t hear of it, right?”
“Not at all.” The beer was frigid and small flakes of ice floated near the neck of the bottle—it was Lily’s favorite way to drink beer. She closed her eyes, remembering how angry her mother got when Liam finished one side of the cottage on his own while she shopped for groceries. “He was a grown man, but I swear I’d bet he was wagering if he could outrun her should she get the idea of running around the property threatening him with a belt.”
“He wouldn’t have out run her, I bet.”
“No,” Lily promised, lowering her bottle when the memory overtook her. How long had that been? Twenty years? More than that? Just then, with the silhouette of her mother’s handiwork shadowed in the moonlight, a wave of sensation overtook Lily and she could not shake the feeling of loss. After all this time, all these years, she still missed her mother something fierce.
She wanted to tell Zinnia more, maybe relate what her father might have said about his daughter’s impromptu engagement, but the night had been stressful enough and then the floodlights around the carport next door flickered to life and Lily forgot about the things she thought Zee should know.
The women didn’t speak; they didn’t, in fact, do anything at all, but watch the activity below—Keilen ambling from his Mercedes with his jacket over one shoulder and his button-up sleeves rolled so that his forearms and all those dark tattoos of his were visible. He moved inside the cottage, switching on each light as he went and still Lily could do no more than watch, observe.
Zinnia, however, could never stand silence for long, and in between her own sips of beer, she concentrated on her aunt’s responses, how closely she watched Keilen across the yard.
“You know, he only married Malini because she was a lot saner five years ago.”
“Malini Wilson has never been sane.” Lily shook her head, remembering just how big of an idiot that girl had made herself over Keilen in high school. She hadn’t cared a bit that the hallways were filled or that Keilen would tell her to control herself whenever she kissed him against the lockers or right at the tables in the full cafeteria. Lily’s memories, she knew, were likely clouded by her own jealousy, but dear God, Malini seemed to still love an audience.
“Well that’s obvious now.” Zinnia took another sip, shrugging as they continued to watch her mother’s old home coming to life. “Ano told me what went down between them.”
“It’s not my business.”
Her niece ignored her, rubbing the cold bottle across her forehead. “They dated for six months.”
“It’s not your business either.”
A quick laugh, as though Lily had cracked a joke and not attempted to fuss at Zee and she continued, nonplussed. “And then, just as Keilen decides it’s not going anywhere, Malini claims she’s pregnant.”
Lily jerked her gaze at Zinnia and a hot, sick feeling curled around her stomach. “It’s not…wait. Pregnant? Keilen has a child?”
“She’s a liar.” Lily didn’t like the way her niece smiled, as though she knew something, believed something her aunt would never admit. “He married her, trusted her word, and then she claims she miscarried, but he’s a doctor and doctors talk, nurses do, too. Ano told me one of Dr. K’s surgical nurses had a sister in OB. They couldn’t tell him a thing, HIPPA rules and all that, but somehow Milani’s bill got sent to Dr. K since they were married. There was an explanation of benefits that included a negative pregnancy test.”
Lily could only watch her niece, unconvinced that Keilen would be so gullible. “He just believed her without…and then married her?”
“Dr. K is a very trusting person. To a fault.” Zee’s face took on a look Lily had never seen before. It was far off and a little sad, as though she thought of things she’d keep to herself. Things that she didn’t believe Lily needed to know.
“I guess he is.”
“The thing is, Lil, I’ve know the man two years and from the first day I met him, he asked about you.”
She tried disregarding the small truth. Kaimuki was small. But there was still a good fifteen degrees of separation in Hawaii. Fifteen hundred acres across eight major islands. That didn’t leave much room for strangers and eventually, you’d run into someone who knew someone who knew you. Zinnia was an orphan whose parents had died horrifically. She’d been taken by her young aunt away to the mainland. Of course Keilen knew her.
“That’s not a shock, Zee.”
“No,” she started, resting back on a hand as she moved her feet from side to side. “But asking me every week how you are or how you’re getting along all by yourself in New Orleans? That’s not just friendly conversation starters. He worried and wondered about you for a long time. I suspect longer than I’ve known him.”
“Zinnia…”
Her niece smiled at her warning tone, not remotely threatened by it. “I’m not saying he’s pined for you all these years, Lil.” The smile was infectious, genuine, and even though Lily knew her niece was plotting something having to do with herself and Keilen, Lily couldn’t find it in her to complain. “I’m just saying you left an impression. Probably a lot bigger one than you’d believe.”
Teenaged Lily would have laughed, possibly punched the air if someone said that to her about Keilen. She’d been so desperate for him to pass a look her way. He’d been the dream, after all, but that hadn’t been her reality. Not when she was a kid at least. “Well,” she said, hiding whatever excuse she’d give her niece behind a long swig of her beer.
She looked back across the property, stunned then saddened when Keilen pulled a beer from his fridge, scrubbing his fingers through his hair as he drank.
Behind them, a phone rang, a shrill, loud sound that echoed onto the balcony. Ano’s voice carried behind it, his tone tired, a little exasperated as he called Zee inside.
Zinnia got up, patting Lily on the back as she started inside, and Lily nodded a small acknowledgement. The beer was starting to warm, but she drank it anyway, vision unfocused before she blinked, continuing to watch Keilen like a stalker as he moved around her mother’s house.
It seemed odd to her, somehow, a little intrusive that he walked on floors she’d mopped as a kid, how he’d taken over the place as his own. Through the windows Lily could make out the walls, beige and bare except for temporary hooks Keilen seemed to use for stapled papers and blueprints, and here and there, a few thin bags. There were no pictures in frames, no shots of Lily and Liam when they were babies; no reminders at all of her mother and the comforting, welcoming home she’d built for them.