by Haymore, J.
The rotors whipped through the air, and even from this distance, I could feel the wind they created. It was large as helicopters went, and I could see it had seats for several people in the back. But there were no other tourists around. Kanoe must’ve pulled some strings with his friend to get a private ride. The helicopter itself was silver with a blue streak and Royal Hawaiian Helicopter Tours painted on the side.
Ducking slightly, Kanoe strode over to the helicopter and stopped at the door to exchange words with Leo. The roar of the sleek machine made it impossible for me to hear anything either of them said.
I watched them talk. I couldn’t believe Kanoe’s pride was so fragile that he’d become upset over such a thing as a woman paying for something, but this was Hawaii, and I was already used to being surprised by some of the cultural differences here. Fine. If it was that important to him—I’d let him pay. It wasn’t that big of a deal.
Leo emerged and approached me as Kanoe climbed inside.
“Da boss asked me to tell you to go on over,” Leo yelled. “Duck as you approach. You’ll be sitting in the passenger seat in front.”
Da boss? Was this some kind of pidgin English lingo for “my pal” or “the other passenger in the helicopter”?
He nodded, looking knowingly at me. “Yeah.”
Since beheading via helicopter rotor didn’t sound like something I wanted to experience, I ducked, held my hands over my head, and sprinted to the helicopter door.
Kanoe was in the pilot’s seat, wearing a seafoam-green headset with a mouthpiece. I dropped my hands and stared at him. No way.
“Get in,” he shouted.
I gaped at him for another second before climbing in beside him and strapping the seat belt over my shoulders. I accepted the proffered headset from Leo, and then he latched the door behind me.
“Hello, hello.” I adjusted the mouthpiece close to my lips and tapped it. “Testing one, two, three.”
“I hear you.” Kanoe’s voice came through loud and clear. The headset blocked out most of the helicopter noise, and it was just the two of us, talking like we talked in the car.
“Are you really the pilot?” The words gushed out of my mouth. “You know how to fly helicopters?”
“Yeah, does that surprise you?”
“Of course it surprises me! You didn’t say anything about this before.”
I gazed at the complicated instrument panel, wondering about the function of every knob and dial. Kanoe, local Hawaiian pidgin-English-speaking surfer and hula dancer, was a pilot. So amazing. “Are you really going to fly this thing?” I asked in awe.
“Yeah. Be quiet for a minute.” He pushed a button. I saw his lips moving, but I didn’t hear a word.
“I don’t think your headset is working,” I said loudly.
He released the button. “I’m talking to the tower. Hold on.”
After a few moments, he turned and gave me a thin smile. “Here we go.”
I sank back into my seat, still stunned. Shocked, to be honest. Utterly amazed. He hadn’t said a word about flying or helicopters. Or being anyone’s boss.
He was a hula-dancing surfer. At least that was what he’d led me to believe.
But he wasn’t only a hula dancer, he was a helicopter pilot, and he evidently worked for the tour company. When had he become a helicopter pilot? Why? And why hadn’t he mentioned it?
He fiddled with some instruments, then placed his hand on the stick, and the helicopter rose in the air. Straight up with a bit of a sideways drift. A very strange sensation. “Wow,” I murmured.
He moved his hands over the controls, and the helicopter responded, turning gently. Some part of me wished I knew how to do that. I watched his every move in fascination.
The crossing runways of Hilo Airport grew smaller beneath us. I saw the highway and scattered sailboats anchored at one end of Hilo Bay, but then Kanoe turned again, leaving the bay behind.
“Kanoe, you have to explain why you didn’t tell me you were a helicopter pilot. This is amazing!”
Keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the window, he raised his eyebrows. “You never asked.”
“Yes I did! When you told me you were a hula dancer, I asked you if that was your job. You said it was.”
“I said it was my job every other weekend. It is.”
Seriously? This didn’t make sense. If I were a helicopter pilot, that would be the first thing I’d tell people when we were introduced: Hello, I’m Celeste McMillan, helicopter pilot. So why the hell hadn’t he told me, especially when I’d asked about his job? I ground my teeth and looked out my window.
“I’ll show you my house first, then we’ll fly over the volcano. I just finished building it, and I moved in a couple months ago,” Kanoe said. I turned to him. A surprised look must have crossed my face, because he said, “So I was right, wasn’t I? You assumed I’m some loser unemployed surfer living with my mom.”
I reared back a little, stunned. Then I found my voice. “I never thought you were a loser. I know you’re a surfer, obviously, and I’ve seen that you’re employed as a hula dancer. As for where you live, I—” I broke off. I hadn’t even considered that one. We were together for now, and I had to admit I hadn’t given much thought to where he’d go once we were apart. I felt strangely guilty about that.
The helicopter turned hard, and I clutched the door handle to keep from falling toward him. What was with all this tension? We’d only known each other for a few days—I’d met him surfing in the middle of the day, and he’d told me he was a hula dancer. That was all I had to go on. True, I’d never asked for more information. Then again, he’d never volunteered it.
He gave a low, bitter laugh. “So what other assumptions did you make about me?”
“I didn’t make any assumptions.”
“Yeah, right.”
I ground my teeth. “You misled me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“When I asked you if hula was a job, you said yes. You didn’t volunteer any other info about doing anything else.”
“You didn’t ask,” he shot back.
“Okay, so I’ll ask now.”
“Go ahead.”
“So you’re a pilot and own a house you built. And…you’re Leo’s boss?” I guessed.
“Yes. And I own part of this helicopter.”
“And you’re a helicopter owner. Anything else?”
“Yeah. We have three others. This one, one in Waimea, and two in Kona.”
“So are you saying you own the whole company? Royal Hilo Helicopter Tours?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Royal Hawaiian Helicopter Tours. I’m a part owner and a pilot.” His voice was low and tight, and he hardly moved his lips when he spoke.
I’d never been good with strong emotions. Kanoe was different—I’d known that from the first time we’d kissed. He was intense; he felt things rapidly and passionately. The intensity had appealed to me at first, but right now, high up in the sky in a tiny little machine completely under his control, I felt vulnerable. It wasn’t very comforting to know that my survival was in the hands of a pissed-off man.
We crossed the shoreline and began to fly over the ocean. Far below, waves crashed against a rugged coastline of black lava.
“Any other assumptions you made about me?”
Tension coiled through my shoulders. “I didn’t make any assumptions. I just imagined you’d have told me these things about yourself earlier.”
Like when I’d asked.
“And because I didn’t, you made assumptions.” He released a breath that came through the headset as a hiss. “Forget it.”
First he misled me about his career, and now he was mad at me…why, again? For assuming he was a hula dancer because he’d told me he was a hula dancer? The logic behind all this antagonism baffled me. I threw up my hands in a gesture of helpless confusion. “Why are you so angry with me?”
“I’m not angry. I said forget it. Let me show you Hawaii from the sky.”
<
br /> His voice was mild, but his eyes still had a hard look in them, and I knew he had closed himself off. I stared at him, trying to think about this from his point of view. Had I made assumptions about who he was? Maybe I had, a little. I’d assumed he surfed during the day and danced hula on the weekends…but that was all he’d told me. He didn’t volunteer that he had another job, that he had his own business.
But then again, I hadn’t asked.
Should I have? God, I didn’t know. I’d never lived so in the moment as I had since I’d met him. I’d talked about my career, my hopes and ambitions, but I’d never asked him about his.
Yet he’d never volunteered that information.
Okay, I was going around in circles here. The fact was, he’d led me to believe that he was a simple kind of guy. A surfer, a hula dancer, a man who loved the island he belonged to. But I’d been so focused on what was happening between us, I might have been a little selfish in not trying to dig deeper and learn more about his life.
I closed my eyes for a second. I didn’t want to think about this mess now; I wanted to experience the thrill of flying in a helicopter over this beautiful place. It was not the time to argue. I’d ignore his dark mood until we were back on safe, solid ground.
He adjusted something beside his left leg, and we began to descend. “You can see my house from here. It’s the one with the green roof.”
I saw it, perched on a small bluff, surrounded by palm trees and thick greenery, facing a small, shallow-looking lagoon open to the ocean. “I see it. It’s amazing.”
“I like it,” he said.
“I’d love to go see it. On land, I mean.” It was meant to be a peace offering, but he didn’t seem to take the bait. Instead he clamped his jaw shut and looked straight ahead.
Kanoe turned inland, and we flew for a while in silence, dodging rainclouds. I watched him, feeling envious that he could manipulate such a complex piece of equipment and make it fly.
“How long does it take to learn how to be a pilot?” I asked.
He gave me an indecipherable, sidelong glance. “It varies. Took me about a year. I was still in high school. Fifty hours of flight time, then several hours studying for ground school. It took many more hours to get my instrument rating, commercial license, and helicopter license.”
I’d never manage to find the time. Sighing, I turned to look out the window. Far below, lush shades of green covered the landscape, marred only by the grid patterns of roads, the occasional house, and clusters of buildings.
After a while, smoke appeared over the horizon ahead, and broad, dark lines began to mercilessly cut through the greenery and across the roads—the lava flow. It was as if someone had painted jagged black streaks over a close-up satellite picture from Google Maps.
“That’s Pu’u O’o.” Kanoe motioned toward the plume of smoke. “Sometimes you can see the hot, red lava at the bottom of the crater, but it’s going to get choppy.”
As we approached, the helicopter started bouncing around. Kanoe had to pay more attention to the controls. I grabbed the door handle as we flew into a cloud, and suddenly, through tendrils of smoke, the crater appeared below. Shades of green disappeared completely, replaced by shades of ash and black. The crater itself had a high lip but plunged inward—like a steep mountain inverted—so deep, I couldn’t see the bottom through the smoke.
Before I had a chance to get a good view, Kanoe banked the helicopter away from the crater and began to descend the long slope toward the ocean. Black lava covered everything. If greenery had once existed in this place, it was gone now. It looked like Kona, but ten times more desolate, a hundred times more devoid of life. No plants, no roads, no signs of civilization. Small columns of smoke dotted the black landscape, but I could see no red lava.
“Where’s the hot stuff?” I asked.
“It flows to the ocean in underground tubes.”
He continued to chat in impersonal tour-guide fashion as we flew down the steep slope toward the ocean, sharing facts about the eruption and describing the property and the historically important artifacts the volcano had annihilated since it first started erupting thirty years ago.
I divided my attention between the scenery, the man relaying information to me, and my own thoughts. Where had today’s revelations left us? The fact that he was a pilot was definitely the surprise he’d kept from me earlier. But why hadn’t he just told me in the car? We could have straightened it all out there.
It seemed like he’d been testing me to gauge my reaction. But why?
Kanoe circled around one of the smaller plumes of smoke, explaining that he was looking for a “skylight,” an opening in the lava tube where one could see the actual flow of red lava. Finding none, he turned back down-slope.
He’d tested me for some reason, and I’d failed. Why he would do such a thing was beyond me. I’d only had a few facts to go on: hula dancer, surfer, older model Ford truck, simple clothing, deceased father who ate a lot of Spam and mother who’d been poor. It didn’t seem a huge leap to assume hula was his sole profession, surfing was his game, and he was not much more than a party boy out to have fun. After all, that was all we’d done since we met.
And now I knew there was more to it than that.
Kanoe stared ahead, concentrating on flying, his jaw set. His perfect, serious profile ignited sparks of lust within me, gathering to simmer low in my belly. Angry or not, he was sexy. Or maybe the anger added to his sexiness.
I didn’t like fighting—I could usually find mutually satisfactory solutions to conflicts when they arose in order to avoid arguments. But Kanoe was so different from most of the people I associated with. Still, I didn’t want to have an argument with him. I wanted to dig into his head, find out why he was so upset and resolve it.
I really liked Kanoe. It didn’t matter if he was a hula dancer or the King of Hawaii. I only had a few days left, days I wanted to spend exploring with him, surfing with him, sleeping with him.
Sleeping with him…just the thought of it made my body tight in some places and loose in others. Did helicopters have autopilot? I didn’t think so, dang it.
But I could pleasure him. Lean over, pull down his shorts and take him in my mouth. Would that bring the dimples back to his cheeks?
Given his current attitude, I probably wouldn’t be joining the Mile High Club today.
My lips twisted in amusement, and I choked down a laugh. Little Miss Frigid was fantasizing about the freaking Mile High Club. Unbelievable. I’d become someone I hardly recognized. Someone I might like better than the old Celeste, though.
Later, I resolved, in the safety of Aunty Nanette’s house. We would talk about this, and then we would make up, hard and fast. And it would all be good.
We reached the shoreline and began to circle the huge plume of steam emerging from the waterline.
“There it is,” Kanoe said, still with that cool, impersonal note in his voice. He took us in closer. Through the wisps of steam, a red stripe of lava collided with the ocean. At the point it hit the water, smoke billowed violently, mixed with flying chunks of black lava. “The lava explodes as it enters the ocean. It’s how the black sand beaches are formed. The steam can be deadly—it’s full of hydrogen sulfide.”
“Incredible,” I breathed, wanting so badly to touch him, to really experience this with him. But he was too aloof, and I didn’t know how to deal with him when he was this way.
He circled the site a few more times, then turned the helicopter back toward Hilo.
Kanoe
This was it. I was finished. I couldn’t do this anymore.
Better to end it now, when her true nature was revealed, than in four days when I knew it would hurt. At this moment, I was angry enough to leave without looking back. Yes, I’d enjoyed the weekend. Who wouldn’t have? But this was my real life, and she wasn’t a part of it.
So the insecure part of me I’d been trying to shove aside had been a hundred percent right. Celeste had assumed I was a
simple local boy with no mind, no money, no ambition. Of course she had. She bought in to the mindset right away. I was stupid to entertain the thought that she might be different.
As I drove home from the airport, she sat silently beside me, clearly sensing my mood. All I had to do now was extricate myself from this situation. Not that hurting her was likely. She’d shown me today the amount of regard she had for me—little to none. She saw me as an adequate lay, a stress-reliever, someone to slum with before she went back home and became an uptight, ignorant little bitch again.
I flinched even as that thought crossed my mind. I couldn’t look at Celeste and think “ignorant little bitch.” Looking at her confused me, made me hot and cold at the same time. I couldn’t stand those feelings, not with what I planned to do, so I avoided looking at her altogether.
It would be a relief to leave her at this point. To not let this thing go any further. And right now, I had the perfect excuse to leave.
I pulled into a parking spot against the guardrail a few feet behind Celeste’s rental convertible.
We sat still for a long moment after I turned off the engine.
“Are you coming in?” she finally asked.
“Yeah.” I’d left my surfboard in the bedroom. And a pair of board shorts hanging in the bathroom.
“Kanoe—”
“What?”
Tension hung in the air as I waited for her answer.
She fiddled with the door handle before she answered. “Never mind.”
She left the truck, closing the door behind her. I followed her down the path to Aunty Nanette’s house, watching the raindrops shimmer on her pale shoulders, watching her body move beneath her khaki shorts and brown sleeveless shirt. She wore better shoes now and had a much firmer grasp on the concrete than she had that first day.
Inside, she lingered in the kitchen while I strode into the bathroom to get my shorts. They were nowhere to be found.
Backing out of the bathroom, I called, “Do you know where my—?”
Turning, I nearly collided with her. She reached out to steady herself, and I stumbled backward. I couldn’t touch her. If I touched her, I wouldn’t want to let her go.