Mai Tai for Two

by Delphine Dryden

  The sudden protective instinct galvanized Alan, riling up his testosterone even though he knew Jeremy could beat him into the ground with one hand tied behind his back. He felt the way he had in high school when some asshole talked smack to one of his sisters.

  Amanda looked about as appreciative as his sisters always had. If she rolled her eyes any harder, she was going to strain something. But then she wiped her cheek with the back of one hand, and he realized it wasn’t so much eye-rolling as tipping her chin up, probably to keep from snotting all over her dress. She’d pulled the fabric tight around her legs—for modesty or out of habit, he had no clue—and he could see what might be a tearstain on the cloth stretched over one knee. Either that, or a splash of ocean water. Her feet were sandy, like she’d been walking on the beach.

  “I haven’t even seen Jeremy tonight. You were his date. You tell me if he needs beating up. I came over here because he didn’t answer his phone, but he isn’t here, either.”

  “He isn’t? That’s weird. We came back here at the same time, and I thought he went in. Are you sure your phone is working? Maybe I can—” He reached for his pocket to pull his phone out, then remembered it was still on the charger back in his room. Just as well, since it was too late to be calling anyone. “Or not.”

  “No, it’s okay, anyway. I should go back to my room. Coming over here was probably a bad idea. Or no,” she amended. “It was probably a really good idea and if he’d been here and I’d gone through with it while my nerve was up, I’d be better off. No time to second-guess myself. Which I’m absolutely doing now. Shit.”

  She made no move to get up and return to her room. After a few seconds of rocking back and forth on his heels, waiting for her to do so, Alan reluctantly mumbled, “Did you want to talk about it?”

  “No. No, I should get back.” Sniffle.

  “Okay. Well, I can walk you—”

  “You know...”

  She talked about it.

  When she seemed to reach a conclusion, Alan nodded in what he hoped looked like sympathy. Amanda sniffled again, but was otherwise silent. Clearly, she was expecting him to answer.

  “Damn.”

  “I know,” she agreed.

  Oops. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Recover, Cortese, recover. After all, he’d just spent hours talking to Jeremy, who’d spent a lot of that time talking about Amanda. Surely Alan should have some kind of insight to offer. If only he could remember a word of what the guy had said. Right now, all that came to mind was something about an explosion, and things not being set in stone.

  He sat on the wide bench that served as a railing, swinging his legs around to the lanai side to face Amanda. “Okay. Look. You and Jeremy, you’re both really smart. Between the two of you, you can figure out the logistical stuff of who lives where. I think you both accidentally picked the same hill to die on, and then once you were fighting from those positions, you got entrenched. Once people are in their foxholes, lobbing bombs, nobody’s gonna be brave enough to come out first. Right?”

  She’d lifted her head and was looking at him with bemusement. “Okay.”

  “It’s not a love problem. It’s a fear problem. This all sounded a lot better in my head than it does coming out of my mouth.”

  “No, keep going. I want to see where this foxhole analogy is headed. You could go so many ways with that.”

  Now she was actually smiling, and the sniffling had stopped. He’d accomplished that much, at least. He’d managed to be the comic relief.

  “I think what I’m trying to say—” Wait, shouldn’t he know what he was trying to say? Why had he ever come out of his room? “I’m trying to say that somebody has to be brave enough to stand up out of the foxhole and say, ‘Hey, this is stupid. We’re on the same side.’ And yeah, you might get blown up. But if you stay in the trench, you’re going to... I don’t know. Die alone down there or something. Get dysentery. Bad things, is the point.”

  Amanda laughed, the sound a musical lilt over the gentle shushing background of the surf. “I get it, I get it. You can stop now.”

  “I’m glad you get it, because I have no idea what I’m even talking about, here.”

  “I think what you were trying to say is that love is a leap of faith, and maybe it’s time for me to leap.”

  “That sounds way better and used a lot fewer words.”

  “It’s all that practice summarizing research.” She lowered her legs from the chair with a sigh, smoothing the polka-dot dress over her lap. “And you know what? I think you’re right. I’ve been focusing on the wrong things. And I also think I owe you an apology for being kind of a bitch to you since...oh, since forever.”

  He hadn’t expected that. “Nah, it’s all good. You were pretty much like all my sisters.”

  A sudden metallic click startled them both, and Alan jumped to his feet as Jeremy slid open the door. He looked from Alan to Amanda and back again, clearly baffled.

  “Uh...hi?”

  Amanda stood up, too, fingers wrapped in her skirt, clearly nervous. Alan silently wished her luck. “I knocked, and you weren’t there, and you hadn’t answered my text.”

  “I was in the shower.”

  Alan could tell when he ought to beat a hasty retreat, so he gave Amanda an encouraging smile and wave. “I’m out of here. See you tomorrow.”

  Without waiting for a response, he strode back to his own room as quickly as he could. He had done enough spying for one night, and he didn’t want to overhear anything else that might get him into trouble.

  Besides, in talking to Amanda, he had figured out what he needed to do.

  He needed to come out of the foxhole. It was time to stand up, whatever the consequences. Time to be brave.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Horseback riding had seemed like a great idea over her lonely breakfast. Now, Julie was regretting the idea.

  To begin with, her horse was a dud.

  “This one doesn’t go,” she told the guide as he rode past on the trail. Her bay had stopped to graze yet again, and seemed oblivious to her heel taps, reining and array of noises meant to indicate it should pick its head up and move along. She was a decent rider, and she knew she would prevail, but she hadn’t really been in the mood for a challenge.

  “Yeah, Hoki has a mind of his own sometimes. Has a smooth gait when you get him going, though. Don’t be afraid to kick harder than that. He won’t pay attention otherwise.”

  With sudden suspicion, Julie asked, “What does Hoki mean, anyway?”

  The guide laughed and called back over his shoulder, “It means ‘mule.’”

  Great. The horse finally responded and lumbered down the trail, last in line. The surrounding tropical forest was astonishingly beautiful, the ironwood trees full of morning birdsong. When they reached the beach, which Julie recognized from the previous day’s kayak tour, Hoki was more compliant. Probably because there was no grass to distract him. By that time, though, Julie had become irretrievably grumpy about the whole thing. She’d envisioned cantering along on the beach all morning, carefree, with the wind in her hair. Instead, she got about five minutes of beach-cantering, and about an hour and a half of tepid, sweaty walking and trotting along the trails. She’d planned, but hadn’t been able to follow through, through no particular fault of her own. Shit happened, and sometimes you just had to adapt to that.

  She took some pictures with her phone, feeling like a liar when she snapped one of the tour guide on his horse, grinning into the camera. The guy was hot—she wondered if the hotel hired them on that basis, because all the tour guides were suspiciously attractive—but she couldn’t really appreciate it. Instead, she kept thinking of Alan in the shower, and the way the water had looked running over his neck. Not even the good parts, like his shoulders or butt. His stupid neck.

  Julie had never had tender thoughts about anyone’s neck before. But then, she’d also never literally cried herself to sleep before, as she had the previous night. After Amanda finally
decided to go to Jeremy’s room, Julie had given in to temptation and texted Alan, not even sure what she wanted from him but willing to settle for a booty call.

  He never texted back. And she knew he wasn’t still out with Jeremy, because Amanda didn’t return, so she must have found Jeremy in his room.

  Breakfast alone. Horseback riding alone. And now souvenir shopping alone, because it was the last full day and she had to do it sometime. Things had come to a sorry pass when even the prospect of retail therapy didn’t cheer her. The resort’s various stores were fun, though, and Julie was fully prepared to solidify her happy-vacation fiction with physical evidence in the form of Hawaiian-themed doodads for various friends and family.

  When she entered the gift store with the best small-souvenir selection and started perusing the shells, of course she spotted Alan through the tall display shelf. Because her morning wasn’t completely blown yet, and a “We can still be friends” talk was exactly the thing to round it out. She edged to one side, so a large conch shell was hiding her head.

  Alan didn’t notice her, anyway. He was busy poring over his own souvenir options. Julie guessed he had his six-year-old niece Hailey in mind, because he was eyeing a selection of corked colored-sand bottles, and the one he had his hand on leaned heavily toward the pinks and purples, in marked contrast to the blues and greens surrounding it. It was a sunset, she thought. The last sunset on the shelf. Hailey’s favorite color was purple, and her favorite uncle was Alan.

  A little girl and her mother entered the store at a brisk clip, the girl making a beeline for the shelf Alan was browsing. She had a twenty-dollar bill clutched in her hand, and a clear purpose in mind. When she saw the sand jar in Alan’s hand, she stopped in her tracks, pointed at the shelf, and burst into tears. No prelude, no warm-up. Just a bawling little kid, and a bewildered guy standing in front of the jars of pastel sand.

  “Kiara, sweetie, it’s okay,” the mom said after the immediate shock passed. She crouched down to console her daughter, but looked up at Alan and assumed the apologetic, harried smile of moms in stores everywhere, the expression that begged everyone in the place not to judge her for the screaming kid. Julie plastered a bland, unconcerned look on her own face and inched another few steps away down her own aisle, desperate not to add to the poor lady’s woes.

  “It w-w-was the last one!” the girl choked out between wretched sobs. “I only w-w-wanted the pink one! You said I had to wait until the last day. You made me wait and now it’s g-g-go-g—” She couldn’t even get it out. It was awful. The girl was only five or six. Julie remembered how it felt at that age, how something as small as which sand bottle you wanted could seem like the only thing in the world that would ever matter again. And although she didn’t have kids herself, she could feel the mother’s anguish at the words You made me wait. That was some guilt for the ages.

  Alan looked at the jar in his hand, stepped over to the mom and the weeping child, and squatted down beside them. “You mean this one?” He held up the pink-and-purple sunset bottle, and the girl’s mouth dropped open, her eyes going wide. She kept right on crying. It was not a pretty sight. It was, however, a beautiful one.

  The mom’s eyes widened, too, then the tight smile came back. “Oh! But you’d already picked it out. You don’t have to—”

  “No, no. This is the last pink one. Here you go.” He passed the bottle to the little girl, holding his other hand underneath to catch it in case she dropped it. Not a chance. The child had a death grip on the thing, and her sobs started to slow into hitching gasps. She looked up at her mother, unsure whether it was all right to accept the offering.

  “What do you say, Kiara?”

  “Th-thank you. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome. Enjoy it.”

  As the light dawned on the little girl’s face, the truth that she was going to get the special pink sand bottle after all, she smiled the sort of smile that explained why people continued to have children at all. Julie made an accidental happy noise, and Alan looked up with a jerk, standing to face her through the knickknacks on the display.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” It came out in a strained hiccup, a chortle that had nowhere to go. Not only in sympathy for the kid, who’d moved along to the cash register, anyway, but because Alan was wonderful and she wanted him to love her like she loved him. It was really that simple. Figuring that out was such a revelation and a relief, Julie wanted to cheer out loud. She ducked her face against her shoulder in a lame attempt to hide her emotions and the blush she could feel. “That was really nice.”

  He shrugged. “It was supposed to be for Hailey. I got some cool-looking shells for Mark and Teddy. I guess I’ll find one for her, too.”

  Alan always had an easier time shopping for his two nephews than for his niece. Julie was usually recruited to help with that around birthdays and Christmas. “I can help you look, if you want.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I meant what you did was nice.”

  “It was no big deal.”

  They were still talking through the open shelf, their conversation framed by a cube of space already occupied by a small army of plush sea creatures. Neither seemed willing to take the encounter into the open air.

  “Maybe a stuffed animal?”

  “She has too many already. Angela said she’d kill the next person who brought another plush item of any kind into the house.” He nodded toward the end of the aisle, and they walked to the intersection and stood face-to-face. Julie didn’t know what to do with her hands, didn’t know if she was supposed to kiss him or what. Alan had a cagey, uncertain look, like he was trying to decide whether to tell her she had something on her teeth. Or as if he might bolt at any moment from the crazy flailing souvenir-shopping lady. She really wouldn’t blame him. The whole situation was a mess.

  “Did you see the little sand castles?” They were adorable, little sparkly epoxied-together creations that looked like homes for sand fairies.

  He had not seen them, but once he did, he agreed that Hailey would love one. They picked out some other things, mementos for their office desks, things for their parents.

  They ended up saying it at the same time, over the conch shells, right after they agreed the big ones were out of the price range sweet spot for moms.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry— Oh, sorry. You go.”

  “No, you.”

  “Roshambo?”

  He threw paper, Julie won with scissors, then wasn’t sure if she’d won the right to talk first or listen.

  Deciding that what she’d won was winner’s privilege, she pointed at Alan. “You go.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry for whatever I said or did yesterday that ruined everything. Whatever it was, I didn’t mean it, because I so didn’t want to ruin everything. I realize this may not mean much since I obviously ought to know what I’m apologizing for. But I’m truly sorry.”

  “You called me honey.” In retrospect, Julie thought that could probably use more context. She could hardly think straight, the relief was so overwhelming. He hadn’t wanted to ruin everything...which meant there was an everything. There was at least a thing.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. In the kayak.”

  “Oh. You mean when we were talking to Amanda and Jeremy, and I was like, ‘Let’s go, honey’?”

  “Well. Yes.” Yes, that one casual term of endearment ruined everything. You should be hanging your otherwise perfect head in shame over it, Alan. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  “I say that at work all the time. Like, ‘Honey, I’m home,’ every time I walk into your cube. So I guess I just— That’s what you were upset about?”

  Did he really say it every time? How had that not been annoying? “It was more that when you said it at work, we hadn’t... That was before.”

  There were a few other shoppers in the store, and none of them needed to hear the specifics of that. He coaxed her deeper into the store, to the ve
ry back where the puzzles and coffee-table books were housed along with some of the less interesting souvenirs.

  Alan lowered his voice. “So you thought I was suddenly thinking honey, as in the little woman, like in a make-me-a-sammich way?”

  Sure, when he said it out loud, it sounded preposterous. In her head it had made at least a modicum of sense. “A little. Like you were taking me for granted, maybe? I didn’t enjoy feeling like the work wife anymore.” She shrugged and looked down at the bobbling dashboard hula doll on the shelf next to them. It was bouncing slightly as if their conversation were sending out shock waves. “I didn’t mean to have expectations. We already know each other. It’s not like this is a courtship, it doesn’t make any sense for you to woo me. I’m not even sure I’d like that. Probably I’d think you were being too dramatic or something.”

  Alan inhaled deeply, exhaling on a long, slow sigh. He reached for the shopping basket in Julie’s hand and carefully set it on the floor before slipping his arms around her waist. “But going straight from marathon sex to assuming I could make old-married-couple jokes like before—that was uncool. So yeah, I apologize for that. I apologize for not wooing you, Jules. You deserved to be wooed.”

  He was serious, and it made everything okay. He made everything okay. That was his special talent. Not the grand gesture, but the small, everyday things that made life sweet all the time. Bringing her coffee. Laughing at her jokes. Helping her paint her bathroom. Knowing exactly which silly movie would match any given evening’s mood. Letting her override his movie choice when the whim struck her, and watching without complaint.

  Looking at Alan now, she saw it. The light in his eyes, the special light just for her. She hadn’t noticed it, because it had always been there. “You’ve been wooing me for years, haven’t you? I’ve been too clueless to see it.”

  He pondered that a moment, head tilted, a fine line of concentration forming between his eyebrows. “You’re right. I have. I was too dumb to see it, too. Does that make sense?”

  “As much sense as any of this. I’m sorry, too. For not knowing what I wanted. For expecting you to sweep me off my feet with some big romantic declaration. That would have been ridiculous, and it wouldn’t have proven anything. I didn’t need that. I don’t want that. I just want you.”