by Claire Adams
"He's not leaving? You convinced him to stay?"
"I didn't do anything. He just told me this morning that he wasn't going back. He turned down a deal this producer had for him in LA and said he didn't have anything to go back to there. He wants to stay here."
"Permanently?" she asked.
"I hope so. I talked to his dad this morning."
"What? That's major. He wouldn't let you unless he was really serious."
"I guess," I said giggling. "I'm just so happy. I didn't realize how stressed out it was making me, preparing to see him go. I feel like I can just enjoy him now. I can kiss him and not worry that I won't be able to again, you know?"
"I'm really happy for you, Abby. Both of you. I think you guys saved each other this summer."
"Saved?" I scoffed.
"You showed up at just the right time. You both had things you needed to get over, and you helped each other out." I shrugged. I guess you could look at it that way.
"Maybe," I said.
"Maybe? I hardly even know you anymore. I've never met loved-up Abby before." I laughed.
"I could say the same about you. I finally have both my friends back now," I said, referring to her and Keno.
"About that..." she said. I panicked.
"About that what? Did you guys break up again?"
"I guess he technically is my ex-boyfriend if he's my fiancé now," she said. I squealed, making her laugh.
"When were you going to tell me? Where's the ring?"
"I was going to show you today, but Keno took it back because we had to get it resized."
"Oh my God, Makani, congratulations. This is so great," I said, hugging her.
"I guess we both won this summer," she said.
"I'll say. When's the wedding?"
"This winter. We don't have to wait. We were talking about doing this already before the breakup. The only reason we're having a ceremony is because of our families."
"And me. I'd never forgive you if you eloped," I teased.
"You're next," she said, grinning.
"Slow down," I laughed. "We're not in a hurry."
"He's moving here now, so you have all the time in the world," she mused. I smiled.
It felt like a dream. Nate had told me what he was doing and I had heard him tell his father what he was doing, but for some reason, him going to Joseph and telling him that he was interested in a regular performing position at the hotel was what really sealed the deal for me and made it feel real.
Even better, was he was performing tonight. This was one of his options. He had creative freedom and would get paid to make music. I didn’t know whether he saw himself doing this when he was thinking about a career in music, but this took away the stress of the cutthroat, money-hungry industry that had screwed him over before. Just him and his music the way that he wanted.
I had watched him do this enough times that it shouldn’t have taken my breath away, but it did. I hooted and clapped with the audience when he took the stage. I watched, completely drawn by his presence on stage and his amazing music. I felt happy and smug knowing that the incredible man on stage was coming home with me. They thought they had him, but he was all mine.
Makani, Keno, and I were waiting with drinks for Nate when he came off the stage.
"How'd I do?" he asked, coming up to the bar where we were waiting. I kissed him, handing him a drink.
"Amazing. As usual."
"I heard the good news. You're one of us now," Makani said to him.
"I heard yours, too, congratulations," he said.
"How did you know before I did?" I asked.
"I told him," Keno said.
"Since you're both here, I think it goes without saying that you're both in the wedding party," Makani said.
"How did he ask you? Did he get down on one knee?” I asked her.
"You gotta propose on one knee," Nate said.
"I go to the house, and he tells me he’s waiting for me in the garden. I go out there and it's completely dark. I can't see him anywhere. I start going back into the house and suddenly all these lamps turn on and he's standing there. He comes up to me and tells me that I’m the love of his life and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me," Makani said, beaming. Keno stood next to her with his arm around her waist.
"Nice. Did she cry?" Nate asked Keno. I swatted him on the chest. What kind of question was that?
"Oh, yeah," Keno said, laughing.
"You were trying to make me cry?" Makani asked him.
"That's when you know you knocked it out of the park," Nate said.
"Only happy tears, honey," Keno said to Makani.
"How soon before we can expect kids?" Nate asked. Makani blushed and Keno laughed, hugging her to his side.
"Nate, you gotta slow down. At least let us get married first. You know, you remind me of this story I heard-"
"No. Don't. Just don't," Makani said, cutting him off.
"You don't want to hear it?" he asked.
"No," Nate and I said at the same time. Makani kissed his cheek, laughing. He could be a little long winded sometimes; we weren't trying to stay up all night.
We hung out while the luau shut down and said goodbye to Makani and Keno, making our way down to the beach to my place. I smiled making the walk, thinking we'd do this often: take walks on the beach. I had put it all on the line, falling for Nate, and here we were going home together.
There was no more doubt. No more fear. No more anxiety. Only us, and the future.
"I'm really happy you decided to stay," I told him.
"I am, too."
"I think living here is going to be good for you."
"Being with you is going to be good for me," he said.
"I love you, Nate."
"I love you too, babe."
"Are you excited?" I asked carefully.
"I can't wait."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nate
Three Months Later
I'd never been to a Hawai'ian wedding before. Keno's family had wanted something a lot more traditional, while Makani's family was a little more modern. They came to a compromise that looked like a wedding of about one hundred people at a public park overlooking the ocean.
It had only been three months since Keno had proposed. I asked him over and over whether it was happening so fast because she was pregnant, but he kept denying it.
It didn't matter anyway. They were getting married. I was happy for them. After Kirsten, I had to admit, I wasn't that excited to try doing it again.
Maybe it really did come down to whether you were marrying the right person. Keno thought Makani made the sun rise every morning, and hey, I got it. I thought Abby was an actual angel and I had just been the lucky shmuck she had felt sorry for and decided to give some love to.
I had loved Kirsten, but I didn't remember feeling what I saw between Keno and Makani with her. I didn't remember feeling for her what I felt for Abby. Maybe that was a sign that I wouldn't be paying Abby a divorce settlement in the future when it all went to shit, but I didn't see the need to rush anything.
She was still in school, and I was still moving my life from LA to Lanai. I had had to have a few flights back just to arrange everything and make sure I wiped that slate clean. I was stoked on Lanai. I understood why Abby and Keno loved it so much. It certainly didn't hurt that I had some actual friends now.
I had gone almost twenty-eight years of my life without having ever been a groomsman at someone's wedding. It was kind of embarrassing when I thought about it. Kirsten and I had had a really small ceremony at my house with like, ten guests. It hadn't felt anything like this.
The people who weren't family were friends, colleagues, and people who had known Makani and Keno since they were young. There were old teachers, former classmates, people who worked at the market in the city, everyone.
I liked it. It was great feeling like you belonged to a community. It was like it was everyone's big day, not just theirs
.
Speaking of big day, Keno had been nervous as fuck since we had gotten to the ceremony.
He had been asking me how to deal, but I wasn't sure if he wanted advice from someone who had ended up getting a divorce. I just told him to wait till Makani showed up, then he'd be able to calm down. I was standing at the front of the ceremony waiting for it to begin with him, his brother who was his best man, and one other guy who was his last groomsman.
Makani walked down the aisle to the Hawai'ian Wedding Song instead of the bridal march most people knew. Before she did, though, her bridal party walked down the aisle. I watched the other girls walk down the aisle waiting for Abby's turn. She was maid of honor, so she went in just before Makani.
She and Keno were wearing white, but her bridesmaids, Abby included, had these long, flowy dresses that were cotton-candy pink. She took my breath away coming down the aisle. She looked really pretty in the dress, but she had these white flowers in her hair and I don't know, maybe it was because we were at a wedding and she was walking down an aisle. It put some crazy ideas in my head.
That was my girl.
Where the fuck would I be if she hadn't come to my suite that day to tell me to come to the luau? Definitely not here.
I was coming up on six months dope free, we were living together, and I had just gotten more and more requests from producers to work with them. She did that. Even if I had managed to stop using on my own, if we hadn't met, if she hadn't refused to give up on me, I would have gone back to LA and probably ended up trying to make it work again with Remus, which would have driven me fucking crazy.
I was happy. I had forgotten what it felt like to wake up and want to go back to sleep because everything sucked. I liked where I was and the people I was around. I loved her. She was the brightest and best thing in my life. She had met my dad, and he had felt the same way. She was perfect.
The ceremony was really nice. It really said something that the two of them were together again after they had broken up. Not every couple was like that. I thought I deserved a little credit helping them patch things up, but I didn't tell them. It was their wedding – I could just do it during the toasts.
The reception was a huge luau-style party. The feast was ridiculous; eating here had ruined me for other food whenever I had to fly back to the mainland. Abby was picking off my plate at our table. Being part of the wedding party, we were all sitting together. There was an open bar, but we didn't need booze tonight.
"How does it feel to be married?" Abby asked Makani.
"Amazing," she said, smiling.
"Hold on to that. Whenever he pisses you off, just remember women live longer than men do. He's going out first," I said.
"Not all of us are cynics like you, Nate," Keno said, laughing.
"When he fucks up, just tell me. I'll sort him out," I told her. She laughed.
"I'll take that as an invitation to make Abby the same promise," she said.
"Am I still on probation?" I asked, laughing.
"You've lasted this long without messing up," Keno said.
"It never ends," Makani said. "We're sort of a package deal." She wasn't kidding. That was sort of what life here was about: that weird closeness you develop when there's so few of you around. It would take getting used to, but I was getting there. Any day of the week, this beat LA, hands down.
The entertainment began, and I went up on stage to perform a song I had written with the wedding band. That was sort of my thing now. I only did things that I cared about for people I cared about. It was a hell of a way to live. I didn't know why I hadn't started earlier.
Epilogue
Abby
Two Years Later
Something I always thought would make me love Lanai even more than I already did was being able to see the sun rise over the water instead of setting. The morning sun had just begun illuminating our bedroom.
I was awake, just sort of slipping in and out of wakefulness, enjoying the feel of the sun on my naked body and the sound of Nate's playing infiltrating the rest of the house from the living room.
The wall facing the water in our bedroom wasn't a wall at all. It was all glass, with a sliding door that opened onto a balcony. He had asked for it just for me, knowing how I felt about mornings. We had gone back and forth about the design of the house for months before agreeing on something that was small enough for me to be comfortable in, and grand enough for Nate to feel like he was giving me a gift by having it built.
I had been a little sad about leaving my beachside hut near the Four Seasons, but this place was nice, too. We had designed it from the ground up and Nate had called it my present for our one year anniversary when we had moved in. I had wanted something small and cozy for two people to live in that didn't feel cold and empty. He had drawn inspiration from a beachfront villa he and his parents would stay in when they would come to Hawai'i when he was a child.
The compromise had been a scaled down villa on the eastern coast of the island overlooking the beach. It was secluded, but not isolated. We had our privacy, but the city was less than twenty minutes away when we really wanted to go.
I stretched in the sunlight like a lizard basking on a rock. Nate often played in the morning. His inspiration hit at the strangest times, but I loved when the sun was just creeping up the horizon and his playing infiltrated my fading dreams. I could hear his voice, too; he was singing. He composed and wrote more than he sang, so it was always a treat when he did.
It was time to get up. I wasn't even tired anymore, I was just being lazy. I had graduated a while back and the summer peak season had just come to an end. I was enjoying my days off after a busy season. I climbed out of bed and walked to our split closet. I pulled on a pair of panties and grabbed one of his worn old t-shirts to go downstairs in.
I walked down the stairs, following the music. The closer I got, the clearer I heard the song. I recognized it. It was the one he had written for me his first summer here. He tended to play a lot of the old stuff he had written with Remus, too.
He had distanced himself from the band since he had ventured out on his own solo career, but since he had writing credits on so many of the band's songs, people were constantly finding out about Nate through the band anyway.
If the balcony upstairs was for me, the recording studio basement was for him. I had felt he needed it to make up for the fact that we lived so far from Los Angeles where the people he collaborated with lived. Having a studio at home meant he didn't always have to leave when he needed to record. The times he did have to travel for shows were bad enough, especially when I couldn't join him.
His beautiful grand piano was in the living room. I walked into the room seeing him, but stopped. It was starting to get light outside but the room was illuminated with soft yellow light from candles on the mantle and coffee table. A sea of blood red rose petals covered the floor between me and Nate at the piano. The scene was soft and romantic, but we’d already celebrated two years a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know what this was for.
"Nate?" I called carefully, walking into the room, feeling petals beneath my feet. The playing stopped and he looked over his shoulder at me. He didn't have a shirt on. He was on the bench in just a pair of pajama pants. He smiled seeing me and waved me over.
"Morning, babe," he said, grinning.
"Hey," I said smiling, walking up to the bench. I sat next to him with my back to the piano so I could face him. He kissed me sweetly. "What happened in here?" I asked.
"Do you like it?"
"It's beautiful, but I don't know what we're celebrating."
"Do I need a reason to do something nice for you?" he asked, smiling.
"This is for me?"
"Everything I do is for you, Abby," he said.
It had been two years of hearing him say things like that to me and they still never failed to fill me up with insane pleasure. He was a songwriter, he knew how to say things to make them sound the sweetest, but that wasn't even where it stoppe
d. I believed him when he said things to me because he was generous with his words, his heart, his body, his money. He gave me everything.
"I love it," I said. "Thank you."
"I love doing things for you; don't mention it. I should be the one thanking you," he said.
"Me? What for?" I asked.
"For all the delicious food you make me, for coming with me on tour, for being my biggest supporter," he said making a list.
"I do those things because I love you, Nate. You don't have to thank me."
"I wouldn't be able to do anything without you, Abby," he said.
"Oh, come on. What were you doing before we met?"
"Nothing," he said seriously. "Nothing good. I wasn't making music, I was high all the time; I was a junkie."
I sighed. I remembered. The more distance we gained from the time, the more dire it seemed in my remembrance of it. We were both here on the other side of it, in love and stronger than ever, but when we had met, this man that he was today was somewhere obscured behind the pain of a broken dream, marriage, and addiction. It was hard to think sometimes that he was the same person.
His left arm was covered in beautiful, dark tattoos instead of track scars now. He was inspired and healthy, and through it all, he was still the creative, beautiful soul I'd been drawn to when we met.
"All that happened in the past. You aren't that person anymore. You got better and you took your career back."
"I didn't do shit, Abby. You're the one who got me here."
"I just didn't let you ignore me," I said, smiling.
"You treated me like I was someone worth saving," he said. "I wouldn't be alive if you hadn’t driven me crazy the first summer I got here." I smiled, remembering how upset he would get when I'd wake him up in the morning.
"Yes, you would, Nate," I said. "I'm not the one who beat your addiction – you are."
"If you weren't there, I wouldn't have been able to do it. You were it, Abby. You still are. I'm alive because of you, and you deserve every last one of the years I have left on this earth." I felt my eyes well up.
"You don't owe me anything, Nate. Here and now with you is enough." He shook his head.