“My point is that there isn’t much to do, especially at night.” Hayes bends down and picks up a rock. “Don’t you get bored?” he asks me.
“No,” I snap.
Maybe I shouldn’t take it so personally, but Hayes and his complaining are getting on my nerves.
“It’s just a slower pace than we’re used to. Which is exactly why I wanted to come,” Will says.
“No, you wanted to come because it’s five thousand miles from home,” he says. “But being here doesn’t change anything. It’s just a vacation from your problems. But guess what, Will? They’re all still waiting for you back home. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to deal with—”
“Hayes,” Will says, a warning note in his voice.
My shoulders tighten. I know something about keeping secrets—there are things I keep to myself, things I don’t want Will to know about me. Like the fact that I’m a thief. So I can’t blame him for wanting to keep his.
Hayes snorts. He pulls his arm back and throws his rock like he’s pitching a baseball, far into the water. He takes off down the beach. It’s still light enough to track him as he walks along the shore, but the sun is setting rapidly. Napili isn’t big, he’s going to hit the end of the bay soon, but trying to find him in the dark will still be a pain in the butt.
Will swears under his breath. He follows Hayes, and I want to give them some privacy, so I head back to the van. Fifteen minutes later they climb inside without a word, and they remain silent all the way back to the hotel.
Eleven
I waited until my mom got home this afternoon before I left for the hotel. I’ve only been in her office for ten minutes, but I’ve already located the owner of the travel candle. As I expected, Leo left a note about the clogged toilet on Mr. Robert O’Reilly’s guest record. The guy lives in Iowa and I’m guessing sending this candle back to him will cost me more than it’s actually worth, but it must be done.
Now that I’ve figured out who the candle belongs to, I start to search for the owner of the hula-girl shot glass.
Here’s what I remember: I took the shot glass during one of the last shifts that Nalani and I worked in housekeeping together. We were scheduled to work together four times in those last two weeks before I was promoted, which means the owner of the shot glass could have stayed in any one of the forty rooms we cleaned.
I sigh. And I sigh even harder after I search through all forty records and nothing jumps out at me. I put my head down on the desk, combing through my memory for any other details that might help me figure out who the shot glass belongs to.
An older man answered the door in one of the hotel’s soft white bathrobes. He was wearing thick black glasses and his gray hair was unkempt, like he’d just woken up from a nap. He frowned when he saw Nalani and me standing in front of him.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir. Should we come back at a better time?” Nalani asked. The HOUSEKEEPING PLEASE sign hung from the doorknob, but maybe he’d meant to flip it to DO NOT DISTURB. It happened a lot.
“No, I’d like the room cleaned now,” he said curtly.
He stepped back to hold the door open, and Nalani and I exchanged a glance. Clearly he was planning to stay in the room while we worked, something we both hated. This kind of guest would watch us closely, like they expected us to take something, or they’d pretend we weren’t even there. Either way, it was uncomfortable.
The fact that all this guy was wearing was a bathrobe made me nervous, so I was relieved to see a blond woman in a purple bikini sunning herself on the balcony. The balcony overlooked the garden, which meant that this was one of the hotel’s cheaper suites—although even the garden suites in the Grand Palms ran more than six hundred dollars a night.
I lift my head off the desk. That’s it! The suite had a view of the garden, which means that the room was on the west side of the property. I pull up my schedule on my phone, my heart picking up speed. Two of the shifts that Nalani and I worked together were in the west wing of the hotel. I smile. I’ve just narrowed the list down to twenty possible rooms.
I bring up the list of rooms we cleaned during the two shifts. Six of them had children staying in them. There was no sign of any kids in that room, so I can eliminate those from the list. That leaves me with fourteen rooms. But none of the remaining guest records are showing me anything that brings me any closer to solving the mystery.
I don’t have any more time to search, either, because I’m due to meet Will and Hayes in the lobby. I sigh. I have all sorts of feelings about taking the two of them to Nalani’s party, but it’s too late to back out now, so I guess all I can do is hope that I don’t regret it.
* * *
For years, Nalani has been throwing parties in the rental houses her parents manage. Somehow we’ve never been caught, although maybe that’s because she keeps the guest list small and won’t let anyone leave until we’ve scrubbed all traces of our existence from the place.
Will is beside me in the passenger seat. His knee is bouncing up and down and he hasn’t spoken more than a few words on the entire ride over here. Hayes is more subdued than usual, too. That same weird vibe from the other night is still there—it doesn’t seem to have dissipated at all. Neither of them seems to be in a party mood, and my nerves ratchet up with each mile we get closer to the house.
I pull up in front of a tall gate and punch in the code Nalani sent me. The gate slowly swings open, revealing a sprawling white mansion that glows in the evening light. The house was designed by some famous architect whose name I can never remember, and it’s situated on a rocky bluff that overlooks the ocean. It’s like something out of a magazine.
“Now this is more like it,” Hayes says.
I smile at him in the rearview mirror, then glance at Will, expecting a similar reaction, but he just shrugs. “Nice.”
Nice? That’s it?
And maybe to him that’s all this house is—I mean, he probably lives in something similar. Sometimes I forget that what’s impressive to me is just run-of-the-mill for him. Still, I’m annoyed as we climb out of the hotel van. He’s the one who wanted to come to this party in the first place.
Will stuffs his hands into his pockets, and the three of us walk along a stone path, toward the sounds of people splashing in the pool. The closer we get to the backyard, the farther behind me Will and Hayes drop, having a whispered argument.
“Hey, Marty?” Will says, just before we round the corner to the back of the house. “We’ll catch up with you in a minute, okay?”
I don’t really want to walk into this party by myself—this was part of the reason why I brought them. But I guess I don’t have a choice. “Sure.”
The night is still warm, even though the sun has set and the stars are out. The pool is lit up and I spot Nalani sitting by the side of the pool in a black-and-white polka-dot bikini, a red Solo cup in her hand. Half a dozen people we went to high school with are in the pool, playing water volleyball. A few others are gathered in the lounge chairs, near the built-in stone barbecue. The smell of burnt meat drifts on the late evening air.
“Marty!” Nalani calls. I start to walk over to her when, suddenly, the volleyball comes flying through the air and sucker-punches me in the stomach, knocking the wind right out of me.
I double over, my arms wrapping around my aching stomach. Tears spring to my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Nalani’s beside me, her hand resting on my back.
I nod. I take a shaky breath and then straighten up. This type of thing—getting hit with errant volleyballs, palm trees falling on my car—never used to happen to me. At least, not with the alarming regularity that they happen now. It’s Karma reminding me, once again, that I need to stop messing around and finish what I started.
“Whoops, sorry, Marty,” Hunter calls from the pool. “I don’t know how that happened. I was aiming in the opposite direction.”
Wait. Hunter is here? I throw a panicked glance at Nalani. If he’s here, then it means that Kahale is probabl
y here, too.
“They showed up together,” Nalani says quietly. “What was I supposed to do? Kick him out?”
“Yes!”
She shakes her head. “Marty, come on.”
“Fine. But you could have at least warned me.”
Her mouth tightens. “I would have, but you haven’t answered any of my texts lately,” she says. “Are you mad at me or something?”
“No. I just…”
I rub my stomach. The words should be easy enough to say—I’m not going traveling with you—but I can’t seem to get them out. She’ll want to know why, but I know she won’t understand my answer. Nalani’s spent the past few years dreaming about getting as far away from her parents as possible. Leaving my mom isn’t an option for me. Not until she’s in a better headspace, anyway.
This is a mess.
And, oh god, it’s about to get messier, because now Kahale is climbing out of the pool. He’s wearing blue board shorts and his chest is bare, showing off his well-toned abs and the intricate detail of the eagle tattoo on his shoulder. I’m shaking as Kahale grabs a striped towel from a stack near the edge of the pool and wraps it around his waist. My fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. I choose flight, but Nalani grabs my arm.
“You can do this,” she says as Kahale starts to walk toward us. She gives my arm a squeeze and then takes off before I can beg her not to leave me alone with him.
At one time, I would have given anything to have Kahale Mahelona go out of his way to talk to me at a party. We’ve been in the same friend group since junior high, but he never paid much attention to me. Not until one night, a few weeks before prom, when a bunch of us were at Keawakapu Beach for a bonfire. He sat down next to me and we talked the entire night. For the next few weeks we were inseparable. I thought we were on our way to becoming something really great. And then prom happened.
“Hey, Marty,” Kahale says. He smiles, revealing the dimple in his left cheek, but if he thinks that’s all it’s going to take for me to forgive him, he is dead wrong.
I stare at him, expressionless, until the smile slips off his face.
He clears his throat. “I, uh, was hoping I’d see you here tonight. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“Oh yeah? What about?” I can feel everyone at the party pretending not to watch us. They were all at prom—they all know what happened—and I suddenly feel like I’m reliving the humiliation of that night.
Kahale’s ears start to turn red. “About what happened,” he says. “What I did … There’s no excuse. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I’m sorry.”
He stopped trying to reach out to me a week or so after prom, when he finally clued in I wasn’t going to answer his texts. We’ve been avoiding each other all summer, yet he shows up tonight, at this party he knew I would be going to. Why?
I stiffen. Oh my god. He saw my Instagram notification! He knows I was creeping on his account. He thinks it means that I’m feeling nostalgic or sentimental or that I want to be friends, when really, I was just bored/nosy.
I. Could. Die.
“Okay. Well, thanks,” I say.
Kahale stares at me like he’s waiting for me to say something else. “So … we’re friends?”
I shrug. I’m not so sure about that. His apology seems sincere enough, I guess, but I can’t imagine being friends with him again. I can, however, be civil.
“Okay, well … I’m glad that’s resolved,” he says, pulling out the dimple again. I’m relieved to find that it no longer has the same hold over me that it once did. Whether that has to do with the fact that I’m truly over him or that Will has entered the picture, I don’t know. Either way, I’m glad my days of crushing on Kahale are over.
Someone cannonballs into the pool, sending an arc of water through the air that soaks the front of my shorts.
“Who the hell is that?” Kahale asks as Hayes surfaces, fully clothed, between Hailey and Anne-Marie, two girls from my chemistry class. Both of them are staring at him like he just farted or something.
“That would be my brother,” Will says. He’s come up behind me and he’s standing close enough that his fingers brush lightly against mine. “He doesn’t always think before he acts.”
Kahale’s eyes narrow. “And who are you?”
“Will Foster.”
Kahale stares at Will’s outstretched hand for a few seconds before shaking it. He looks from Will to me, then down at our hands, which are almost touching.
“Well. Nice talking to you, Marty,” Kahale says before sauntering away.
“Your ex?” Will says as soon as he’s out of earshot.
“Sort of.” Kahale was never technically my boyfriend, but we were on our way to being together. At least, I thought we were.
Will drums his fingers against his thigh. “Is he the reason that you’re so closed off?”
“Excuse me?” I wrap my arms around my waist, feeling like I’ve been sucker-punched again.
“It’s just … you’re kind of a hard person to get to know.”
My face is hot. What he’s saying isn’t untrue, but I don’t know how to respond. He’s made it clear that he wants to know me, but I’m so afraid of what will happen if I let him see beneath the surface. I’m afraid of falling for someone who is eventually going to leave.
We watch Hayes awkwardly try to climb onto a swan floatie, the silence between us growing heavier by the second. The odds of this becoming anything real are small, but if I don’t take the chance and let him in, I’ll never know. What if wondering what could have been is worse?
I take a deep breath and rub my four-leaf-clover charm. “You want to go somewhere and talk?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds good.”
I lead him down a path toward a pair of chaise lounges set on the edge of the bluff. There’s almost no moon tonight, and the only light comes from a few flickering tiki torches and a sky full of brilliant stars. The sound of the party is swallowed by the roar of the waves crashing against the shore below us.
The salt air is cooler here by a few degrees. We lie down on the lounges and I kick off my slippers and dig my feet into the sand. I clasp my shaking hands together. I don’t know how to start this conversation, to tell him who I am, so I go back to our game. Maybe that will ease me into it.
“Would you rather visit every country on Earth or go into space?” I sneak a glance at him. It’s dark enough that I can’t make out his features, but from the way his head is tilted, I can tell he’s staring up at the sky.
“Space. Sci-fi geek, remember?” Will says. “You?”
“I’d see the world. Definitely.”
“But you’re going to, though, right? During your gap year?”
I let out a breath. This is it. This is my chance to let him in.
“Actually, I’m going to be sticking around Maui for a while.”
“What? Why?” he asks. “I mean, it’s beautiful here—I can see why you’d want to stay—but don’t you want to see what else is out there?”
“Of course,” I say. “But now’s not the right time.”
“What are you going to do instead?”
“Work at the hotel.”
Will doesn’t say anything. I can feel that he wants to ask more, but although I’ve opened the door a few inches, I’m not quite ready to kick it down yet. And I guess he senses that, because he says, “Zombie apocalypse or alien invasion?”
“Zombies. They’re dumber than aliens. I could fight them off easier.”
“But maybe aliens aren’t our enemies.”
“Not according to pretty much every sci-fi movie I’ve ever seen,” I say.
The wind picks up and I curl up on the lounge, feeling myself start to relax.
“Stuck in a broken elevator with an ex-girlfriend or on a broken ski lift with Darth Vader?” I ask him.
He doesn’t even hesitate. “The ski lift.”
“Wow,” I say. “You’d pick Darth Vader over your ex-girlfriend? Mus
t have been a bad breakup.”
“It wasn’t great. But it was for the best. My mom always says, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them.’”
“Is your mom Maya Angelou?” I ask. “Because I’m pretty sure she said that.”
Will laughs. “No, she’s not,” he says. “But I do think she’s pretty wise. She knows when to pull out the right quote, anyway.” He reaches across the space between us and nudges my leg. “What about you? Elevator or ski lift?”
“Well, I’ve never seen snow, so I guess I’d go with the ski—”
Something suddenly swoops low through the air. I duck as it skims the top of my head.
“What the hell was that?” he yells.
“It was a bat.” I shudder.
Will slides low in his lounge and wraps his arms over his head. “What? There are bats here?”
“They won’t hurt you.”
“It just flew at us!”
“It flew at me,” I say.
“What if it was a vampire bat?”
“You know vampire bats aren’t actually vampires, right?” I say as he slides off his lounge and motions for me to make room for him. I move over, my skin tingling, as he drops down beside me. The chaise isn’t built for two—especially when one of us is so tall—and we have to shift around until we both find a comfortable position. We end up on our backs, Will’s arms tucked behind his head, my head dangerously near his chest.
He’s so close, in fact, I have to remind myself to breathe.
“So about that guy…,” he says. “Your ‘sort of’ ex.”
I guess this is his way of asking about what happened between Kahale and me. I don’t really want to tell him—being dumped at the prom is embarrassing—but this is why I brought him over here. So I could start being honest about my life.
I stare up at the stars, trying to slow my heart rate. “He decided he was more interested in someone else. Right in the middle of prom.”
Will lets out a breath. “Wow, that’s pretty crappy.”
“Yeah.”
He’s quiet a minute. I’m expecting another question about Kahale, but instead Will says, “Remember when you asked me if I’d rather be able to see my future or go back and change my past?”
Just My Luck Page 8