Page 46 of True Abandon

I inhale through my nose and nod my head. “The water sounds good.”

There is a knocking sound as men make Hawaiian carvings. In front of them, on a blanket, are intricate bowls, and souvenirs. We watch as a young man with a hand knife digs into the wood to create a long poll of makes a long pole of carved symbols and figures.

Jax is staring at it with slightly parted lips and a raised eyebrow. He takes a step closer, pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens the camera app to record the men at work. A loud noise erupts from deep within my throat, and he leans his ear toward me, but I put my hand out instead, silently requesting his phone.

His head turns toward me for a second, looks back through his phone and then shoots back in my direction.

“You want my phone?” he asks in disbelief.

With my eyes trained on the device, I just stare at it until he reluctantly places it in my hand.

“You’ll get this back at the end of the night. Unless, of course, I get to leave early?” I bat my lashes despite the grimace on my face.

“Not a chance. Now, which one should I get?”

I cross my arms. “What in the world could you possibly need a totem pole for?”

“For one, the craftsmanship is amazing.” He lifts a figure off the ground and runs his fingers across the smooth surface, his nail digging into the crevices of the menacing figure carved into the wood. “Do you see how meticulous that is?”

With a tilt of my head, I look at the intricate sculpture and admire the details.

Jax palms the totem, feeling the weight of it in his hand. “It’s meant to frighten away evil spirits.” He places the totem back on the ground and picks up another.

“Funny, I always thought they were like welcome signs.”

“The word totem means kinship group. It’s supposed to symbolize a clan or a spiritual belief. It can even mark an occasion. We could buy this one as a commemorative totem.”

“What are we commemorating?”

“Us,” he says nonchalantly. He picks up another and scowls. “They were also used to publicly ridicule someone.”

I try to ignore his comment and brush it off by saying, “How do you know so much about this stuff?”

He puts the figure down and walks away. “Anthropology paper.”

Sometimes I forget just how smart he is. He’s a Princeton dropout, but that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that he got into Princeton in the first place. The guy was a history buff and avid reader. How he went from being on top of the world to lying face down in a nightclub in Manhattan is beyond me.

The pieces of his life puzzle are so mixed up, I couldn’t begin to describe what his damn picture was supposed to look like in the first place.

“Drink?” I ask, wringing my hands on my belly.

“Sure, I’ll come with you.”

“No,” I shoo him away. “Walk around. I’ll meet you at the table. What can I get you?”

“Sapporo.”

“Coming right up,” I spin toward the bar.

The Waimer’s are still elbows-deep into each other’s mouths, and there’s a small crowd gathered around another hula lesson happening on the pathway.

The bar is lined with servers ready to fill the drink orders from their tables. I walk behind it and stand next to Isaiah, still wearing his palm tree shirt, but tonight, he has a green lei on his head as he holds a bottle of champagne.

“See you’re here with Shark Bait.” The cork pops with the T, startling me.

“Occupational hazard.”

He pours a tray full of champagne glasses. “He’s traveling solo?”