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“Sarah wasn’t fine for a long while, but she’s back now.” Bret gazed into his nearly empty beer mug, as if he could see the past in dredges. “She bosses me around. Tonight she was furious I got into a fight with you. Told me I needed to get over it. Said I needed to go cool off, and I couldn’t come back until my blood was dry because she didn’t want me to bleed on her new sheets.”
Kai laughed. “She’s a tough one.” And she was. Bret wouldn’t have given up extreme surfing for a pushover. Sarah knew what she wanted and usually got it.
“You have no idea, brother,” he said, shaking his head. “I love that woman. God, do I love her, but she is a pain in my ass.” Bret laughed and finished off the last bit of his beer. “Maybe you were right to stay single.”
“Not single,” Kai said quickly. Too quickly. “Well, I don’t want to be anyway.”
Bret looked as though he might fall off his stool. “You? In love? Somebody call CNN. This is newsworthy.” Bret clapped his friend on the back. “Who’s the lucky girl? Wait, the woman at the beach?”
Kai nodded.
“Fine woman. Fine, indeed. Athletic. Firm.” Bret nodded his approval.
“Hey, watch it. She’s my girl,” Kai warned him. At least, she had been, he thought grimly.
Bret just threw his blond head back and laughed. “You are in deep, my friend.”
“Not sure if she wants to be with me, though.”
“Don’t blame her,” Bret teased, and Kai gave him a playful shove, feeling as if he had truly gotten back his old friend, the one who never let up on him. Never coddled him and always gave him shit. Kai realized just how much he missed it.
“I shouldn’t compete, should I?”
“You know what I think.” Bret looked at Kai. “But I can’t stop you. No one can. Only you can do that.”
“How can I let down the charity?”
“Don’t surf. Donate your own money there, Mr. Clothing Line. A charity isn’t worth your life.”
“I don’t have that much cash just lying around,” Kai said. “Besides, wouldn’t that be the coward’s way out?”
“Dude, nothing about our lives has ever been the coward’s way.” Kai laughed at this and the two clinked their mugs together.
Kai glanced at his nearly empty glass. “If I quit, what do I do after that, man? What do I do if I don’t surf?” Kai asked, realizing that was the question he’d been asking himself for months. Bret had given up that kind of extreme surfing two years ago. Maybe he’d have a game plan. Or at least some advice. Because when Kai looked into his future without big-wave surfing, all he saw was a blank, boring slate. An average life, a small life, a life he didn’t recognize and didn’t want.
He stared at his old friend, his thirtysomething face weathered by sun and surf. “What do I do?”
Bret held Kai’s gaze a long time. “You miss the hell out of it,” he finally said. “That’s what I do.”
* * *
JUN STEPPED OUT of the airport on the Big Island, having taken the first flight out of Maui. She passed the open-air baggage claim, shaking her head once more about how so many buildings in Hawaii seemed to hate walls. But why put up walls when the outside temperature was a perfect seventy-five degrees? She walked out into the warm sunshine and headed to the parking lot where she’d parked her car. Jun double-checked her phone as she went, browsing through the message from her sister. Po had slept fine through the night and was now safely at day care for the day, which left Jun without anything to do for the moment.
She’d been in such a hurry to put miles between her and Kai that she hadn’t thought about what would happen when she got back. In her mind, she’d cut ties, but she was learning it wouldn’t be that easy. She felt the urge to call him, to see if he was okay, to find out if he was still going to go through with the competition. She didn’t want to think about it.
While she was on the flight, she’d gotten several calls from numbers she didn’t recognize and one from Jesse. Only Jesse had left a message. She thought about deleting it but then worried Kai’s injuries might have gotten worse. She listened to Jesse’s voice mail. Apparently, there was a meeting about the Big Island Kids charity later that morning at her coffee shop. Of course, after that weekend, Jun didn’t know if Kai wanted her leading anything anymore. Or if she even wanted to. Could she spearhead a charity when she couldn’t seem to get anything else right in her life?
