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“Can I go? Can I?” Po asked Jun, who nodded.
Kaimana and Po were out the back door and headed to the steps leading to the beach when Jun heard Kai’s voice behind her.
“Jun?” He sounded surprised.
She whirled.
“K-Kai.” No matter how good-looking Kai was in her memory, seeing him in person always jolted her a little, always reminded her that her recollections didn’t do him justice. It could have been his broad shoulders filling out that tightly fitting light blue T-shirt or the way the khaki shorts he wore showed off athletic, muscled legs. Charisma, she thought. It was no wonder he could sell whatever he wanted and that he had companies lining up asking him for endorsements. Who wouldn’t buy yogurt from a man with this kind of smoldering intensity?
“What are you doing here?” Kai frowned, looking almost...annoyed. But he was supposed to be the one ready to apologize. Why did it seem as if he had no intention of doing that?
“I’m here to hear your apology,” she said, confused as she struggled to understand why Kai looked so ticked off. His mouth was in a thin line, and his dark eyes now flashed fire.
“My apology!” he barked, sour amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Why would I apologize? You’re the one who owes me an apology.”
“Excuse me?” Jun felt her blood simmer.
“You can’t just come into a man’s home, throw away his stuff and snoop through his phone.”
“You said I made the rules!” Jun had lost track of why they were even arguing. Hadn’t he invited her here?
“What are you doing here, really? Here to get your severance check?” Kai crossed his arms and looked at her suspiciously. “I can write it for you now.”
Jun looked for Kaimana, who had already disappeared to the beach. “But Kaimana said you wanted us here. You signed this!” Desperately, Jun dug the contract out of her bag. Kai just blinked at it and then laughed.
“I never signed that.”
“But your aunt...” Jun was flustered. Had she misunderstood somehow?
Suddenly, Kai’s annoyance disappeared, and a strained cough broke from his throat. “Auntie strikes again!” he declared, shaking his head. “Where is she? I’m going to give her a piece of my mind.”
“She took Po for a walk on the beach,” Jun said, pointing and now growing worried.
Kai just sighed. “They’re probably halfway down the shore by now, knowing her.”
“What? Do I need to...?” Jun suddenly feared the nice elderly Hawaiian woman might have kidnapped her son.
“Oh, don’t worry. They’ll be back.” Jun felt her shoulders sag in relief. “This is just her way of getting us alone together.”
Jun’s cheeks grew hot. Alone together? “What are you talking about?”
“My aunt thinks you’re good for me. She thinks you should train me, and when I said no, she tricked you into coming over here. She does that a lot with people who don’t mind her advice.” Kai shook his head and chuckled softly. “I should’ve known she’d try something like this.”
“So you’re not going to apologize?” The truth was still sinking in, and Jun was embarrassed and angry at the same time.
“No.”
“So you don’t want me to work for you?” In that moment, Jun realized how much she’d been hoping that Kai would apologize, that he’d offer her the job back, that it would be the answer to at least half of her stress: money, child care, how she and Po were going to ride out the next couple of months without Tim’s roaming hands making her uncomfortable at work. And then she hated herself for feeling so desperate. Hadn’t she always prided herself on being independent? On taking care of Po and herself, no matter how hard or impossible it seemed. Yet disappointment struck her like a swift kick to the shins.
With Po’s nightmares getting worse, and then with the episode last night, it just seemed as if she wasn’t balancing on the tightrope anymore, that somehow they were all falling. Even worse, Jun felt her throat constrict as tears threatened to spill. Now she was going to cry? She never cried. But she was running on fumes: hardly any sleep, and she’d barely had time to eat today. That must be it, she thought. It had to be it.
