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“In the garage, I think. Making more lists,” his aunt warned him, “on her clipboard.” Kaimana raised her eyebrows for emphasis, which made Kai smile. Jun’s clipboard was as rigid as her regimen: she kept a no-skip checklist for him for every day of the week. Even Kaimana, who thought he needed discipline, thought the list was overkill. It had his entire day planned out to the minute.
“Do you have bathroom breaks planned in there?” he’d joked on Monday. As it turned out, she had.
If he thought Gretchen had been merciless, he’d gotten the shock of his life.
Now, he wandered out to the garage. He saw her standing, clipboard under her arm, glancing up at his collection of boards. He couldn’t help appreciating her firm curves, and the shorter-than-should-be-street-legal shorts she was wearing certainly caught his attention. He felt his body respond in new ways. Women hit on him all the time. He’d bedded more than his fair share, and yet...something about Jun just disarmed him. Maybe it was her steadfast insistence that she wasn’t interested. Everything about her stiff, determined posture screamed challenge.
And Kai was never one to back down from a challenge.
“Looking for something?” he asked, and Jun started at the sound of his voice. When she turned, a small, barely visible blush crept up her cheeks.
“Oh...good...you’re back.” He watched her struggle to regain her composure and put on the professional veneer that had momentarily slipped.
“See one you like?” he asked her, nodding at the wall of surfboards.
“I don’t know. Which one is your favorite?”
Kai felt a ripple of unease in his stomach as he looked at the five boards, including the one, up top, that he’d used to win last year’s championship. He looked at the old board, one handmade by Hawaiian surfing and surfboard-shaping legend Ben Aipa. It was waxed and well cared for, but the old logos were worn and faded from overuse. He used to think it was his lucky board, but now he was almost afraid to surf with it. Afraid his bum knee might somehow suck all the magic out of it. Kai remembered watching old clips of the master surfing when he was little. Aipa had made one championship board after another since 1970.
“That one,” he lied, pointing to one of the new demos, one of the ones Kirk wanted him to be seen surfing with, a board that was fine but lacked the finesse of his favorite.
“This one?” Jun narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe you. This is the one I see you on in all the posters.” She tapped the championship board, as if she saw right through the lie.
“That’s my Ben Aipa board,” he admitted. The board that slices through water like a shark, almost anticipating every move the water makes.
“Ben Aipa! We must go test it out.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
“We’re going surfing. Today. Now.”
“Now? But...” Kai desperately looked for an excuse. He glanced out the open garage door to the white-capped waves. “I don’t know that there’s good surf today...”
“It’s Hawaii. There’s always good surf.” Jun grinned at him, and he knew there’d be no getting out of it. He swallowed the trepidation in his throat. Now she’s going to find out what a fraud you really are. “Which board do you want?”
“This one,” Kai said, stubbornly sticking to the Kai Brady prototype.
“Fine, mind if I borrow the Ben Aipa?”
“Wait, you surf? Since when? Why didn’t I know this about you?”
“I learned when I was fifteen,” Jun said, shrugging one shoulder. “Had a crush on a boy who surfed every day. I had to learn if I ever wanted to talk to him. But I only did it for a year and then quit.”
Kai tried to imagine Jun at fifteen, chasing after some surfer dude on a Big Island beach. He felt an irrational flare of jealousy. Where had that come from?
“How long did you date?” Why did he care?
“We didn’t,” Jun said, and Kai felt a perverted kind of relief. “But I did learn to surf. That was something. So, can I use it? I’ve never surfed with one.”
Kai hesitated. The old Kai would’ve hated to have a novice surfer out with him on the breaks, slowing him down, causing him worry, and he’d never let a novice near his championship board. Now he was surprised to find himself even considering it.
