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Did I interrupt something?
The door of Kai and Callie’s bungalow finally opens after the third knock. Kai’s hair is messy and his face is flushed but he has an unmistakable smile when he lets me in.
Yup.
“Busy?” I ask with a snort as I walk in.
Callie fixes her messy pigtails as she goes about the room, picking up random things and shoving them into a beach bag.
“Hey, Kat. How is it going?” Her voice is lazy but out of breath, and when Kai walks past her and pinches her butt, she blushes and swats his hand away with a quiet, “Stop it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Oh, gee, don’t tell me I caught you guys in the middle of it.”
“Actually, at the end of it. All yours now.” Callie chuckles, still not meeting my eyes.
This girl… First, she gets on an island where both her ex and her ex’s ex-best friend that she had a thing for play war. If that’s not complicated enough, she starts another war between them, then gets a chance to leave but comes back and is now on a permanent honeymoon. To be fair, if someone deserves a cheesy as hell happily ever after that’s her and Kai, and I’m a bit envious of their bliss.
“So, a lot of between-the-sheets-action these days, huh?” I ask, strolling around the room as she gets ready.
“Shh.” Callie presses her forefinger to her lips.
“Why?” I snap, then hear a voice in one of the bedrooms, a kid’s voice. “Oh…”
I cover my mouth with my hand. I forgot they have a kid now, a foster kid, or whatever this arrangement means.
Just then, he comes out of the room, chatting with Kai. He looks like a surfer kid, eight or twelve, it’s hard to tell. He’s gained some weight but is still skinny.
“Little, this is Katura,” Callie introduces us, and the kid shakes hands with me.
“Sonny Little,” he says proudly with a half-smile.
It’s the second time I’ve seen him, and now he’s dressed in shorts and a t-shirt that are actually a child’s size, barefoot, his hair still a mess, down to his shoulder.
He’s a Chatty Cathy, for sure, as he slides his feet into flip-flops, chirping non-stop aboutThe Wizard of Oz.
“He’s obsessed with movies,” Kai explains as we all leave the bungalow and head for the beach.
There’s already a small party assembled there. Beach umbrellas, coolers, beer. Rap music blasts from a portable speaker. A small but rowdy crowd, Outcasts, like the old days—Owen, Ya-Ya, Guff, and Kristen among others from the Eastside. Surfboards lie in a line on the sand. It’s overcast, but the waves are perfect for surfing, the mood is cheerful, and I’m right away handed a beer—Belgian, not the Port Mrei swill we used to drink on the Eastside.
Ty, our Eastside Tarzan, is here. His dirty-blond hair is past his shoulders, and his smile is bigger than ever.
“Look at you, all lovey-dovey,” I say to him.
As a confirmation, he wraps his arms around Dani from behind and kisses her on the cheek, then nuzzles her neck.
“Oh, young love,” Marlow coos as he stands by the beach chair where I sit and fixes a joint.
I snort. “Like you’re older or something.”
Marlow lights a joint, takes a hit, and passes it to Ty. “My grandma used to say”—he inhales and holds his breath—“‘you should have one big love in your life. Just one. Forever.’”
“Oh, yeah?” Ty squints at him as he takes a hit and passes the joint to me.
“Yeah,” Marlow says on an exhale, a cloud of smoke forming around him like a halo. “So I go, ‘Grandma, who was your one big love? Grandpa?’ She goes, ‘Bikers, sweetheart. My one big love was bikers.’”
We all break out in laughter.
“Bullshit,” Ty says and lets go of Dani. Before Marlow has time to react, Ty lunges at him and has him in a headlock. “I’ll show you love, sweetheart.”
