“Is it too early to drink?”

Behind my sunglasses, I squint over at Carrie. She’s brought her own flask out to the beach, a pink glittery one she bought in the souvenir shop. The resort’s logo is in silver, the whole thing shining as she tilts it back and swigs.

“Vacation,” Tanya says, her answer to everything, apparently, before reaching over to grab some for herself.

I shake my head when they offer it to me. I’m too wired for the hazy lure of daytime alcohol.

All morning—and most of last night—I’ve had that weird, fluttery feeling in my gut, adrenaline I can feel all the way down to my bones, and a loop running in my head of Kai: the weight of his chest against my shoulders when he pressed himself to me on the sled. Tasting this beach on his mouth when we kissed. The cool shock of his fingers as he pushed my panties out of the way....

I turn over on my stomach and push my face in my towel, so they won’t see me blush.

“So, ladies,” Tanya sighs, lying back on her towel, “what do we want to do today? I vote more tanning and beach drinking, then a late lunch at the resort.”

“Then tan by the pool,” Carrie adds. Macy agrees from the end of our row.

“Come on, guys.” I turn my head back so they can hear me. “We can tan at home. Shouldn’t we leave the resort for a while? You know, see the island?”

“Hawaii is all about the beaches,” Tanya counters. “That’s what we’re here to see.”

“The boys are going on a volcano tour, or something.” Macy sits up and slathers another coat of oil onto her skin. “You could go with—” She sucks in a breath instead of finishing her sentence.

Tanya glances at me, then shoots Macy a death glare. “Nice.”

“Please don’t walk on eggshells about Damian for my benefit,” I grumble. I pull a magazine over my face. It reeks of perfume samples. “We came here as a group. I’ve got to face him eventually.”

“No, you don’t.” Tanya knocks the magazine off me. “What he did to you was beyond shitty. Wait until he apologizes.”

“If he apologizes,” Carrie adds. “He was a huge jerk last night, saying what he did.”

“Do you think James knows he’s gay?” Macy blurts, which gets her another glare from Tanya. She has a habit of thinking out loud, something that almost never works to her advantage.

“He must have known. They’re roommates.” Carrie takes another drink from her flask, tipping it way back; it’s nearly empty. “I mean, he couldn’t hide something like that from him, right?”

“Maybe they’re both gay,” Macy adds, her tone joking, as she picks at the edges of her acrylic nails. Then she stops. I close my eyes just in time to avoid their stares.

“Shit,” Tanya breathes.

I pull the magazine back over my head. Way to pick ’em, Mollie.

A few minutes later, Carrie gets a text from Ted. She refuses to admit who it’s from, but only the promise of a booty call before his big volcano adventure would tear her away from tanning. Macy decides she’s burnt to a crisp and heads back for a nap. As much as I love them, I’m relieved when it’s just Tanya and me on our little stretch of the beach.

“Hey.” Her shoulder bulldozes hot sand dangerously close to my nose as she scoots over. “What’s up?”

“Not much. Just stewing in self-hatred for all the years I wasted on Damian. You know, the usual.”

“Think I can cheer you up.”

“Impossible.”

“Kai’s out on the water.”

I wish I could say I don’t bolt up like a maniac, but the magazine flying off my face and toppling about five feet ahead of us begs to differ. Tanya laughs and points out a figure, swooping up from the crest of a wave and landing on the glittering water in one flawless motion.

She whistles. “Damn, boy can surf. Wish he’d lose the rash guard, though. I need to see what you’re working with.”

I smile and rest my chin on my knees. “Oh, there’s plenty. Don’t you worry about me.”

She laughs again. “Knew I could cheer you up.”

As the wave closes off behind him, Kai twists and falls into the water. When he surfaces, he flings the water off his face and takes in a lungful of air, then lifts himself back onto his board to paddle out again.

For what seems like hours, we watch: he paddles out, waits for the right wave—a process of deduction I can’t figure out, but which seems all too simple for him—and turns his board into the force. It pushes him forward on his stomach for a few feet before he lifts himself up, first on his arms, then crouching, and finally standing at his full height, just when the wave seems like it’s going to crash around him.

“He looks distracted,” Tanya says.

I shake my head. To me, he’s the exact opposite.

He doesn’t seem aware of anything around him: not the honeymooners lounging on the shore, or the single girls hollering and whooping at him as they stroll down the beach. Even the occasional wave that makes him lose his footing and topple into the water—none of it gets to him.

After a while, Tanya suggests I swim out and meet him.

“He’s busy.”

“He’s surfing. And he’s been doing it about half an hour now, so maybe he’s ready for a break.” She stands and brushes the sand off herself. “I’m at least getting in the shallow part. This sun is killing me.”

I look at Kai again, who’s paddling out for another wave a quarter-mile away, and sigh before following Tanya to the water.

We wade out to our waists. I try to avoid sneaking more glances, but quickly get the feeling I’m being watched. Before I can even ask Tanya to confirm or deny it, she’s waving over my head.

“I’m going to kill you,” I mutter.

She just smiles and winks.

“Hey,” Kai calls. I hear the gentle swish of his arms as he paddles towards us before I turn. He glides to a stop and straddles his board.

“Hi. So…you surf?”

“Ever since I can remember.” His rash guard top clings to his skin. I’m grateful for my sunglasses in a way I’ve never been before: at least he can’t tell I’m ogling him. “You, uh...enjoying the resort?”

I nod, already cringing inside at the silence I know is coming. When it settles, Kai looks out at the ocean and coughs.

“Well,” Tanya says, way too loudly, “guess I’ll head over to the pool, see what the girls are up to.” She gives me a look like she just remembered something, one I immediately recognize as fake. “Oh, but you wanted to explore the island, didn’t you, Moll?”

I’m going kill you twice.

“Actually—”

Kai interrupts my protest. “What were you guys thinking of doing? There’s some cool stuff around here if...I don’t know, you need some pointers.”

“There you go.” She hits my arm, oh-so-casual. “Kai can show you around.”

“Oh,” he stammers, “I wasn’t—”

“Thank you so much for this.” She waves as she backs up towards the shore, effectively sealing off any possible escape for either of us. “I said I’d go with her to do something, you know, ‘authentically Hawaiian,’ but I’m just exhausted and feel terrible for bailing on her.” She looks at me. “I’ll carry your stuff back to the room, no worries!”

Forget killing Tanya. She deserves the slowest torture imaginable.

We watch her haul ass out of the water and gather our magazines and towels without looking back. When she’s trekked halfway to the resort, I drag my eyes to his.

“Hi,” he says again. The word has more weight now, more warmth.

“Hi.” I cross my arms over my chest, instinct taking over, which is stupid: for one thing, I’ve got a bathing suit on—a tankini, at that—and for another, he’s already seen me naked.

He liked me naked.

It must be the daylight. There’s something about being out in the open water with the sun blazing above, instead of that cozy, dark hut behind the resort, that makes me feel vulnerable. Like he can see all of me at just a glance—not just the surface, but down to the core. My fat days, my shy ones. Every pathetic thing I’ve ever done in my life.

If he does see any of this, though, he doesn’t show it. When he leans forward on his board and starts paddling towards shore alongside me, he asks, “So you want to do something authentically Hawaiian, huh?”

“Um...yeah.” My laugh is strained. I clear my throat and channel the few ounces of dignity I’ve still got. “You know, something not tourist-y. Or at least, not part of the resort package. I just want to explore the island.”

“The island is pretty big—any places in particular you want to check out?”

A week ago, I could have recited my dream vacation by memory. Now, all I can think to say is, Let’s go back to that cabana thing and finish what we started. His backside, every muscle working and visible under his rash guard as he paddles just ahead of me, isn’t helping.

Thankfully, I manage to remember at least one thing from my list: “I really wanted to see a coffee plantation.”

He smirks. “Oh, yeah. Not tourist-y at all.”

Without thinking, I splash him. He laughs, so I do, too.

“I’ll take you,” he says, sliding off his board the closer we get. When he stands and reaches out, I know I don’t need his help. I can stand at this level, too, tiptoeing on the sand until the water grows shallow.

But I still take his hand, hold on, and let him pull me the last bit of the way.

Summer girls leave. And yet here I am, giving one a personal tour of the island.

You. Are an idiot.

It’s not the dumbest thing I’ve done this week, but I can’t say it’s the smartest, that’s for sure.

Still: when Mollie steps out of that water, her swim bottoms shifting just enough to remind me of last night... I can’t exactly blame myself for agreeing to this.

“Holualoa isn’t far from here,” I explain, averting my eyes while she gets dressed in the only thing her friend left behind, a cotton sundress. Thanks to what I’m sure was a purposeful oversight on the friend’s part, there’s no towel, so her swimsuit leaves wet spots in the fabric.

“Are we walking?”

“I’ve got some bikes we can use, back at my house. It’s a little ways up the road.”

We chitchat along the way, mostly school talk: what she was studying, what she plans to do next. She asks where I went to school.

“Took some business courses online. My dad’s idea.” I shrug. “I liked it, but by then, the resort was already underway. So I kind of stopped caring.”

“What would you study now, if you went back?”

Her question surprises me. “I’ve never thought about it, to be honest.”

“Going back to school?”

“Well, that, but...I’ve never thought about what else I’d be interested in.” My surfboard makes a solid clunk sound under my hand. “Other than surfing, I mean.”

“My advisor always told people to think back to when they were kids,” she says, “and use what they liked then as a starting point.”

“So...surfing.”

She laughs. I realize I love the sound of it.

Yep. Idiot.

But so what if I’m an idiot? I’m also jobless, and after Dad gets home tonight—if he hasn’t stopped in already—I might be homeless, on top of that. I can already picture all my belongings strewn on the lawn.

There are worse things to be than an idiot. And right now, I don’t care either way. I like spending time with Mollie. That can be enough, at least for one afternoon.

When we reach the house, she stops on the front stoop and tilts her head, squinting at the door.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” she says quickly, but when we get into the living room, she does it again, this time in front of the sofa.

“I have this déjà vu feeling, or something. Like I’ve been here before.”

I look up from the box I’ve dragged out of the closet, with all our old safety gear inside. “Actually, you have.”

“What?”

“The, uh...the night you....” I don’t know why it’s so hard to say. She didn’t drown. Just...almost. “I brought you here, and my parents called the ambulance.” I toss the bike helmet I’ve found onto the couch. “I set you down right there.”

She picks up the helmet and sits. “Your mom,” she says, her voice soft and slow, pulling the memory up to the surface. “She was whispering to me.”

I pause, just as my hands find the other helmet. “Yeah,” I say, my head bent down towards the box. “She was probably praying over you.”

Mollie turns and looks at me. “I felt a lot better after that. Like, when she said I was going to be okay? I really believed it.”

This makes me smile, even if it’s bittersweet. I shove the box back into the closet and motion for her to follow me to the shed, where we keep the bikes. One of Luka’s shirts is on the porch railing, sun-bleached but clean, so I peel off my rash guard and make the switch. I can feel her eyes on my back while I change.

Once we’re on the road, the tightness in my neck dissipates. There was something unsettling about having Mollie in my house. Like she could see more about me than I wanted her to know yet, if at all.

That’s the weirdest part, though: at least a piece of me wants her to know more. And I want to know more about her.

We talk the entire ride. She tells me about her family, then I tell her about mine. I even relay how I quit, just this morning.

“Wow.” Her pedaling slows. “You told your dad how you felt, and he still let you quit? He didn’t even try to work it out?”

We skirt the side of the road while a shuttle from a different hotel glides past. “That’s a little too well-adjusted for my dad. He doesn’t do the whole ‘talk about your feelings’ thing.”

“My dad does. Guess I always took it for granted.” She pedals faster again, catching up to me. “You could still fix things, though. If you wanted. I can’t imagine he’d refuse to hire his own son back.”

“Oh, he’d hire me back. But that’s the problem—I don’t want to work there anymore. I just stayed because...it was easy. You know what I mean? Humans stick with what they know, even when everything tells them they shouldn’t. Even if it makes them miserable.”

“I actually know exactly what you mean.”

“You do?”

Mollie draws in a breath. “Last night,” she says, “when I told you I wanted to talk?”

“Yeah—that friend who you found out wasn’t a friend, or…something?”

“It’s this guy, Damian. I had a huge crush on him for, like, four years, and I decided this trip was going to be when I finally asked him out and told him how I felt.”

Damian. I remember her saying his name when we met. At least, when I met her.

“But when I did,” she continues, as we come up over a hill and start to coast, “he turned me down.”

“I’m sorry,” I find myself saying, even though I’m not. “It’s never fun, getting shot down.” I realize too late that this comment could come off as snarky. After all, she shot me down barely twelve hours ago.

She doesn’t seem to notice. “Well, it’s even less fun when the person tells you they’re gay.”

“Whoa.”

“Right?”

I can’t help the laugh that escapes. Mollie hits her brakes, hard, just as we get to the bottom of the hill. “It’s not funny.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Anyway,” she stresses, “then he tells me this hookup we had a few years ago was really just him ‘testing’ himself or whatever, because he knew I’d let him.” She starts pedaling again. “Which was upsetting, because....”

Her voice trails. I wait. When she doesn’t finish her sentence, I offer up the only ending I can think of—how I’d feel, in that situation.

“....because you thought he was your friend, and a real friend wouldn’t have taken advantage of your feelings for his own gain.”

“Exactly.” She looks at me, pleasantly surprised. “See, you get it. But Damian thought, instead of just being drunk and upset, I must have purposely drowned myself because Lord knows I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t have him.”

I laugh.

“Then he made fun of the fact I had a crush on him, calling me ‘obsessed.’ He didn’t even apologize for anything.”

“He sounds like an asshole.”

“He kind of is,” she smirks. “Looking back, I can find all this evidence that he wasn’t a good friend. He never remembered stuff I told him, only called me when he needed my help with a class…. So, yes, I totally understand what you mean, how sticking around just seemed easier. We do stick to what we know. Even if it’s obviously wrong for us.”

I try not to ask my next question, but it finds its way out, anyway: “Is that why you bailed on me last night? Because you still like him?”

Mollie’s quiet for so long, I wonder if she’s mad at me, ready to turn around and call this day—and whatever it might turn into—quits. Instead, though, when I look at her over my shoulder, I see her studying the road.

“No,” she says. “I kind of hate him, actually.”

We brake at the same time, a cloud of dust around our tires. “Then why’d you leave like that? I mean, I’m not trying to sound clingy or anything. It just seemed like we had a....” I pause. “Connection” seems too strong a word, even though it’s exactly the one I want to use. I settle on “good time.” “But then it was like a switch flipped, and you couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”

“It wasn’t you, Kai.” She picks at the peeling rubber grip on her handlebars. Her bangs fall around her face in wisps as she looks at me. “I had a crush on him for a long time, that’s all. So it was weird, realizing I had one for someone else.”

I can tell, from the way she flinches as she says it, that she didn’t mean to use the word “crush.”

But she did. It’s out there.

“You know what I mean,” she mutters.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I smile. “You like me. It’s cool, whatever.”

Her face is pure red. It’s cute, but I do feel a little bad for embarrassing her. “I barely know you.”

Let it go. Don’t admit to anything.

“Well, barely knowing you hasn’t stopped my crush.”

Mollie opens her mouth, but registers my words and stops short. She smiles.

I look away and start to pedal again. Even with my brain now compiling a spreadsheet of why I’m even dumber than I think, I feel myself smile too.