CHAPTER 7
.7.
I made coffee the same way I always did: measuring the grounds by eye, boiling water in a battered pot, and letting it steep until the color matched the darkness of a moonless night. The process was automatic, muscle memory taking over while my mind wandered. It wasn't until I turned around that I noticed Jimmy watching me with the intensity of a child seeing a magic trick for the first time.
"What’s wrong?" I asked, suddenly self-conscious.
Jimmy blinked, as if caught doing something he shouldn't. "Nothing. It's just – I've never actually seen anyone make coffee before."
I paused, the pot still in my hand. "What do you mean? You've had coffee before, right?"
"Of course," he said, almost defensive. "But it always just... appears. At home, the staff brings it. At the hotel, the same. I've never watched someone make it."
The pot felt heavier in my hand as the implication sank in. This guy had lived his entire life with things being given to him ready-made. Food. Drinks. Probably even his opinions. I set the pot down on the counter harder than necessary.
"Well, this is how us commoners do it," I said, immediately regretting the edge in my voice. I had already acknowledged to myself it wasn't his fault he'd been born into privilege any more than it was mine to have been named Horatio. It just hadn't become a fixture in my reasoning yet.
If Jimmy caught my tone, he didn't show it. Instead, he leaned forward, watching as I poured the dark liquid into two mismatched cups – one a standard enamel mug, the other a chipped blue ceramic thing my mother had painted herself.
"Do you take sugar?" I asked, holding up a small jar with a spoon stuck in it.
"No, thank you. Black is fine."
I handed him the blue cup. "The good china," I said with a half-smile.
Jimmy accepted it carefully, as if it were fine porcelain rather than my mother's amateur pottery. Something about his gesture made me feel both better and worse at the same time.
I rummaged through a cabinet and found a tin of biscuits – the good kind from Honolulu Mercantile, not the cheap ones that tasted like sweetened cardboard. My mother had left them during her last visit, part of her ongoing campaign to make sure I didn't starve to death while pursuing my literary ambitions.
"Here," I said, prying open the tin. "They go well with coffee."
Jimmy took one and bit into it cautiously. His eyebrows rose. "These are good."
"Don't sound so surprised. We do have actual food in Hawaii."
He laughed, a genuine sound that softened his features. "That's not what I meant. It's just that they're different from what we have at home. Less sweet."
I gestured toward the screen door. "Let's sit outside. The lanai catches the breeze better than in here."
We settled into the two rattan chairs that constituted my outdoor furniture. The sun was already beginning its decline toward the ocean, daubing the sky in shades of gold and pink. The beach was quieter now, most tourists having returned to their hotels to dress for dinner or retire to speakeasies hidden in plain sight.
We sipped our coffee in silence, not the comfortable silence of old friends, nor the awkward silence of two strangers sitting close together.
It was something in between, as if we were both waiting for the other to decide what we would become to each other.
The waves kept up their endless conversation with the shore, a language older than either of our bloodlines. A seabird wheeled overhead, its cry piercing the evening air like a question neither of us knew how to answer.
"It's beautiful here," Jimmy finally said, voice low over the mug. "I've been in Hawaii for two weeks, and I think this is the first time I've really seen anything of it."
I glanced at him. His profile was silhouetted against the darkening lanai, his eyes suspended on the horizon. "What do you mean?"
He shrugged, a gesture too casual for the weight in his voice. "I came with friends. We've spent most of our time drinking and trying to surf and... I don't know. Looking at everything but seeing nothing."
The sun touched the water now, a red-gold disk sinking into the Pacific. In a few minutes, it would be gone, and the quick tropical twilight would follow.
"I don't remember what happened," Jimmy said suddenly, still staring at the horizon. "The other night. In the water. They told me I fell off the boat and you pulled me out, but I don't remember any of it. The last thing I remember is drinking gin on the deck, and then waking up in the hospital with a nurse telling me I was lucky to be alive."
I didn't know what to say to that. What do you tell someone about their own death and resurrection?
"But even though I don't remember it, I'm afraid," he continued, his voice barely audible over the waves. "I'm afraid of the water now. I close my eyes and feel like I'm drowning, even when I was lying in bed at the hotel."
The last sliver of sun finally disappeared beneath the waves. The sky held onto the light for a few more moments, like a memory that refuses to fade.
"I don't want to go back to California feeling like this," Jimmy said. His hands were wrapped around the empty coffee cup, knuckles white. "Like a crippled man. Like someone who's been beaten."
I knew what he was going to say before he said it. I could feel it in the air between us, as tangible as the salt spray.
"I need to go back in the water," he said. "Tonight. Before I lose my nerve completely."
"That's not a good idea," I replied automatically. "Night swimming is dangerous even for experienced swimmers."
Jimmy turned to look at me, his face half in shadow now. "I'm going to do it. With or without you. But I'd rather not do it alone."
The weight of Mr. Kahanamoku's words settled on my shoulders like a heavy hand. You transferred your Mana into him. When you did that, you chose to be his Kahu – his protector.
"It doesn't work that way," I said, trying to keep my voice calm. "You can't just force yourself to get over something like this."
"Can't I?" His voice had an edge now, the desperation of a man who sees only one path forward. "If I don't do it tonight, I never will. I'll go back to California, and I'll never swim again. I'll look at the ocean from a safe distance for the rest of my life."
He set the empty cup on the floor between us. "I don't want to live like that."
The sky was darkening rapidly now, stars appearing like pinpricks in a vast velvet curtain. The ocean had turned from blue to black, the waves visible only as silver lines where they broke.
I thought about what it meant to be someone's protector. Was it about keeping them safe from harm, or was it about helping them face their fears? Mr. Kahanamoku would know, but he wasn't here, and I probably wouldn’t like his answer anyway. It was just Jimmy and me, on my lanai, with the night closing in around us.
"Fine," I said finally. "We'll go together. But we wait for the moon to rise first. I'm not taking you out there in complete darkness."
Relief washed over Jimmy's face, visible even in the gathering night. "Thank you."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The decision felt both right and wrong, like many of the important choices I'd made in my life.
We sat in silence again, waiting for the moon to climb above the mountains and cast its silver path across the water. I wondered if Jimmy knew what he was asking me to do, to guide him back to the place where he'd died, where I'd pulled him from the darkness and breathed life back into him. I wondered if he knew what it could mean for both of us.
The first edge of the moon appeared above the peaks, a sliver of light that grew as we watched. Soon, it would be bright enough to see our way through the water. Soon, we would know if Jimmy could conquer his fear, or if the ocean would claim a piece of him forever.
I just hoped we weren't making a terrible mistake.
Comments
Post a Comment