The Moment of Letting Go - J. A. Redmerski Page 0,40

more and more uncomfortable as the evening wears on. I’d much rather have Alicia as my company, but she’s been pretty busy playing casual hostess and sitting on Braedon’s lap since we arrived.

The guy doing the grilling takes the burgers off the fire and stacks them in a large mound of steaming meat on a platter. Without him having to sound the dinner bell, everybody gets up in intervals to make themselves a plate.

“What do you want on your burger?” Luke asks me, standing from his chair.

I start to get up, too, but he stops me. “No, I’ll make it for you.”

“Just ketchup,” I say, smiling up at him.

“Potato salad and baked beans?” he asks.

“Just potato salad—thanks,” I tell him, and he smiles and goes off to make our plates.

“So where are you from?” Kendra asks once Luke steps out of the way.

“San Diego. Lived there all my life. What about you?”

“I was born in Hawaii,” she says. “Honolulu. But I’ve lived most of my life in California. Haven’t even been in Hawaii long enough to call myself a local.” She chuckles lightly.

A bout of silence fills the space between us for a moment.

I sip on my beer just to be doing something.

“So,” she speaks up, “did you and Luke meet over at the resort? That’s where he usually meets girls”—she sort of chokes down the beer she just swigged from the bottle and waves her hand in front of her face rapidly—“I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

Actually I think you did.

I look at the grass, my feet, the strange little insect crawling across the patio beside my shoe, and then back up at her. I swallow nervously and place my beer between my thighs, glancing across the patio at Luke standing next to a table where the bowls of beans and potato salad and bottles of condiments are placed.

Finally Kendra leans her back against the chair with a long sigh.

“Look,” she says in a low voice, “let’s just forget I said that. It totally came out all wrong.” She laughs lightly. “So is Luke going to take you hang gliding?”

My eyes get big.

I laugh a little. “Uh, definitely not,” I tell her, shaking my head. “He couldn’t even get me to jump off the cliffs when we went swimming earlier.”

That seems to have silenced her, though I don’t know why. She just stares across the short space at me with a sort of surprised yet vacant look.

Luke walks up then with a plate in each hand. He hands me one carefully and I place it on the top of my legs and thank him with a smile.

“What, are you afraid of heights, or something?” Kendra finally asks as Luke is sitting back down next to me.

I notice them glance at each other again—that’s starting to annoy me a little, not to mention making me very uncomfortable. But this time the look that passes between them is something more serious. Kendra’s eyes are slanted with confusion and maybe concern—if I knew her well enough to decipher her expressions, that’s what I’d call it: concern.

Luke looks as though he wants her to stop talking altogether.

I dig a plastic fork into my potato salad and poke it around in there to distract myself, until finally they look back at me with smiles as if no secret conversation had just passed between them right in front of me.

Finally I answer, “Yeah, actually I am pretty afraid of heights. Planes. Bridges. Ferris wheels. If it’s more than ten feet off the ground, I’m uncomfortable with it.”

Kendra stuffs the edge of the burger into her mouth, and I get the feeling it’s more to keep her from saying something Luke doesn’t want her to say. She chews happily, a big smile plain on her face as her jaw moves around.

Luke does the same, but he’s not smiling so much as he is beginning to look as uncomfortable as I feel.

I notice Seth, from the corner of my eye, talking to a dark-haired girl standing next to the back door. He tucks his index finger behind the elastic of her bikini bottom, just below her belly button, and snaps it back. She giggles flirtatiously and pulls away. My player radar is still working at least—I was beginning to think maybe it stopped somewhere between seeing Luke through my lens and meeting him for the first time. Could Luke be playing me? I had started to think that, but decided that he just doesn’t seem the