from the group, and threw myself into his arms. He just held me for a while. While I cried. He hugged me, and he said I was safe, and he said, ‘I got you.’ I never forgot that. And then he carried me back to my dad, even though I was kind of too big for that.”
I pull away. “No wonder you thought Billy Wong was the best.”
He sighs. “Right? I guess the moral of the story here is that a person can’t be summed up by a single action.”
I don’t know what to say to that, except, “Well, I’m glad he was there for you.”
“And I’m sorry he was there, for you.”
We stop dancing. Then, at that exact moment, the singer with the ponytail taps the microphone to get our attention. “And now the bride would like to dance with her father, while the groom dances with his mother.”
I immediately feel tears start to well up. I cast a desperate look at Nick, who also looks stricken. “Oh shit. We have to get out of here.”
He takes my hand and we just run, away from the reception, away from everybody, away, just away, until the grass under our feet gives way to sand and we reach the ocean. Nick takes off his jacket for me to sit on. Then he produces a rumpled tissue from his pocket. He hands it to me. “It’s clean.”
I dab at my watery eyes. “This trip is going to kill me.”
But then I look up. Away from the lights of the party, the sky has cracked open over our heads. I gasp. I have never seen stars so bright.
“It’s because there’s no light pollution,” Nick says as we gaze raptly upward. “We’re on a largely uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So everything’s very clear.”
“That feels like a metaphor,” I whisper.
He laughs. “I don’t know what it’d be a metaphor for, but it’s beautiful.”
“I could never paint this.” I close my eyes and breathe in the sweet salt air.
Nick takes off his shoes and socks and buries his toes in the cool sand next to mine. “You’ll just have to remember it.”
“I will.”
The breeze ruffles his hair. “Me too.”
This will be the beach I remember from now on, when I think of beaches. This beach and this night.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome, but for what?”
“For telling me your story. And for being my friend tonight.”
He gazes out at the water, smiling sadly. “I was hoping I’d get to be more than a boy who’s your friend. But that’s okay. I could use a friend, too.”
I understand. He thinks I’m giving him the let’s-be-friends speech. I shake my head.
“You’re more than that. I don’t know what we are, exactly, but we’re more than friends.”
He turns and looks at me, his smile happy again—I can tell, even in the dark. At the exact same moment we lean toward each other, closing the distance between us until our lips meet somewhere in the middle.
It’s the perfect kiss. It isn’t too long or too short, too dry or wet, too soft or firm. It’s simply two people who want to tell one another what we feel without having to use words.
At some point we come apart again. I touch his face, his smooth boyish cheek, and smile at him. He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear.
“That was epic,” I whisper.
42
Next morning. Mom wakes me by poking me in the foot. Because the rest of me is still buried under the covers.
“Wake up,” she orders in her usual drill-sergeant style. “Get dressed.”
I groan. “We’re supposed to be on vacation. Doesn’t that mean sleeping in?” But the vacation is almost over. We have one more day in Hawaii, and then we’ll be going home.
I still haven’t figured out how I am going to keep myself together around Pop.
“Rise and shine,” Mom says. “We’re all having breakfast together.”
I sit up slowly. “Who’s we in this scenario?”
“The core group,” she answers. “The Wongs, of course, and Marjorie and the Jacobis and the Ahmeds.” She is suspiciously cheerful, when I’ve been expecting her to be furious. I’ve pulled an Afton, after all. I up and disappeared last night, and I never answered her texts, and I still don’t intend to provide her with any explanation as to where I was. To top that off, Nick and I talked on the beach until like two in the morning, which put me back at the room about two thirty.