North Star

08 | shave ice

2019

I had never actively wished for a brother, but Keali'i made me believe it wouldn't be so bad.

Kanani met him not long after she had graduated high school and it was like they were always meant to meet. That fated day at KCC went down in history as the day my sister realized she liked the idea of settling down with someone if it was the right person. And truthfully, even from the beginning, we had always believed him to be the right person. He treated her well, made her laugh, and was all around a good person to be around. There wasn't much more any of us could ask for.

I hated to admit it but I sometimes liked being around him more than my sister. For obvious reasons, we had far fewer disagreements between us, but that could probably be chalked up to not being around each other as much. Maybe if he lived with us, I wouldn't feel the same. Maybe he'd push my buttons and I'd charge full force like I did with Kanani instead of making strategic retreats.

At the end of the day, he often felt like a mediator between my sister and me. And on those days when I couldn't stand to be around her, being around him instead felt like a compromise. I could always see the pieces of her within him and feel like I was close to her even when I wasn't.

He picked me up from work a lot since Kanani and I shared our car and he worked on the same side of the island as me. More often than not, we grabbed dinner together or saw a movie since we both liked a lot of the same kinds.

The part of my brain that didn't stop overthinking everything wondered if he did it because he actually liked being around me or if it was because he felt bad. He never made me feel guilty about not being as present as I wished I could be, but that didn't mean he wasn't thinking it. He could have made it his mission to bring me out of my shell more, and doing things with me outside of the house could have been part of that plan. I had to remind myself often to not get stuck in that mindset, not believe that I was a puzzle everyone else was trying to put back together.

"How was work?" Keali'i asked after waiting for me to close the passenger door.

"Shit."

He shifted the gear, placed his hand on the back of my seat, and turned so he could reverse out of the parking spot. Unlike the rest of the island of O'ahu, the two of us seemed to be the only people who refused to back into a parking space ever. It felt like our only little club.

"Give me something a little more to work with, please."

I considered all my options, then decided that Keali'i would find a way to work it out of me no matter what route I used in an attempt to escape from my bad mood.

"Three of my deliveries went out today and had problems with them," I explained. Pressing a little too hard on the button, I rolled down the window and welcomed the gust of fresh air that rushed in immediately. After spending an extra forty-five minutes helping out a customer who ended up not making a purchase—furniture was a big price tag so I didn't blame them for waiting on it, but that meant potentially losing out a sale to someone else when they came back and I hated that—I was ready to not spend any time indoors. "They straight up just dropped a dining table as they were lifting it out of the truck. And I know my ass wouldn't be able to carry that but they just tried to play it off like nothing happened! Like, what? You think they're not gonna notice the giant crack in the table? So annoying."

If it wasn't so late, the beach would have been nice. I settled for the open window and did my best to not imagine flinging myself out of it while the car was in motion.

"That sucks," he said. "They probably call and bitch you out too."

"They think me forwarding them to customer service is me trying to dump them on someone else and I'm like uh, no? I literally have no way to send out a service truck so you need to talk to them? Exhausting."