North Star

28 | hale kahananui

2019

It wasn't that I had been avoiding him, but it had been a couple of weeks since I ran out of his show.

As ridiculous as it was since I had been the runaway while he was left to defend the adoring crowd on his own—not quite alone, exactly, since everyone else was there, but I recognized there would be some opinion about me leaving—I was a little thrown at the zero attempts to get ahold of me during those two weeks. I had no reason to be upset, and I wouldn't necessarily say I was mad, just confused. Nikau seemed determined enough at that point to keep whatever we had going, even if neither of us could definitively say what it even was or if it was anything.

Then, one day, Kanani came into my room and demanded I reach out to him because she was tired of shielding texts from him asking if I was okay.

She left without an answer.

It only made me feel worse for doubting that he cared, but I was the only one to blame. I couldn't push people away and expect them to keep coming after me. After a while, even the most loyal of people had a breaking point where they could no longer keep pushing. Nikau hadn't been in my life for long, but he would have been better off just cutting me loose and saving himself the headache of dealing with me.

Thankfully, at least, he didn't show up at work. On top of the already present embarrassment of having to deal with my feelings for him, I didn't have it in me to add the office ladies fawning over him on top of that.

I should have expected him to show up eventually. After two weeks, I had gotten too comfortable with the idea that he might have finally been ready to forget about me. Finding him talking to my mom in our living room after coming home from work was a surprise, but less so the more I thought about it.

The sight of Nikau Reed inside Hale Kahananui was something I had to get used to.

"Is anyone else thirsty?" I asked as a way of greeting them. After I dropped my bags down near the door and hung my car keys up on the hook above, I dragged my feet into the kitchen where most of the room was cast in early evening shadows.

Mom looked like an angel with a soft filter while Nikau appeared in contrast. Not quite the opposite in the devilish sense, but it was clear this wasn't his home. He sat straighter and took up less space. After spending my entire life doing the same myself, whether I was at home or elsewhere, I recognized it immediately. The only difference was that he did it because it was what most individuals were taught to do when they visited someone else's home for the first time.

"I'm so sorry, Nikau, I forgot to ask if you wanted something earlier," Mom directed at Nikau. "Water? Juice? Beer?"

"Water's fine."

I brought over three glasses, handing one to Mom and placing the other down on the table next to Nikau.

"Have you been waiting long?"

He shook his head. "Maybe like twenty minutes or so."

"You could have texted." I didn't always recognize the way my words sounded to everybody else, so I hoped he didn't take that the wrong way. It was a genuine response with no intended snark.

"So you could come up with an excuse?" Mom sipped her drink. "Sure."

"Funny." She was in a good mood. I could take the potential humiliation for that reason alone. "Do you want to—"

I angled my body toward the stairs. As much fun as he might have been up to getting information out of my mother, he didn't come here to hang out with her, and, as much as I loved my mother, I wasn't about to have this conversation with him in front of her.