28. Mila

TWENTY-EIGHT

The hardest part of parenting is trying to be fake mad

when your kid does something bad but hilarious.

~ Unknown

Finally, Kai and I found a day when we can both get away at the same time. Noah's in the main room waiting for his ride to pick him up. Chloe's sitting with her legs tucked up under her on my bed, and I'm randomly throwing items of clothes out onto the mattress to see if they're what I want to wear.

"Chloe, you should have seen him. He was so … just so there for me."

I'm rehashing the night Kai showed up to serve me ice cream while I melted down over Brad meeting Noah.

I haven't told Chloe about the hardware store kiss for obvious reasons.

"I've been watching, Mila. Kai's always there for you. Remind me why you're so dead set on resisting this man."

"I can't talk about that right now. He'll be here in an hour. Let's put a pin in that."

"Okay. Consider it pinned. And consider me the woman you've always known me to be."

"You're not dropping it." I set another blouse on the bed, hold the last one up to me and raise my eyebrows, silently asking Chloe her opinion.

"Too formal. Isn't he just taking you to the beach? And why are you stressing about what to wear if you two are so fake?"

"I'm just … I don't know. That's part of the pinned conversation too. Okay?"

"Not by a long shot. We're having tea one night after Noah's in bed—soon. And by tea, I mean tea. The tea you'll be spilling. All. The. Tea, Mila."

"Okay. It's a deal. But now can you help me pick out an outfit? I just need to get dressed."

Chloe purses her lips and raises her brows as if I'm transparent—as if there's more to this time I'm about to spend with Kai than us figuring out our stories so we can convince his family we're real during Kalaine and Bodhi's wedding. And also so we can continue to convince Brad we're real. All of those reasons seem misty and vague right now. Meaningless and trite. This fake romance has taken on a life of its own like a runaway horse pulling a carriage across a dirt road full of ruts. I can't get my bearings anymore and I'm being jostled so hard I'm no longer sure if I'll be upended or survive the ride.

"Anyway, as I was saying, Kai needs a fake date for the wedding. So I'm it. His parents already think I'm his girlfriend."

Chloe laughs. "You're so used to this now. It's like pulling the wool over everyone's eyes but mine is no big deal to you anymore. Are you the same girl who tattled on Jeremy Stein for copying one answer on our math test in sixth grade?"

I am that girl.

"I don't know, Chloe. You're right. It's become too easy to pretend—to deceive people. It's so complicated. How did I even get here? And now …"

"Now you went and caught real feelings," she finishes for me.

"Yes-ish. Sort of. That's under the pin too."

"This pin is getting pretty darn overloaded. Do I need to rent a yurt on the backside of the island and steal you away for a weekend so you can bring me up to speed?"

"Can't. It's the beginning of high season. I barely managed to take this afternoon off, as you know."

I hold up another shirt and Chloe stands, marching over to my closet and thumbing through a few things. "Here," she says, handing me a gauzy blouse that's not too formal, but isn't schleppy either.

"Kai saved me, Chloe. He saved me on more than one occasion. When you think of it, he's been saving me for years in small ways."

"Yep. Bonafide mouth to mouth." Chloe wags her eyebrows suggestively and then cracks up at her own joke.

"Stahhhhp." I scold her while my mind unhelpfully recalls the actual mouth to mouth episode from last week. "All I'm saying is he deserves me to be the best fake girlfriend ever at the wedding. And I will be."

"Pin," Chloe says. "So, so much under that pin."

Noah knocks on my door while swinging it open and walking in.

"Buddy, knocking means waiting."

"I did wait."

Chloe chuckles like the childless woman she is. Noah entertains her infinitely—especially when he's doing something he shouldn't.

"Did you hear me say, ‘Come in'?"

"You were going to. I saved you the trouble."

Chloe shakes her head. Her face is pinched with suppressed laughter. I quietly glare at her like she's dead if she lets one puff of a laugh out right now.

"What are you doing?" Noah asks.

"Picking out clothes to wear."

"You're already wearing clothes."

"This is for later."

Noah's face contorts in confusion.

Then, as if in slow motion, Noah walks toward my bed. I feel like I'm in one of those scenes where the person lunging for something moves in freeze frames while the background music sounds like it's being played underwater. Everything happens too quickly and slowly at the same time. I can't get to Noah fast enough because I'm the sluggish girl in the meme, saying "noooooo" while diving for the item he now holds up as if it's a class project on show-and-tell day.

My shapewear.

My son has my Spanx in his hand, his fingers like little clothespins so the entirety of them is on display.

"What kind of shorts are these?" His nose scrunches. "They're ugly. Like skin. You should definitely not wear these out to the beach." He pauses. "Or anywhere."

No kidding!

"They're nothing!" I say in a squeaky voice while I snatch my tummy-tucking, modern-day girdle from my son.

"Oooh. You know what, Noah?" Chloe uses her child-charmer voice while her breath comes out in small bursts of laughter she's trying desperately to contain. "Can you make me a snack?"

I stuff the Spanx behind my back, which only makes them seem all the more suspicious. Today just isn't the day I need to edify my son as to what women wear to smooth out the places where we carried our children in our wombs … and the other spots on my body that bear the evidence that, yes, I do love scones, thank you very much. Not that I'm embarrassed of those places. I'm proud. But when a man like Kai asks you out for a day on the beach to get to know you better … Well, you panic. Or at least I panicked. And I needed all the reinforcement I could get. Enter: the girdle.

"Sure, Aunt Chloe," Noah thankfully takes my bestie's bait. "We've got brownies. Want one with milk?"

"You know I do." She smiles sweetly, but there's mirth in her eyes. It's a dangerous look. I know I'll be hearing about this for years to come.

Noah turns and practically flies to the kitchen. He loves serving guests. I guess it's a byproduct of living here all these years.

Once he's safely out of earshot, I cover my face and wail while Chloe laughs hysterically from her spot on my bed.

"My Spanx. Really?"

I look at Chloe who is now literally rolling on my bed in laughter. She's rocking from side to side, holding her stomach.

"He's going to need so much therapy. So. Much." I wail again.

"Calm down," she says between laughs. "He probably won't even remember. Why do you have those out anyway?" She pauses to study me and then says, "Ohhhhh. For your date?"

"Not a date."

I fold the Spanx and put them in my drawer. What was I thinking? This is Kai. He's seen me at all hours, under all circumstances. Besides, it's not a date.

"So you were putting on Spanx for your not-a-date?"

"Can we stop saying Spanx before I need therapy? Please?"

Kai made me a picnic. He didn't stop to pick up slaw from the market and fried chicken from a restaurant. The man made me a picnic. And then he walked me down to the local North Shore beach and laid out a beach blanket before opening the cooler with all the food in it. And we've spent the past few hours filling in blanks of our knowledge about one another, coordinating the fake details of how we started dating, and sealing any holes in our stories.

We're prepared.

I look around the blanket at the remnants of the meal we shared. Chocolate's smeared on the dessert plate from the tart Kai picked up at the Patisserie inside Alicante. It's the one item he didn't make from scratch, and I'm not mad about it.

I'm a woman who serves people for a living and loves doing it. There aren't really words to explain what it means when someone turns the tables and decides to serve me. Kai did that. He does it all the time. A slow, soft, but surprisingly intense yearning begins to swell somewhere in my chest. It whispers and nudges: This. Him. Forever.

What would it be like to spend my life giving back to Kai Kapule? Out-serving him. Showing him how much he matters. Running my hand along his jaw whenever I wanted. Looking into his honey-gold eyes while they crinkle in the corners with amusement. Sharing my heart with him, because he's safe enough to hold it.

Only, is he? Does he feel anything beyond friendship for me? He's reiterated the word friend all along. He's always treated me like this. Nothing has changed for him. He said he missed me, but then went right into how we needed this day just to get our stories straight.

And then there's Noah. He loves Kai, but he's about to find out who his dad is. I've been subtly leading up to the reveal that's going to happen sooner than later. There couldn't be a more inopportune time to start dating another man. What if Kai and I dated and broke up? Noah would lose the one man in his life who's been anything close to a father figure. I can't do that to Noah. I knew it wasn't time to think about romance, but my heart didn't listen.

"Mila?"

"Huh?"

"You drifted off somewhere."

"Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about." Kai smiles softly. "We probably need to talk about one more thing."

"So we're prepared?" I ask.

"Yeah. It's kind of important."

Kai's leaning back on his elbows. I'm laying down, my head propped on my hand. When he says it's important, he sits up. I raise myself off the blanket so we're side by side, looking out toward the ocean.

"We need to talk about that kiss."

I cover my face. "Could we not?"

"Mila …" Kai reaches over and pulls my hands away. His soft expression melts me. "It's okay. I already told you that. I just think we need to consider what we're doing about kissing going forward."

"What we're doing about kissing?"

Do I sound panicked? Because I feel a little panicked.

"Yeah." Kai doesn't take his eyes off mine. "That kiss was …"

"Awkward?" I ask, fishing for a sign that would tell me he feels anything other than sweet friendship for me.

"No …" He shakes his head and it almost seems like he's remembering our kiss. Then he chuckles lightly. "A little awkward. You definitely caught me off guard." He smiles at me. I smile back. Then he finally settles on saying, "It was …unrehearsed."

Unrehearsed? How can he say it was unrehearsed? The best kiss of my life to date felt unrehearsed to him? I don't know if I should feel insulted or curious as to where he's going with this.

"Definitely," he says. "Unrehearsed. It looked like our first kiss ever."

"Which it was."

"Right. Exactly. And, if you think of it, we shouldn't look like we've never kissed. It won't do. We've been dating. Obviously, we've been kissing."

"We have?"

"Well, we would have been."

"We would?" I nearly swallow my tongue the way Kai looks at me after saying we would have been kissing.

"Sure. I'd be stopping by the inn, sometimes bringing you flowers. Then I'd stay for a meal. I'd even bring the meal on nights you were burnt out on cooking. We'd clean up together. And after Noah was asleep, I'd sit with you on the porch swing. We'd talk. It's not all about the kissing for us."

"It's not?"

"Not at all." He smiles at me like he's not painting a picture like the ones you want to step right into once you've seen them hanging on a gallery wall. "We have a friendship as a foundation. A strong one. We care about one another."

"We do," I agree.

"So we'd chat in the evenings on the porch swing. We'd laugh about something funny Noah said. Maybe you'd ask me for input on a situation at the inn. Maybe I'd tell you some crazy story about Ben. But then, we'd fall into a peaceful quiet with one another."

"We would?"

I gulp and hope the sound isn't noticeable. It must not be because Kai keeps spinning the images of us in a committed relationship.

"Yeah. We'd get quiet, and I'd hold you. And we'd sit in that comfortable silence we always share."

"It is comfortable," I agree, even though my stomach feels like it's on a roller coaster with every single word out of Kai's mouth. Dipping, falling, rising, twisting.

"It is. It's one of my favorite times—when we're just quiet together. That kind of thing is underestimated, if you ask me. Anyway, I was saying, we'd sit like that, and you'd put your head on my shoulder, and I'd kiss the top of your head, and then you'd tilt your face up and smile at me the way you do, and … well, then we'd kiss."

"Every night?"

"If you wanted. Though, some nights I'd take you out to dinner instead of you cooking at the inn. I'd get Chloe or Phyllis to watch Noah and cover the needs of the guests. And then I'd make reservations. And we'd dress up and I'd take you dancing or out to eat. On our way home, I'd kiss you on the beach, or on the porch of the inn at the end of the night."

"You would?"

"If this were real, Mila? Yeah. That's how it would be. So, you see my point."

"Your point?"

I seem to be only capable of two word answers right now. My mouth is too dry for a full sentence.

"My point is, we should appear to have that life—the life where I'm kissing you daily."

"So our kisses should appear more boring. Like you're used to me."

"I would never be used to you. And believe me, our kisses would not be boring."

"In this fantasy of yours."

"Sure. Yes. In my fantasy. But it's our reality right now. The one we're presenting."

"So we need to look more … practiced?"

"That's what I think. But that's just my take on it. You have to tell me. Maybe we'll never have to kiss in front of anyone ever again. After all, you did attack me at the hardware store." He winks.

I cover my face again. I'll never live down the fact.

"Mila." Kai nudges me. "I'm teasing. That was us. Not you. We kissed one another. And it was a good move. Brad got the message loud and clear. That's what we want. We don't want a yellow light that he thinks he can run. We want it to be very blatantly red."

Yeah. Brad. That's what this is all about. We need to show Brad we're a couple.

Somehow, our objective no longer matters. It's irrelevant, because that picture Kai just painted is everything I've ever dreamed of.

And it's just a fantasy.