9. River

9

RIVER

T he Frisbee sliced through the humid air. I watched Adam’s lean form as he darted across the sand to catch it. Adam was all tousled hair, defined muscles, and a smile that went on for days.

His arms flexed as he threw the Frisbee back in my direction.

I jumped to catch it, feeling the grains of sand shift under my feet.

“Hey, look at you!” I teased, nudging him playfully when he returned to my side. “You’ve taken to vacation life like a fish to water. You know, like that lucky fish you caught yesterday.”

Adam chuckled. “What can I say? Maybe it’s the company.” He winked and threw himself on his beach towel.

I followed him, dropping the plastic disk on the sand.

“I am a joy to be around,” I joked.

Adam lay sideways and rested his head on his hand. “I missed this, you know. Doing nothing, being with you, listening to music.” He sighed and reached into his bag to grab his iPod.

“You do know phones do that these days, right?” I teased.

“I know. But they’re also attention whores, and when I want to chill with our playlists, I don’t want the world interrupting.”

I smiled as he passed one of the earbuds to me. For as long as I could remember, we’d made playlists for each other. I started it when we were bored one particular summer, and when he’d been gifted an iPod for his birthday, we took it to a new level. We had a playlist for every mood, and I loved it.

For a while, we lay there under the late afternoon sun, listening to a nineties summer playlist.

My belly rumbled, so I turned to him. “Want to grab some food?”

“Absolutely. I was right when I said we wouldn’t see the happy couples for the rest of the day,” he said, pulling his phone out of his bag. “I guess we’re on our own for dinner.”

“They did say couples massages always put them in the mood.”

“Like they ever have a problem with that.”

I snorted. There was no arguing that.

We picked up our stuff and walked side by side toward the beachfront restaurant, the sand giving way beneath our feet.

“Look at that,” Adam murmured, nodding toward the horizon where the sunset painted the sky with beautiful hues of gold and amber. “Doesn’t it make you want to just…stay here forever?”

“Sometimes,” I confessed. “But life’s waiting for us back home, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” he pondered aloud. “Or are we just afraid to find out what could be if we took the leap?”

I glanced at him, at the earnestness etched into his features, and the weight of my secret pressed down on me with renewed force. What would happen if I took that leap? If I dared to voice my truth?

“Maybe,” I said, the word hanging between us.

The restaurant buzzed with life, the evening crowd a blend of tourists and locals. We found a cozy table outside on the patio facing the ocean and sat down.

The server didn’t take long to give us a menu and take our drink order.

“I’m impressed by the service here. If the food is as good, I think I’ve found my favorite place on this island,” I said.

A girl at a nearby table angled her chair to face us, her gaze locked on Adam with an eagerness that set my stomach in knots. “Hey there! I was wondering if you know what’s good to eat in this place,” she asked, but her body language told me the last thing on her mind was food.

I felt my jaw clench, a wave of unease rising in me. I wanted to shield Adam from her, to claim his attention as solely mine. But I held back. It wasn’t my place.

“It’s our first time here,” Adam responded with kindness, never crossing into flirtation, his focus flickering back to me.

“It’s my first time here too. In Maui, I mean. It was meant to be a girls’ vacation, but my friend got sick, and I didn’t want all our plans to go to waste.

“Um…I’m really sorry to hear about your friend,” Adam said. “I’m sure it’s not as fun traveling on your own.”

The girl shrugged. “As they say, a stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet.” She leaned closer. “There are some strangers here I wouldn’t mind getting to know better.”

“Just as long as they’re not serial killers.” His gaze flickered to me again, and I clung to the fact he didn’t seem interested in the girl in the slightest.

The girl giggled, a sound that seemed to resonate at a frequency designed to grab attention. Her hair, a cascade of sunkissed waves, was tossed with calculated carelessness. “You don’t look like a serial killer.”

It was Adam’s turn to shrug. “Vacation wardrobe.”

“I can’t tell if you’re serious or joking,” she said.

At that time, the server returned to take our order, and while she listed the day’s specials, the girl made her way inside the restaurant.

“She was very interested,” I said after the server left us. “What was it that Noah said? You could be sewing your royal oats before the main course.”

He laughed. “Aside from the fact I’m here with my best friend, who I wouldn’t ditch for any girl, I’m also not interested in hooking up or vacation flings.”

“It’s too early. I get it.”

He gazed out at the beach in front of us. “It’s more than that. I’m not sure I’ll ever trust again, and it’s not just trusting someone else. It’s trusting myself.”

I squeezed his shoulder. As much as I wanted to tell him the right person was out there and all that, I didn’t want to play down his feelings. He was entitled to feel like not touching another person ever again. He was entitled to feel bitter, sad, and angry. It was all part of the healing process.

Yeah, you know all about that, don’t you, River?

The food was even better than the service, and after chatting with the server, we were given a brief tour of the kitchen. We met the chef, a local woman who’d learned to cook from her grandmother and had a no-nonsense approach to handling a kitchen. She was a hoot and made us promise to come back with Adam’s brothers and their partners.

As night draped over us, we retreated to our hotel room. Our conversation flowed easily, so despite our skin itching from the sea salt, we grabbed drinks from the mini bar and sat on the balcony.

“River, you know, today…it was good. Really good,” Adam said.

“Good days are what we’re here for, right?” He raised his can of soda, and I met it with mine.

When we finished our drinks, we took turns in the shower and settled in bed. The soft glow of the bedside lamp cast a muted light across the room, illuminating the space just enough for me to make out Adam’s silhouette.

“Remember that time you stole the keys for Lusitana from your parents so I could use the kitchen?” I asked.

Adam chuckled, the sound rich with nostalgia. “How could I forget? I was grounded for a month for pulling that stunt.”

“But that roast pork was to die for.”

“Totally worth it. I still don’t know why you didn’t become a chef.”

I smiled to myself, recalling the surge of triumph followed by the blue lights of the police coming into the kitchen because a neighbor thought the restaurant was being burgled. “I love cooking, but I think doing it for a living would take the fun out of it. Managing the restaurant allows me to have fun in the kitchen when they need me, but I also get to do other things, like working on customer experience and building relationships with long-standing customers.”

“And making sure Lusitana will still stand in place in thirty years.”

I laughed. “And that.”

As the night deepened and our anecdotes dwindled to murmurs, a silence settled between us.

“I know I've already said it, but thanks for being here, River,” Adam whispered across the dimness, his voice a tender caress against the room’s stillness.

I turned my head to meet his gaze, finding his blue eyes earnest and open, a universe of gratitude and trust within them.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” I whispered back, even though the devil on my shoulder called me a liar.

Eventually, the exhaustion of the day caught up to me. As I teetered on the edge of sleep, my mind conjured images of our day together. Just Adam and River.

Even as my heart craved more, I felt grateful that I’d had this time with him.

With one last glance at his silhouette, barely discernible in the moonlight that filtered through the blinds, I let sleep claim me.