“It means crustation,” I explained. “Which is exactly what we’re going to pick up, a whole heaping roasting pan filled with steamed, boiled, and broiled crustaceans that we can sit and pig out on when Lani gets home.”
“Yum!”
“Exactly,” I said. “Fortunately, it’s on the way home.”
We had to drive past the very club Aunty Ina had mentioned during our conversation. What was left was a charred pile of beams and concrete that scarcely resembled the vibrant place it had once been. Yellow caution tape blocked off the lot and the building next door, which looked to have experienced external charring and damage to the windows on the side closest to the club. I wondered if the heat from the blaze had shattered them.
Our Panglao special was waiting when we arrived, and judging from the number of cars in the parking lot and the line of people waiting to place their orders, it was a good thing we’dcalled ours in, or we’d have had a hell of a wait and not nearly enough time to pull off the surprise we had in store for Lani.
At the house, we took the divide and conquer approach, with me getting things put away in the kitchen while they sorted out the decorations after positioning the plants we’d picked up. The bay windows were the perfect spot for the hanging ones, while the standing ones were ideal brackets for the entertainment center. They truly breathed new life into the space. If it wasn’t for that infernal couch, I’d have been looking forward to spending time hanging out in there. We’d purchased clear hooks that could easily be stuck to the walls and moved or removed with ease.
Kekoa’s idea, not mine. I’d had a box of small nails in my hand when they suggested we use something less destructive. Less permanent too. The stuff that kept the hooks from falling off reminded me of the blue tacky goo my siblings and I had used to hang our posters back when we still lived in military housing. I just hoped it worked better than the old stuff did; after a while the posters had wound up sagging and rolling down the walls at the most inappropriate times, like the middle of a rushed make-out session. A Metallica poster had landed on my then boyfriend’s head, and apparently laughing was not the proper response. Who knew? Needless to say, he wasn’t my boyfriend for very long after that.
Now I had a mate who happily whistled as they stood on a chair and positioned the hooks first, then took stock of the light we’d purchased, including several strands of SpongeBob ones.
“What are you doing?” I asked as they rearranged them a second time.
“Putting them in order to make it easier for you to hand them to me,” they said. “We don’t have a lot of time left before Lani gets home. There’s no way we can get it all done tonight.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I think we can get this room done before he arrives,” Kekoa said. “We can stash the rest of the decorations in your workshop and surprise him a second time by decorating the bedroom tomorrow.”
“I like that,” I said. “I think Lani will too. He loves surprises as long as he doesn’t have to organize them.”
“I can only imagine.”
It truly took a team effort to position each strand of lights and wrap the planters containing the elephant ears in garland, but working with them, I wasn’t hit with the pangs of melancholy I’d been nailed with the last time I tried to decorate. Instead, I found myself singing along with them and the carols that spilled from the smart speaker, laughing at some of the funny Christmas stories shared on the music channel we were listening to as we brought our aquatic holiday theme to life. With the way they’d layered the lights and alternated between twinkling and non-twinkling, the walls shimmered with teal and aqua, answering the question of why they’d dug so hard for those colors while passing on the more traditional ones.
They’d slipped in a few strings of silver lights too, just three, but they truly did enhance the feel in the room as they shimmered. Twice I cracked my shin on the wooden frame of the couch and toyed with the idea of dragging it out to the curb after the second time. The three of us couldn’t even sit on it comfortably. The only thing that stopped me was not having anything to put in its place or a reasonable excuse for not letting Lani do it when he threatened to evict it months ago.
And speaking of Lani, his headlights illuminated the window, and I caught Kekoa’s hand and hauled them close, excited to see our mate’s face when he saw how we’d spent our day.
Chapter 13
Kekoa
“Um… Chief Masters, do you have a moment?”
“Of course I do, Kekoa honey,” she said as she stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. “And out here it’s just Mrs. Masters, or even Ms. Dana if you really feel the need to put something before my name.”
She gestured for me to sit on one of the patio chairs and poured us glasses of lemonade from the pitcher on a nearby stand.
“I prefer gardening at night,” she explained as she filled them. “A throwback to my days in the service. I used to head outside to wind down and decompress from my day, and honestly because my plants were far less lively than my children. Once they were in bed, gardening and a glass of wine were the only things I had to focus on.”
“And they were incapable of complaining if you paid more attention to one over the other,” I said as she passed me the glass.
“Oh, you’ve got jokes,” she replied as she sat.
“Too many, sometimes,” I replied. “My snark has gotten me into trouble a time or two.”
“I’m sure it has.”
“Never got into any trouble making plant jokes though,” I said, “or tending to them. I hope Lani and Nyx don’t mind me adding some to the yard. They’ve got a beautiful backyard space, but it’s kind of bare.”
She laughed at that. “I’ve been telling them that since they bought the house. Even offered to plant a few to get them started, but they declined.”
“Might be for the best,” I replied. “I have it on great authority that Lani is a notorious plant killer. I hope forbidding him to touch them helps keep the new herbs and houseplants alive.”
