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.”
