I groan and flop my head against the headrest as he pulls us into a quiet residential neighborhood and puts the car in park. I glance around but don’t see anything other than small, quaint houses and well-manicured lawns. It looks like any other American suburb, except for the tall palm trees dotting a few front yards and the gigantic mountain range rising up behind us, the ocean crashing against the rocks just down the street.
And it’s definitely not where I was expecting Tyler to take me, so maybe our mind-reading skillsarea little rusty. “Are we…not going to do what I think we are?” Even though I don’t have a specific destination in mind—since I’ve never been to Hawai?i before—I thought I had a good grip on the type of activity Tyler was taking us to. But now I have no clue.
He swings the door open and hops out, flashing me another cheeky grin. “Oh, we are. We just have to take a little walk to the cliffs.”
I slide out of my seat with a grumble and follow Tyler down the paved road until we come to a grassy clearing with a trailin front of it, a small sign posted at the trailhead declaring the entrance to Koko Kai Beach Mini Park. I make one last-ditch attempt to grab Tyler’s arm and tug him back toward the car, but he chuckles and gently clasps my hand, leading me down the path and toward another, rockier clearing. Steep, sharp shelves of stone, meticulously layered lava rock from back in the island’s infancy, jut out and kiss the frothing ocean, creating a multi-layered cliff face that makes the ocean in front of us feel like it could go on for miles. Like we’re perched at the end of the world. Like this place where rock was poured from the sea hundreds of thousands of years ago is the quiet lip of the edge of the planet.
The sun is bright in the sky, illuminating the sturdy cliff of lava rock jutting out at various distances toward the churning ocean below. All around us are people, what looks like tourists and locals alike—spread out on picnic blankets on the higher rock shelves with sandwiches and sweating drinks, surfers out in the frothy waves, and people screaming gleefully as they catapult themselves off the lip of the rocky shelf and down to the water below.
“China Walls,” Tyler declares. “One of the most well-known cliff-jumping spots on O?ahu. And a gorgeous place to come watch the sunset, if you’re ever in the market for a romantic place to go.” He practically chokes on the worldromantic,cheeks flaming red.
I’m too busy taking in everything around me to fully think about what Tyler’s saying, staring in wide-eyed shock as a girl in a bright yellow string bikini shrieks for her life, leaping off the edge. The air whooshes out of my lungs as her arms flail in weightlessness before she disappears and I assume crashesinto the frothy water below. The guy with her—I’m guessing her boyfriend—leans over the lip to watch her descent, cheering and clapping when her head presumably pops above the surface with a happy shout. My staccato heartbeat slows only slightly with relief that she’s alive, but the unease still lingers at what could’ve happened. “There’s no way,” I tell Tyler, my teeth already beginning to chatter from fear. “There is absolutelynoway in hell you’re expecting me to jump off this giant cliff into the ocean. No way whatsoever.”
Tyler’s hand is still clasped in mine, and he squeezes it gently over the sounds of the ocean, the shrieking, and the music coming from people’s speakers. “Of course there’s a way, Olive. Youjump.”
I take a step back, farther away from the edge and closer to the rock shelf behind me, where people are leisurely enjoying their lunches and staying as far from the cliff’s churning edge as possible—exactly where I should be. “There isnoway.”
And yet, Tyler and I still stand at the end of a smattering of rocks jutting out toward the choppy ocean, and looking down, all I can imagine is the resonatingcrackof my skull against the stone.
“You do this forfun?” It’s hard to keep the shriek out of my voice, which rises an octave higher when Tyler lets go of my hand, whips off his shirt, and presents his tan, rippling muscles to the warm sun. On his right shoulder blade is a small tattoo of a funky-looking fishhook—which wasnotthere when we were together. I knew all his tattoos like constellations etched into my core memories, but not this one.
Surely my mouth is watering because I’m still hungry even after lunch, not because my outrageously ripped ex is standingright in front of me. He turns around and notices me staring, so I point at his shoulder in a weak attempt to justify my creepiness. “What’s the tattoo of?”
“Oh, that?” He glances over his shoulder as if he could possibly see it, surprised by my question. “It’s a Hawaiian fishhook. It’s called the makau. It’s supposed to bring good fortune and luck.” He taps his collarbone. “Lucas got me a necklace of it last time I was here, but the string broke back home. I’ve been meaning to replace it. Our mom was actually really stoked when I showed it to her, you know?” And I do know. Tyler and Lucas’s mother was born and raised on Maui but met Mr.Ferris when she went to Boston for college, and the rest was history. As far as I’d known from talking to them at Ferris family events, she’d gone back a handful of times before to see family, but never with the boys in tow. She was always promising them a big Hawaiian family vacation to help them learn their culture and get back to their roots, but up until now, it hadn’t happened.
Maybe now, with Lucas and Ella being stationed here, they’d finally get to discover that part of themselves again. Tyler already seems gung ho to do so.
I force myself to swallow and focus on the conversation at hand, throat dry from the thirstiness that has nothing to do with the sun as I study the sharp slopes of Tyler’s chest. “Uh-huh.”
He keeps strolling toward the end of the cliff, unperturbed by my ogling. “It’s really not as bad as it looks.”
“The tattoo?”
He gives me a playfulkeep uplook as I take a few hesitant steps toward him. “The cliff.”
I keep my eyes trained on the churning water below. “Has anyone ever died here?”
No response. Tyler is staring at the ocean, too, his jaw working tightly to keep in the secret that he knows I probably assumed. If I wasn’t already shaking with panic, I’d fumble into the back pocket of my shorts for my phone. “Ty?” I prompt him again, more cautiously this time.
He shrugs like it’s no big deal before taking a few steps back to prepare for his running jump. “Don’t Google it.”
“Great,” I moan, dropping my head into my hands. “So we’re definitely going to die.”
“We’re notdefinitelydoing anything, other than walking away from this with a really good story.” He sighs and flexes his shoulders, preparing for the jump, and I find myself fascinated by watching the ink move on his tanned skin. “I told you to trust me, remember? Look at all the people who are here and having the time of their lives, and they’re fine. It’ll be an awesome memory of an adventure to look back on years from now.”
I catch what he doesn’t quite say.When our adventure day is over and we go back to pretending we were never a part of each other’s lives.
It’s hard to stop the squeak of panic from escaping my throat, especially after realizing that my disturbing vision of this all going wrong might not be so far-fetched. My fingers itch to take my phone out of my back pocket and Google China Walls and all the bad things that happen here. I instantly start spiraling, panicked by the risk, by the nonanswers, by the lack of a plan—
“Olive.” Tyler’s voice is suddenly stern as he takes another step, this time toward me, putting his hands on my shoulders and forcing me to lock eyes with him. I try to ignore the warmth of his palms seeping into me as he looks right into my soul, his usual Tyler mix of serious and playful. He smells like a blendof coconut sunscreen and boy sweat, musky and intoxicating. “Relax.”
“I’m…I’m not even wearing a bathing suit,” I stammer. Another weak attempt at putting a stop to this whole thing.
Tyler wiggles his eyebrows playfully. “You could always go in without one.”
I slap him on the shoulder as a punishment. “Be serious. Also, there are like ten million children here.” As if they hear us, a gaggle of them start shrieking behind me, one of them chasing another with a dead gecko they found nearby.
He sighs dramatically. “You know I’m kidding. Just jump in with what you’re wearing. It’s hot enough that you’ll dry out in a second.”
