“When are your parents going to kick him out?”
“I mean, he’s their son too, right? Besides, where would he go? There’s like three houses available on Bane and Keone Reef combined, and I’m positive Benson can’t afford any of them.”
Laiken sits beside me, his hand resting on my leg right away. I love the possessive touch. I rest my hand over his and curl my fingers under his palm.
Despite the way people are stealing glances our way, knowing that my parents are probably here somewhere, I keep my attention firmly in my own lane. I’m happy Laiken is here with me. I’m glad he’ll touch me in front of everyone, making sure the entire island knows that I’m his. We’re together.
The room hushes as the six island representatives come in. They greet those in the front or those lingering by their chairs for quick discussions. This is always how the meetings begin.
Taylor is next, signaling that the reps should take their seats. Usually, that’s the note that the meeting is about to begin. But this afternoon with Taylor is Mr. Calloway. His presence has everyone whispering.
“I didn’t think he was coming again,” Cash says. “Didn’t we vote that Taylor was getting a second chance not to be a royal pain in the ass?”
“We did,” I agree.
Laiken points to the easel at the front with something covered. “Whatever that is might be why Mr. Calloway is here.”
“How did we miss that?” I muse.
“We were too busy looking at Onyx,” Cash murmurs, making me smile.
I make the mistake of looking for him again because I see my mother up front with her biddies from work. My stomach flips, and I turn my attention to Taylor at the podium. I wonder where my dad is. Who is he sitting with?
“Good afternoon,” Taylor greets. “I hope you’ve had a great month.”
There are murmurs around the room in response.
“I want to thank you again for allowing me another opportunity to serve you.” He hesitates as he looks at the podium, where I’m guessing an agenda is. “I think it’s important that everyone recognizes their own weaknesses, and I think one of mine is not understanding which of the things I feel is important is something that maybe you don’t want to discuss. So I have a list of things that I feel might be important to you, and I want you to be honest if this is something you don’t care about.”
A hand immediately goes up and Taylor nods.
“It’s not that we don’t care about some of the things you bring up, Taylor. We just don’t need a twenty-minute conversation about how tall a sign should be at the docks. It’s the nuances of the conversation that matter. Not their importance.”
Taylor’s head tilts to the side. “Oh. Okay. Well… I would like to take the first few minutes to go over a short list because it will be a helpful learning experience for me to take note of these kinds of things. If everyone is okay with this?”
One of the things I love about living on Kala is that, as a whole, it’s filled with good people. Maybe these next twenty or thirty minutes are going to waste our time, but no one actually wants Taylor to fail. That’s not what the point was when Laiken inadvertently created a movement against Taylor’s hovering.
“I understand that grass length is too nitpicky, correct?” Taylor asks, receiving a lot of nods. “I understand that it’s about the parameters I was putting on it, though we can agree that there is a thing as too long, right?”
He reminds me of a child at school, just learning a subject. I smirk as the front rows explain to him what makes this subject important and what makes it over the top.
“Okay. How about the trees in the park? I will admit that this is a personal observation, so I want to know if it… is worth a lengthy discussion. The trees aren’t uniform, and it makes the lines of trees uneven. I know we can’t control how trees grow, but I think there might be ways to train them. I’ve seen online—” His words cut off, and he clears his throat. “Lengthy discussion or no?”
“No,” the room unanimously agrees.
Taylor nods and makes a note on the paper or tablet in front of him. I’m too far away to know if that’s a pen or a digital pencil in his hand.
For the next several minutes, I listen amused as Taylor brings up pet curfews, the way the water moves the sand on the beach, how the hydrants are fading from the sun, and whether we should make them rainbows. A whole lot of things that certainly could have been put in the newsletter, asking for feedback instead of being talked about in person.
However, there were topics he brought up that we wanted to have a conversation about. Such as adjusting the shape of the docks on Etsumi because of traffic to create a better flow. Whose responsibility it is to correct guest behavior when we see themclearly breaking rules—any resident who sees it or reporting it to a team member, which will allow the guest the ability to deny they’ve done said thing.
Taylor definitely took extensive notes on what constitutes as in-person importance and what can be relayed as a discussion topic in a newsletter.
“I think he’s going to thrive under feedback like this,” Laiken says, a smile in his voice. “He already looks ten times more relaxed than he usually does.”
I nod. “It’s nice when people are willing to listen and learn from those around them. It really shows the kind of person they are.” I didn’t mean for that statement to become a parallel between this situation and the one with my father, but I can’t help but take note of what my own observation says about the person my father is.
Has he always been that person, and there’s just never been a reason to see it until now?
