“I’ll tell Kai you were looking for her,” she says.
“It’s all right. I’m sure I’ll talk to her later.”
“Okeydoke,” she says, perky as hell. She always seems that way. I get the feeling the world could be collapsing in front of Lea, and she’d be staring through the dust, daydreaming about something exciting.
I take my phone out of my pocket and hit Kai’s number again, waiting for the ring. Right to voicemail again. Damn.
“Hey, Lea, what’s your address? I’m going to take Kai some soup or something to make her stomach feel better.”
“You’re so freaking sweet, Denver. Here,” she says, taking a cocktail napkin and jotting down her address. “Tell her I hope she’s feeling better.”
“No problem. I … uh … left Aya at the kids club, so if anything crazy happens over here—”
“I’ll get the kiddo. She’s so cute. No problem.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. “I’ll be back in an hour. “
Without giving it another thought, I book it to the address Lea gave me, finding a cute, older-looking house, styled from several decades ago. Kai mentioned living in her family’s house, so it makes sense. Her Jeep is in the driveway. That’s a good start, at least. As I’m hiking up the driveway, though, I get a feeling of unease. What am I doing? I haven’t even given her twenty-four hours to return my call. Maybe she just needs some space. God, I’m acting over the top and a little stalkerish. I shouldn’t be here. Back in the day, I wouldn’t give a chick another thought if she didn’t return my call. I’d just move on to the next. I didn’t have the patience for games, but this situation with Kai is making me feel crazy, and what’s worse is I’m doing crazy things.
I ring the bell, silently hoping Kai isn’t really sick because I showed up empty-handed. I decide to stand away from the peephole, another asshole move. She should have the right to avoid my presence.
Asshole or not, the door opens, and Kai is dressed in her work clothes, not looking sick in the slightest. “What’s going on?” I blurt out.
She starts to close the door. Another chick thing? What the hell? Twice in one week now. I don’t stop her from closing the door because that’s not my thing with women, just Aya. At least I have some self-restraint left.
Before the door is completely closed, Kai reopens it. “What are you doing here?” she asks.
“Why didn’t you return my calls?”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“How about the reason why you left without saying goodbye last night?”
Kai takes a long look at me and scoops her hair up off her shoulders, tying it up in a ponytail. “Come in,” she says. “Take your shoes off, please.”
I shuffle my flip-flops off and follow her down the narrow hallway with peeling wallpaper, then into a family room with worn furniture. She plops down on the couch in front of a TV playing a rerun ofThe Bacheloror something of the sort. She grabs the remote and clicks the TV off.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting awkwardly on her couch, feeling like I’m too tall for this particular sofa, with my knees jutting out a foot off the cushion. I lean forward and rest my elbows on my legs. “What happened?”
“Aya called for me,” she says.
“And?” I ask her. She didn’t know whether Aya knew she was there or not. “She had no clue what time it even was when she was calling for you. She didn’t believe me that you were gone, so she yelled out.”
Kai turns her body, folding her leg up beneath her to face me. “Look, Denver, not only did I lose my parents, but I had to watch my little sister, who was twelve at the time, go through the emotions of losing her parents too. I did everything I could to make the pain better for her, but there was no way to fix her. The only thing there was for her was time to numb what she felt inside.
I look down between my clasped hands, getting where she’s going with this. She thinks I’m not careful with Aya’s heart. “Ask me how many women I’ve dated since Isla, Aya’s mom, left two years ago.”
Kai shrugs. “I’m not saying you would do anything to hurt Aya. That’s not my intention.”
“I understand, Kai. I haven’t gone on one date because it didn’t feel right, and I didn’t want to hurt Aya. That little girl, though, she has been begging me to find someone. She wants another woman around, and she thinks she’s got it all figured out. I’ve told her no so many times that I felt like a broken record. I wasn’t trying to find anyone, and I was okay with settling into a single life. Then you came around, and something clicked in my head. My resolve to remain solo began to waver. I had a sudden desire to remember what being with someone felt like.”
“With me?” she asks as if she still can’t understand my attraction for her.
“You may have been the first woman I spoke to when I arrived in Maui, but like I said, something clicked and told me to try my hand at flirting with you, which I obviously screwed up at first.”
“Yeah, you did. You’ve got zero game.”
“When you’re numb below the waist for so long, you’re not really on your ‘A’ game.”
