She and Jackson had been like two peas in a pod, sharing a room until they were eleven, though the house they’d grown up in had had plenty of space. She liked chatter and noise; he’d been a silent, shy kid. Her father used to joke they made up for each other’s weaknesses. Together, they were one perfect individual.
The first time they’d been apart had been when Jackson was arrested for the fire. That had kicked off a decade of separation.
She and Jackson had never been physically affectionate—like her mother, Jackson shied away from overt displays of fondness. But nothing could have stopped her from throwing herself at her brother. She tried to wrap her arms around his neck, but even in heels, on her tiptoes, he was far too tall.
She spoke against his chest, “Pick me up,” but it came out more like “Schmoop rump.”
“Uh, what?”
“Pick me up!”
A resigned sigh came from deep in his belly, but he did as she asked, lifting her so she could properly cling to him.
A big hand awkwardly patted her back. “Please stop.”
She ignored the pleading in that rough voice. “Don’t tear-shame me. I can cry if I want. I haven’t seen you in forever.” Not since the charges had been dropped. He’d left town sometime that night, with only a terse note for her, a duffel of clothes, and the money Maile had given him.
She’d left a couple days later, unable to find a reason to stick around in a place that no longer seemed like hers.
The patting turned more frenzied. “How long is this gonna last?”
“As long as I want, asshole,” she snarled between sobs. “Deal with it.”
Another sigh. “Livs, you know I’m not good at this.”
He never had been, bless him. She inhaled, struggling to stop. A few ragged breaths later, her tears eased enough for her to speak. “No, I don’t know that. I don’t know anything.” She twisted her head. A flash of black peeked out from under his T-shirt sleeve. Her tears turned to indignation, and she shoved herself away from him. “Except I see you got some tattoos. From someone who obviously wasn’t me.” Like a wife discovering lipstick on her husband’s collar, she jerked his shirt up and studied the half-sleeve there with a sneer. Her outrage melted into sharp nostalgia. Jackson had incorporated Hawaiian designs, reminiscent of the single tattoo their father had had on his arm. Whenever she’d asked her dad about it, he’d laughed and rolled his eyes, telling her it was a remnant of his wild youth.
She sniffed and lifted Jackson’s other sleeve to find something written on his inner bicep. Damn it, too bad she couldn’t read Japanese. “This is ridiculous. You went to some strangers somewhere for our people’s heritage?”
“Since when are you an expert on our people?”
She wasn’t. Her father had been estranged from and never met his extended family in Hawaii, and her mother had only ever made half-hearted efforts to teach her kids about their Japanese side.
Butstill.“I know how to do research.”
“I got this one in Tokyo and the other one in Maui. I think that was better than you hitting up Wikipedia.”
She nudged him into the moonlight and peered closer at the lettering. “Some nice line work,” she admitted grudgingly. “I could do better, of course, but it’s not terrible. What does it say?”
“Google it.”
She glared up at him. She and Jackson might have been close, but he was still a brother, with all the annoying traits that came along with that. She smacked his arm. “You want to permanently alter your body? You come to me from now on. No one else.”
He rubbed his arm where she had hit him, though she imagined her hand stung more than his hard flesh. “Yeah, yeah.”
She took another step back, and silence fell between them as they studied each other, cataloguing the differences ten years could make. His hair was shorter now, his face roughly hewn and matured from his baby roundness. There was an odd sense of deep familiarity that came with seeing someone you’d spent twenty years with, but the strangeness of meeting someone after a decade who had lived a life that was so remote, she had no idea what it had even consisted of.
They’d emailed occasionally and talked on the phone at least once a year, either around their birthday or the holidays, so they’d had a vague idea of where the other one was, but that was it. While she’d stuck to the States, Jackson had backpacked the world, doing God knows what. When she would ask if he had a job or enough money,he’d only tell her vaguely he was doing fine, and then change the subject.
He was the first to speak. “Still a pipsqueak, I see.”
Her inhalation was shaky. “Still big and mean, I see.”
His full lips curled. “Hey, Livs.”
“Jackson.” She shoved her hands in her pockets, unsure of what to do with them now that she was done grabbing him. She fingered the rose petals, their smoothness calming her. “I’m surprised to see you.”
“I know.”
