“I bet you were amazing at it.”
She tilts her head at me. “I like to think I was.”
She takes another forkful of cake and a slow swallow of coffee. A single petal falls from the jacaranda and lands on the edge of the saucer between us, and she picks it up and sets it carefully on the tablecloth.
“It’s not bad work, but I quit,” she continues, more quietly. “I don’t think it’s my forever thing. I just know I want to keep making things, using my hands, and preferably working for myself to avoid stress and office drama.”
I sip my coffee which is still scorching hot. “Maybe time to start up your own business. Oahu is a perfect place for that.” I waggle my eyebrows to which she’s laughing.
“It’s as if you want me to stay here.”
“You bet.” We both go for a piece of cake, our forks clashing, and after a miniature battle to get in first, in which she wins, I finally scoop some for myself.
“Your turn,” she says, then sips her coffee. “You told me you were in the military. What made you go in the first place.”
I take a breath, then release it slowly. “My father was in and he was a very proud man. He’d tell me all these stories when I was really young, and I guess it rubbed on me. When he died, I spent too long missing him, and when I was old enough I figured the quickest way to feel close to him was to wear the same uniform he did.”
Her face softens, she puts the fork down and reaches across the small table and her fingers rest on the back of my hand for a second. “Oh. I’m so sorry about your dad.”
“Long time ago.”
“Doesn’t matter how long. Did it help? The military and being in his world.”
I turn my hand under hers and her fingers interlace with mine. I stare at them for a moment because she’s so much smaller than me and there’s a small jolt every time her touch slides against mine.
“Honestly? Not in the way I thought it would. He wasn’t there, obviously. I knew that going in, but I still somehow thought I’d find something of him in it, and I didn’t, not really. What I found was discipline, structure, and the routine of something every day.” I shrug. “I needed that at the time. Even now, I don’t sit still well for too long and it’s why I run or surf most mornings.”
“So what happened after you left? What did you do?”
I reach over and take another piece of cake to buy myself a few seconds. “When I left the service, I hadn’t realized that the structure that had been holding me up, and suddenly it wasn’t there anymore. So I made some choices I’m not proud of.” I take a drink of coffee which has cooled down. “I got involved in downright bad things I shouldn’t have, and made shit decisions. Work that paid well and didn’t require me to sit quietly with my own thoughts, which was what I couldn’t do at the time. I stayed in that world longer than I should have.”
“Oh!”
“I’m not proud of the man I was then. He made a lot of money, and he was not someone I would want you to meet.”
She’s watching my face very carefully now. One eyebrow has come up a fraction. “That sounds very ominous,” she answers.
“Yeah. You could say that. I’m not going to get into the specifics and scare you with stories you didn’t ask for. I’m just telling you the shape of it. A different Luca did those things, and he’s not sitting across from you.”
She considers me, her fingers are still in mine. She hasn’t pulled them back, which means everything.
“We all have made horrendous decisions in our pasts,” she says, quietly. “Trust me. I know.”
“Yeah.”
“Mine…” She pauses, staring at her coffee momentarily. “Is not something I want to get into right now. Maybe ever. Some of it, maybe.”
“I’m not asking.”
“I know you’re not.”
“If you ever want to, I’ll listen, and if you never want to, I’ll skirt around shitty pasts with you forever.”
She laughs, and I’ve been getting addicted to the sound over the last few days, and shakes her head. “Skirting the shitty pasts it is.”
“Great deal.”
“Thanks for this. Think I needed it.” I squeeze her hand, and she does the same back.
