He shoots me an incredulous look. Eyebrows raised, pure Holden. “Yes. But I learned to drive without them.”
“Old man.”
He shakes his head, but there’s the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. “From the girl who parks halfway on the curb, I’ll take it.”
I gasp, mock-offended. “That’s how we do it in Canada!”
He snorts—which, coming from him, is rare enough to make me laugh. “No it’s not.”
“Okay, it’s not,” I admit, leaning back in the seat. “I just don’t like driving your monster truck. I prefer Alana’s car.”
He chuckles, eyes still on the road. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s a hybrid, and not the fuel-guzzling beast you think it is?”
I shrug, sipping again. We fall into an easy conversation about the presentation—my answers during the Q&A, the one question I didn’t know how to answer, the moment someone in the back yawned loudly enough to make half the front row turn. He gives me aperfect mix of praise and precise feedback, both gentle and honest, and I soak it all in, grateful and mildly obsessed.
It’s really unfair, the way he can make my heart race with a casual note on vocal pacing.
We wind down the coastal road past Diamond Head, the ocean shimmering to our right, until we reach Hawai?i Kai—where he and Theo live.
It’s my first time seeing his place since we’ve always met at my dorm or in his office, which are conveniently just minutes apart.
He pulls up in front of a small, beautiful house with an orange tiled roof and white brick walls, parking on the street since the two-car driveway is already full. I spot Alana’s white Volkswagen and Kai’s dusty blue Corolla tucked in tight.
We step out and I pause, taking it in. It’s not a big house, not by any means, but it feelsgrown. Put-together. Adult. Nothing like the cramped chaos of Maya and my dorm, or even Alana and Soren’s off-campus apartment.
He catches me staring and rubs the back of his neck, like he’s unsure how I’ll react. “Stacy’s a real estate agent,” he says. “She helped us find it a couple years ago.”
I nod, quietly impressed, as we walk to the front door. I’ve wondered what Holden’s place might look like—too many times, if I’m being honest.
First, I pictured black walls and steel furniture, plus an aggressively drooling dog snarling at strangers. Then I revised the mental image into something more… minimalist and sterile. Emotionally bare, like he sometimes seems.
But none of those came close.
Because when I step inside, the house isn’t dark or hollow. It’s warm. Lived-in. Full.
The walls are a soft, clean white—but nearly every inch of them isclaimed. Right by the door, a long, beat-up blue surfboard hangs horizontally on the wall, covered in signatures. Someone’s drilled through the tail and fin to attach wooden hooks for jackets and keys. It’s the kind of thing that only makes sense when it’s real, right in front of you.
The hallway stretches long, framed in mismatched memories. Photos of Holden and Theo—shirtless at the beach, in graduation gowns, grinning through sunburns. There’s one of Penny, curled on a blanket. One of Theo mid-air during a surfing competition. One of the coastline at golden hour, the sun dragging its belly across the water.
The whole house feels like a conversation—between old friends, between brothers, between versions of themselves that lived here at different points.
Even the furniture tells a story. The couch is worn in the middle, all cushion and comfort, and the low coffee table is crowded with books—marine biology, physics, one with a broken spine and a post-it that says “return to Nate.”
Everything in here feels intentional without trying to be. Like the kind of place you build slowly, without realizing it, until one day you look up and see a life.
We make our way through the length of the house until we reach the open kitchen at the back—its windows spilling light and salt air, its view split between the glittering ocean and something even better: all my friends.
Alana’s perched on the counter, dipping a carrot into what looks like ranch, narrating some wild story to Theo, who’s leaningbeside her with that soft, captivated look only she can pull from him. Soren’s near the sliding doors, deep in a debate with Kai that seems to involve whether M&Ms belong in popcorn. Maya is by the wireless speaker, scrolling with purpose.
As soon as we step in, they all look up—like something in the room just clicked into place. The chaos halts just long enough for a chorus of congratulations to crash over me.
“I heard you killed it,” Theo says, grinning as he lifts me into a quick, celebratory spin.
I squeal, breathless with surprise. “How could you havepossiblyheard that when it ended, like, thirty minutes ago?”
He taps something on his phone, then turns the screen to me. It’s a photo—me on stage, mid-talk, mic in one hand and the other pointing confidently at the stats behind me, grinning like I know exactly what I’m doing. It’s taken from the back of the crowd.
My jaw drops. I turn to Holden. “You sent him a picture?”
