“So, Theo,” Alana says, adjusting her straw with a flick of glossed lips, “how long have you lived in Hawai?i?”
“Born and raised,” he says around a mouthful of tater tot. “Well—born on the slopes of Haleakala, moved to O?ahu with my mom when I started high school.”
Alana and I blink in tandem, both of us clearly having assumed he was just another California transplant living out his surf-boy fantasy.
He catches the look and grins. “Yeah. I get that a lot. Not being able to tan past this point doesn’t help my case.”
I laugh, because I know the feeling. I could spend a decade on this island and still look like I wandered in from a Nova Scotia postcard.
“Do you stay on campus?” I ask, resting my chin on my hand. There’s something undeniably fascinating about him—like he shouldn’t be this easy to talk to, but somehow is.
“Nah. I have a place in Hawai?i Kai,” he says, and when I clearly don’t register the geography, he adds, “other side of the ridge behind the university.”
“Wait, you commute?”
He shrugs. “Twenty minutes, give or take. Holden usually drives us.”
There’s a beat. “Holden?”
His smile curls. Slowly. “Uh-huh. We live together.”
He doesn’t blink as he says it—just lets the statement hang in the air like a very well-placed comma.
“You’d like it,” he adds, more casually. “We’re ten minutes from the Makapu?u tide pools. Great spot for the creepy crawlers you’re into.”
I blink. “How do you know what I study?”
He offers no answer—just spears another bite of biscuit and gives me the most insufferably knowing look I’ve ever seen worn without irony.
I don’t push. Mostly because he’s right—it does sound like a place I’d love to visit, and he just casually brought up the equivalent of a marine biologist’s Disneyland. I launch into a dozen questions about the area—species sightings, tide schedules, the neighborhood—and he answers every one with enthusiasm. By the time I’ve run out of questions, he’s promised to take me there soon.
The door swings open behind us with a lazy creak, but I barely register it—mid-heist, fork halfway to my mouth with a stolen bite of Theo’s cinnamon roll. He’s already laughing at something Alana said when his eyes catch on someone over my shoulder. They brighten immediately, a glint of mischief slicing across his grin as he lifts a hand in greeting.
“There he is,” Theo says. “Took you long enough.”
I turn. And my brain, frankly, never recovers.
Because there he is indeed.
Holden strides into the courtyard, cutting a silhouette that deserves its own Greek myth. Navy athletic shorts, a white tee soft enough tocling in the right places, and—God help me—abackwardsbaseballcap.
I don’t know who signed off on the backwards hat as a male enhancement device, but they deserve a Nobel. Something about the flipped brim, the peek of curls beneath it, the implied ease and confidence—it’s weaponized masculinity. Somewhere deep in my brain, a tiny voice whispers“objectification is bad,”but it’s promptly overruled by the rest of me.
I choke. On cinnamon roll, on oxygen, on my sense of composure. Alana doesn't miss a beat, patting my back gently like she's seen this exact medical emergency play out before.
“Girl,” she murmurs under her breath, “you didnotprepare me for this.” She told me she’d seen him around campus before, but I doubt anything could’ve prepared her for this specific image. This, right here, isnota TA.
Holden’s halfway to our table, smile boyish and bright—when he sees me.
One step stalls. The light in his expression flickers, tightens, shifts into something unreadable.
And that’s when I know. Theo texted him. He came here for breakfast. But he wasn’t expectingme.
His gaze flicks to Alana in a quick, practiced sweep, then back to me—cool, collected, but not quite blank. There's something still burning in the silence between us, something sharp and electric. Or maybe that's just the hat.
“Theo,” he says finally, his voice a low scrape. “Didn’t mention we had company.”
“Oh, did I not?” Theo says, unapologetically pleased with himself. “Must’ve slipped my mind.”
