Heat Wave(106)

“I can’t say anything,” I tell her. “About any of this. And neither can you.”

“So you’re just going to give him back his ring and leave?”

I nod, though my chest is aching from the sobs. “Yes. I have to tell him I don’t love him anymore and I’m not ready and I’ll have to leave a note and leave.”

She stands up. “A note?” she exclaims. “You can’t leave him a fucking note. You owe him way more than that. You owe him the truth. You owe him what’s going on. You’re going to destroy him inside, Ron. He loves you.” She puts her hand to her forehead and stares at me with a pained expression. “Please, please, don’t do this to him.”

I have no choice. Can’t she see this? “I have to!” I cry out. “If I try and lie to his face, he’ll see right through me. He’ll know. I can’t keep that lie up with him in front of me. It’s this or it’s nothing.”

“Then choose nothing, Ron, please, stay!”

I get up and hold out my pink finger. “You promised you wouldn’t tell, now swear on it.”

She stares at me with wild eyes. “Please, Ron.”

“Do it! Promise me. Let me be the bad guy here, let him blame me for leaving. It’s better than the alternative.”

She clamps her lips together until they are pressed into a thin, hard line and for a moment I think she’s not going to do it. She’s that stubborn. But then her finger wraps around mine and I know, pray, hope, her word is still good.

“I hate this,” she says, looking sick. “I hate that you’re leaving, I hate that you’re leaving him broken hearted. Don’t you think he’s gone through a lot with Juliet? Now you’re going to tell him you never loved him? Do you know what that’s going to do to him?”

“I can’t live with the guilt—”

“Did you ever think that maybe you should?” she questions. “That it’s a better sacrifice if he loses the hotel and you live with the guilt over that then it is for him to keep it and lose you?”

Maybe it is selfish. But I still think it’s the only way he’ll come out of it.

“What would you do?” I say to her. “If you were in my position. Forget Charlie, he’s a piece of shit. But think if you were in love. What would you do?”

“People don’t like having their life decided for them,” she says after mulling it over.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Because I don’t know.” She sighs. “I just want you both to be happy. And this way neither of you will be.”

“Yeah well, maybe it was a mistake that I came here to begin with.”

“Ron…”

I push past her. “I have to pack.”

“You can’t be going now.”

“My father sent me an email. I’m on the eleven-p.m. red-eye to Seattle.”

“What the actual fuck?” she practically explodes, following me into my bedroom. “You are fucking joking!”

“I need a ride to the airport soon,” I tell her. “Not Charlie.”

“Dude, no, no, no. You can’t just up and leave.”

“I have to! I told you I can’t face him, he’ll know and he’ll make me stay and he’ll give everything up for me when he shouldn’t. What the fuck am I supposed to do, just keep this a secret until the time is right? There is no right time, this is all horrible, it’s so horrible!”

“But…what about me? And Johnny? Daniel? Jin? Nikki? Your ohana? What about this place? What about everything you’ve worked so hard for here?”

I swallow hard, my nose clogged, my eyes hazy with tears. “You, Johnny, Jin, Nikki, and Daniel will no longer be here if I stay. We will all lose everything. Logan will lose the most. Unless you have extra money lying around to buy out my parents, nothing will change. Maybe you’ll keep your jobs when someone else buys it, maybe you won’t. But your life, our lives here, as we know it, won’t be the same if I don’t go. So you can see, I have to. It’s not just Logan, it’s all of you. And everything will go back to the way it was before I ever showed up.”

“But it won’t be the same,” Kate says, wiping away a tear. “Because you brought us all even closer together. Your effect on Logan is the same on us all. We’re all closer, a better ohana. Without you here, we won’t have that. We’ll be in mourning all over again.”

I stare at her for a few moments until I pull her into a hug. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. This is the only thing I know to do.”