But the lies could suffocate him.
He just couldn’t lead her on one more day. And that glued him to his spot, watching passengers fill the gate area, tan and happy from their vacation. Too many wore I Love Hawaii T-shirts, leis, floppy hats.
He’d checked and found that he and Grace had been on the same flight back to Minneapolis. Now Grace would have to fly home by herself. No one to hold her barf bag. No one to ensure she switched planes safely. What if she sat next to a jerk?
Or a guy like him, who could recognize her beauty?
He picked up the magazine again, telling himself that would be best. He would have to break it off eventually anyway. He’d known going in that it was just a vacation friendship. It could never be more than that.
Maybe if he’d kept it to friendship . . . But one look at Grace and deep down, he’d known he couldn’t stop there. He’d lied to himself for three weeks, until he’d pulled them both in to drown.
Worst vacation of his life.
The gate attendant announced first class. Max grabbed his bag without a look back at the family, the other passengers. He handed her his boarding document.
“Aloha,” the pretty attendant said. “How was Hawaii?”
He ignored her and got on the plane.
Max had left Hawaii. Flown out or taken a ship or even swum. But he’d really left Hawaii. Without an explanation. Without a good-bye.
It took a full day for the truth to sink into Grace’s heart.
When he’d walked away from her after the competition, she stood, too stunned to do more than watch him go. Unable, even, to run after him. To stop him.
Keoni had driven her back to the hotel, his own expression grim, as if he was sorting through Max’s actions.
She’d changed, texted Max. Waited, texted again. Finally, around dinnertime, she went to his room.
A family dressed in beachwear, fresh from the mainland, answered his door.
Just in case he’d simply moved rooms, she asked about him at the hotel desk. They gave no information other than that he’d left.
She spent the rest of the evening by the pool, her eyes thick with tears, rereading page 3 in her stupid novel, listening to his words in her head.
He didn’t have time for mistakes.
Like the wrong ingredients.
The wrong partner.
Her.
It still seemed so impossible that she’d driven him clear out of Hawaii.
By the next day, the unfairness rooted in her bones, turned her brittle and angry. What kind of person simply abandoned the team? Upset or not, he owed her an explanation. She had stopped texting him, given up after leaving a couple voice mails.
Still, like a lovesick fool, she kept her phone by her side. Hoping. Hating herself for hoping. Running conversations over in her head, none of them satisfactory.
She sat on the beach while the sun burned her, watching the surfers, the lovers strolling hand in hand, trying not to remember Max’s arms around her, the way one look from him made her feel strong. Capable. Extraordinary.
By Sunday morning, she simply wanted to endure until her late-afternoon flight. She got up, showered, and packed. Hating that she looked like a swollen crawfish, she donned her sunglasses and went outside for breakfast on the terrace. The Twinkies sat at a table and lifted their hands to her. She waved but made a U-turn and headed toward the beach.
Sunday seemed like any other day at the resort—paddlers on longboards in the lagoon, surfers testing the swells, children digging channels out to sea, women in bikinis on straw mats soaking in their vitamin D.
At home, her family would be returning home from church. They took up an entire row, sometimes two. Surely Darek and Ivy had returned from their honeymoon by now. Tiger would have taken a perch between them, although sometimes he opted for Grace’s lap. She too often let him play thumb wars with her when the sermon got long.
They’d all be gathered at home for brunch—something Grace would have prepared—or they’d grill, eating outside on the picnic table. Casper would take volunteers to go fishing. Darek would disappear to work on the framing of his house, now in the rebuilding stage. And in the evening, they’d gather for their ritual Sunday night s’mores around the fire.
What was she doing here in Hawaii alone, when she should be in Deep Haven with her family? Why had she agreed to this trip, this disaster? The entire thing seemed like a trick, as if God had held her dreams out in front of her only to yank them away.
She’d stepped onto the hot sand, heading toward the water, when a sound caught her attention. Music. A hymn.
“‘O, how He loves you and me . . .’” A flute played the melody and lured her closer, toward where a man dressed in a blue Hawaiian-print shirt was singing. A woman in a matching blue floral dress danced a sort of hula to the words. Fifty or so onlookers sat in folding sports chairs or in the sand, some under tents, listening.