“Jacks, I’m so sorry.” Her voice catches, and I immediately soften.
“I know,” I say, realizing I’ve already forgiven her. She couldn’t have known. Even though I’d love to put this on someone who’s still alive so I could unleash the anger coiled inside me, she’s not the reason this happened.
“I just—I don’t know. Marriage is hard. And I didn’t want to make assumptions and create more problems when it could have been a completely innocent business lunch or an old friend. Of course, I feel like shit that it wasn’t.”
“I know,” I say again. She’s practically heard it all. Our fights about his travel schedule, about money, about time together. How can I blame her for not wanting to muddy the waters even more, especially when it could have been nothing? Would I have told her if I’d seen Mark out with a woman I didn’t know? I would like to say yes, because that’s the most convenient answer. But everything is so skewed now that I can’t be sure.
“I’m not going to pretend I’m thrilled you jumped on a plane to Hawaii, but I’m here for you if you need me. Do you want me to fly out there? Would that help?”
“No, but I love you for offering. I need to do this without you.”
An hour later, I’m sitting with Nick at the Relish Burger Bistro bar by the Lanai pool, my hand cupping an almost-empty glass that had been filled with rum and pineapple juice, a bright-pink umbrella piercing a piece of pineapple resting on the rim, and I feel my edges soften.
“Can I get you another round?” the bartender asks, and Nick and I exchange a glance. “It’s happy hour!” the bartender declares, and points to his watch. It’s four.
Nick looks at my glass and shoots me a questioning look.
“Okay, but I should eat too or I’ll be in no condition to . . .”
“Hula dance?” Nick offers, and we both half smile. I wonder if he’s thinking what I am—that it feels wrong to laugh. I remember last night I had the TV on while packing, and Jimmy Kimmel was doing his bit about mean tweets, and I laughed when Nicole Kidman read one about herself. I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle it.
“Maybe—or dance with fire,” I say, then tell the bartender we will take that second round. We sip our cocktails, and I listen to the sound the wind makes as it sails through the palm trees, the laughter coming from the kids’ pool nearby. Then I feel a wave of guilt. I remember why we’re here. I realize James and Dylan may have sat at this very bar.
“We should ask this guy about them,” I suggest to Nick. “Maybe he served them?”
“Okay, follow my lead,” he says. “Hey, man, can we ask you something?” Nick says when he catches the bartender’s eye.
“Sure.” He scoops ice into a glass and fills it with rum and Coke for a woman who’s waiting.
“We had some friends who stayed at this hotel toward the end of May. You might have read about them in the newspaper. They were in an accident on the back side—”
The bartender cuts him off. “Road to Hana. Man and a woman, right? Jeep?”
Nick and I nod.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he says sincerely.
“Thank you,” Nick says, and takes a drink. “This is a long shot, but did you talk to them at all when they stayed here? Serve them a drink?”
The bartender shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. Only saw the write-up in the paper, but that was it. I just hate when I read about accidents over there. It happens more than it should.”
“Thanks,” I say to him, feeling defeated as he walks away to take a young couple’s order. This is going to be harder than we thought. Maui is a large island. What if no one recalls seeing them?
Nick turns to me and surveys my face. “Not everyone will remember them. And that’s okay. You never know; it could be just one person who tells us everything we want to know. Let’s stay positive.”
“I guess it was silly to think we’d get all of our answers on the first try.”
I take a long drink, this one not tasting nearly as strong as the first. “What was she like?”
“You’re ready to go there? Really this time?”
“No, not at all, but I think it will help,” I say, my chest tightening in anticipation as I remember the emails. How he’d missed Dylan. He was thinking of her. What were the qualities in her personality he had been attracted to? I had so many soft spots in my relationship with James. And to find out that Dylan may have filled one or more of them—if she had been strong when I had been weak, I might not be able to handle it.
Nick takes a drink before answering, and I watch him, wondering if he’s going through his personal files of memories of her, deciding which ones won’t hurt me to hear, which ones won’t hurt him to tell.
“Dylan was sweet. Very, very kind,” he says as the bartender sets a plate of coconut calamari in front of us.
“Compliments of the house—in case you need your strength for that fire dancing.” He winks before walking away again, and Nick rolls his eyes in my direction, clenching his jaw slightly. Just as I’m about to say something to defend the server, Nick breaks into a smile. “I think that guy has a crush on you.”
“Please! He just feels bad that he didn’t know anything about Dylan and James. Or he wants a big tip. Either way, bartenders flirt.” I finish the last of my drink. “James was like that too—flirtatious. Talkative. Outgoing. The salesman in him, you know? He could make anyone feel like they were the only person in the room. Everywhere we went, he’d strike up conversations with perfect strangers, and within five minutes you’d think they’d known each other all their lives.”
“Did it ever bother you? Make you jealous?”
“Not really. It was just who he was—like he couldn’t help himself. I had always thought it was harmless—” I don’t want to finish that thought. Like what if I hadn’t thought it was harmless? What if I’d been jealous? Would it have stopped him from crossing the line? “What about you? Did Dylan do anything that made you insecure?”
“I look back now and see certain things in a different light. But in the moment? No. Not at all. I’m a lot of things, Jacks, but jealous isn’t one of them.” He finishes his first drink and moves on to his second. “But maybe I should’ve been.”
“Me too,” I agree, thinking back to when I’d caught Beth snooping on her husband. She’d been scrolling through his iPhone and glanced up at me and said, “The men you never think would stray—they are always the ones with the most to hide.” And then we’d laughed—because he was Mark. An accountant she’d been married to for twelve years who, save for tax season, came home every night at six on the dot. Whose biggest self-proclaimed flaw was his penchant for itemization.
I watch the bartender washing out glasses on the other side of the bar, taking in his broad shoulders and coffee-colored skin, the dark rum in the mai tai starting to grab me. I take a bite of the calamari. It’s warm and crunchy, and the sweet coconut flavor swims in my mouth.
“So, you said Dylan was kind—what else?” I ask.
Nick watches the bartender blend a daiquiri. “She was a server.”
“Where did she work?”
“In Laguna, at Splashes Restaurant.”