Olly orders us a second helping of lobster pot stickers. “You make me very hungry,” he croons, eyebrows waggling. He touches my cheek and I blush into his hands. We eat this plate more slowly. It’s our last. Maybe if we just sit here, if we don’t acknowledge that time is passing, then this too-perfect day won’t have to end.
As we leave, the waitress tells us to come back and visit again soon, and Olly promises that we will.
We head away from the lights of the restaurant and toward the darkened beach. Above, the clouds have hidden the moon. We slip off our sandals, walk close to the water’s edge, and sink our toes into the cooling sand. Nighttime waves crash mightier and louder than daytime ones. The farther we walk, the fewer people we see, until it begins to feel as though we’ve left civilization behind. Olly steers us to dry sand and we find a place to sit.
He takes my hand and kisses the palm. “My dad apologized to us after he hit her the first time.” He pushes the sentence out on a single breath. It takes me a second to realize what he’s talking about.
“He was crying.”
The night is so dark that I feel rather than see him shake his head.
“They sat us down together and he said he was sorry. He said it would never happen again. I remember Kara was so angry she wouldn’t even look at him. She knew he was a liar, but I believed him. My mom did, too. She told us to forget all about it. She said, ‘Your father has been through a lot.’ She said that she forgave him and that we should, too.”
He gives me my hand back. “He didn’t hit her again for another year. He drank too much. He yelled at her. He yelled at all of us. But he didn’t hit her again for a long time.”
I hold my breath for a moment and ask the question I’ve been wanting to ask. “Why doesn’t she leave him?”
He snorts and his tone turns hard. “Don’t think I haven’t asked her.” He lies back in the sand, links his hands behind his head. “I think that if he hit her more often, she would leave him. If he were just a little more of a bastard maybe we could finally go. But he’s always sorry, and she always believes him.”
I put my hand on his stomach, needing the contact. I think maybe he needs it, too, but then he sits up, pulls his knees into his chest, and rests his elbows on them. His body forms a cage that I can’t get into.
“What does she say when you ask her?”
“Nothing. She won’t talk about it anymore. She used to say that we’d understand when we’re older and in our own relationships.”
I’m surprised by the anger in his voice. I never guessed that he was angry at his mother. His father, yes, but not her.
He snorts again. “She says love makes people crazy.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes. No. Maybe.”
“You’re not supposed to use all the answers,” I say.
He smiles in the dark. “Yes, I believe it.”
“Why?”
“I’m all the way here in Hawaii with you. It’s not easy for me to leave them alone with him.”
I tamp down my guilt before it can rise.
“Do you believe it?” he asks.
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Why?”
“I’m all the way here in Hawaii with you,” I say, repeating his words. “I never would’ve left my house if it weren’t for you.”
“So,” he says. He lowers his legs and takes my hand. “What do we do now?”
I don’t know the answer to this question. The only thing I know for sure is that this—being here with Olly, being able to love him and be loved by him—is everything.
“You should leave them,” I say. “It’s not safe for you there.” I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.
I rest my head on his shoulder and we watch the near-dark ocean together. We watch the way the water pulls back and turns over and beats against the sand, trying to wear the earth away. And even though it doesn’t succeed, it pulls back and pounds the shore again and again, as if there were no last time and there is no next time and this time is the time that counts.
SPIRAL
THE END
SOMEONE HAS PUT me in a hot oven and locked the door.