We don’t shake hands, but it doesn’t seem necessary. And I don’t detect any territorial vibes from her. I take that back—actually I do, but I can’t place it. It doesn’t feel like jealousy, but something else.
With his hand still at my waist, Luke walks with me down the steps and to the concrete patio laid out in a circle shape over the top of a large portion of the grass. A red grill with a dome-shaped lid just like the one my dad always cooked on during the Fourth of July holiday stands on four legs on one side of the patio. Delicious-smelling smoke billows from the vent at the top and from the sides. A dozen other lawn chairs are set here and there and all of them are occupied.
A guy with a shaved head that has a painful-looking scar running along one side of it raises his arm in the air at Luke. He gets up from his lawn chair with a beer bottle wedged between the fingers of one hand. He’s wearing a pair of black cargo shorts and a pair of black flip-flops and has several black hemp—or leather, I can’t tell—bracelets around his wrists.
He steps up to us and he and Luke do that weird man-shake where they bump fists and whatnot.
The guy looks at me with a big, close-lipped smile, and then back at Luke—there’s an awful lot of inner dialogue going on around here and I’m starting to feel seriously out of place.
“Sienna, huh?” the guy says with a grin and reaches his hand out to me. “I’m Seth, Luke’s best friend and roommate—he wouldn’t know what to do with himself without me.” He looks between us, still grinning.
Luke play-punches him against the arm.
“Yeah right, man,” he says, smiling and shaking his head. “I think it’s the other way around.” He looks right at me. “Really, it is the other way around. I rescued this guy from a very troubled time in his life and now he owes me.”
I chuckle.
Seth laughs and takes a quick swig from his beer, balancing the bottle neck between his thick, rugged fingers. “You’re so full of shit,” he says.
Luke looks at me—his hand has not only remained on my waist, but it just squeezed me tighter—and smiles. “We’ve been best friends for about six years,” he says. “And Kendra, she’s part of our family.”
Kendra, who has been standing with us the whole time, smiles hugely. She has a lot of freckles, just like me, splashed across her nose and cheeks.
“Your family?” I ask Luke.
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” Kendra says. “So how long are you in Hawaii for?”
I was hoping she’d elaborate.
OK, so everything about me screams tourist. Great.
“Two weeks,” I answer.
Luke is beaming standing next to me. “I had to talk her into it,” he says, and Kendra and Seth exchange a look.
Then they look at me.
“Did he manipulate you?” Kendra says in jest. “He’s good at that. You gotta be careful around this one.” She grins at me.
“All right now,” Luke says and walks with me to the patio. He leans toward my ear and whispers, “Don’t let them get in your head; they’re worse than they try to make me out to be,” but it was hardly low enough they couldn’t hear him.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I smirk up at him.
Braedon comes walking from around the side of the house looking like a linebacker with four more folded lawn chairs in his hands. Luke’s hand finally slips away from my waist and he takes two of the chairs from Braedon, unfolding them with a snap and setting them side by side on the patio. Some other guy comes walking down the back steps and goes straight over to the barbecue grill, lifting the lid with a giant spatula in his other hand; smoke billows in big puffs into the air as it escapes the confines of the lid. The meat on the grill sizzles and pops as he begins flipping the burgers over.
I hear the shuffling of ice inside a nearby Igloo chest as Luke reaches inside and pulls out two bottles of beer. He pops the lid on one and holds it out to me.
“Thanks.”
He pops the lid on one for himself and we sit down at the same time in the two empty chairs.