Before I Ever Met You

“Where is Kate?” I ask, rattling the ice in my cup.

Nikki laughs, throwing her hair over her shoulder. “Do you even have to ask?”

“Do you see Charlie?” Lucia asks wryly. “No. Put two and two together.”

“In other words, don’t head back to your apartment so soon,” Nikki says with a smirk.

“Figures,” I mutter. Fighting leads to fucking. Well, for everyone but me.

“Hey, can I ask you guys a question,” I ask after a few minutes, my voice low as Daniel takes in some of the chairs back to the restaurant.

“Sure, what?” Nikki asks.

“After my sister died…was there ever anyone else? I mean, with Logan?”

Nikki and Lucia exchange a furtive glance.

“What?” I ask because that glance sure as hell meant something. “One of you?”

“No, no,” Nikki quickly exclaims. “Not us. Nothing like that anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

There! Another sneaky glance.

“You guys! Come on. I need to know. I won’t say anything.”

Lucia sighs. “Well I don’t live here, so I don’t have much to lose. And anyway it isn’t a big deal. A girl Charlotte used to work here. She and Logan went out a few times.”

“Oh my god,” I exclaim, feeling somehow both jealous and angry. “When?”

“Maybe six months ago?” Nikki muses.

“Did he cheat on Juliet with her?”

“What?” Nikki asks, scrunching up her nose. “Cheat on her? Logan would never do that.”

How badly I want to tell her otherwise.

“No, it was short, maybe a few dates. Charlotte had a mad crush on him hey, and finally he gave in,” Lucia says with a laugh. She gives me a quick shrug. “I don’t know. I think he kind of needed it. It was really hard seeing him after she died.”

“Like he was actually upset?”

Nikki frowns. “What kind of person do you think Logan is?”

What kind of person? Once again, I think I have no idea.

We stay there on the lawn for a while longer, talking about Lucia’s newest boyfriend in Hanalei, a lifeguard, and some live music show playing at a lounge in Kapaa’a tomorrow. But all I can think about is Logan. Now this Charlotte woman. It’s completely possible that this was the person he cheated on Juliet with, especially if she worked here. Nikki and Lucia might think they know Logan, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t privy to anything important. Not like that. Juliet had a hard-enough time confiding in me, I’m sure she would go out of her way to make sure no one else here knew what was really going on.

The night is balmy and the clear sky is doing something to my head. Or maybe it’s the copious amounts of punch. When Nikki and Lucia decide to leave, I wander past the restaurant and down to the beach, passing a plumeria tree. I shove my nose into the center of the white flowers and breathe in deep, then start plucking them off the tree. I know it’s wrong and I should only pick up the ones that have fallen to the ground, but I’m drunk and the idea of making my own lei or decorating my body with them is extremely appealing.

Plus the smell is so intoxicating. It’s just as sweet and heady as the air here, a smell that makes me really feel I’m in paradise and has an immediate relaxing effect.

“Duplicitous,” Logan says from beside me, his voice low and rough.

I jump, the flowers flying up and out of my hands and twirling to the sand below. “Jesus, way to sneak up on me!” I cry out, hand at my chest.

He stares at me, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. He looks different, his eyes less hard, his face more open. The half-moon illuminates his face just enough for him to look both mysterious and devastatingly handsome.

Damn him.

“Sorry,” he says, quickly bending over to pick up a flower. He holds it out in front of me, then his hand goes over my right shoulder and he slides the flower behind my ear, his fingers rough as they graze the tip of my lobe. I can’t help but close my eyes, my breath stilling inside me. Even the waves seem to slow down, the surf echoing in my ears. “The right side means you’re not taken.”

“Well I’m not,” I say, but my words come out in a whisper. I slowly open my eyes again and he is still there, this beautiful, troubled, strange man that no one seems to know and everyone thinks they’ve figured out.

“No, you aren’t.” His voice drops a register, sounding almost melancholy.

“What did you mean? You said duplicitous. Just now. When you scared the shit out of me.”

“The flowers are not what they seem,” he says, finally breaking our heated gaze. Thank god, because that was getting a bit intense. My heart is still pounding so hard I’m afraid he might hear it over the waves.

He runs his hand along the flowers and their dark, shiny leaves. “Plumeria, Tiare, Frangipani. No matter what name we give them, they remain a lie.”

I peer at him closely. “Are you drunk?”

He cocks a brow. “What makes you say that?”

“Well I’m drunk and we’ve all been drinking Dan’s potent punch. Plus you’re talking about lying flowers, so there’s that.”

“I’ll have you know I’m not drunk,” Logan says but he kind of slurs it. And it’s kind of adorable. “And I don’t have to be drunk to be talking about lying flowers. Here, smell.” He plucks one off the tree and steps even closer, the distance between us tightening up into intimate levels. He raises the center of the flower to my nose and I don’t have to lean far to stick my nose in. I take a deep breath just as I had been earlier when I was hitting the blooms up like I was huffing paint.

“They bloom at night,” he says, taking the flower away and smelling it himself, rather delicately. “To lure the sphinx moth. Only they don’t have any nectar—it’s all a rouse. So the bloody moth flies from flower to flower, in a fruitless search for nectar. And while it does that, the moth pollinates, ensuring the flower’s survival.” He flicks the flower to the sand and stares at it for a few moments.

“Is this a metaphor for something?” I ask after a few beats.

He glances at me quickly before turning his attention to the waves, the spray illuminated by the moon and the faint light of the hotel rooms. “If it is, you’ll have to let me know who you’d be…the flower, or the moth.”

“Neither,” I say. “I’m just the girl who wants to put the flowers in her hair.”

He chuckles at that and nods a few times, shoving his hands in his pockets. Silence is a line between us, weighted and heavy. I have this feeling that if I don’t say a word, the silence will continue, thickening by the minute, like adding flour to water.

I look at him. “Can I ask you something?”

“No.”

“It’s about Juliet.”

Finally, his eyes come back to meet mine, brows furrowed with worry. “What?” he says hesitantly.

“Did you cheat on her with that girl Charlotte? The one who worked here?”

For a second it seems like he hasn’t heard me. Then his eyes widen and he physically recoils, shaking his head. “What the bloody hell, Veronica?”