He shook his head, his eyes trailing over her face. “Yeah, awful.”
They finished their bland cups of coffee, and then Jessie started picking at her cup. Not sure what to feel right now, she alternated between disgust, sadness, desire, and curiosity. Feeling that the last emotion was the one she could entertain the most at the moment, she looked over to see Kai also tearing apart his cup. Their similar habit made her smile. “So…Hawaii? I hear it’s nice.”
“Yeah, it can be,” he said with a smile.
Jessie shook her head, trying not to notice the charm in his boyish grin. “I can’t imagine why you’d come to Colorado. If I lived in paradise, I’d never leave.”
His smile widened as he leaned back on the bench. “Well, once you’ve gone through a couple rainy seasons, you get a different opinion of island life.” He shrugged. “I guess you just get used to the beauty, once you’ve lived in it your whole life.
Jessie bit her lip, and for just a second she let herself think that she would never get used to his island beauty. Shaking her head to clear the troubling thought, she said, “Well, I’ve always wanted to go there.” She laughed. “I used to try and get my parents to visit yours every summer when I was younger. I wanted to learn how to surf so badly. I used to practice on the lawn.”
Kai laughed, but abruptly stopped when what she’d said sunk in. Parents. Family. Cousins. Jessie would have given anything to visit Kai as a kid, and that made everything they’d done last night seem that much weirder. Jessie cleared her throat. Would every topic be awkward? “Well, I hope you’re not too disappointed, living here.”
Kai stared at her in silence for a few seconds. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and full of meaning. “So far, it’s been pretty incredible.” He reached up and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. A lump formed in Jessie’s throat, and her eyes began to glisten as the back of his knuckle lingered on her cheek. Why did she have to be related to him?
Dropping his hand from her skin, Kai returned his gaze to his coffee. Surprisingly, Jessie instantly missed the contact. Voice soft, he told her, “Maybe it’s because I grew up on a beach, but I’ve always wanted to ski.” He looked up at her, and Jessie had to blink several times to clear her eyes. “Maybe you could teach me?”
She wasn’t sure how she would be able to handle spending that much intimate time with him, but she nodded anyway. They were family, and it was the least she could do for him. “Yeah, of course.” Another moment of silence passed between them, but there was a comfortable companionship in the silence this time. If they weren’t who they were, their personalities would have been very well matched; they probably would have made an amazing couple. But as fate would have it, they were who they were, and any companionship between them had to be purely platonic.
Grumbling in her head over how unfair the universe was, Jessie crumpled the empty cup in her hand. “What do we do now, Kai?”
He reached over for her ruined cup. “We go see how our grandmother is doing. I continue getting my place together, and getting ready for my new job. And you…you go back to your life.” He gave her a serious look. “And we forget this ever happened, and never tell anyone about it.”
Jessie’s eyes misted again. He made it sound so easy, but she knew it wasn’t. “Yeah…no one.” There was no one she could tell anyway. Or no one she wanted to tell at any rate.
Kai’s gaze flicked over her face as he nodded. His eyes locked on hers, and he leaned in slightly. Jessie leaned in as well. Without even thinking about it, they had considerably closed the distance between their faces, and Jessie found herself lost in the perfect ocean of his eyes. Kai leaned in just a fraction more, and her lips parted as her breath increased; her heart started pounding. Even knowing what she did, her body still reacted to him. Biting her lip, she struggled to remember that he was family, and this was wrong. Very, very wrong. Kai paused, and his eyes narrowed, like he was struggling to remember that too.
This was going to be harder than they thought.
Expression intent, Kai shifted his movement and gave her a light peck on the cheek. Even still, Jessie found herself closing her eyes at the tender touch; she only reopened them when he pulled away. He quickly shifted to stare at the cracks in the worn concrete at their feet. He seemed just as dazed as she. Jessie hated that the only guy she’d ever been able to so physically effect was a blood relative. Figured.