Totally and Completely Fine(79)

“You don’t know that!” she said. “All I’m asking is for you to have the best night you can.”

I’d given her a look.

“Okay, and to share all the sexy, dirty details when you get back.”

“It’s just dinner.”

“Sure,” she’d said.

She almost seemed more excited than I was for my date.

Almost.

“We’re going to a restaurant,” I told Ben. “Just about an hour away.”

“Wow,” he said. “You really don’t want to be seen.”

I shifted in my seat. He wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t feel great hearing it out loud. Especially since he’d been so understanding about…everything.

I still couldn’t believe I’d started crying in front of him. It was so embarrassing. I’d thought about talking to my therapist about it, but then I’d have to tell her about Ben and that would be a whole other conversation that I didn’t have time for.

We were still working through my slutty teen years.

“It’s just easier this way,” I said. “Less chance for folks to gossip.”

“You look great,” he said.

I’d put in some effort tonight—a dress and heels and lipstick. I’d even shaved past my knees and made sure to pluck those astonishingly long nipple hairs that always seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“Thank you,” I said. “And I do like the black.”

Ben looked down at himself, his leather jacket slung over his knees.

“I’m basically color-blind,” he said. “Or, as Danny would say, fashion-blind. I can’t be trusted to pair clothes with the right patterns.”

I tried to imagine Ben in a bright plaid or checked shirt. It made me smile. He’d look gorgeous, of course, but I couldn’t deny that his style fit him.

“What about your jewelry?” I asked.

I’d been dying to know about them ever since I noticed he always wore the same two necklaces and signet-looking ring.

“My mom’s,” Ben said, pulling his necklaces from inside his shirt. “She wore this chain every day. I think it used to have a charm on it or something, but she could never remember what it was or how she’d lost it.”

“Did she have a bad memory?”

“Something like that,” Ben said. “The other necklace is a hibiscus blossom—or one that was pressed into a mold. My mom loved flowers, and the hibiscus was her favorite.”

It was clear that Ben’s mother meant a lot to him.

“The ring was a gift from Fran,” he said. “Her grandfather’s, I think. The Celtic cross—I’m not religious, but I like having a piece of Ireland that has nothing to do with my father.”

“And the harp,” I said, remembering his tattoo.

“When I showed it to Fran for the first time, she cried,” Ben said. “I’d love one day to get a tattoo that didn’t make someone break into tears.”

He was joking.

“I always thought that when I went back to Maui for my mother’s house, I’d go full traditional and get a kākau—where they use bone and ink to apply it.”

I winced.

“That sounds far more painful than your average tattoo,” I said.

“And still, apparently less painful than childbirth,” he said.

“Is that the barometer you measure all pain by?”

He shrugged with a smile.

“What was your mother’s name?” I asked.

“Leilani,” he said.

“Leilani Akina,” I said.

There was silence. When I glanced over at him, I found him staring at me with a look I’d never seen before. Something like wonder.

“What?” I asked, feeling self-conscious.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just been a long time since someone has spoken my mother’s name out loud.”

“Your father doesn’t call her Leilani?”

Ben snorted. “He doesn’t call her anything. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be happy to pretend she never existed.”

“What? Why?”

“She embarrassed him,” Ben said.

I had a billion other questions.

“Have you ever been to Maui?” Ben asked.

I shook my head. “Where would you take me?”

He lit up at the question.

“Okay, so the best way to start your day in Hawaii is always in the ocean,” he said. “I’d get you up early—”

“I already hate this,” I said.

He ignored me. “We’d grab some surfboards.”

“I don’t surf.”

“And hit the waves for a few hours.”

“Hours?”

“You’ve never been surfing?”

I shook my head. “Montana isn’t exactly known for its sick waves.”

Ben laughed.

“It was like therapy for me,” he said. “Before, you know, I started actual therapy.”

The highway was empty, just us and the road, heading far out of town.

“It’s not even about riding the waves. Not always. Sometimes, it’s just about going out past the swell and sitting there on my board, nothing but the sea and the sky.”