I take the empty chair next to Beth, who smiles at me as if I’m her favorite person. “Has anyone heard from Six?” I ask.
She shakes her head, a flicker of worry in her gaze. “He won’t be able to contact us until he’s out on bail tomorrow,” she says. “His lawyer is keeping in touch, though. I just hope he doesn’t miss all of Oahu, but we’ll figure it out.”
I blink at her. She said three days at the airport, but we are in Oahu for six. I’m beginning to worry Beth is one of those relentlessly optimistic people who hope for things fruitlessly, continually readjusting what they wish for, only to conclude it was all for the best in the end when nothing works out.
“Even if he misses Oahu, there are other islands for you to see together!” Beth says, patting my hand. “It will be fine. We’re just happy you came.” I nod, but the truth is I’m so tired I feel numb, so tired my body is simply shutting down from fatigue—it’s seventy-eight degrees and I’m shivering—and I’m alone, on vacation with strangers. I’m also still reeling from the conversation with Davis just before I came down from my room. I don’t give a shit if you need rehab, Drew, he said. I only give a shit if it looks like you need rehab, and it definitely looks like it. So you’d better get your ass on that plane.
Things, in a nutshell, feel slightly less fine than I’d like.
The mai tai I ordered as I walked in is delivered and Sloane raises a polite brow, as if to say Are you sure that’s a good idea? I wonder if the Baileys will still be happy I came once I push Sloane into a volcano.
Beth orders several things for the table, and chatters about the many, many plans she’s made for the trip. She is everything my own mother is not: cheerful, accepting, willing to overlook the occasional felony. Six has a chip on his shoulder about his father, who thinks playing guitar is a hobby no matter how much Six earns doing it, but he doesn’t say much about his mom. Maybe that’s how you know he’s got a good one: she’s like the foundation of a building, attracting little notice, there simply to hold him up.
All guesses, however. I don’t actually know a lot about good moms.
Beth notices I’m shivering and tries to make me take her wrap, which is when Josh’s attention focuses on me. His eyes sharpen, as if he’d forgotten I was here at all and remembering is unpleasant, and then his lip curls in sheer disdain. Put her in a van and she vomits, he’s thinking. Take her outside and she can’t regulate her temperature. Aside from stealing people’s silver, what does she do well?
It’s just like spending time with my family, which is why I generally don’t do that. And under normal circumstances I could shrug it off, but it’s harder to do right now when I’m this tired and this disheartened. Tonight, it doesn’t feel like a blip. It feels like disappointing people is how I’m destined to spend my entire life.
I’m relieved when we all go our separate ways. I stumble into my room, eager for bed, but am drawn to the balcony instead. A full moon hangs low over Diamond Head. It seems like the sort of crap I should photograph and post on Instagram to prove to the world I’m occasionally sober, but I’m too tired. Yawning, I turn to go inside when something catches my eye: a solitary figure, standing on the sea wall. Joshua. He’s probably out there wondering how he can harness the power of the sea for evil, but then he looks down and stares at his hands, as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders and I feel something a little like worry.
What had him so distracted tonight? And why the hell is he not with the girlfriend he hasn’t seen in months?
It certainly appears I’m not the only person feeling lonely on a romantic trip for two.
4
DREW
January 22nd
Twenty-three hours a day, I’m the girl who doesn’t give a shit. I’ll do a line of coke off my breakfast bagel, wrestle someone in a bath of Jell-O, jump off a cliff when everyone else is worrying about the depth of the water below.
There is only one hour when I’m not that girl, and it’s this one. Four AM. It’s ten back home, so it would make some sense that I’ve awoken, but I’d have woken anyway because it happens without fail: my heart beating hard as my eyes fly open, scanning a dark room that is, more often than not, unfamiliar. Realizing I am terrifyingly alone and have failed at everything, even the things other people want to laud me for.
It’s the hour when I admit that I’m a fake, that this person who appears in magazines and performs for thousands isn’t me at all. She doesn’t have my name, she barely looks like me anymore, and she isn’t even someone I like…yet the only way I can succeed in life, the only way I can get what I want, is to pretend to be her even harder than I already have.
After thirty minutes of lying in bed, wondering if things will ever get better, I rise and dress to go for a run. I don’t love running, but there are a lot of buffets here and Davis will kill me if I gain weight.
I take the elevator down and wander the paths out to the street. It’s silent now but for the babble of the fountains, the occasional murmur of someone at the front desk. There’s something inherently reassuring about it. About the whole city, and perhaps the whole island: the weather is mild, the trees bear fruit. You could lose everything and somehow survive. I have more money than I could ever spend, but the idea still appeals to me.
“Please tell me you aren’t planning to run before five in the morning in a strange city,” says a low voice I’d know anywhere, mostly because only one person is that contemptuous of me, twenty-four hours a day.
I turn to find Josh there, looking at me in a beam of moonlight. His eyes are like a summer storm; that furrow between his brows deep as a trench. I feel the oddest tug in my stomach at the sight of him…and ignore it.
And I’m not letting Josh add himself to the long list of people who feel free to correct and criticize me. How the hell is it any of his concern what I’m doing, anyway? Is he worried I’m out prowling, getting ready to steal silver from someone’s one-bedroom condo?
“Fine,” I reply with my sweetest smile. “I’m not planning to run.”
And then I turn and start to run.
I head down toward the main drag, popping my headphones in as I go. I pass a long, long row of ridiculously expensive stores, the kind of places I could now afford to shop if I didn’t hate shopping.
My soundtrack is this fairly mellow band from Sacramento. Mostly acoustic guitar, but I love the way they go from subtle to big, from comfortable to goosebumps-on-my arms.
It’s the kind of music I used to write, back before I got my first record deal and discovered I was never going to be performing my own stuff. I don’t even play guitar in concert now. You’re too hot to stand there just playing an instrument, my manager explained at first. People want a show.
Maybe I should have insisted on doing things my way, but I was twenty and broke and scared if I kept holding out for more, I’d wind up empty-handed. I doubt many people would say it was a mistake, given where I am now.
The shops come to an abrupt end, replaced by a little beachfront park where a massive, twisty tree looms just off the sidewalk. I jerk to a stop and stare at it. Under the glow of the full moon, it looks magical, like something created by Disney.