Nico comes around the table and pulls me in for a kiss, his breath warm and smelling like the beer he was drinking. “There’s my girl,” he says, his hand briefly sliding down to squeeze my hip.
“Please tell me you’ve already ordered me a drink,” I reply, rising up on tiptoes to nip at his lower lip, and he grins, nuzzling his nose against mine.
“I can go grab you one now,” he says, and I glance at the girls, both of whom have turned away from us to talk to each other.
“I’ll come with,” I say, but Nico shakes his head, tugging me over to the table.
“No worries, babe,” he says, a phrase I hear so often I nearly mouth it along with him.
The girls at the table are watching me, and Nico nods at them in turn. “Brittany,” he says to the one with the bun, “and Amma,” the girl in jeans, “this is Lux. Lux, Brittany and Amma.” Another grin, this one slightly goofy. “I’m gonna grab a couple more beers.”
He disappears back into the crush of people, leaving me standing there at the edge of the table, looking at Brittany and Amma.
Brittany speaks first. “Lux,” she says. “Like The Virgin Suicides.”
I’m surprised—and more than a little pleased. No one has ever made that connection when they hear my name. Usually they just ask if it’s a nickname, or short for something. “Yeah,” I say. “My mom really loved that book.”
“Kind of a bummer of a character to be named after?” Brittany says, but she’s smiling as she tilts her bottle to her mouth.
“I know,” I reply. “When I finally read the book when I was thirteen, I was like, ‘Mom, what the fuck?’”
Brittany and Amma both burst out laughing, and I suddenly realize how long it’s been since I’ve talked to people who weren’t my coworkers or Nico’s. Even back in San Diego, I’d started losing touch with my friends as soon as my mom got sick.
Funny how fast that happened, how easy it was for people I saw every day to fade away, disappear, become nothing more than a bunch of Instagram accounts I still followed. And I didn’t blame them. My life had become sad and depressing, and no one knew what to say to the girl who was suddenly taking care of a sick parent instead of sitting next to them in sociology.
After Mom died, I’d thought about reenrolling, but everyone I’d once been close to was already at least two semesters ahead of me. It had felt too much like starting over again, and it had been easier to get a job, to just focus on putting one foot in front of the other—and making rent.
“So, Nico says you’ve been in Hawaii for almost a year?” Amma asks. Up close, I see that she’s not quite as pretty as Brittany, but she has full lips and high cheekbones. In the dim light of the bar, her eyes are dark and hypnotizing.
“Six months,” I say, then wonder if Nico had exaggerated to make himself seem more familiar with the waters around the island. I quickly add, “Nico had been to Hawaii many times before we moved here, though, and he’s done a lot of sailing in the area.”
On family vacations, that is, staying at the nicest resorts on the islands, places where I wouldn’t even be able to get a job scrubbing toilets. I don’t mention this. I’m assuming that they only see Nico as a beach bum, a friendly guy with a great smile and an even better body who works on boats and definitely has no idea which fork to use at a fancy dinner.
“What about you?” Brittany asks. As she reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, I notice a tattoo on her wrist. “Where were you before this?”
In the After.
I wonder what that means, if anything. Maybe it’s just a lyric from a Taylor Swift song I can’t bring to mind.
“I grew up in Nebraska,” I tell her. “But me and my mom moved to San Diego when I was a kid. That’s where I met Nico last year. He told me about his whole plan of sailing around the South Pacific. About how there were hundreds of islands that didn’t even have names, places that were barely on maps.” That had been the part I’d liked the most, if I was honest. The idea of going somewhere almost completely unknown.
“And you followed him?” Amma asks, cocking her head to one side.
I don’t like the way she says it, but it’s true. I hitched onto Nico’s dream because coming up with my own felt impossible, back then. Dreams were for people with money and time, people who didn’t feel hollowed out from watching the only person who loved them die in agony. Dreams were for people who had choices, opportunities. I didn’t believe I had any of those things.