Page 33 of The Moon & His Tides

“It’s the confidence,” she agreed, peering at me like an old woman through spectacles. Arriving at some decision, she abruptly flipped onto her belly, face still in her hands as shefaced me, feet kicking an easy rhythm in the air behind her head. “My name is Linnea Kai.”

“Lovely name for a lovely girl.”

“Don’t flirt with me,” she scoffed. “Not when it’s just pity flirting.”

“Who says?” I demanded, kicking my feet through the water to splash in her direction without actually spraying her.

She waved a hand toward her body, the oversizedCagedband tee swallowing up her scrawny figure and that glorious mane of rumpled hair. “C’mon. I’m young, but I’m not dumb.”

My laugh felt good in my chest, loosening the tension I’d harbored there all night. I held my hands up in surrender. “If I’m feeling any pity tonight, Linnea, it’s for me, not you.”

“Now you sound more like an actor.”

I laughed again and watched the way that wide mouth twitched as she fought a smile. This was a kid who’d had to grow up a little too fast and now resented her youth instead of embracing it. I knew the feeling because I’d been the very same.

Maybe I still was.

Eighteen going on eighty.

“What brings you to the Meyers’ house?” I asked, swinging my legs through the backlit waters.

She moved again, quicksilver, to sit upright and hug her knees to her chest. I had the feeling she didn’t often keep still.

“My mother,” she said with a sniff. “She loves these things.”

“Most people do, even if they’ve never been.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking into the distance at something I couldn’t see in her memories. “I’d rather be back home.”

“Home?”

“Maui.”

“I’ve never been before.”

“You wouldn’t want to leave. It’s so… alive. It’s not just a paradise, you know? People think it’s all sunshine and flowers,but there’s an underbelly. A balance. Volcanic rock and fertile soil. Scorching days and storms that roll through, whipping up the ocean and ripping open the earth.” A pause as she shivered, falling out of her reverie. “You wouldn’t want to leave,” she said again for emphasis. “I never have before now.”

It was late after a long, tiring, and frankly confusing night. January in London was as damp and chill as any other month, and my skin was starting to numb. Yet I found myself leaning toward her, a flower tipped toward the sun. Her energy was a palpable thing I wanted to bask in.

“You sound like me when I speak about Italy.” There was no reason to share with this girl. She was a stranger. Absolutely nothing linked us together but being in the same place at the same time in mostly the same mood. Somehow, there was a magic in that. A space for intimacy that was made sacred and safe by the fact I’d probably never see her again. “Everyone thinks it is the most beautiful country in the world, but it has its shadows, and I grew up in the darkest pit.”

“But you loved it.” She uncurled her legs to stand, tall and gangly, the points of her collarbones sharp through her shirt.

“I did.”

“Why did you leave, then?”

“There was nothing there for me. No future, anyway.”

“Because you wanted to be an actor?”

“Because I wanted more for my family and myself.”

Why was I talking to this slip of a girl about any of this? I watched wearily as she stepped to the edge of the pool deck, toes curling over the tiles. All that hair rustled in the wind, softening her striking bone structure. She was a beauty, already, the signs barely buried beneath the surface ready to be unveiled, but she didn’t have a clue. She was all awkwardness and young candor standing there in front of me with her head dipped to one side, eyes earnest even in the dark as they took me in.

I had the sudden revelation that she wasn’t looking at my body, wasn’t aware of my beauty, at least not in an impactful way. She was peering beyond that, into the shadowy depths I hadn’t shared in so long.

It made me uncomfortable, but not as much as it made something long-neglected, deep inside my chest stir with warmth.