Hot-Blooded (5 page)

Ding-rattle, ding-rattle.

Keahilani rolled over and flipped on the bedside lamp. Unfamiliar perfume, mixed with sweat and sex, grazed her nose. She snatched the pinging phone bouncing on the glass and read the message from Kai:
M’s going 2 the meeting 2day. Bets on how long?

She smirked. Those idiot street-rat dealers wouldn’t last more than ten minutes or a couple of broken ribs with Manō yanking their balls. Once he put the fear of Pele’s Enforcers into them, the ‘ohana would have a meeting set up with their distributor by day’s end.

She texted back,
5 minutes.

He replied right away.
I give them 3.

What do I get when I win?

Loser has 2 work the shop this afternoon.

She rolled her eyes.
Fine.

The Alanas had received some insurance money after Mahina’s accident. It wasn’t much, but they took a chance, invested it, and got lucky with a few stocks Bane had suggested. That kid was amazing on a surfboard, but he also had an impeccable business sense, especially considering how young he was. They cashed out and put a down payment on Mahina Surf and Dive Shop a couple years ago. Keahilani, Kai, and Manō quietly built up their
other
business on the side, taking care to keep Bane out of it. They didn’t want to jeopardize his chances of going to college and making a good life for himself.

So far, so good.

The week’s rent on this condo—the Alanas used the place for business meetings once a month or so—had been funded by an outside source: investors in Pāhoehoe, the ‘ohana’s brand of homegrown, top-grade weed. Keahilani needed to pay back those investors very soon, and she wasn’t even close to having enough money to do it. She had plenty of product, plenty of demand, but no efficient way to deliver it.

The body beside her shifted. A delicate leg and an arm appeared from under the rumpled red satin sheets. The guy on the other side of the woman stretched. The couple had been a nice diversion off the beaten path of Keahilani’s usually vanilla encounters, but last night’s adventure hadn’t been especially fulfilling. Not surprising. She was rarely satisfied in the bedroom these days.

“Get out of here,” she told them softly.

The pair sat up in tandem, dressed quickly, and hightailed out with heads cast downward. Though they were submissives and would have done as she said regardless, their fear of Pele’s wrath may have also had something to do with their quick exit.

As soon as the main door in the living room clicked shut, Keahilani chucked her fiery red and black wig onto the dresser and finger-combed the tangles from the wavy locks matted around her face. Yawning, she slipped a silk robe around her shoulders on the way to the kitchen. She brewed a cup of joe in the fancy one-shot coffee maker and snagged a Danish from the stainless steel fridge. When she turned around, the handmade book she’d found at the safe house—Manō’s rather expensive contribution to the secret family business, courtesy of his
other
illegal activities—stared up at her from the granite-topped island, its faded, handwritten “1976” on the cover beckoning with heavy silence. Blood rushed behind her eardrums. She picked up the relic and thumbed the worn stitches on the spine.

“Why do you come calling now, after six years of healing? Here to open up old wounds? Or inflict new ones?”

Not surprisingly, Mahina’s journal didn’t answer.

She stuffed the fragile book under her arm. Balancing breakfast one-handed, she headed to the balcony of the 2,000-square-foot condo facing Kāʻanapali Beach, slid open the tinted glass door, and laid the diary gently on the table as she dropped into a chair. Only a few more days booked here for business. Might as well enjoy it while she could.

At 5:30, the sun had yet to make its appearance, and all the other balconies were devoid of humans. Good. Keahilani loved her privacy and hated her secrets. She could preserve both out here for a few precious moments before the rest of the world awoke.

The wind breathed rather than blew, cooling her bare legs with a playful tickle, much like the woman’s soft exhalations on her throat last night. She closed her eyes, remembering the puffs of air steaming her neck while the husband took his wife from behind. She traced a finger down her throat to her collarbone.

Keahilani had engineered everything in the bedroom, from setting up the scene, to instigating emotional conflict, and observing the fallout as a nonparticipant. The couple from last night was like the little dolls Mahina had made for her when she was a kid. Posable. Malleable. Breakable. Just the way she liked them.

Though she enjoyed the control, the sex wasn’t rough enough to satisfy her dark tastes. She needed a new challenge.

Blowing on her coffee, she propped her bare feet in the chair across from her and used her cell phone’s torch to illuminate the book in her lap. She turned it over and studied the fibrous, velvety edges of the pages. A few tiny, haggard strings poked out from the spine like crooked cat whiskers. The smell of yellowed paper steeped in time wafted toward her.

Though she hadn’t read a single word, this journal was more precious to her than a gold-filled treasure box. The secrets inside were sure to dredge up shit that might be best left unknown, but they would also provide insights into the past Mahina rarely spoke of. Hesitating, she rubbed the back of her neck.

“I’m not sure about this, Mahina,” she whispered. She’d spent the years since her mother’s death trying to avoid the pain her absence had caused, but nightmares still plagued her. She often emerged from sleep with bed sheets balled in her fists, screaming, “Wake up!” at Mahina’s bloody face, overlaid with shadowy tiki imagery.

But the worst nightmares didn’t involve reliving her mother’s violent death. The most disturbing dreams were the happy ones where the whole family sat around the dinner table, Mahina at its head, laughing and singing. The food on their plates was sparse, their clothes worn, but their hearts overflowed with love.

‘Ohana is everything.

It damn sure was. And ‘ohana hadn’t been the same without Mahina.

A small shape skipped along the breeze and landed on the top of the diary. Keahilani shifted the light up. A chill raced up her spine, followed by a full-body tremor. She slammed her lids shut and swallowed hard.
Go away
, she willed the orange and black creature. She opened one eye.

The monarch butterfly flapped a smile at her with its wings.

Damn it.

“Fine.” Her mother left her no choice. With shaking hands, she flipped to the first page. The text was written in Hawaiian. It had been years since Keahilani had read or spoken her native language, but once she got started, she’d have no problem deciphering the words. Mahina had been adamant that all four of her children learn and converse in their native tongue, and they did so fluently back in the days of Section 8 housing.

Just like riding a bike, right?

The butterfly prompted her again with more wing beating, this time much slower.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that she stumbled upon the lost box full of Mahina’s possessions last week while unpacking their family’s few heirlooms at the safe house in Kula. Or that a butterfly always appeared when Keahilani’s life hit a major crossroads. That part scared her most, especially since the family business was about to sprout wings of its own. The ‘ohana would soon find out whether their hard work would bless their risky venture with the lift it needed to fly or curse it to crash.

Keahilani hoped Mahina—wherever she was—understood the tough choices she’d made to support her brothers. She wasn’t proud of some of the things she’d done, but her goal had always been keeping the family afloat and, most importantly, together. That’s what Mahina would have wanted.

The butterfly’s wings flapped harder, lifting its delicate stained glass frame into the air. It hovered above the journal.

Keahilani sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. And she read.

November 21, 1976 – North Shore, Oahu

I met a
haole
boy at a protest today. Well, maybe I didn’t actually meet him, but I saw him—stared at him—from a distance. Light hair and light eyes, but he surfs like an
‘ōiwi
. I think he’s from California. Probably rich. No good for me. But he’s handsome.

He caught my eye as he headed into
ka po‘ina nalu
, and my heart tripped. I had to rub my chest to make it stop racing. My ‘ohana wouldn’t want me talking to a haole. Normally, I wouldn’t have even noticed a boy like him, but the way he looked at me, hungry and determined and blind to the color of my skin … how could I not stare back?

I didn’t say anything to Palani. He would have bitten my head off and blabbed to
Makuahine
, but I never stopped gawking. I hope I see him again.

November 24

The haole’s name is Justin Jacobs. He’s training on the North Shore in preparation for traveling the world, searching for the ultimate wave. He intends to conquer it. He didn’t know about our protest or what the haole businessmen are doing to our beach. Palani spoke to him for a long time, animated and angry, as is his way. I pretended to talk to my friends, but every time I looked up, Justin was watching me. My insides were taro paste, my skin on fire.

I think I’m in love.

Keahilani’s skin pebbled. She paused for a moment and smiled. This was the tale of how her parents met.

Her mother had kept most of her history with Justin private. Keahilani always assumed it was because Mahina was embarrassed they never married. Like there was some kind of shame in the children knowing the father who couldn’t commit. To some degree, Keahilani understood Mahina’s need to keep them from getting too close, but it didn’t change the fact that despite his general absence, she’d still felt she had a right to know about the father she only got to see once in a blue moon.

She slid her fingers over Mahina’s pretty handwriting and imagined how different things must’ve been back in 1976. Experiencing her parents’ first moments together from her teenaged mother’s perspective was both sweet and enlightening. The tentative, naïve words somehow softened Mahina’s stern personality. First love, love at first sight, true love. These universal themes were utterly foreign to Keahilani, yet they anchored her to her mother and gave renewed life to the mother-daughter connection the car wreck severed six years ago.

November 26

Palani introduced me to Justin Jacobs when he came in from an epic surfing session today. I kept my head raised like Makuahine told me to do whenever I talk to a haole. I let him know I’m not a pushover, even though I could be for him.

When Justin offered his hand to shake, I took it firmly and held it longer than I should have. I wanted to feel his skin on mine for as long as I could so I’d remember every line, every callus, every lick of heat warming my belly. Roll after roll, those waves owned my insides like a twenty-footer with no break in sight.

His eyes are warm—blue with a glint of cunning that shakes me up every time he looks at me. And his smile is so bright and full of spirit. He must’ve been Hawaiian in another life. Most haoles stifle their smiles before they get a chance to really shine, but not Justin. His explodes from deep within and doesn’t have to fight its way out.

He asked what I thought of the protest, and I told him. These white men come in and take over our
po‘ina nalu
like they own it. Nobody owns this space, but if anyone did, it would be us, not them. I tried not to get too upset when I spoke, but sometimes it’s hard. We’ve lived here all our lives. Never bothered anyone. We do our own thing. Suddenly, we’re troublemakers for defending our place.

Not fair. Not right.

So I told him those things, and he surprised me. He agreed. I couldn’t believe it.

He stared out over the horizon as the sun set, jaw rippling, water-wrinkled fingers gripping his board tightly. Then, he turned to the construction behind us. As he pivoted back toward me, he scanned the surfers scattered over sand and sea. He shook his head. A thundercloud of sadness, heavy with rain, moved in like a storm front and took over his face. That sadness dampened the smile I wanted to kiss. For a few seconds, he shouldered some of my weight with nothing but his stare. The relief was too much to bear.

“Let’s talk,” he said and stretched his palm open.

I couldn’t hold his hand with Palani watching us like a hawk, so I shook my head and shot a glance my brother’s way, hoping Justin would understand. He seemed to. We walked along the beach. Incoming waves tagged our bare toes—his tanned, and mine darker. I’m not ashamed of my culture, but for a fleeting moment, I secretly wished my skin were a shade or two lighter.

I quickly wiped away the silly thought. I’m proud to be
‘ōiwi
and would hate being anything else.

But Justin’s not like me, which means nothing could ever happen between us.

At least, nothing my ‘ohana can find out about.

Our stroll didn’t last long because I had to go home when Palani left. In the short time we spent together, I learned that Justin is eighteen and his family has lived on the island since he was born. Does that make him a Native? Not in Makuahine’s eyes, but technically yes. He also has hypoglycemia, which explains why I saw him chugging a bottle of orange juice after he got
rag-dolled
by the waves earlier.

He’s competed in a couple of surfing contests on the North Shore but hasn’t won anything yet. He has a Hawaiian friend who shares our
mo‘olelo
with him. His favorites are the ones about Pele. He loves her strength and vulnerability, but he would never want to get on her bad side. Neither would I.

Mahina’s mention of Pele set Keahilani’s mind spinning. She had named her alter ego after the volcano goddess because Keahilani, which meant “fire of heaven,” was reminiscent of the mythological figure and because her mother had often told the
keiki
stories about Pele. Seeing the name in Mahina’s handwriting and knowing her father also revered the goddess shot tingles through her limbs and confirmed that Keahilani had chosen her new “identity” well. Blood coursing with pride, she grinned. Her mother’s words served as a stamp of approval from ghosts of the past.