The Sex Whisperer: Book 1 in the Whisperer Trilogy (15 page)

“You’re already planning your escape?” Charlotte said.

“I have to,” Olivia said. “Mike moved my
things into a Stor-n-Lock. His attorney says he’ll give me the key when I get back.”

“Jesus,” Charlotte said. “Somehow I just thought this was a fight gone bad. I didn’t realize my best friend is really going to be a divorcee.”

“Yeah,” Kenneth called out from the backseat. “I guess this is going to put a damper on my friendship with Mike.”

“Ummm, probably so,” Charlotte said over her shoulder.

Olivia was silent in the front seat. The word
divorcee
resonated. Charlotte reached her hand across the console and laid it on top of Olivia’s.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. … And I would love to help you go apartment hunting. You know you’re going to be staying at our
house until you find a place, right?”

Olivia tried to say yeah, but there was a knot in her throat.

The voice-guided GPS interrupted her thoughts.

“Your destination is 200 yards ahead on the right,” it said.

Olivia looked up and saw a sign for the Koko Shooting Complex.

“Welcome to gun-owners heaven!” Kenneth yelled out from the backseat. He laid a
hand on Olivia’s shoulder and shook her vigorously. “We’re going to blow some things up! It’s the perfect cure for the blues.”

∞

Their instructor was an enormous Hawaiian named Nohea. “It means handsome in Hawaiian,” he said, grinning. “You’ve got to admit my
makuahine
knew what she was doing when she named me.”

Despite herself, Olivia smiled. Handsome wasn’t the word she thought
of when she looked at Nohea. She couldn’t keep her eyes off his gelatinous stomach. It stuck out so far his shirt didn’t cover all of it, and Olivia could see his belly had its own tan line.
He must not own a single shirt that covers that thing,
she thought.

Nohea
’s shotgun looked like a stick in his giant hands. When he passed it to Olivia, she was shocked by its weight. She felt awkward with a gun, not knowing where to hold it. It seemed like there was too much to think about: steering clear of the trigger and concentrating on keeping the barrel pointed away from herself and her friends.

Nohea urged them on, though. He let each of them take five shots one-by-one. Olivia was up first, and Nohea led her to the
shooting box. A small microphone was mounted near her waist.

“When you’re ready,” Nohea said, “you’re going to aim just above the traphouse.”

He pointed a massive finger at a green bunker 16 yards in front of where she stood. “Real loud-like, you’re going to call out the word ‘pull.’ The mic will pick up the sound and launch a pigeon, and you’re going to point at it and blast that bugger out of the air, okay?”

Olivia nodded. This was the first time she’d ever fired a gun, and she had no idea what to expect.

“It’s not going to be a real pigeon, is it?” Olivia asked.

Nohea broke out in great rumbling laughter.

“No, no,” he said. “Clay pigeon. Looks like a Frisbee. Put your weight on your front foot, okay?” he said. “That’s good. You look like a pro, like you do this every day.”

Ol
ivia was so nervous her breath came quickly. It sounded unnaturally loud with earplugs in her ears.

“Pull,” she called out.

An orange disc shot out of the traphouse. Olivia swung the gun toward it, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

“All right!” Nohea yelled. “That’s the ticket. You got it first time. Your
makuahine
would be proud.”

Olivia beamed. She had no idea how she’d hit the pigeon, but she had opened her eyes in time to see it disappear in a poof of dust. She had expected the gun to launch her backwards, but instead she’d stood her ground and hardly noticed the recoil.

“Now, we just need to work on keeping those eyes of yours open, okay?” Nohea said.

An hour later, the three of them had gone through 50 shots each, and Olivia’s arm felt as gelatinous as Nohea’s belly. It was a good pain, though, like Olivia had battled a terrible beast and won.

“How do you feel?” Nohea asked. “Like a million bucks, right?”

Olivia smiled.

“I feel like I can take on anything life throws at me,” she said.

Nohea tossed his large head back and
laughed. Again, the valley filled with his deep, rumbling sounds. The laugh shook every ounce of fat on his body, even his long black hair seemed to move.

“That’s good, young lady,” he said. “Now, you know how Nohea feels every day.”

∞

Guns are insidious
. You don’t feel any pain when you shoot them, but later you find bruises in strange places. Olivia stood shirtless in front of the mirror in her cabana. Two deep purple bruises had formed: one on her shoulder and the other on her right cheek where she’d been pressing her face to the wood to sight the gun. They were like visual indications of how she felt inside: beat-up and used.

She walked to her bed and propped herself up on her pillow, laptop in her lap.

Dear Thomas,

I’m sorry I haven’t written lately, but life has thrown
me a few curveballs. My friends did, however, take me trapshooting today, and I hit quite a few of the targets! Who knew I’d be good with a gun?

I loved your latest whisper. Part of me wished you actually would have shown up! I should be back in Dayton with your package soon. I hope there’s a new whisper waiting for me when I get home. Something tells me I’m going to need it.

xoxo,

Hawaii Girl

∞

Dear Hawaii Girl,

Thanks for taking the time to write and for the kind words. You can rest assured that if I had the money, I would have flown out there and made a complete fool of myself — whether you wanted me to or not! Trapshooting sounds incredible, too. I have to admit, you’re braver than me. I’ve never shot a gun in my life, and I’m not sure it’s something I want to do! Regarding those curveballs life’s throwing at you, I hope it’s nothing serious. If anyone can handle them, though, it’s you. Safe travels, beautiful girl.

Your Faithful Servant,

Thomas
 

∞

They spent their last night in Hawaii at the Paniolo. The name
meant Hawaiian Cowboy, whatever that was, and it was the sort of place only locals visit. Nohea had told them about it, and he made them promise they’d visit it before they left.

“You’re cow
boys now,” he’d said. “You shoot guns in Hawaii, you go to the Paniolo, too. That’s the way it is. You promise, okay?”

The bar itself wasn’t much more than a wooden platform with a thatched roof and strings of
light bulbs glowing brilliantly against the star-filled sky. There were no tourists here. Just clusters of Hawaiian families. There weren’t any age limits either, and it looked like each family had brought a representative from every generation. There were infants, teenagers with thick, oily hair and grandparents with deep, joy-filled smiles.

Here, they served a drink they called
‘awa
. Olivia would only learn later that it was a sedative the locals drank to relax. It came in a halved coconut and tasted pungent, like someone had put lawn clippings in a blender and turned it into a drink.

Shortly after they arrived, Kenneth slipped away and started up a conversation with one of the elders. They shared a long wooden pipe.

“That man has a gift for meeting strangers,” Olivia said.

“Indeed,” Charlotte said. “I have to keep him from using it with other women.”

Olivia nodded toward the beach, and the two women walked a few feet away from the bar and sat on the sand facing the sea.

“I wish we didn’t have to go back,” Olivia said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Charlotte said. “You could just stay here — get a job at the gun club or at the Hawaiian Cowboy or something. You could become one with the sea.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” Olivia said. “Things are simpler here.”

“That’s because Mike’s not here,” Charlotte said. “Things are always simpler when he’s not around.”

Olivia didn’t want to say that she agreed. Instead, she forced down a giant gulp of
‘awa
. Before long, they’d both had three mugs of
‘awa
each, and the sedative was in full effect. They lay flat on their backs staring up at the stars, nothing but the sound of the sea filling their ears.

At some point, Kenneth ambled over, reeking of smoke. He said the storyteller was
about to start.

“What storyteller?” Charlotte asked.

“The
storyteller,” Kenneth said. “The original Hawaiian Cowboy. Once a week he tells stories.”

The women didn’t think to question Kenneth. They just followed him down an unkempt trail to a
fire pit where the locals had gathered. The men sat with half-filled coconuts in their hands, and — most of them — with a child or two asleep in their laps.

When Kenneth pointed to the storyteller, Olivia couldn’t believe the man was standing. He looked so old and frail that a strong
gust of wind might have collapsed his bones and turned him into a pile of sand.

When he spoke, though, his voice was deep and resonant. It was a voice that commanded attention,
even from Olivia and Charlotte who couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

Kenneth had talked his pipe-smoking friend into translating for the three of them, and he did so happily, sitting Indian-style on the sand
with all three of them huddled close to catch his whispers.

The cowboy told the story of Kamohoalii, the Shark God.

Many moons ago, there were two young lovers,
the storyteller began. The boy was the son of a Kahuna from Maui and the girl was the daughter of a Kahuna from Kahoolawe. They saw each other every three months when the Kahoolawe Kahuna brought in his harvest for trading.

The boy and girl told no one. They thought it was a secret, but everyone knew they were in love. Everyone knew, too, that their fathers would never approve of a marriage across the islands.

That didn’t matter to the boy and girl, though. They thought of nothing but seeing each other, and, on one trip, the boy pulled the girl aside and whispered in her ear: “I’ve found a boat, and I mean to sail to you with the next new moon.”

“You can’t sail a boat alone,” the girl said.

“I’ve been practicing,” the boy said, “and I don’t care how long it takes to get to you. Light a fire for me on the south side of the island every night after the new moon, and I’ll find you.”

When the new moon came, the boy snuck out in the night, uncovered his boat and set sail. When he was halfway to Kahoolawe, the sky darkened and the moon was blotted out by thick, monstrous clouds. The seas grew rough. It was as if each wave were a mountain intent on swallowing the boat.

Without the stars, the boy didn’t know which way to steer, and he began to cry, realizing, for the first time that he was lost — that he might never see his beloved again. When his tears mixed with the rainwater, though, Kamohoalii, the Shark God, could taste them, and he knew that there was trouble above. He showed himself to the boy by flipping his massive tail in front of the boat.

The Shark God was so large he could have swallowed the boy and his boat in a single gulp.

“Dry your tears,” the Shark God called out. “If you feed me some of your ‘awa, I will guide you wherever you want to go.”

“But I don’t have any ‘awa,” the boy said.

“Then, you will surely be eaten by the bad sharks,” the Shark God said. “The Uhinipili will eat anything.”

“I am sailing to my one true love,” the boy called out. “I
have to get to her or there is no point in living. The Uhinipili can have me. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“I am a powerful god, but still I get lonely,” the shark said. “If you promise to send your first-born daughter to me, I will guide you home.”

Thinking only of his beloved, the boy agreed. And the Shark God let him tie a massive rope around his fin. Then, the great fish swam to shore, towing the boy all the way to Kahoolawe where a small fire was burning despite the rain.

“Do not forget your promise,” the Shark God said, and then he disappeared into the deep black water. When the boy found his beloved, of course, he forgot all about his promise.
Over the years, he grew into a strong man, and the girl grew into a beautiful woman. They built their home on the south end of Kahoolawe, far away from the Kahuna’s village, and they had four powerful sons who helped their parents on the farm.

When the woman was pregnant with her fifth child, the man was visited by the Shark God.