Page 27 of Coyotes Ever After

She shrugs. “I have no idea, but I know it’s pricey for coffee.”

“Like how much?”

She glares at him. “I literally just said I don’t know. You have a phone. Look it up. It’s civet coffee. That’s why it’s so expensive.”

“What does that mean?”

I hold back a smile as Mila asks him, “You really want to know?”

Dom gives her a look of confusion. “Yeah, that’s why I asked. Jesus, you Russians can be dense.”

He loves baiting her, and she usually falls right into his traps. She faces him, annoyed.

“There’s an animal in Indonesia called the Asian palm civet. It’s not like an American cat; it looks more like a giant rat. So the civets like to eat coffee cherries at Indonesian coffee plantations. The civets partially digest the beans and the enzymes in their digestive tracts start breaking them down. Then when they excrete the beans, the farmers collect them, clean them and roast them and—” She raises her mug slightly. “We drink Kopi Luwak.”

Dom gapes at her as she takes a drink of her coffee. “Are you shitting me?”

She gives him a satisfied arch of one brow. “I guess I am literally shitting you, yes. It’s true. Look it up. Ask Analu.”

“Anal-oo would not do that to me.”

Dom enjoys mispronouncing the name of Colby and Mila’s chef, calling him “Anal-oo” instead of “Analu”.

“Go ask him.” Mila makes a shooing motion.

“We’re your friends! Why are you serving us poop coffee?”

Mila rolls her eyes. “It’s a delicacy, you moron. They take the outer skin of the beans off.”

Colby approaches us, grinning as he wraps his arms around Mila from behind. “Does Dom object to Analu’s choice of coffee?”

“Object?” Dom balks and glances at the coffee in his mug. “Who wants to drink coffee that’s been shit out by a rat?”

“It’s a cat,” Mila says.

He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Because that’s so much better? Rich people are nuts, man.”

“And you and Tess are...broke?” Colby says in a teasing tone.

“We do okay, but we don’t have a tropical palace.”

My husband comes into the room, still smiling from our morning quickie earlier. “Looks like no hiking for us today. Board games again?”

“And rewatches of our most epic games!” Beau calls out from the kitchen.

Mila and I exchange an amused look. The men in our friend circle never get tired of rewatching the games they played as Coyotes. They yell, cheer and boo like they’re seeing it for the first time. It’s one of their favorite activities on our quarterly Kauai trips.

Analu announces that breakfast is ready and everyone moves into the breathtaking dining room of the home. Set in an actualjungle, It has a glass domed ceiling and mostly glass walls, the locally sourced dining table stretching through the massive space. It seats up to twenty-six people and the house staff adjusts its size for every meal by adding or inserting leaves.

Today, it has seating for twenty-two. This is an important occasion, so everyone made sure they could be here. All the kids who aren’t adults are here, too. Some of them still asleep after our late night playing Taboo last night.

“Daddy, look!” Tess and Dom’s son Ryland points at a monkey visible in one of the nearby trees.

Dom pulls his son onto his lap. “Aunt Mila will probably comb through his poop looking for something for our dinner tonight.”

Charlie Fox gives Dom a concerned look, then asks his mom if that’s true.

“No, baby, Uncle Dom is just dramatic, remember? We just smile and nod when he says something.”

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