Page 51 of Hula Girl

“Well?”

I snap out of my daze and see the impatience on her face. Opening my mouth to speak, but still not sure what to say, I’m given a reprieve when the waiter brings my entrée. The plate is basically a deconstructed taco with all the ingredients beautifully spread out, including thinly sliced beef with tomatillo broth, beans, grilled red onions, crispy bacon, avocado, radishes and cilantro with tortillas and salsa on the side.

It makes the half order of shrimp tostadas Ava ate seem paltry in comparison and I push my plate to the middle of the table.

“Share it with me,” I say.

“Speak,” she insists.

“Eat, and I will.”

She eyes me warily before taking a tortilla and piling it full. Lust returns as I watch her take a bite and see a trickle of juice escape the corner of her mouth. I want to lean over the table and kiss and suck it off her. Just then, her eyes meet mine and she must recognize what’s going on in my head because for the briefest second, I see her own desire. That thing we found in Maui has definitely survived. It wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t fleeting. If I get this along with the other real world stuff, then I’m all in.

And then she takes her napkin and slowly wipes her mouth, forcing me to snap out of it once more.

“Uh,” I start, knowing she’s still waiting for me to speak. “Okay, so the thing I told you about him not wanting to be there for me is true. He and my mom had a vacation fling. When she realized she was pregnant, she tracked him down, and he immediately said he’d give her some money but he had no desire to be a father. So, it’s true that I didn’t have one.”

There’s sympathy in her eyes. But that’s not what I want from her, especially because I wasn’t some kind of victim in all of this.

“But when I was twelve, that all changed. Senior, as some of us call him, had a change of heart and sent for me,” I tell her. “He insisted I visit him over here, and I went kicking and screaming. I was so full of anger over it all that I was a real jerk to him.”

“Sounds totally understandable to me,” she says softly.

“I don’t actually regret that. I regret what happened next.” In between eating, I proceed to tell her everything that happened after that first visit, including the way my dad blackmailed me into moving in with him and the way I eventually flipped and wanted to be just like him, if that meant that I’d finally earn his love.

“So, it’s pretty pathetic,” I say. “I became a complete asshole, just like him. I was ruthlessly ambitious just like him. I was materialistic just like him. And you know what the best part is?”

She shakes her head.

“It never mattered. None of it. Not me speeding through school, not my natural ability for the law, not any of the billable hours I brought in. In the end, he still wanted to push me aside. I overheard him speaking to someone on the phone about how he’d sideline me by using my ‘ever expanding ego’ against me. That’s when I realized nothing I could do would really matter to him, that everything I’d done was all in vain. The only thing I had really accomplished was to become a shell of myself.” I pause, thinking of that pivotal moment. Shaking my head, I laugh. “It was a cruel fucking epiphany, that’s for sure. But it made me completely change my life. That’s the day I walked out and went home to Maui.”

“You walked away from practicing completely?”

I nod. “Thing is, I may be a good lawyer, but it isn’t my passion. And now, it’s tied to all the ways that I compromised myself. I may have been young when I left Maui, but I had absorbed the lifestyle there. It may seem lazy to outsiders, but it’s aboutbalance. It’s about knowing that work has its place, but so does the rest of your life and it shouldn’t be ignored all for the sake of materialism. I lost sight of that when I came here. Instead, I became ambitious and intensely focused on winning—cases, appeals, shares, a better car, more fucking materialisticthings. Yeah, I got all that stuff, but I lost what is really important to me. I lost thealoha spirit.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“It’s the alignment of the mind and the heart, the coordination of which brings each person to reflect on the basic life forces of kindness, unity, pleasantness, humility, and patience. In turn, each person is expected to think and express good feelings to others. That brings about a kind of mutual regard and caring without any obligation in return. And when you are surrounded with everyone living in this way, it’s, well, it’s the best kind of peace and freedom you could ask for. That’s the way of life in Hawai‘i.” I take a second to breathe because I’ve spit all this out so quickly.

“That’s beautiful,” she says softly.

“That’s what I’ve been working to regain since I went back. I just didn’t realize how much I needed it and how much it meant to me until I went without it for too long. So, even if I did want to practice again, I can’t see doing it at that level. It’s draining. It’s soul-sucking.”

Seeing the look on her face,I realize I’ve insulted her.

“I don’t mean that’s how it is for you,” I tell her. “I’m sure your motives and rewards are much higher than mine ever were. But I can’t separate it all anymore. Being a lawyer is the epitome of everything Idon’twant. All I want is to have a life that is meaningful tome. I love living one wave at a time,” I say and she winces, obviously recognizing it as the way she had demeaned me when we first met. “I love seeing my mom every day. I love teaching music and being around those kids. Ineedto live the aloha spirit.”

She takes a moment to digest this before saying, “Okay, but you’re here now because …?”

“My leave of absence is up. I need to either resume my position at the firm or resign.”

“And you’re going to resign?”

“Yes.”

I see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes. Maybe the idea of me as a high-powered lawyer was more enticing to her than what I am now, just a surfer boy. That bothers me way more than it should given the fact that she and I were never meant to be. This reaction makes me realize I’ve been holding out hope for something more with her since before she ever left Maui. There’s no choice now but to shrug it off.

“Where did you go to school?” she asks, changing the topic.

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