Page 103 of Try Easy

Keoni looked from Lou to Paul, and the color drained from his face. His eyes hardened. “You told him that?” he asked.

“She told me everything, pal.”

“Lou?” Keoni asked.

“You should go,” Paul told Keoni, looking him over with a dismissive glance. “You don’t belong here.”

Keoni’s eyes flashed to Lou. “Is that what you want?” he asked.

“She wants a good life. A comfortable and secure life. She doesn’t want to worry about her husband getting himself killed in the ocean,” Paul said. “Can you give her that?”

Color flooded to Keoni’s face as his mind flashed to Sunset Beach when he’d pulled Eddie’s body onto the sand. Eddie’s lips had already been blue, but Keoni had given him CPR for ten minutes trying to revive him. He remembered calling Eddie’s girlfriend, and telling her he was dead. Would someone be calling Lou like that one day?

“Keoni,” Lou said, grabbing his shoulders. “Look at me.”

Keoni thought about standing up at Eddie’s funeral and talking about what kind of man he was. A friend. A brother. A son. A role model.

What would they say about Keoni when he was dead?

“Keoni.” Lou shook his shoulders until he focused on her. “Don’t do this. Don’t go away.”

Keoni sighed, realizing it was too late. He was already gone.

Lou dropped Keoni’s shoulders and rounded on Paul. “I’m tired of you talking for me all the time. You tell me how to wear my hair, what drink to order, what car to drive! Now you tell me what I want in a man!” Lou marched to the door and held it wide open. “Get out!”

Paul left, saying he would call her later, to which Lou stuck her head through the doorway and yelled, “I’m changing my number!”

When she came back into the apartment, her color was high, and she held her chin with pride. She dusted her hands as if she was glad to be rid of something, and then she marched over to Keoni and wrapped her arms around his waist.

He held her for a minute, resting his chin on top of her head. He couldn’t get the image of Pearl at Eddie’s funeral out of his mind. She’d been in so much shock that she hadn’t even cried. She’d spent the entire ceremony staring off at nothing.

Keoni leaned back and tilted Lou’s chin up to look at him. “Every time I go out in the water, I could get killed,” he said. “I can live with that. Can you?”

Lou hesitated, and it was long enough for Keoni to have his answer.

“Yes,” she said. She clutched his shoulders when he tried to pull away. “Yes. I can live with that.”

Keoni studied her face. Her eyes were wide and he could see all the way down into her soul. He loved Lou too much to cause her the same kind of pain Eddie’s death had caused him.

“I don’t want you to,” he said, taking a step back.

Lou’s face darkened. “I can’t compete with a dead man, Keoni,” she said. Tears came to her eyes and she blinked them away. “You have to let Eddie go before you can let anyone else in.”

“I’ll never let Eddie go,” he said, feeling a flash of anger at the very idea.

“I don’t mean you have to forget him,” Lou said. “I only mean you have to forgive yourself.” Lou clenched her fists at her sides. “We can’t keep having this conversation, Keoni. You can’t keep holding on to your guilt like it’s a precious memento.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“You’re choosing pain over love.”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “I’m tryin to be smart. I can’t let you give up your planned-out life for the unknown with me. I could die tomorrow.”

“It isn’t your choice to make,” Lou said.

Keoni knew he had stepped into dangerous territory when Lou glared at him the same way she’d glared at Paul.

“Do you want me to come back to Hawaii with you, or not?” she asked.

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