Page 91 of Try Easy

Keoni staggered down the hall into the bathroom. He wrenched open the medicine cabinet and scoured the contents for a bottle of aspirin. His head ached, and his throat felt like a cat had been using it as a scratching pad.

“Eh, wassa madda you, brah?” Bones called from the door of his bedroom.

Bones was leaning on the doorframe, looking sleepy and grumpy. He had on a pair of shorts that hung low off his hips, and his long hair was loose, hanging past his shoulders.

“I’m going to Waimea,” Keoni said. “You wanna come?”

“Hell yeah.”

Keoni started ransacking the medicine cabinet, throwing bottles into the sink and onto the counter.

“Whatchu you looking for?” Bones asked. He came to stand in the doorway of the bathroom, his big body blocking the hall.

“Something to make my head stop spinning,” Keoni said.

Bones shoved him out of the way. “Here,” he said, grabbing a bottle of aspirin and popping it open. He spilled a few of the white pills into his Keoni’s hand.

“What’s going on?” came a woman’s voice from the hall.

Keoni cringed at the sound of her voice. The memories of the night before came flooding back. He and Bones had gone to Legends last night. It was a bar in downtown Honolulu where mostly locals hung out. They had run into a few girls they’d known in high school, then they’d all come back to Bones’s house to drink more. Keoni was already wasted when they’d switched from beers to shots of liquor.

“Go back to bed,” Bones told the girl.

“Only if you’re coming back with me,” she said, coming to stand in the hall. She leaned against the wall, rubbing her eyes. “Hey, Keoni.”

Keoni swallowed a few of the aspirin and blinked into the mirror, meeting her eyes for a moment before looking away. “Heh, Lelani,” he said.

Lelani’s eyes roamed over Keoni’s naked chest and then flashed back up to meet his gaze. The sleepy look was gone, replaced by something predatory. “You can come, too,” she said, giving Keoni a sexy smile.

“Don’t make A,” Bones told Lelani. Grasping her shoulders, he turned her back toward the hallway. “Go back to bed unless you want to come to Waimea.”

Lelani yawned, stretching her arms over her head. She was wearing one of Bones’s T-shirts, and it rose up to midthigh as she stretched.

“I’ll be in bed,” she said, sauntering back down the hall.

Keoni pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “What the hell happened last night?” he asked.

Bones grunted. “Nothin’ illegal,” he said.

“Chee, Bones, that makes me feel a lot better. Thanks, eh?”

“Anytime,” Bones said. He went down the hall into the kitchen. “You want coffee?”

Keoni stared at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair stood up all over his head, and he hadn’t shaved his face in a week. Why anyone would invite him into their bed looking like he did was beyond his understanding. He was a wreck.

At least his face had healed. The bruise under his eye was only a faint yellow memory, and the split in his lip was history. He turned away from the mirror in frustration and left the room.

In the kitchen, Keoni sank down to the stool at the counter. Bones met his eyes for a moment, and Keoni realized his cousin looked just as miserable as he felt. It didn’t work any better to bury your sorrows in the body of another woman than it did to drown them in a bottle.

“What the hell are we gonna do, cuz?” Keoni asked, burying his head in his hands.

Bones turned his back on Keoni and filled the percolator with water. “We’re going to have coffee and surf Waimea Bay,” Bones said.

The prospect of big waves at Waimea should have had Keoni jumping out of his skin with excitement, but he felt nothing. He had been dead inside since Lou had left. He didn’t even know if he could muster the energy to drive up to the North Shore.

His whole life had revolved around surfing and making a name for himself on the waves. Normally, he wouldn’t have even waited for the coffee to brew. But he couldn’t get excited about anything, not even Waimea Bay.

Keoni knew Lou was the woman he wanted, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He wished he could have found that spark in a local girl, but none of them had ever seemed right. Why’d he have to go and find that spark with a haole tourist? Someone he’d never see again?

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