“Or we can Uber.”
“No. Hang out with your friends. I do not mean to take you from them.”
I wasn’t expecting her consideration. In fact, she hadn’t complained once.
“Shame you guys didn’t come around February or March,” she said, looking down the slopes of endless rows of short coffee trees.
“Why? Less people? More available rooms?”
“Yes, but the Kona snow.”
“Snow?”
“All the coffee plants flower these tiny white blooms, and it looks like the plants are covered in a dusting of snow.”
“Ah. Sounds pretty.”
“Your friends are watching.”
I hesitated to look over my shoulder.
“Don’t tense up. Are you always this weird with your girlfriends?”
“I’m a grown-ass man who doesn’t know how to do this.”
“Lower your voice.” Bane smiled, twisting back and forth at the hip, taking the hem of my T-shirt and tugging.
Something rumbled in my gut. “What are you doing?”
“We’re supposed to look cute,” she muttered. “Mr. Grown-Ass Man is going to blow his cover if they hear you. You have to make it look believable when all eyes are on you.”
“Ah. They’re still watching?”
“Not at all inconspicuously.”
I tensed anyway. They probably all knew the truth and were exchanging expressions of sadness over my pitiful life. “So what should I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“To make this look believable.” I gestured with my hand, indicating the air in front of us as if it had to create the bulk of our illusion.
She shrugged. “How should I know?”
“You seem like you’d know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
I shrugged. “Don’t you know? What do you do when you date?”
“The better question is what do you do when you date?” She pressed a hand against my stomach. My stomach automatically clenched at the touch. What the hell was happening to me?
“Um. Maybe this?”
Bane kept her hand right where it was and looked up into my eyes. She said, “You’re in capable hands. If anything, we’ll just look like a bickering, awkward couple. And one of us is definitely awkward.”
“And one of us definitely bickers.”
There she went jabbing a finger into my chest. “You’re both, you know? A bickering, awkward dev.”
I took her hand, dropping it to our sides. “Yeah, yeah.”
We ended up walking on a dangerously narrow pathway alongside the road to a café up ahead. This wasn’t a sidewalk at all, evident by the lack of cement, but Sam and April wanted to try this place that made lattes with coffee grown from this farm. So we went.
We ordered in pairs, which quickly turned into the theme of this trip. I didn’t know what I wanted except something local. A quick decision. No one thought this hard on a coffee order. So lavender and macadamia nut it was.
It was a small place and Bane and I took our drinks outside.
“Don’t you want to spend time with your friends?” she asked.
“It’s crowded in there.” There was barely enough room for Sejal’s glares.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she replied with an appreciative smile, which fell flat as soon as we were outside, at a small metal table for two. Because from the corner of my peripheral vision, Bane’s little expression of confusion turned to realization, and was promptly followed by her signature smugness.
“Don’t start,” I warned her.
“Did you just get lavender coffee?”
“Don’t even say it.”
