“Why should I move to answer your question? Where’s your phone?”
He fumbled around, slapping his butt, then his side, slipping his phone out of his pocket. The screen illuminated his face. “It’s past nine. We’re supposed to meet up at eleven to go hiking.”
“In your post-drunk state? Don’t they know you’re an old man?”
“Screw me.”
“Am I still expected to go?”
He pried open one eye. “You don’t want to?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“My friends like you.”
I pushed myself onto my elbow and tapped his nose. “That’s because I’m freaking lovable.”
“Right. It’s just me…”
“You’re the only person on this entire island who doesn’t like me, so you do the math. I know you’re good at it.”
“Smart-ass.”
I sat up and stretched, acutely aware of Sunny watching me. And for some unknown reason—because, one, I wasn’t trying to show off, and two, this wasn’t on instinct—I raised my arms above my head and arched my back.
Sunny grumbled something inaudible.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, rolling away and heading to the bathroom. “I…need to shower.”
“I’ll heat up leftovers.”
“I thought those were for me,” he said as he passed through the opened bathroom door.
“You snooze, you lose.”
While Sunny took a speedy shower, I had leftovers heated and was plating up.
“That was fast,” I told him when he emerged from the bedroom.
“Didn’t want you to eat all the food.”
He grabbed a plate and helped himself. “Where’s everyone?”
“They must’ve all left this morning. It’s Thursday…so at least two of them have work.”
Kimo was likely to have left with Diya, which meant Kimo had dragged his brother out, too.
“This does taste better heated up,” he confessed, which had me wondering how drunk he’d been to remember our conversation last night. And if he remembered everything. What he’d said, the way he’d looked at me, like he wanted to try some of this edible pumpkin.
My skin tingled. It was just the thought, not the man. No one had paid any special attention to me in a while. No one had spent this much time in close quarters, alone, in a while. And maybe I was reading too much. That book Diya lent me was a rom-com, and rom-coms had some great sexual tension and provocative imagery.
Alas, Sunny was not it. He couldn’t be, and if he somehow was, he could never know.
He constantly checked his phone and I asked, “Trying not to work, huh?”
“Yeah, but not just that.”
“Wedding stuff?”
“Some of it.”
I watched him until he finally put his phone away. “Is everything okay?”
He scratched his forehead. “Checking in on my family. They say I worry too much, and that’s one hundred percent true.”
“Tell me about them, your family.”
“You don’t need to know.”
“What if someone asks: How’s so-and-so? And I have no idea to whom they’re referring. Your sister, mom, aunt, cousin, child?”
“I don’t have children.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“We should get going.” He washed the dishes and I put away dwindling leftovers.
