“I should have brought the towels down. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry. The air’s warm enough. I’ll dry off.” I went back to my pile of clothes and picked up my tank top to put it back on. “Hey. What’re you doing? It’s your turn.”

“Oh, no,” I said, half-laughing. “There’s no way. That looked excruciating.”

“Yeah, it pretty much was. I don’t think we’re going to see my balls for a day or two.” I laughed. “But you’re going in.”

He was smiling at me and I was smiling back, but I couldn’t tell how serious he was. I shook my head no. He nodded his head yes. I shook my head again.

“Think about it this way. You may never be back here again, and if you don’t go in, you will spend your whole life thinking about how you didn’t swim in that waterfall on Maui and you will regret it forever.”

“Wow, that was quite the speech.”

“Sarah.”

“Josh.”

He stood there watching me, his eyebrows raised.

I took a moment to appreciate the sight of his body glistening with water, the not-too-bulky muscles of his arms and taut torso, the benefit of a few days of sunshine evident in his tan, and his wet swimsuit clinging to his thighs. He really was hot. I flicked my phone up and took the photo.

“Hey!” he said in half-assed protest. “Stop stalling. You’re not getting out of this.”

His posture and his expression hadn’t changed, and I actually felt myself give in. “All right,” I said.

“Really?”

“You’re surprised?”

“Yeah.”

“After all that ‘you’ll regret it for the rest of your life’ crap? How am I supposed to resist that?” He laughed.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I walked past him and handed him my phone. I charged into the water calling out, “Get ready to take a photo, Joshua. This is gunna be fast!” And then I was swimming in the (literally) breathtakingly cold water. He took the shots—me trying to look as natural and as happy as possible—and before I could blink, I was back on land. I think the whole thing took less than a minute.

He wrapped his arms around me as I shivered on the shore. “I’m proud of you,” he said. I smiled into his chest.

“I’m proud of both of us,” I said, leaning back so I could see his face. He kissed me softly.

“And we never have to do it again,” he said.

“I’ll drink to that!” We grinned at each other.

“It will be a well-deserved beer when we get to Hana,” he quipped.

“Or two.”

“Or three.”

Thunder cracked over our heads and we both looked skyward. “Where did those clouds come from?” I asked rhetorically.

“Be quick. It feels like it’s going to rain.” We went back to our piles of clothes and tried to hurry as we pulled them onto our still-wet bodies. When I got to my shoes, they didn’t want to cooperate.