My flight to Honolulu was at 7:00am, with a connection to Sydney at 11:00am. Seven in the morning is a ridiculous time to fly, but I hadn’t wanted to stay in Hawaii without Josh, and it had been impossible to coordinate our flights any better than we had.

He was flying out of Maui later in the day, then from Honolulu to Chicago in the evening. His flight was a red-eye, with him landing on the morning of January third, then going straight to work. I felt for him. When I got home, I’d still be on school holidays, meaning I could sleep in until I recovered from my jet lag.

I shoved the thoughts aside. The last thing I wanted to think about was being in Sydney alone—Joshless.

*

The road up to the crater turned into a series of switchbacks—quite different from the Hana Highway, though, because these turns were one-eighties and in many sections, there were no guardrails. We stopped talking so Josh could concentrate. Then it started to get cold—really cold. As much as I wanted Josh to focus on his driving, it got to the point where I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Um, Josh? Do you mind if we put the roof up?”

“Yeah, it’s getting kind of chilly, isn’t it?”

Chilly? Where is this guy from, Antarctica? “Yeah, you could say that.”

“It’s kinda cool, though, driving with the top down, don’t ya think?”

“Yes, ‘cool’ is the operative word.”

“How about I just turn on the heat?” I looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. He didn’t seem to notice and cranked up the heater on our feet, and we ended up driving to the top of the crater with toasted toes, but our top halves frozen.

An hour later, we got to the park entrance at the summit, paid for two adult passes, and pulled into the carpark. After parking the car, Josh finally put the roof up. It was far too late for that, as far as I was concerned. I had goose bumps on my goose bumps and my nipples were sore. I knew without looking that they’d turned blue.

When the roof slotted into place, Josh turned off the ignition. “Ready?” he asked with a smile. No! No, I was not ready! I had not dressed for freezing weather. I’d dressed for Maui beach weather. Josh’s clothes weren’t any more suitable than mine, but he didn’t seem to care. Yep, definitely from Antarctica.

“Umm …” I bit my lip.

“What?”

“It’s really cold out there.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s only fifty!” I said, using Fahrenheit so he would understand. And I knew what fifty meant in Celsius, too. It meant it was frigging cold.

He seemed annoyed with me which, considering the circumstances, I thought was rather unkind. Then he got out of the car and walked off. Well, that was definitely unkind. I sat there, pouting, but he didn’t come back. I opened the car door and cold air rushed in. Why hadn’t we done more research? We were supposed to be hiking the crater for the whole morning. I was going to be lucky to make it out of the carpark.