“No. Let’s stay. It’s not every day I can eat hot dogs and hamburgers on the beach with teenage boys.”

Kai laughs, smacks my ass, and heads to the surf where the Jet Ski waits.

I watch as he climbs on and zips out. Twenty-year-olds, I repeat. Partying with twenty-year-olds.

At home, twenty-year-olds take care of my kids. Twenty-year-olds ask me for advice. Twenty-year-olds read my fashion magazines and keep me informed of the latest trends and celebrity gossip. I like my twenty-year-old baby-sitters. I like the college girls with their hip clothes and pierced navels and hidden tattoos. I love their stories about concerts and clubbing and long-distance boyfriends at other universities.

The girls are great. They’re smart and pretty, successful and funny. So what exactly is my problem with hanging out with twenty-year-olds here? Like I’m doing something taboo? Or, as my German grandmother would say, verboten?

A little later, John approaches and offers me a beer.

“Thanks, I’m good,” I say, showing him my beer. “I’m still working on this one.” I don’t bother to add that it’s the same beer I’ve had since arriving. I’m having a hard time sliding into fun mode, and the beer isn’t going down easily.

Young John stands next to me on the edge of the beach where I’m watching Kai ride the Jet Ski. “You’re here with Kai?”

“Yes.” I shade my eyes to see up into John’s face. His hair is that surfer blond and his eyes a light honey brown. He’s tan and lanky tall, but cut, muscular. My baby-sitters would really love him.

“Kai’s a good guy,” John says.

“I think so.”

“How long have you two been hanging out?”

Hanging out being Hawaii-speak for dating, I suppose. “A couple months.” I see John’s expression and add hastily, “I live on the mainland. I just see Kai when I’m here.”

“Cool.” He crosses his arms over his chest, flexing pec muscles. “Kai said you design houses.”

“I’m an interior designer.”

“So you decorate houses?”

“Sometimes I help with paint and fabric, and sometimes I reconfigure the interior of an entire house.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah.”

“So how old are you?”

My stomach falls, one of those dazzling maneuvers that leaves me antsy and breathless all in one fell swoop. What do I tell him? That I’m forty and old enough to be his mother? That I’m actually older than his mother? “Do you know how old Kai is?” I ask instead, deliberately stalling until I see where this is going.

“Um, twenty-eight?”

“I think that’s pretty close.”

“So you’re twenty-eight, too?”

“Yeah.” I cross my fingers behind my back.

“I know it’s not cool to ask a lady’s age. I was just curious.”

“It’s all right.”

“So how’d you meet Kai? Was he your surf instructor?”

“Pretty much.”