He doesn’t try too hard. He doesn’t have to. Women and opportunity just come to him, both tumbling into his lap, desperate to be taken, desperate to be experienced. It’s so easy for him. He doesn’t have to wish or want or need.

Not like me.

Not like me, who wants and needs everything. Who wants a man to love her more than he’s ever loved anyone or anything.

Not like me, who has been good for certain things, the dutiful things, but not for the fragile, the delicate, the intangible.

To be loved for one’s laugh, to be cherished for a smile. To be looked at as though I were good again, rare and special. Because when I first met my husband fifteen years ago, that’s how he looked at me, and back then it seemed as if he’d never stop looking.

He stopped looking.

“I will miss you,” I say finally, knowing I have to say something, knowing that Kai is still watching me, waiting for me to speak. The sun plays down on the top of his dark head, lingering over muscles that corporate men of forty-something don’t have, those little lines and cuts in the traps and deltoids, the biceps shaped, curved, connected to the triceps.

“Everything ends eventually, girl.”

“I know.” But I don’t know, or at least I don’t want to know, don’t want to believe it. And maybe that’s my problem: my inability to accept what is true.

Maybe this is why I’m divorced and my friends aren’t.

I don’t agree with the way we humans function. I don’t want to be human, mortal, if men biologically need a million women; and women get married and then bored of sex; and children battle, are difficult to raise, and then leave home and never look back.

Who made up this life, anyway? Who designed people to be so hurtful and lonely and alone?

“But it’s not over,” Kai says now, reaching for me and pulling me against his chest. His arm circles me, holds me firmly, holds me so I don’t feel so small or fearful. He leans down and presses a kiss to my temple, murmurs, “You’re still here and I’m still here. So, Jackie, relax. Let go. Just try to enjoy it.”

Later, after Kai leaves, I slip on a hotel robe and go outside to sit on my balcony. This time my hotel view is of Waikiki’s city lights and the distant hulking shape of Diamond Head. Curling up in my chair, I think about what Kai said and realize he’s right.