I hadn’t realized I said the words aloud.

“Onekahakaha Beach, you sure, eh?” he asks.

“Very,” I say, glancing at him.

* * *

Koji takes the long way, slowly driving down the streets I’ve known all my life. When we leave the neighborhood and the outskirts of downtown, I roll down the window and close my eyes, letting the warm wind caress my face. How long has it been since I’ve felt its touch? My mind is racing as Koji drives slowly, carefully over the uneven dirt roads softened by the cocoon of blankets. I know we’re nearing the beach even before I open my eyes. There’s the sharp salt-fish, seaweed smell of the ocean, the swishing of the palm trees that surround the beach, and suddenly the past rises before me, and I’m that fourteen-year-old girl standing on the rocks with Nori and Leia.

“Let’s go,” Nori says.

We were fishing for bonefish, carrying our bamboo poles and buckets and walking back across the hot sand of the beach.

“Not bad, yeah, we caught two,” Leia says.

When I glance across the sand I see the three boys on the beach looking our way, one of them strutting toward us as if he owns the beach.

“Hello, ladies,” he says.

We laugh because we aren’t ladies, we’re still girls.

“My name is Franklin and my friends over there . . .”

I think of that Franklin, so young and handsome, all he did was look my way and I fell under his spell. I think of all the things he could have done if he’d just set his mind to it. Instead, he wasted his talents.

I feel his hand reach out and touch my shoulder, but when I open my eyes it’s Koji I see.

“We’re here,” he says.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“You okay?”

I nod, even though there are increasing flashes of pain.

“Take a breath,” he says, knowing.

Koji parks the truck in the shade of the palm trees facing the ocean. He rolls down his window and reaches over me to carefully roll down mine. We sit, comfortable in our silence, letting the wind speak, letting the briny scent of the ocean embrace us. The sun overhead casts an inviting light on the water, and I wonder what it would feel like to just lie back and float out to sea, yeah. I imagine the coolness of the water, the pain and fear gone, the complete calm of drifting off until I simply become part of the ocean. But then Koji reaches over and takes my hand gently in his and draws me back to shore.

“Beautiful, yeah,” Koji says, looking at me. “You were always the red lehua blossom to my twisted, gnarled branches.”

I squeeze his hand tighter. “Nonsense,” I say. “You’ve never seen just how beautiful you are.”

Koji laughs. “I’ve never been beautiful.”