AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Day six, today, like all the days before, I don’t know what’s coming, only that Kal will be picking me up.
I dress in shorts, a cap-sleeve top, and sandals, with Autumn’s bikini beneath. I grab my trusty bag, rope, and all, and head out to wait for Kal.
Only he’s standing there—hands in pockets, waiting for me inside of my closed-in porch.
“Kal!” I yell, heart thumping. I leap for him. What can I say? It’s instinct for Spontaneous Meg. I jump in the air and wrap my long legs around his waist as if there were sharks inside this very porch and I were a very frightened octopus.
He lifts his mouth to mine before I can ask how long he’s been waiting. I don’t argue. I kiss him back like he’s just returned from war and we’ve been separated twelve long months, rather than what it is—eight excruciating hours.
“What are we doing today?” I ask, loosening my long-legged grip on the man and sliding my feet back to the floor. I blink up at him, still holding him around the neck.
“Would you be okay with something smaller today?”
“I’m okay with anything, as long as you’re there. Is there kissing on the menu? Then I’m in.” Whew. Spontaneous Meg says the craziest things.
A loud balk sounds from the corner of my porch—my closed-in porch. A balk that isn’t mine and isn’t Kal’s. And isn’t on the outside.
A little woman with tan skin and gray-black, frizzy curls claps her hands, her loud hoot drifting to a sigh.
Kal clears his throat. “Meg, you remember my mother?”
I drop my hands from around Kal’s neck. “Alana,” I squeak. “Yes. Hello.” I give her a blaring, obnoxious smile, then search the ground for a hole to crawl into. This woman just watched as I leapt onto her son, wrapping my legs around him like some eight-legged sea creature who smothered him in kisses. Not to mention, she heard me say that I’m up for anything as long as there’s making out involved.
Awesome.
I’m not sure how Spontaneous Meg feels about this, but Sensible Meg is horrified.
She smirks—confirming that she didn’t miss a thing. “Aloha, Meg Miller.”
I grin back, showing every last tooth in my mouth. Switching my gaze from Alana to Kal, I widen my eyes, trying to stress that I’m not exactly thrilled at the moment. “No warning?” I say through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t let him give any!” Alana says. “I have not seen my boy all week, and when I ask him why, he looks at me all sheepish.” She peers up at Kal, wrinkling her nose.
How did someone so tall and broad come from such a little woman? I mean, she’s got the hips for it—but the height? She’s tiny.
“So, I ask him, is it Meg Miller? The girl who lost her clothes at Gracie’s wedding?” Alana’s laugh booms with the memory of what will surely go down as my most embarrassing moment ever. “When he does not answer right away. I know.” She nods, her pretty hair bobbing with her. “Meg Miller!” Alana’s roar ends in a sigh like she’s just run a strenuous race—and in a way I guess she has. “And now we’re here.”
The woman lifts herself from leaning into the crook of my fence and walks over to us, a green-and-navy lavalava about her waist. My limbs are like dead fish at my sides. But Alana wraps an arm around me, patting me on the lower back—way too close to my behind. I peer up at Kal, who looks as though he’ll laugh before he’ll offer me any assistance.
“Don’t worry, Meg. No reason to be embarrassed. He’s very kissable. I get it.” Her blue eyes sparkle up at me. “Ready, Kalani? Let’s go.” Alana pushes through my gate and starts toward Kal’s Jeep.
I dart a glance at Kal. “Am I coming too?” I whisper with a shrug. I have no idea what just went down.
“I hope so,” he says. “If you don’t, she’ll only be back.”
I lick my lips. “Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Alana sits up front and I slide onto the backseat. My hair whips in the wind. I comb it back, behind my ears, again and again, while Alana talks. She mentions so many people—all by name and only a couple that I recognize—Malia and Leilani, Kal’s sisters. I peek at Kal in his rearview mirror, and every time I do, he peeks back, giving me that smile that could win awards and break hearts.
“Which is why,” Alana says, with a huff, “Kal is my greatest disappointment.”
Kal pulls up to a little yellow house with bright green trim—no argument from him. Apparently, he knows he’s a disappointment.
I blink. “Oh.” I don’t know what to say. I’m not even sure what she is saying. She rambled on and there were so many topics and the wind…I have no idea what reasons the woman gave for being disappointed.
Should I agree or disagree?
“A good, handsome boy like him, still single at thirty-one! Do you know his cousin Ekewaka was married at nineteen? Nineteen years old and the boy had a girl who agreed to marry him.”
