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She found she loved the way she laughed when their server—costumed as a cabana boy—gave her a flirtatious wink, sashaying his barely concealed hips in his skintight short shorts as he took their order. She appreciated the respectfulness of her nature—always leading with please and ending with thank you—and how she didn’t bat an eye when Dillon asked for a seltzer and lime, instead of matching her order of a rum runner.
After the drinks arrived, Kam pulled the tiny paper parasol out of her pineapple, and stabbed it into the lime Dillon had discarded on the table.
“I bet it gets wild here over the holidays.” Kam’s voice was muffled by the live brass band blasting out upbeat Cuban love songs.
Dillon plucked up the tiny umbrella, twirling it between her thumb and forefinger. “I imagine it’s not much different than an average day in Hollywood. Surely this type of scene is your status quo by now.”
“Not really,” Kam slid one of two cherries off the plastic cocktail sword into her drink, and offered the remaining one to Dillon. “I’m kind of boring.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Dillon didn’t like maraschino cherries, but took it anyhow.
“Then you might be sorely disappointed.”
Tugging off the stem, Dillon tossed the cherry into her mouth. “Somehow I doubt that, also.” She washed down the offending fruit with a sip of her seltzer. “You won’t convince me that the girl who was voted in school to be Most Likely to DropHer Phone in the Toilet hasnothinginteresting about her.” She smiled behind her glass. “I’m not the only one with a page on wikipedia, Kam-Kameryn.”
Kam’s dark eyes widened, her drink paused midway to her mouth. “Tell me it doesn’t really say that!”
Dillon laughed. “I assure you it does.”
“Oh my God.” Her cheeks glowing scarlet beneath the flame of the tiki torch glare, Kam wrestled her phone out of her still-damp jeans pocket. “Fucking Dani!”
“It did also mention something about being voted Most Likely to Lead a Protest.”
“I swear I’m going to kill her!” Kam fussed with her phone, before giving in and tossing it on the table. “There’s no service.” She stewed another moment, and then laughed. “Wait—I can’t believe you looked at my wiki page! I thought you never went on the internet?”
Dillon swirled the ice in her glass. “I had to make sure I wasn’t meeting with an axe murderer.”
“If I was going to kill you, don’t you think it would have been easier to do it during the privacy of our hike on Ka’uiki? Or even better, just finishing the job I started on the Road to Hana?”
“That sounds like something someone would say who’s given the thought some consideration.”
Kam gave a noncommittal tilt of her head. “Maybe I’m a thrill seeker? Just looking for a steeper challenge?”
“Lucky coincidence for you, then, that you had work in Miami.”
As soon as the words were out of Dillon’s mouth, Kam’s face shifted, losing all its playful bluster. She stared at the melting ice of her cocktail, before looking resolutely up at Dillon.
“I lied to you.”
Uncertain what to say, or where this was going, Dillon waited.
“I—I don’t even know how to say this.” Her brief determination to hold her eye faltered, and once again she returned her stare to the table.
Sitting up a little straighter, Dillon fought down the uneasiness that crept up from the bottom of her stomach.
“I didn’t have work in Miami. I didn’t—I didn’t have any reason to be here.” Kam’s voice trembled, as if she were on the verge of tears. “I just… after the way we left things in Hawaii, I didn’t… I wanted to…” she swallowed. “I wanted to see you again. And,” she rushed on, before Dillon could say anything, “I know that makes me look like a psycho. You have to think I’m a freak. And I really understand if you want to skip out now. It’s probably what I would do. But I—” again she wavered, before turning her gaze to Dillon once more, her humiliation evident. “I didn’t want to lie to you. And I didn’t know how to tell you the truth.”
Dillon stared back at her for a long second, wrapping her head around everything she’d said. It wasn’t what she’d been expecting—though she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Just—not that. And, as caught off guard as she was, it still came as a colossal relief.
Kameryn hadn’t blinked, or taken a breath. “Please say something.”
Dislodged from her surprise, Dillon couldn’t help but laugh. “You flew all the way across the country not even knowing if we’d find time to meet up?”
The color of Kam’s cheeks—never fully recovered from her embarrassment over the wikipedia page—grew more deeply flushed. “Yeah.” Her shoulders sagged. “I know how that sounds…”
“Flattering? Bold? Sweet?” Dillon shrugged. “And, yeah, a little crazy, maybe. Especially coming from someone who tried to convince me a few minutes ago they were boring—but, whatcan I say?” she smiled. “I think that might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
Kam’s expression tentatively brightened. “So, you’re not—freaked out?”
