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Ankor’s grin is a cocky slash. “Good.”
He takes a turn, and his hand leaves my thigh to return to the gear shift as we negotiate a particularly steep road, this time headed down it, toward the distant shoreline. The jungle rears up, and for a while, I can’t see much except the road ahead of us, and the thick trees all around, their leaves so huge they look bigger than me.
“Do you get a lot of time to explore the island?” I ask as we drive.
“Enough that I have some favorite spots,” he says. “I prefer my solitude, and there can be a lot of tourists, even at this resort—which is one of the smaller ones in Maui. Sometimes it’s nice to just get away for a while, be by myself in nature. So I can clear my head and think.”
I laugh a little, my breath a soft huff. “That I can empathize with.” After all, why did I come all the way here, if not to do just that? To escape while I still could. To be by myself, figure things out. Clear my head of the past and all its ugly ramifications.
“Look.” He points to my right, and I glance over. My breath catches.
Between the trees, I spot the sparkle of the midday sun on the waves. They’re big waves here, larger than at the beach where I went wandering yesterday. The kind of waves I imagine a surfer would crave. Not that I would know, of course. Since I never learned how to swim, I never took up any kind of water sports. Least of all surfing, which combines swimming with balance, possibly the only thing I’m worse at than the former.
I’d be eaten by a shark my first time out on a board. It would take one look at me and pin me as an easy dinner.
Still, watching those waves, it makes me wish I were braver. Bolder. The kind of person who would swim out in them and tackle them head on.
We take a final turn, and to my surprise, the road just… ends. There’s a bit of gravel before we reach the white sand of the beach. Ankor pulls off to one side, parking near enough to the asphalt that it won’t be a problem for his car. There are no other cars here, but even so, he leaves plenty of space in the lot. “In case anyone else comes off-roading or down to surf later,” he explains. “You learn to be a good neighbor around the island. Word travels fast, and it’s a small town, that’s for sure.”
I laugh, trying to imagine put-together, impossible-to-ruffle Ankor worried about some small-town gossips complaining about him. But I can’t deny that it’s a little bit sweet, too. It’s polite of him to leave space for others to reach the beach. For all his talk about solitude and preferring his own company, I wonder if he’s always been like this, or if he used to be a more social person.
He pops the trunk and takes something out. Something that makes me break into a grin.
“What, did you pack us a picnic?” I tease.
He tucks the basket under one arm and extends the other to me. “I may or may not have bribed the kitchen staff to pack one for us. Does that count?”
I laugh delightedly, though I roll my eyes, too. “Close enough. It’s the thought that counts, after all, right?”
“Couldn’t agree more.” He leads me over the white sand, toward those big waves. As we approach, I can hear them crashing loudly, a deafening roar that’s somehow both impressive and soothing all at once. It sounds like the old white noise machine I used to listen to at my bedside, an attempt to coax my anxious nerves into relaxing after another long night of terror.
I suppress a little shiver, in spite of the hot sun beating down on our shoulders. “I should have put on more sunscreen,” I complain. “I’m going to fry out here.”
“Don’t worry.” He flashes me a wink, and then, when we reach a spot on the shoreline he deems appropriate, he leaves me with the basket and a blanket to spread out, and jogs back to the car. I’m still struggling with the blanket—I weighed down one side with my shoes, but I can’t get the other to lie flat—when he returns with a beach umbrella tucked under his arm.
I grin. “Wow, you really thought of everything. Are you sure I’m the first girl you’ve seduced out here?”
“Positive,” he replies. “Or I would have remembered to bring some wine and a bucket of ice, too.”
I snicker, as he lays his shoes down to hold down the other side of the blanket. “Trust me, this is more than good enough. I’ve never had anyone take me on a date like this.” I hesitate, worried I’ve misspoken. “Er. This is a date, right?”
