Caleb + Kate (18 page)

For its size, the house is surprisingly comfortable. I wish I could see her room and get an idea of what she sees every morning when her eyes open. But we don't go upstairs. Probably better anyway. The image of her bed might end up emblazoned on my mind.

Kate's mom carries down a tray of “brain food”—what she calls the chicken quesadilla cut into triangles for us to share.

We lean back and eat and never open a book. I don't know where the time goes or what we're talking about, but I feel enormously content, a happy I haven't felt since . . . since my mother died, I realize.

Kate sits with her legs pulled onto the couch cross-legged, talking about how much she loves the crew team, and I'm awash with this strange joy. She could talk about anything and I'd be happy listening to her voice and watching her hands move as she talks.

Her mom calls over an intercom that dinner is ready.

I hear classical music as we walk up the stairs.

“This will be your brother someday?” I ask.

“If Mom has her way. The conductor of this symphony is a childhood friend of my father's. We'd heard him play in New York and again on a trip to Vienna when I was little.”

Little comments like that are slight pricks to my contentment. But right now, I'm going to enjoy this and not obsess about the gulf of differences between us.

“We haven't eaten together at the table this whole year,” Jake says as we take our seat at the perfectly decorated dining room table. I've rarely eaten with china, except when Grandfather dragged me along to one of his parties.

“It hasn't been that long,” Mrs. Monrovi interjects, seeming embarrassed by that. She says a prayer and the food is passed around.

“Wow, this is very good,” I say, taking a bite of some kind of a chicken dish with an excellent rosemary sauce.

“I confess, I don't cook, but I have great people who can.”

Kate appears horrified by this, and I wonder how long I should let her believe I'm some poor Hawaiian guy attending Gaitlin on a scholarship. My lunch friends caught me up on all the assumptions people had made about me when I arrived. My favorite was that I had to leave Hawaii for spearing a guy while diving for underwater treasure.

“What are meals like in your house, Caleb?”

“Well, you know, it's my dad, sister, and me.” Kate's mom nods, she's already told me stories of meeting my mom and how sorry she was to hear about her death. Those are always the awkward moments for me, but we're past that now, thankfully. “We do a lot of eating on the run. Now with my extended family, it's chaos, nothing formal at all. I have cousins and aunts and uncles popping in and out all the time. We have a large family on my mother's side. My aunts love to cook, but the food goes fast. It's a bit like a free-for-all. If you don't elbow your way in, you might go hungry.”

Everyone laughs as I tell them about Uncle Harv falling asleep in a recliner and waking up to find all of the food completely gone.

As we talk, I hear the sound of a car approaching, tires in water. It must be raining outside. And then the entire night makes an abrupt change.

KATE

It's as if everything is exactly as it should be. I don't understand where that feeling comes from, because it's also new and unknown. When Caleb tells a story about his family, the details fascinate me; they sound so unlike my family. With Caleb beside me eating dinner, it's like I know him but I don't know him at the same time. That's what I've felt since the night of the prom.

We hear the sound of the downstairs garage door open.

“Reed is home, excellent,” Mom says, glancing at his empty plate. “I hope he's hungry.”

I hear my father's footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Hey, Dad,” I call.

“Dinner at the table? What's the occasion?” Dad says, coming around the corner to the dining room.

When I see the worn look on his face, I'm instantly worried. Something is wrong, very wrong. He takes a step back when he sees Caleb.

“What in the world are you doing here?” Dad demands.

We stare, no one moves. I've rarely heard Dad speak so forcefully and with such anger.

“Dad,” I say, jumping up. “I invited him over. We're working on a project together.”

“Reed, what's going on? I told you she had a friend coming,” Mom says, regaining her composure after the shock of such a humiliating outburst in her house.

Caleb stands up. “I'll go.”

“No,” I say, grabbing his arm.

Dad stares at me like I'm someone he doesn't know at all.

“Dad, what's wrong?” Jake said. Even Allie barks from the anxious energy in the room.

“Reed?”

“Nothing,” Dad says with his jaw set. He suddenly turns and heads for the staircase to the second story.

“I'd better get home,” Caleb says, glancing around for his backpack. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Monrovi. Do you know where my bag is?”

Mom hasn't quite recovered from whatever has just occurred, but she suddenly hops up and toward the front closet. “Gerdie can't leave anything out of place. If you can't find something and it doesn't have a place, then check the closet.” Sure enough, his black bag is hanging on the hook.

“Thanks,” he says.

I try to grab his arm. “Wait.”

“Walk me out, then?”

We open the front door to rain. I hadn't noticed that it started, and now it's pouring down in a steady sheet.

“Where did that come from?”

Caleb sighs. “Could I leave my bag with you, so my homework doesn't get soaked? I should have brought the jeep.”

“Of course. I'm really sorry, I've never seen my dad do anything like that before. Something is wrong.”

“If you were my daughter, I might do worse if I found a guy sitting at the table by her.”

I shake my head. “I don't know if that's it. I'll find out. We still on for the morning and the trust experiment?” I ask, wishing to keep him here. I'd planned to ask him to stay for a movie—it is Friday night, after all.

“Of course. No rain forecasted tomorrow, but this could make it interesting if it continues.”

We're standing on the covered entry with the rain pounding down around us. The nearness of him is like the vibration of the rain echoing through me. I hear Jake talking to Allie in the background from inside, “That was weird, huh, Allie? Not cool of Dad to do that to our new bud.”

Caleb and I smile at each other, and I have a sudden brilliant idea. “I'm giving you a ride home. Just let me get my keys.”

I hurry upstairs to my room. Mom walks out of her bedroom with a confused expression on her face.

“What's going on?” I whispered.

She shakes her head. “I don't know. He won't talk to me about it.”

“Well, I'm driving Caleb home—it's pouring out there.”

“Drive carefully and come right back. I'm not sure why your father is so upset, but we should find out before you're out with Caleb for too long.”

I want to protest. There's no way that Caleb has done anything to make my dad treat him like that. I'll find out when I come back.

When I walk downstairs to the front door, Jake is standing there. “He said he'd pick you up in the morning.”

CALEB

I should be working on the Camaro, but instead, once again, I'm taking out my aggression on the punching bag in the backyard as the rain pours over me.

After a while, my head stops going over and over everything. It all clears out, and there's no anger or humiliation or anything, just me and the rain and the bag.

Back home, I'd grab my board and drive to the beach. I long for those warm waters. Surfing here isn't quite the same. I think of my friends and family. It's three hours earlier, so right now, while I pound this bag in the pouring rain, they're most likely out on the water. We spent hours there, sometimes just sitting and waiting for the perfect waves, talking and pulling our feet up, trying out a trick, rehashing the best rides.

I wonder if Laina is dating someone else already. She promised she'd find a rebound guy fast when we talked two months ago. She's sent me a few texts and tried calling, left me a note on Facebook before I closed down my account. I never used it anyway, and she was the one who set it up. But it's over, she said so, and made sure when she met that guy on vacation from Australia.

There's a loneliness here that I didn't know there. There's a loneliness back home that I don't feel here with Dad and Gabe. And there's a loneliness that is almost always with me except, I realize, when I'm with Kate.

After almost an hour, the rain has slowed and a towel comes flying at me, hitting me in the head.

“Old Man Kalani lands one against Surfer Boy,” Dad says with a laugh.

I dry off my head and walk toward him. I sit under the porch near an old tree stump that was cut years ago. My clothes are soaked down to my shoes.

“What is it, son?” Dad asks, and I put one foot on the tree stump. Moss and ferns have crept up, making it look like an ornamental landscape design. The stump reminds me of one of my favorite children's books that would make me cry every time my mom read it to me. For some reason, this settles a heavy sadness into my chest.

“I miss Mom. I miss our family with Mom in it.”

Dad nods thoughtfully. “Don't I know that? And . . . what else?”

I peel off my shirt and dry my back. “You know I went to Kate Monrovi's tonight.”

Dad watches me carefully as he nods.

“Well, there's that, and also Mr. Monrovi. He was strange tonight.”

“He was?” Dad stares at me, and he's probably wondering if I did something.

“Yes, it was really weird. He was rude. Asked me what I was doing there, said it in front of his family. It upset all of them.”

“Your grandfather submitted an offer to buy the hotel.”

Now I stare at Dad and rest the towel over my shoulders. “Wow. That's unexpected. Why now? He doesn't really think that Mr. Monrovi will go for it?”

Dad shrugs. “I don't really know. Mr. Monrovi called me on his drive home. He was under the impression that I've been spying for your grandfather.”

“Oh, no. So then he comes home, and there I am.”

Dad nods. “Your grandfather has quite a way about him. You know, son, I should have brought you here earlier. It seemed best to keep you there, at least at the time, and I know you wanted to stay. But a good father would have made you come. Your mother would've wanted us together. I'm sorry for that.”

“It really was okay, under the circumstances. And you are a good father. But I couldn't do it any longer. I needed a break from him. Grandfather is impossible, as you know.”

“Impossible, I do know that. He's my father, remember. But I hope Reed Monrovi doesn't go for the deal.”

“Even though you love the land?”

“I can love it without possessing it. Seems the only people who are angry and bitter are those who have tried to own something that really can't be owned. That land will outlast all of us.”

I think of Kate and her love of the hotel. I put it out of my mind. Tomorrow I have a class assignment with Kate. We are tentative friends. This could ruin our friendship, or anything else that was between us, before it really gets started.

Loyalty. Grandfather was always playing that card. But what about loyalty to me? What if I did get together with Kate? I knew what that meant to Grandfather. And I knew it meant a very abrupt end to my charted future.

Chapter Eleven

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a
glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
(Act 2, Scene 2)

KATE

He pulls up in his cousin's black jeep. Before he reaches the door, I come out of the house wearing my oldest jeans and a long-sleeved thermal shirt with sweatshirt.

“Good, you listened. I was worried you'd be wearing Gucci or something.”

“You told me to wear clothes that could be ruined. And I
trusted
you.”

That smile of his, it makes its usual impact. I see his tongue for a moment, which makes me actually stumble on the stairs.

“Are your parents home?” he asks, and I'm sure he's still wondering about last night. I'm furious at Dad, but he wouldn't talk last night and this morning he was gone early. Mom had little to say. All I know is if I acted like that to anyone, especially one of his guests in our house, he would've grounded me for a month.

“Just Mom.”

“Should I say hello?”

“Oh, before you take her daughter out for the day? That sounds a little old-fashioned.”

“My mother practically beat gentlemanly etiquette into me.” I pause a moment, wondering if it's hard for him to mention his mother. “She was on her treadmill and then getting ready for a luncheon, but she would have liked your etiquette.”

Caleb takes my bag from my shoulder. The idea that my clothes might be ruined makes me a little nervous about today's experiment.

“Where are we going?” I'm grateful to see high clouds that don't appear to threaten much rain today. The jeep has a top on, but the doors are still missing and the sides are covered with mud.

“No questions. Only trust.”

“Did you clean the jeep just for me?” I ask.

“I did some early morning scouting.”

“Great. This sounds ominous.”

I pull myself up to get into the seat then reach around for the seat belt.

“We could always take my car.”

“Yeah, I'm sure the Lexus would do great off-road.”

So he knows what my car looks like. When I've seen him in the parking lot at school, he never acts like he's seen me.

“We're going off-road?”

He gives a shake of his head and I sigh.

“Okay, okay.”