He kept glancing at Sam. Just to make sure he wouldn’t fall over. Sam didn’t get sick very often, so when he did, it was weird to see him off-kilter. But a rosy color had returned to his cheeks, and he even managed a smile during Georgia’s toast, so he was probably okay.
Now that their stomachs were full of food and it was near 1 PM, they should probably get snorkeling, not to eat and run or anything, but they had to get moving. Colby was a little irritated that Nate’s chattiness was at an all-time high. His questions had veered back to the screenplays again.
“Do you plan on getting any of those scripts made into movies?” Nate asked Georgia and Trey, as Colby went for their bags, handing Sam, Alex, and Nate their own as a way of strongly hinting they should go.
“Well, that’s the goal, sure,” Georgia replied, leading them into the dining room where the stacks of screenplays were now stacked on the china cabinet hutch. “My husband loved films. I always wanted at least one of them to get produced by a major studio, but you know Hollywood—so fickle!”
“Yeah,” Colby groaned. “Hollywood be a bitch.”
He hadn’t meant it in a bad way, only as an end to the conversation so they could go snorkeling. But it came out sounding rude, and both Georgia and Trey turned their odd stares on him. Well, it was true. Living in Hollywood the last few years had taught Colby a lot about people, mostly how disingenuous they could be.
“It’s not all bad, though,” Colby backtracked. “Surrounding yourself with good friends is important.” He raised his eyebrows at the guys, wishing they could all make a mad dash for the van in the driveway. He was taking his cues from Sam, and Sam was looking like he needed fresh air.
“True, Colby,” Georgia nodded. “Hollywood can also teach us not to give up on our dreams. Trey and I won’t be giving up on ours when it comes to getting these scripts just right. Ain’t that so, baby?”
Trey rapped a stack of papers together on the table’s surface. “Exactly, my love. Your big dream is now my big dream,” he said, scooping her into his arms and giving her a deep kiss that made all them look away to prevent from staring.
Colby clucked his tongue in disbelief. Come on, getting these screenplays produced had been neither of their dreams. The only person it’d meant anything to was Clint, the man who’d written them. And Clint was no longer here. Who were these two living for—a ghost?
He almost felt sorry for Trey, for not having a big dream of his own, but it had been the reason Colby had brushed him off two years ago. Now it was definitely none of his business. Still, he wished he could shake sense into Trey. The boy needed a slap or two.
“Well, boys, let’s get going,” Trey finally said, grabbing the keys off a hook on the wall. He pointed to a painting next to the key hook. “Oh, and this? Hand-painted piece by Sean Connery, the guy who played James Bond 007 in the old films. Pretty groovy, huh?”
“Super groovy.” Colby rolled his eyes. “Maybe you can get him to star in one of your—I mean, Clint’s—movies.”
“Well, he’s past eighty now,” Trey tittered without even realizing Colby was being sarcastic.
So is your girlfriend. Colby’s words nearly fell out of his mouth. They tumbled back into his throat where he swallowed them with lock and key, embarrassed that he’d even thought of them. “True, true.”
All five men headed to the front door, past the row of scented candles, Mardi Gras–masked Buddha, and weird art that looked like it’d been made with elephant tusks and bent animal skeletons.
“I’ll have your rooms ready by the time you come back,” Georgia said.
Colby looked over his shoulder. “Thanks, but we’re not staying the night. We have to be back to the snorkeling shop by six-thirty.”
“Yeah, we appreciate it, though,” Sam added.
“I wouldn’t mind staying,” Alex mumbled out of the blue.
“Bro…” Colby looked at Alex. One thing was to change one day of their itinerary, but another was to change two when they only had three days left on their trip. First, they had to be back at Lihue Airport tomorrow so Nate could catch his flight for his sister’s graduation, and second, he understood Trey and Georgia were starving for company, but one day was more than enough.
“We wish we could stay, but we can’t,” Colby said.
“I see,” Georgia replied, freaky greenish eyes meeting Colby’s a second too long. Something he’d said had met with her disapproval. Colby gave her a weak smile and looked at Sam for backup.
“Anyway…” Sam clapped his hands once, defusing the tension. “Na Pali Coast, here we come!”
The drive to the state park wouldn’t take long, as Trey told them several times—about five minutes along Kuhio Highway, a road closed to visitors. But he made sure to spend that time in the van telling Colby, Sam, Nate, and Alex more about the flood two years ago, how it’d ruined their driveway, destroyed so many trees, knocked out one entrance to their wine cellar. The water level had reached their front door.
“Fifty-five inches of rain fell in a twenty-four–hour period,” he said, driving slowly down the partially damaged road toward the towering mountainside. “It set a new world record.” He opened the windows to let in the salty breezes.
The only way off the North Shore without a convoy was by helicopter, he explained. In fact, he and Georgia traveled to India for a month just to get away during the recovery efforts—it was that bad. Trey made it seem like they’d sacrificed so much when they left temporarily.
But Colby could only imagine how it must be to have so much money, you could just move to another country for a month while your mansion and your island back home got fixed. You wouldn’t have to work. You could just wake up in the morning, no stress, tour the countryside, eat when you were hungry, shop for cool stuff in the Indian bazaars, and take photos all day.
Some might say Trey had it made.
But Colby wasn’t so sure. Yes, he and Sam had a lot in their name, too, but everything they had, they had because they’d earned it. Themselves. No handouts. Colby wasn’t even sure he could even enjoy a life provided by a wealthy sugar mama. He would always feel like he had to contribute. He credited this to his upbringing and swore he could never be like Trey. And to think Trey had tried lecturing him once about life.
“You guys were pretty lucky then,” Alex said from the back seat. “Both during and after the flood, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. You all are lucky, too. For being allowed in this area. For being on this closed road. For seeing this immeasurable beauty. In fact, by the end of the day…” Trey’s hazel eyes appeared in the rearview mirror, first at Alex, then straight at Colby. “You’ll never want to leave.”
Colby couldn’t help but stare at Sam openmouthed.
Seemed like any time Trey said something weird, all he could do was check Sam’s expression to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. He couldn’t trust Nate as Trey’s acquaintance. Nate liked everybody he met. Nor could he trust Alex, who seemed to think everything about this place was perfect. But the widening of Sam’s blue eyes told him it wasn’t just him—Trey was a nutcase.
As they neared their destination, a Jeep crept up on the road behind them, keeping its distance. Trey kept an eye on it in his rearview mirror.
“Are you sure we’re allowed on this road?” Colby checked back at the Jeep.
“Yes, we’re residents.” Trey sped up to put distance between them and the driver. When he was a good hundred yards ahead, the Jeep seemed to have lost interest and disappeared down a dirt road. He slowed and pulled into an empty parking lot, navigating his way around barricades and safety cones.
Trey parked the van near a break in the trees, and they all hopped out. Colby could tell they were near the shore because of the seagulls hovering overhead and the intense salty air. They began taking down the snorkeling equipment, applying more sunscreen, putting on swim shirts, and perching masks on their heads.
“Hey!” someone shouted from across the parking lot. Colby spotted the Jeep that had followed them a few minutes before. He saw the driver now—a tall, heavyset, pale woman wearing a scowl, storming toward them. “Hey, you can’t be here!”
“Um…neighborhood watchdog, headed this way,” Sam warned.
“Oh, that’s Katie,” Trey said, closing up the van’s hatchback. “Hi, Katie! It’s okay. These boys are with me!” He waved his arms until Katie recognized him.
“Oh.” She slowed as she approached them. From all the running and driving with the windows open, loose strands of her thin, brown hair flew all over her head, giving her a winded appearance. “Good to know. Next time, let one of us know you’re bringing guests up. You know we don’t like to see outsiders walking around by themselves.”
“These are my friends, Nate, Colby, Alex, and Sam.” Trey gestured to the group.
“Yeah, nice names, but they’re still outsiders,” she huffed, then wagged a pointed finger at him. “Be nice, you hear? You never know when you’re going to need us.”
That was an odd thing to say. It wasn’t like they were giving her a hard time or anything. Kauai locals sure did get their panties in a twist.
Trey’s laugh felt forced. “Oh, we know, Katie, we know. All we’re doing is snorkeling, then heading back to the house for dinner. The boys are leaving in the morning.”
Why did he keep calling them “the boys”?
“We’re what?” Sam narrowed his eyes. “No, we can’t do dinner, Trey.”
“We’re not staying,” Colby insisted. He was pretty sure he’d already said this once before. “We have to be back in Hanalei by six-thirty to drop off the snorkeling gear.”
“That doesn’t give you much time,” Katie said, glancing at her phone. “You’d have to wrap things up here by four, at the very least, to get back on the road in time. Chop, chop, do your snorkeling, then skedaddle.”
“Okay, Katie,” Trey laughed, though Colby found nothing funny about the woman. “Thank you for looking out for us.”
Katie stared at Trey like she wasn’t looking out for him—she was looking out for herself and possibly other residents, as if this group of twenty-somethings was a problem. Apparently, their reputation preceded them wherever they went.
She retreated back to her Jeep, as they all grabbed their things, but kept watching them from afar for a few minutes.
“What’s so dangerous about being here without supervision?” Colby followed Trey through the cut in the bushes. “Man-eating flowers?”
Nate chuckled. “Bacteria-infested waterfalls?”
“Cloudy dark spirits,” Sam added oddly.
Colby had no idea what he meant by that. Sam had been acting strange since he felt nauseated in the kitchen.
“The locals are just protecting their land,” Alex said. “You can’t blame them.”
“I can’t, huh?” Colby cocked his head. Why did Alex always come to the rescue with his defense of anybody who antagonized them? “What are you, her lawyer?”
“Financial advisor.” He jabbed Colby in the back with a flipper. “Just go. If I don’t get into the water soon, I’m going to get a headache. I can already feel it building.”
“Me too, dude,” Nate said. “We need to relax.”
It was odd that Sam, Alex, and now Nate had all felt slightly sick this afternoon, though Sam’s headache seemed the worst of all. They probably should’ve stopped for breakfast this morning instead of rushing to Hanalei.
“Almost there,” Trey said dramatically, then he burst through the bushes and stopped short of a wide expanse of blue. “Huh? What did I tell you? What…did I tell you?” He held his arms out wide, proudly displaying the surroundings.
The second Colby’s feet hit the sand, he raised his sunglasses and took a good look around him. A swath of heaven stretched before them so exquisitely, it couldn’t have been real. It had to be a painting, a lucid dream. But it was real. They had landed in paradise. Everything else they’d seen in Kauai so far paled in comparison. Energetic, deep-blue waters and white quartz sands beckoned to them, soft-crested waves lapped against the shore, and to their left, towering, emerald peaks jutted upwards from the coastline into clear, baby-blue skies.
Not a person on the beach.
Not a single soul, but them.
The Na Pali Coast was theirs alone.
“Is that…?” Nate’s mouth gaped open.
“That is it, my friend,” Trey replied, jutting his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Majestic, isn’t it?” He started removing layers of clothes until he was standing in his swimsuit. The guy only got weirder with each passing moment.
Colby almost couldn’t cope with the majesty of the world around him. It was too primitive, too surreal. He half-expected his dead ancestors to walk through a set of pearly gates toward him, welcoming him to the promised land. From inside him came a deep sense of belonging, as though he’d finally come home. As though his heart had always been in Kauai.
Sam put his arm across his shoulder. “Glad we came?”
Colby nodded. “Hell, yeah. We have to take a picture.”
“Let’s do it.”
Sam gathered everyone together on the shore—the four of them—while Trey took Colby’s phone and snapped a bunch of photos. Colby beamed in every pic. The smiles emanated without effort. This was the perfect location on the perfect day with his best friends in the world. He hated to admit, Trey might’ve been right—he might never want to leave Kauai.
“Can you believe this is where Ryder Camp was?” Trey scanned their surroundings. “Right here where we’re standing. Me and Georgia love to walk here all the time. We take the long way, of course.”
Ryder Camp was hard to imagine. To Colby, it felt like they were the only five people in the world at that moment. Like the Na Pali Coast had been born of fire, earth, water, and wind purely for them. He solemnly scanned the beach, doing his best to imagine people living here long ago. Hippies from Georgia’s book, singing around a bonfire, playing volleyball, building tree houses, meditating, doing yoga on the sand…having babies.
Living.
Breathing.
Far away from the cruel world.
Suddenly, Colby felt lightheaded. He reached for a nearby gnarly tree to catch his balance. The moment his fingers curled around the smooth bark, he imagined a truck tire hanging on a rope from a sturdy branch, a little blond boy, swinging back and forth, his mother calling to him—dinner was ready. He saw the boy’s bearded, shirtless father grilling fish over the campfire, as groups of half-dressed people laughed while glowing embers rose into the twilight sky, carried away by Pacific breezes.
Just as quickly as he saw the harmonious scene, it disappeared.
Only a deeply tanned woman remained on the beach wearing a wraparound skirt, a necklace of tiny shells around her neck, and no top. She was beautiful but also concerned. And she’d seen him. She stared at Colby with insistent, seafoam eyes.
Go, she said.
“Yo, dude!”
Go…
Colby was transfixed by her beauty and frightened demeanor. Behind her, a dark cloud began taking shape on the beach, even as the evening sky in his vision was clear from clouds.
“COLBY!” Sam called from somewhere far away.
Go, the woman said again, then she clapped. And when she did, it all disappeared—the people, the bonfires, the tire swing, the grilled fish…everything. All that was left were his friends and Trey.
Sam called to him from the water’s edge, decked out in swim shirt, snorkel, mask, and flippers. His mouth looked funny with the mask distorting his face. “Colby, guess what’s here?” he shouted, pointing into the crystal blue waters. “Turtles!”