“Careful,” snapped Brad, his eyes half closed, and she shifted back. In her old life, no one would have barked at Sam like that—at least, no one except her family and her best friend, Nina. But Sam was very far from her old life right now.
The ocean really was beautiful this time of day, the water as ink-dark as the sky, the horizon an indistinguishable blur in the distance. Sam and Brad weren’t far out enough to hit the major swells; she could see the coast to her left, the waves cresting magnificently before crashing and hissing over the sand. Flecks of volcanic ash made the beach incandescent in the predawn light. She wondered which beach Marshall and his new friend Kai had driven to this morning, and whether Marshall would reappear grinning and exuberant, or covered in coral scrapes from a fall off his board.
It was amazing how many hours he could spend in the water. He taught surfing lessons every afternoon—he’d amassed a surprising number of clients in the month since they’d arrived, from excited ten-year-olds to high schoolers who were thinking of getting into competitions. Sam wasn’t surprised at his popularity; Marshall had always been at ease with other people. If only his family could see that. They’d been telling him for years that he wasn’t good enough, because of his dyslexia.
When they had first arrived on Molokai, Sam had felt a bit aimless, uncertain what to do while Marshall was busy surfing. Until one morning when she and Marshall had wandered over to the docks in search of fresh ahi, and she’d stumbled across Brad.
“Hey, kids,” he’d called out, his voice gravelly. “Either of you looking for a job? I could use an extra pair of hands.”
There was no telling how old he was; he was as tanned and wrinkled as a raisin, with a shock of white hair and a perpetual scowl. Though Sam suspected that underneath his gruff exterior, Brad was a complete softie.
“I can help,” she heard herself offer. “I’m a quick study.”
Brad assessed her, his eyes sharp beneath bushy white brows. “Be here at four tomorrow morning,” he said at last.
Sam had come out on the boat every day since. She’d forgotten how much she loved being on the water: the sea spray cooling her face, making her lips taste like salt; the way her muscles burned with satisfied exhaustion at the end of each day.
When one of the lines pulled taut, Sam jumped up and began tugging it in, hand over fist. The cord burned against her palms, which had grown callused over the last few weeks. Not very princess-like, she thought in amusement, but her hair was worse.
Their first day in Hawaii, she’d insisted they stop at a drugstore for hair dye and scissors. She’d sheared off her wavy brown hair, which used to fall below her shoulders, and dyed her ragged pixie cut a platinum blond. She’d toyed with doing a wilder color, like neon blue, only to decide it looked too memorable. She was trying to avoid notice, after all.
She hadn’t expected how light her head would feel without her long ponytail, as if she’d shed years of expectations and judgments along with her hair.
Sam hauled in the last of the line, then wrangled the barramundi into the crate, where it flopped back and forth.
“Well done,” Brad told her, and she stifled a grin. He was judicious with both his praise and his criticism, a bit like Sam’s dad had been. The thought sent a pang of longing through her.
“Time to head back?” she asked. The sunrise was beginning to gild the water, casting its surface with the pinks and golds of dawn. When Brad nodded, Sam pulled the chain on the motor and it kicked to life.
Usually Brad was content to sit in silence, but this morning he cast her a curious look. “So, Martha.”
From the way he said it, she sensed that he knew it wasn’t her real name—and for the first time, she wondered if he recognized her. Would he have said something if he did?
“You ever going to tell me what you’re running from?”
Just our positions, our families, and the entire world. It felt like America had poked a thousand vicious holes in Sam and Marshall’s relationship, one ignorant comment or headline at a time, until the joy they felt at being together began to deflate.
Brad sighed at her obstinate silence. “Whatever it is, you’re going to have to go back and face it eventually.”
“Not if I stay here forever,” Sam quipped.
“I don’t think you will. You have too much energy for this tiny, remote corner of the world. Even if there are things out there that scare you.”
Sam studied Brad—his tanned, weathered features, the lazy baritone of his voice. Was this what she and Marshall would become if they stayed here? Their lives would stretch on and on into the future, one long tapestry of surfing and sunsets and hamburgers on the water, punctuated by the occasional reminder of everything they had left behind. Of the families they had walked away from, in order to give their relationship the breathing room it needed. Would it really be enough?
It had to be. She and Marshall couldn’t be together back home, not without pain and heartache, and she couldn’t live without him. So here they were.
As they pulled up to the dock, Sam noticed a familiar figure standing there in a wet suit, grinning.
She hopped out of the boat and hurtled toward him, and Marshall folded her into a hug. Sam let her arms loop up around the back of his neck as they melted into a kiss.
They kissed right there on the dock at dawn, and no one catcalled or shouted or took a photo to post online. No one told them that they were disgusting or admirable or hateful or the future of America. They were just two young people, kissing because they wanted to. Such a simple thing—such a monumental thing.
This was what they’d traded their former lives for: freedom.
When they finally pulled apart, Marshall leaned his forehead against hers. His wet suit was damp, causing goose bumps to trail down her arms.
“You smell like the ocean, Scott,” she said, using the name Marshall had adopted in Hawaii.
“You smell like fish, Martha.” He laughed, then nodded toward the parking lot. “I already loaded your bike in the car. Want to head home?”
“Would you mind if we went into town instead?” A shard of loneliness had wormed its way into her chest, and she wasn’t sure how to dispel it on her own. She blamed Brad and his pathological truth-telling.
“Of course,” Marshall agreed.
Town was really just a small grid of streets with a few hundred residents. This was the most remote part of Molokai, which in itself was the most remote island of Hawaii. There wasn’t even a newspaper, just a monthly newsletter printed on computer paper, which reported local headlines like The Three Sisters Café Now Serves Dinner or Mallard Duck Spotted at the Corner of Woodhead and Fremont. Is This Your Duck? There was no mention of Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani, let alone international politics.