Aloha, page 65
Tyler shook off a chill. Melelu Kapono could be as warm as a Maui breeze or as chilly as a tundra, but she never made you guess about how she felt. And it wasn’t her hate he feared. It was her disapproval. She’d provided the only maternal love he’d ever gotten in his life and he’d repaid her by breaking the heart of her most cherished foster child and cutting contact with the only real family he’d ever known.
“I need to talk to Hope.”
“You want to talk to Hope.”
“I have to apologize.”
“Write her a letter.”
“I owe her a chance to slap my face in person, don’t you think?”
“I’ve done it,” Mel reminded him. “It’s not as cathartic as I’d hoped. And unlike me, Hope hates violence. I think that’s because of the third house she was in where the foster parents beat her for taking an extra piece of stale bread at dinner. Or was that the fourth?”
Tyler pushed down the bile that instantly rose in his throat. He and Hope had both had horrible experiences in the system. Most kids did. They’d both found solace and home and love in the Kapono household. But where he’d been compelled to leave the first time he had an opportunity, Hope had chosen to stay. She’d become more than a former foster child. She’d become family. Just like she’d become his family when she’d accepted his proposal.
And what had he done? Thrown it away.
Dick.
“It was the fourth,” he muttered, knowing Hope’s history as well as he knew his own. “I don’t know what to do, Mel, but I won’t let things stand the way they are. You told me yourself that Hope was still hurting after all these years. You said she wasn’t seeing anyone and does nothing but work and hardly sees friends. You said it was because of what I did and I believe you. How am I supposed to let that stand if I can do something to help her?”
“I’m not sure you can help her,” Mel said. “I’m also not sure that helping her is your real motivation. Maybe you’re just trying to help yourself?”
“Maybe I am,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve always been a selfish son-of-a-bitch, Mel. Haven’t I proved it enough? But if I can help Hope, too, doesn’t it matter if I finally earn a little absolution?”
Mel stepped up so close, it took everything in his power not to lean back. Her black irises bored into him with the intense heat of a laser. Then, in a brief flash, he saw uncertainty crossher face. Whatever sharp quip she’d been about to deliver transformed as she mulled the words over in her mouth.
“Honestly, Tyler? What happens to you doesn’t matter to me at all.”
Hope tore into the kitchen and grabbed the first solid surface she met, the top of a stainless steel work station that had already been wiped clean and disinfected after service. Though most of the meals had already been served, a couple of stations still buzzed with activity. Lu was supervising the plating of desserts, cutting her famous guava chiffon cake herself into perfectly square servings while one of the pastry chefs drew intricate designs on the plate with a thick lime coulis. For a brief second, she and Hope made eye contact. A half-second later, her foster mother was by her side.
“What’s wrong?” Lu asked.
Hope shook her head. She wasn’t sure she could even say his name out loud. What the hell was he doing here? Why had he come? It had been years. Years! She hadn’t heard so much as a single word from him. He’d disappeared out of her life like a wraith. Like her father.
Her face flushed. The hot sting of tears burned her eyes and at the same time she shivered as if she’d been locked in the walk-in. Lu frowned, took Hope’s hand, and led her to the office.
“Ke kaikamahine,” Lu murmured, using the Hawaiian word for daughter that always tore straight through to Hope’s heart. “What’s happened?”
Hope hiccuped to hold back a sob. Her heart was too raw, too wounded, to survive even an unintentional wound. She wasn’t Lu’s daughter, but yet, she was. How could she not be? Lu loved her, cared for her, ensured her education and success. She’d celebrated when Hope and Tyler had gotten engaged, even though she’d had misgivings. They were too young. Too vulnerable. But she’d supported them.
And when Tyler had left, Lu had refused to say anything negative about his decision to leave Hope and his job as a Sunsets sous chef behind to take a job as a private chef. Even when he’d ended their engagement, Lu had tried to put a positive spin on the break up. Mostly now, she, like Hope, didn’t talk about Tyler at all.
It had to be painful for her, too. He had been her protege and a son of her heart.
Hope shook her head. Tyler hadn’t just hurt her when he’d left. He’d hurt them all.
“Hope, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Tell me what is wrong right now or I will go get Ben.”
Teardrops slid down her cheeks, but she laughed mirthlessly. “He’s in the middle of a set.”
“Since when has that stopped me?”
Never. It did not happen often, but Lu had no compunction about stopping the performance if she needed her husband for something related to their children. And blood relation or not, Hope was their kid. Trouble was, so was Tyler, no matter how much he’d hurt them all.
“Tyler is back,” she said.
Lu’s black eyes widened, then she spun to look at the door as if Tyler was going to materialize out of nothing, which he basically had. “Where? When?”
Hope sucked in a breath and forced it out slowly. She didn’t want to cry or worse, sob uncontrollably. She’d wasted enough emotional energy on her former fiance. God, why did he have to show up now? Had her earlier thoughts about him conjured him from the ether?
No, that couldn’t be it. If just thinking about him could manifest him, he would have reappeared every day since he left. The truth was that no matter how much he’d devastated her, she had never been able to force him completely from her mind.
“He came in a few minutes ago. I don’t know where he is now. I ran away.”
“No,” Lu corrected, pulling her into a hug. “You ran here.”
Hope allowed herself to melt into Lu’s warmth. She didn’t want to cry, but tears spilled out of her eyes in a silent flow. So maybe she hadn’t entirely used up the tears allotted to Tyler. But the moment seemed to pass quickly and she was able to pull herself together.
“Why would he come here? Why now?” she asked as she stood and grabbed a tissue from Lu’s desk, wiped her face and blew her nose.
“He had to come back some time,” her mother replied.
“Did he? Did he really?” she said, her voice rising in volume. She pressed her lips together. Lu didn’t deserve to be the target of her anger.
Lu pushed her hands on her thighs and stood with a grunt. She wasn’t old or out of shape, but it had been a long day for all of them.
“This is his hale, no matter his reasons for leaving,” she said softly. “I know he hurt you, Hope. He hurt all of us when he left. I’d always hoped he’d take over the kitchen here. He will have to ask for my forgiveness before I give it, but he must have a reason for coming back. Don’t you want to know what it is?”
Hope shook her head without really considering the question. Tyler coming back meant she had to dig around in a well of hurt that she’d capped a long time ago. Or had she? She’d tried to, that was for sure. She’d thrown herself into anything and everything that didn’t relate to her failed relationships and broken heart. She’d finished college. She’d worked at the restaurant, the website and finding the best point of sale system they could afford. She’d started the food truck. She’d partnered with a nearby culinary arts program to build their team. She’d helped her community during the pandemic. She’d read books and learned to knit and deepened her studies of Hawaiian history to better connect with the roots that she’d been grafted onto by the Kapono clan.
What she hadn’t done was date or flirt or even entertain the idea of being in a romantic relationship again. That part of her had belonged to Tyler since they’d both turned sixteen. If she decided to explore that part of herself again, she’d first have to exorcize him out of that space to make room for anyone else.
And that would mean facing a whole lot of hurt. Facing it and even, if possible, forgiving it before she could move on.
Yeah, right, like it was just that easy.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Hope insisted.
Lu put her hands on her ample hips. “If not now, when? If the past few years have taught us anything, Hope, it’s that we have to live in the moment. Regrets from the past belong in the past, but you have to put them there. You haven’t. You know you haven’t.”
Lu left the room, but she came back quickly with a plate of cake and a tall iced tea. She also brought two forks, which made Hope smile in a way she didn’t imagine she could. They sat with the plate on top of a pile of resumes they’d received from the culinary school and ate together, chatting about nothing important, reminiscing on how they’d tested and tasted what seemed like one hundred different sauces before settling on the lime to elevate the guava cake from fantastic to fabulous.
Hope drew her finger through the last of the sauce and licked it off with a groan of pleasure.
“Delicious,” she said.
“A little sour offsets the sweet,” Lu offered. “It’s a lesson in life.”
Hope frowned. They’d circled back to Tyler without even mentioning his name. And with that, Lu left the office, blowing her a kiss as she closed the door behind her.
Now, Hope had no company, no cake and no reason not to spend the rest of the night thinking about Tyler and what the hell she was going to do next.
Stalking had never been Tyler’s style, so hard as it was, he stayed as far away from Sunsets as he could while he figured out his next move. He considered texting Hope, but she’d either changed her number or blocked him. He didn’t have social media and if he downloaded an app just to reach out to her, even he’d consider himself a creep.
By Sunday afternoon, he’d jotted out a note to have delivered to her apartment, maybe with flowers or chocolate, but he wasn’t sure where she lived. He could have asked Ben or Lu, but he didn’t want to put them in the uncomfortable position of turning him down. Mel would go to the grave before she told him so much as Hope’s shoe size. Her tirade about Hope’s lasting sadness over their broken engagement had prompted him to seek her out in the first place and judging by her rage when he’d showed up at the restaurant unannounced on Friday night, he’d poked that bear enough.
But he couldn’t take the easy route anymore. He didn’t want to. He’d earned her anger and he had to face her before either of them could move on. At the very least, he had to apologize to her for hurting her. In person. He had to explain how his mind had worked at the time, if she cared to listen.
He had to ask for forgiveness without expecting she’d give it.
Then he could figure out how to deal with the rejection when she flat-out refused.
Why would she forgive him? She could move on without it. She hadn’t, but she could.
So why hadn’t she?
Despite their traumatic childhoods, Tyler and Hope’s romance had been sweet, like in a TV sitcom with a laugh track and a dog or toddler who’d steal scenes. When they were together, they could forget how their parents had abandoned them, how he’d lived on the streets for months and how she’d changed foster homes so often that sometimes the families who had taken her in didn’t even know her name. All of it changed for both of them when they’d ended up at the Kapono home. They’d started off as foster siblings, then became friends, and amid the swell of puberty and hormones, boyfriend and girlfriend.
By the time she’d moved into the dorm at college, he’d started working sixty hour weeks at the restaurant. They’d barely scratched the surface of a physical relationship.
He’d longed for her. She wanted to be with him, too. But life and obligations always seemed to get in the way of them truly exploring what it meant to be intimate, close or committed. He’d thought an inexpensive ring and a sincere proposal would change the course of their relationship. And yeah, a part of him had prayed that a ring and a promise would be enough to hold onto her while she moved up in the world and he was trapped in a sweltering kitchen learning how to properly prepare taro root or butcher a pig for the pit.
He’d never experienced such intense happiness as he had the night she’d said yes to becoming his wife–that was, until Greek investor, Paolo Paredes, had sampled his food at the restaurant and then offered him a chance to travel and cook for him.
Hope had encouraged him to go. She had practically threatened to break up with him if he didn’t. She was still in school. He could take this amazing opportunity to travel and learn and in a year or two, he’d come back and they’d get married. She’d graduate to running the business end of Sunsets and Tyler would run the kitchen.
But after only a year with Paolo, he’d realized that running the kitchen at Sunsets would not be enough for him. Not when there was so much more of the world to see–so much more to explore and learn and experience.
And to get more, he’d have to leave all his past dreams behind.
He’d honestly believed the rewards would be worth the price, but now he knew that he’d give back everything he’d gained if he could find a place to call home again.
He’d returned to LA a few times due to his job with Paolo, but he’d never had the guts to face the people he’d left behind. Running into Mel had been the catalyst for facing his truths, but now that he was here, he wasn’t sure he could leave again. Not unless he knew that the next time he returned, he’d be welcome. Maybe that was too much to ask, but he had to at least try.
Once he’d come to terms with that, he decided to go see the Kaponos. He’d kept in touch with Ben by text and the occasional phone call, but Lu had been harder to connect with since she hated using the phone. But that was no excuse. Not any more. He owed his found family an apology, as well as an explanation about why he’d stayed away so long and why he’d finally come home.
Fact was, he missed them. He’d traveled the globe, but in no corner of the world had he felt as loved as he had in the Kaponos’ kitchen. Without them, he never would have known how to peel an onion much less how to transform it into a meal. He would never have known what it felt like to trust that the adults in charge weren’t going to pass out on the floor or forget to feed you.
He also would never have known what it felt like to fall in love.
Monday morning, he got up early, hit the market to purchase fresh passionfruit, sugar, butter and eggs, then returned to Paolo’s borrowed apartment to whip up a batch of lilikoi bars before heading out to Santa Monica, north of Ventura, where the Kaponos still lived. As expected, Ben welcomed him with open arms. Lu was standoffish at first, but after three lilikoi bars, Hawaiian-grown coffee and three hour’s worth of deep conversation, she returned to her warm and welcoming self. He answered every question they had about his life as a chef, his travels around the world and his immediate plans while in LA.
He answered honestly about the first two topics, but on the third, he had no answers to give. He purposefully kept Hope out of the conversation, which was hard to do since she was the reason he’d stayed behind after Paolo took off for France. He forced himself not to look at the photos of her that hung on the walls, some he’d seen a hundred times when he’d lived there, a few that were new and showed her smiling and enjoying events in her life he knew nothing about.
He bit back every question he had about her. He could not put the family in the middle. Mel had already made it clear that she was done with him. She was the self-appointed captain of Team Hope and he trusted that while Lu and Ben would try to stay neutral, they’d be torn. When he finally said the words, “I’m sorry,” they wrapped him in their arms and forbade him from ever staying away so long again.
Just like that.
No recriminations. No criticism.
Just love.
He didn’t deserve it, but he’d take it all the same.
After promising to cook dinner for them later in the week, he left, though instead of heading back to Paolo’s LA condo, he decided to wander the old neighborhood and try to remember all the reasons why he loved the places he’d left behind.
When he’d first arrived in Los Angeles, he’d been alone, broke and scared. He’d had no family to run to–no friends to have his back except for the punks like him that he’d met on the streets. Truth was, he’d been just as displaced in Arizona, the geeky son of alcoholic parents who never showed up to parent-teacher conferences or signed him up for Little League, but who thought shoving a Ziploc of stale pizza in his backpack for lunch made them parents of the year.
When he’d landed in the Kapono home, he’d been wary. But their spirit, their dedication to the practice of hānai, won him over before he could resist. In their home kitchen and then the restaurant, he’d found his calling. He’d bussed tables and washed dishes for a year before Lu had given him a knife or taught him how to chop vegetables and filet a fish, but every sweaty, back-breaking moment had been magical, simply because they trusted him to do it.
As he strolled through the residential area west of downtown and blocks from the famous Santa Monica pier, he grinned, recalling how different this ordinary oasis was from the streets of west Hollywood, where he’d first tumbled out of a hitchhiker-friendly van.
He hadn’t lasted long on those streets. A month? Maybe two? After getting pinched for shoplifting, he’d been placed in a group home where he’d further honed his criminal skills. That had led to a second juvie arrest, a short-term stint and then placement with a foster family whose name he couldn’t recall and who had had too many kids to pay him any attention. Just after his sixteenth birthday, he’d been moved to the Kaponos and after that, the trajectory of his life had forever changed. With them, he’d learned a trade. He’d learned about family. He’d learned about love.
