My Beloved: A Thin Love Novella(6)
“Kona when are you and Keira getting married?”
“Keira, will you stop writing music to be a housewife?”
The questions were endless and only got louder, ruder, more intrusive the further they walked through the airport. Kona tried appeasing them, moving Keira next to Ransom to sign a few autographs and answer the barrage of questions, but more fans approached and Kona broke away, eager to get back to his family. He knew Keira hated this, didn’t want Ransom around the drama that followed Kona and he made a mental note to make it up to them both just as soon as he got them out of the airport.
Plate lunch, he thought, his stomach growling at just the thought. Keira told Kona she’d taken Ransom to Hawaii when he was fourteen, but the trip had been short and their activities preplanned by a hotel tour guide. They had never seen the real Hawaii, had never visualized it as anything other than tourists. A plate lunch with scoops of rice and macaroni salad from Zippy’s would ease them into island life nicely.
“Shouldn’t there be some sort of security here?” Kona didn’t like how scared Keira’s voice sounded or how panicked her eyes became as she looked up at him.
“It’s okay, Wildcat, someone will come. Just hold on to me.”
They made it past the terminal and into the airport proper before Kona spotted a group of security personnel jogging toward them with radios in their hands. But Kona didn’t relax at their approach and he had to hold himself back, to keep himself from punching the * who asked, “Kona is it true you’re only marrying Keira because you got her knocked up again?”
“You motherfuc…” Ransom surged forward.
“Easy, brah,” Kona told him, pulling the boy back by his collar when he charged toward the photographer. “Not worth it,” he whispered into his son’s ear.
“That’s enough, back up, yeah.” The guy with the blue coat, gripping a radio in his massive hand, made Kona pause. He looked familiar, could have been one of the dozens of relatives Kona had never had the chance to meet. He certainly had the build to be a Hale. “Sorry about that, Kona,” the guy said, directing his security team to block the photographers from the baggage claim area.
“It’s cool, man.” Another quick glance at the guy’s face had Kona squinting. “I know you, brah?”
“Ano. Malia’s third cousin.” He stuck out his hand and smiled at Kona, then grinned at Keira. “She said it would be lolo when you got here.”
“Always is, brah. Sorry.” Kona’s phone chirped, alerted him to five text messages and he thumbed through them, ignoring all the ones that weren’t about the wedding. His agent could wait. Devon would be on the island in two days anyway and Kona needed a break from him. Ransom moved toward the baggage claim, arms folded and a frown pinching his eyes. Kona tensed, his own disappointed expression wrinkling his face when Keira pulled away from him to help their son. “Baby, we can get someone to do that.”
“It’s fine,” she said, giving Kona a smile that didn’t make her eyes shine like every other one she’d ever given him. That smile wasn’t real, it wasn’t Keira.
“Your pretty haole not liking this?” Ano asked him, pointing one of his team toward a photographer who’d climbed on top of a row of chairs to steal a picture.
“She’s just not used to it.”
Kona felt bad that this trip was getting off on the wrong foot and he hoped once they made it to Malia’s and both she and Ransom could relax with his family, that Keira’d feel better. At least, that’s what he told himself, trying like hell to disregard how Keira held her arms across her chest, how tight the muscles around her mouth had gotten in the brief steps from the plane to baggage claim.
She’ll be okay, he told himself, believing the small lie for what it was: a fool’s hope.
Hawaii was another world from the one Keira knew. There were pressures—the mad dash from the airport to the resort, trying to outrun the local media and excited fans and then the quick getaway that Kona managed toward his aunt’s home. And maybe Keira would have been worked up, would have let Kona know just how annoyed the attack of photographers and fans at the airport had made her. But as they drove through Kaneohe, on the Kamehameha Highway, Keira felt the breeze, smelled the scent of ocean water from the limo’s open window, and she let that persistent worry leave her. They were in paradise. They were in a paradise that made Kona smile a bit wider, a bit easier. He was home and he loved it.
But he hadn’t been wrong about his family. Kona’s family, our family, she corrected herself, were a lot to take in all at once. There had been aunties, dozens of them, whose names she’d never remember. Some of the women were neighbors, but, Kona explained, were still “aunties.” There had been cousins, it seemed Hale blood ran deep in the island and every last relative even remotely related to Kona had squeezed into Malia’s back yard to welcome him home.
All afternoon at Malia’s, a smile stayed constant on Keira’s face. She’d loved seeing Kona so treasured, so welcomed. Dark and light, thin and large, gentle, eager hands and arms wrapping Kona in their embraces; kisses on Keira’s cheeks that she didn’t think, even hours after they’d returned to the resort, that she’d ever be able to wipe dry from her cheeks. Kona’s family was nothing like what Keira had imagined. They were nothing like his bitter, racist mother.