Teacher's Pet

Where the fuck would I be if she hadn't come to my suite that day to tell me to come to the luau? Definitely not here.

I was coming up on six months dope free, we were living together, and I had just gotten more and more requests from producers to work with them. She did that. Even if I had managed to stop using on my own, if we hadn't met, if she hadn't refused to give up on me, I would have gone back to LA and probably ended up trying to make it work again with Remus, which would have driven me fucking crazy.

I was happy. I had forgotten what it felt like to wake up and want to go back to sleep because everything sucked. I liked where I was and the people I was around. I loved her. She was the brightest and best thing in my life. She had met my dad, and he had felt the same way. She was perfect.

The ceremony was really nice. It really said something that the two of them were together again after they had broken up. Not every couple was like that. I thought I deserved a little credit helping them patch things up, but I didn't tell them. It was their wedding — I could just do it during the toasts.

The reception was a huge luau-style party. The feast was ridiculous; eating here had ruined me for other food whenever I had to fly back to the mainland. Abby was picking off my plate at our table. Being part of the wedding party, we were all sitting together. There was an open bar, but we didn't need booze tonight.

"How does it feel to be married?" Abby asked Makani.

"Amazing," she said, smiling.

"Hold on to that. Whenever he pisses you off, just remember women live longer than men do. He's going out first," I said.

"Not all of us are cynics like you, Nate," Keno said, laughing.

"When he fucks up, just tell me. I'll sort him out," I told her. She laughed.

"I'll take that as an invitation to make Abby the same promise," she said.

"Am I still on probation?" I asked, laughing.

"You've lasted this long without messing up," Keno said.

"It never ends," Makani said. "We're sort of a package deal." She wasn't kidding. That was sort of what life here was about: that weird closeness you develop when there's so few of you around. It would take getting used to, but I was getting there. Any day of the week, this beat LA, hands down.

The entertainment began, and I went up on stage to perform a song I had written with the wedding band. That was sort of my thing now. I only did things that I cared about for people I cared about. It was a hell of a way to live. I didn't know why I hadn't started earlier.

Epilogue

Abby

Two Years Later

Something I always thought would make me love Lanai even more than I already did was being able to see the sun rise over the water instead of setting. The morning sun had just begun illuminating our bedroom.

I was awake, just sort of slipping in and out of wakefulness, enjoying the feel of the sun on my naked body and the sound of Nate's playing infiltrating the rest of the house from the living room.

The wall facing the water in our bedroom wasn't a wall at all. It was all glass, with a sliding door that opened onto a balcony. He had asked for it just for me, knowing how I felt about mornings. We had gone back and forth about the design of the house for months before agreeing on something that was small enough for me to be comfortable in, and grand enough for Nate to feel like he was giving me a gift by having it built.

I had been a little sad about leaving my beachside hut near the Four Seasons, but this place was nice, too. We had designed it from the ground up, and Nate had called it my present for our one year anniversary when we had moved in. I had wanted something small and cozy for two people to live in that didn't feel cold and empty. He had drawn inspiration from a beachfront villa he and his parents would stay in when they would come to Hawai'i when he was a child.

The compromise had been a scaled down villa on the eastern coast of the island overlooking the beach. It was secluded, but not isolated. We had our privacy, but the city was less than twenty minutes away when we really wanted to go.

I stretched in the sunlight like a lizard basking on a rock. Nate often played in the morning. His inspiration hit at the strangest times, but I loved when the sun was just creeping up the horizon and his playing infiltrated my fading dreams. I could hear his voice, too; he was singing. He composed and wrote more than he sang, so it was always a treat when he did.

It was time to get up. I wasn't even tired anymore; I was just being lazy. I had graduated a while back, and the summer peak season had just come to an end. I was enjoying my days off after a busy season. I climbed out of bed and walked to our split closet. I pulled on a pair of panties and grabbed one of his worn old t-shirts to go downstairs in.

I walked down the stairs, following the music. The closer I got, the clearer I heard the song. I recognized it. It was the one he had written for me his first summer here. He tended to play a lot of the old stuff he had written with Remus, too.

He had distanced himself from the band since he had ventured out on his own solo career, but since he had writing credits on so many of the band's songs, people were constantly finding out about Nate through the band anyway.

If the balcony upstairs was for me, the recording studio basement was for him. I had felt he needed it to make up for the fact that we lived so far from Los Angeles where the people he collaborated with lived. Having a studio at home meant he didn't always have to leave when he needed to record. The times he did have to travel for shows were bad enough, especially when I couldn't join him.

His beautiful grand piano was in the living room. I walked into the room seeing him, but stopped. It was starting to get light outside, but the room was illuminated with soft yellow light from

candles on the mantle and coffee table. A sea of blood red rose petals covered the floor between me and Nate at the piano. The scene was soft and romantic, but we’d already celebrated two years a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know what this was for.