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Rey rested her head back against her surfboard, eyes closed as she bobbed along in the water. She opened her eyes to drink in the azure sky above her and the turquoise waters surrounding her.
She checked her Fitbit and saw she has 30 minutes until their next batch of students come over from Second Chances. She and Luke had been working with the mental health facility to augment their rehabilitation therapy. Sometimes she felt like she needed to pinch herself that she got to combine her love for psychology and surfing into the perfect career and reside on the North Shore of Hawaii.
It all started a few years ago when she met Luke in the graduate psychology program at the University of Hawaii. In addition to the traditional courses, he taught an introductory surf therapy elective. Rey was hooked. She loved to surf and saw a natural marriage of her favorite activity with her academic field of study. It was solidified when she learned that it was particularly used for addiction therapy and to treat soldiers with PTSD.
She herself was an orphan after her parents handed her over to authorities years ago before succumbing to their ICE addiction. She felt like this was a new way she could help the many Hawaiians struggling with their own addiction demons. It also didn’t hurt that three of her best friends from undergrad were serving as officers in the US Navy now. She also thought this is a way she could honor Poe, Finn, and Rose for the sacrifices they were making for their country.
It was a bonus that she got to do all of this living on the Skywalker estate, a vast 200-acre spread just outside of Waialua. 20 acres of the land ran along the oceanfront on one end, with the other acreage trailing across the flatlands and up into the lush green mountains dotted with waterfalls on the back end. Her modest cottage Luke included as part of her pay was just a bit up from the shore. She fell asleep every night to the lullaby of the waves.
Mostly, she loved the peaceful solitude of her life. Every once in a while, the loneliness crept up and threatened to wreck the serenity she mostly felt. She had built a family of friends to substitute the gaping hole her parents had left in her life. Usually, that was enough. Finn, Rose, Poe...and Luke, they were her family.
But sometimes...sometimes her soul just craved more.
When that happened, she prayed. She wasn’t a super religious person, but it was difficult to argue the absence of a creator when you lived in paradise. And maybe...just maybe...if He was up there, He would see fit to give her what she had lost out on for most of her life. She craved belonging...someone to do life with that was hers. So she waited, she prayed, and she worked.
And most days...most days that was enough. More than enough, and she was grateful for her life, which was much more than many had. She had learned long ago to count her blessings and focus on what was good. Luke teased her Pollyanna spirit, but it is what helped her survive. It let her life beyond what her heritage dictated she should have been.
She really couldn’t believe her life. It was almost too good to be true.
And...it was. She had no idea what was brewing that threatened to tear apart the life she had built. Like a tropical storm, strong winds were coming.
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Kylo ducked his head to head into his tent. He had an hour break before his last heat. His competitions as a surf pro took him all over the world, but the Billabong Pipe Masters was just down the coast from where he spent many of his growing up years. He wasn’t sure if it was the proximity to home, the time to think, or both that led his mind back to his growing dilemma. He had been putting off thinking about it, but he was running out of time.
He couldn’t believe that his grandmother, Padme, or Meme everyone had called her, descendent of Liliʻuokalani, the first queen of Hawaii, shackled him with this burden. It was odd that she had skipped over his mother and Luke with the ancestral land bequeathment, but even more strange that she included the stipulation that he must marry before his 30th birthday to claim his inheritance. Until that time, Luke was designated as the trustee of the land. If Kylo was not married by then, the land would be donated to the state as a park.
Kylo knew he couldn’t let the land that had been in his family for generations be handed over to a government agency, but he was running out of options. He didn’t date. He had not dated since...well, he just didn’t. He felt like his focus on his surfing without relationship entanglements was part of his success as a professional surfer. Good for surfing, but it meant any romantic possibilities were non-existent.
Sure, there were surf groupies that were always lingering about, but he wasn’t interested. He was sure they were nice girls...maybe...but he wasn’t tempted by their superficial artifices of bikinis and tans. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about what would tempt him. So he kept plugging along, honing his craft and racking up competition titles...alone.
He sighed as he ran his fingers through his jet black hair that hung in wet waves to his shoulders. He had his Hawaiian ancestors to thank for his hair, but his Haole ancestors to blame for his pale complexion. He didn’t mind though--his alabaster skin made him stand out in a sea of caramel-skinned bodies, and initially, it made his competitors underestimate him, assuming he was green to the sport. Also, it got him a sunscreen sponsorship from an island company. They kept him with an endless supply of the sunscreen he desperately needed while he promoted how well their product protects from the sun.
He stopped his ruminations and forced his mind to focus back on the competition at hand. He was undefeated this season, and he wanted to keep it that way. His edge was his incredible mental focus, and he wasn’t about to let that slide now. After this, he had three weeks off before heading home for Christmas. He would postpone thinking about his quandary until then.
For now...now the waves called him. He tuned out everything but the sound of the sea, willing it to communicate it’s secret patterns to him. He meditated on the rhythm of the waves, their pace crashing on the shore, and where they were breaking after providing the perfect pipeline swell. This is where he belonged.
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After the awards ceremony where Kylo collected his first-place winnings, he returned to his tent to collect his things. When he walked inside, he was stunned to find his uncle. Luke and he had a falling out years ago. He had trained him, but they parted company over a disagreement in Kylo’s training. He sought out a new coach, and Luke refocused on his therapy career. That was six years ago. The only time he had seen him since was at his grandmother’s funeral a few years prior.
“What are you doing here, Luke?”
“Ben, we need to talk.”
“I don’t go by that name anymore...you know that.”
“Fine--Kylo--we need to talk.”
He really didn’t want to have a conversation with his uncle here in his tent where anyone could overhear.
He nodded, knowing the talk needed to come. “I have three weeks off now. I was planning to stick around the North Shore, but if it is OK with you, I can come to stay in the cottage and we can have all the conversations you want.”
“You can’t stay at the cottage.”
“OK. Look, I know things between us weren’t left well. I can just stay at the Turtle Bay Resort like I was planning if you would rather….”
“No...I mean, Rey lives there now. You can stay in the main house. I am in the east wing, so the apartment in the west wing is available to you.”
“Who is Ray, and why does he live in the cottage?”
Luke sighed, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck, under the long sandy-grey locks, not wanting to start this conversation here. “That is part of what I want to talk to you about.”
Luke was the trustee, so he had the legal ability to make a decision about the property. And, since they had no communication in so long, it made sense that Kylo didn’t know about it. He couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that this Ray-guy was going to make his dilemma more complicated. How he had the added weight of a tenant added to his shoulders.
“Why don’t you just come over when you are done here. I have some food from Kono’s I can heat up for dinner. Then, we can talk.”
Kylo nodded his head in affirmation and turned to strip off his wetsuit.
“By the way...you looked great out there. Congrats.” Luke’s eyes watered in spite of himself, and he ducked out of the tent before Kylo could respond.
The words made Kylo’s hands pause. The last thing he expected to come from his uncle’s mouth was praise. Things with them had ended poorly. He quickened his motions, anxious to get to the bottom of what Luke wanted to chat about.