Page 34 of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
9
Ivy
December 21
Kauai, Hawaii
Ivy is satisfyingly weary after an afternoon spent exploring and sketching. The day before, she discovered Ines’s Secret Beach to be a true hideaway, empty of tourists when Ivy got there, sheltered by immense, palm-tree-lined sea cliffs and featuring a beach of shell pink sand softer than any mattress Ivy has ever slept on. She sat on a pillowy dune and sketched for hours before eating her picnic lunch, then making her way farther along the coast to Lumaha‘i.
There, she snapped a photo and sent it to Holly—The beach from “South Pacific”! Picture Mitzi Gaynor washing that man right outta her hair!—but decided against going swimming. The waves were high, and she had readonline and been warned by Oliver that this beach recorded the highest number of drownings per year because people underestimated the pull of the tide and the power of the ocean.
Instead, she spent the rest of the afternoon at Lumaha‘i in the shade of a row of fragrant hibiscus, sketching contentedly before eventually taking a short nap on a beach blanket she had tucked into her backpack. She awoke feeling decadent, rested, sun-warm—happy. She’d shaded a drawing of the beach she had been working on before her nap, waited for the soft pastel to dry enough for her to slide it into her portfolio folder and then into her backpack, and prepared for the hike back to Hanalei, making sure to leave herself enough time so that she wouldn’t be walking in the dark.
As the scenery gets familiar, she cuts up from the beach path. Soon, she finds herself walking through the streets of the town as dusk begins to fall. There’s a buzz in the air, and many people about. She sees a sign for a juice bar up ahead and gets in line so she can buy a drink to quench her thirst after the long hike. Then she’ll find a good spot to get dinner, she decides.
She’s nearly at the front of the line when she hears an unwelcomely familiar voice behind her.Shit.
“Think they have any rum to put in this juice, Abby Bo-Babby?”
Matt.A delighted giggle—at leastsomeonelikes him. Ivy doesn’t catch Abby’s reply through the sudden angry rushing in her ears. They’re right behind her. She has the urge to duck out of her spot in line and hide somewhere—but it’s Matt who should be hiding and ashamed, not her! So she asks for a “santol-ade”—a drink made with the juice of ripe mangosteens—and pulls her Expos baseball cap lower over her face as she waits, the nauseating reminder of Matt’s betrayal of her best friend washing over Ivy like a pailful of dirty water. She considers for a moment what it would feel like to confront Matt, to call him out in front of Abby, the way he deserves.
But doing that would add yet another huge event she would have to keep from Holly.How was your day?Holly might ask her, and Ivy would have to leave out the fact that she dumped a santol-ade on Matt’s head in a tiny Hawaiian town.
“Ugh!” Ivy takes her drink and walks away, all happiness from her exhilarating, productive day gone. She skulks around the back of the juice stand and kicks at a boulder, and of course badly stubs her toe on it. “Ow.Shithead!”
“Now, what did that rock ever do to you?”
Ivy turns to see Oliver, lanky and handsome in the khaki shorts and fitted black golf shirt of his bartending uniform.
“I saw you getting juice, but when I came over to say hi, you’d snuck around back here.”
“Matt is here,” Ivy mutters.
“I saw him. I figured that was why you took off. I see you decided to kick a rock.” Even his one-dimpled smile does nothing to cheer her.
“A big part of me wanted to just kick him in the shins and run away.”
Oliver laughs, then stops himself. “I’m sorry. This isnotfunny.”
“It’snot,” Ivy says. “I’m lying to my best friend. I’m theworst. I’ve never felt so horrible, so dirty in my life.”
“Hey, Ivy?”
She looks up at him. “Yeah?”
“Sounds like what you need is a friend,” he says, all mirth gone from his eyes. “So, it’s good you ran into me. I think I know something that might cheer you up.”
“Nothing can cheer me up,” she says darkly.
“Tonight’s the Hanalei Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony. And I know, I know, you’re lukewarm on Christmas. But this is more than that. It’s really special. I promise you.”
“You were right about the beaches you recommended,” Ivy says. “They were great. But a parade?”
“It’s not a parade,” he specifies. “It’s a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony.”
“Sorry, sorry, tree-lighting ceremony.”
“It starts at the pier, where everyone watches as they bring the town Christmas tree in on a barge—huge shipments comeby steamer every year and get dispersed around the island since, obviously, Christmas trees don’t grow here. Then Santa and Mrs. Claus roll in on their outrigger canoe—”
