Chapter 73: Ohana

Sunday, December 29, 1985

We were up much earlier today. Jas and Paige were, too. Upon a recommendation from the concierge, we changed plans and headed to the Halekulani for brunch at Orchids. This was one of the rare times, thus far, when I saw the wait and simply passed the hostess a folded fifty-dollar bill. That was a significant tip in 1985, but it got us seated in minutes instead of hours. With every minute in Hawaii valuable, I didn’t want to sit around waiting for an hour or two for no good reason.

Jas saw it, but I’m not sure if Angie or Paige did. Jas’s look was approving, which made me happy. We really weren’t rich yet, but we had the money, and this was a good use of it.

The meal itself was incredible. We would visit here again, I was sure of it. Everything was perfectly prepared, the flavors jumped off the plate, and they had a knack of making things feel light, not as if you were overindulging and would feel awful later.

Our next destination was Diamond Head, where we spent several hours hiking around, taking pictures, and just enjoying the scenery. Paige repeatedly wished for an eruption and a big, tough lavaboard, but that wasn’t happening. Thankfully!

We had plenty of time to get back to the hotel, change, and hit the beach for a couple of hours.

By the time we were done with that, it was dinnertime. We revisited the hotel’s restaurant, each of us picking a different dish, and had a great time with it all.

As best as I could tell, Jas and Paige had stopped jumping at shadows looking for a proposal. They might well think tomorrow was the plan, since we would be back to sleeping with our sweethearts, but they weren’t fretting about us not splitting off into couples and doing ‘couple things’ or anything of the sort.

Maybe they thought we would string them along and propose on the slopes. That wasn’t impossible, and in some other universe ... maybe.

But, if the Rose Parade hadn’t been the plan, most likely the Blue Bayou Cafe at Disneyland would have been it. Family, friends, and a great atmosphere.

Albeit with the occasional scream in the background.

We kept to our room-swapping plan, so I joined Paige in her room tonight while Angie and Jas retired to ours. I would be spending the same number of nights in each room, so it hardly even felt like I had a room here. The others were much more attached, though.

Paige hugged and kissed me as soon as we were alone.

“You know I still love this, right?” she said.

“I do, and you know I still love it, too. And you.”

She sighed and said, “I love you, too.”

We got undressed, talking as we did. It amused me that she was just as nervous as Angie was. Not that Angie wouldn’t ask, nor that she would somehow turn Angie down, but rather the inchoate fear that something would somehow go wrong. It was normal, and I shared my nerves with her as well.

We both agreed: this was a preview for the weddings, which we simultaneously believed would be wonderful and would be nerve-wracking right up to the moment we left for the honeymoons.

That led to an interesting conversation.

Paige said, “So ... what are you thinking about for a honeymoon?”

“We really haven’t discussed it. Someplace we haven’t been, probably. With beaches, because I won’t survive the honeymoon without them.”

She giggled and said, “If you’re going to die on your honeymoon, it’ll be from being fucked to death. Beaches will help only because they’ll keep you out of bed!”

“As I said.”

She giggled more and gave me a quick kiss.

“Ang and I haven’t discussed it, either. But that’s because I had thoughts and wanted to discuss them with you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Nah,” she said, grinning. “Naked. After making love.”

“I ... have no problem with this plan.”

We kissed several times while getting ready for bed. Oh, we would both need a quick trip to the bathroom later, certainly, but it sounded like we were going to bed, just with some lovemaking and talking along the way.

Not an unusual night, really.

Tonight was lovemaking, too. Nothing frantic, nothing aggressive, just a lot of kissing and warm, slow, indulgent moving with each other. It wasn’t necessarily new, but it certainly reflected part of how our relationship had grown. Fucking would always be part of the game with Paige (and with Jas, and perhaps one day with Angie), but lovemaking would be, too.

Once we’d finished, and done just a bit of cleanup, we got all snuggly.

Paige kissed me, then said, “I loved that. And it’s got me all ... honeymoon-y.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “I loved it, too.”

“So...” she said. “The location doesn’t matter. I mean ... duh! Of course, the location matters! But not for what I’m thinking about.”

“I ... think I get it?”

“This trip is clearly going to mostly be us. Meaning, all of us. Which ... seriously, I wasn’t expecting it, but it’s just better. Jas and I talked about it, and we have a surprise for ... um. For something we are all pretty sure is coming.”

I nodded, grinning a bit.

“You’ll like it! Both of you. Anyway ... we do. It flows out of the whole thing, I think. I hope! Unless we’re guessing wrong, but even then, it still works. And this is all beside the point.”

“Not sure it’s totally beside the point. It’s good to know to be looking for something.”

“Well ... yeah. So. Anyway. I think honeymoons really should be partly the couples, separately. But only part of it. Half and half? Doesn’t need to be some mathematical thing, even if my sweetheart is a fucking prodigy! I swear, if you told freshman Paige she was going to marry a math prodigy, she might have kicked you in the teeth!”

“In freshman Paige’s defense, most of us would have had a somewhat different impression of ‘math prodigy’ at that age.”

She giggled.

“Yeah. Astoundingly hot blonde with killer boobs, an amazing ass, eyes to die for, and a heart and soul that outdoes any of that is not my usual picture of ‘math prodigy,’” she said, grinning. “But ... anyway. Sidetracking! Which I do! I think we should do more-or-less a half and half thing. And ... maybe in the middle. Seriously, I ... have no damn idea what the parents think. Jas’s probably know how this works. Yours? Your Mom is nowhere near as clueless as I once thought. At least 50 / 50 she knows you and I are more connected than the usual brother-in-law / sister-in-law pair. Reasonable chance she’s figured out more girls pair up than just Ang and me. She knows you and Angie aren’t, but she also knows you love each other, and that means romantically, not brother-sister. And mine? Mine know I used to fuck anything that moved, they know Jas and I were an item, and they know I lusted after you at one point. I doubt we have them fooled, though I also doubt they know anything.”

“Interesting, and ... well. Not worrisome, because if Mom knows, she’s clearly fine. And it really would solve a huge problem for me.”

“It doesn’t change things with Ang,” she said.

“Not that. It’s the open relationship thing. Sooner or later, Mom will find out. Well ... really high chance. I’ll be in the public eye. If nothing else, so will Jess. We all know that, sooner or later, there’s going to be a headline in some tabloid, ‘Playboy Millionaire and Studio Bombshell in Clandestine Tryst’ with the subhead ‘Poor Wife Crushed, Storms out of Mansion.’”

She giggled loudly, then said, “The only way Jas gets crushed in that scenario is if you lie down on her too heavily after you and Jess double-team her.”

“Could happen,” I said, grinning.

“You’re right, though. It’ll happen. We aren’t hiding. Heck, maybe Claire, or Darla, or ... Amy, Sheila, Sue, Jaya, Lexi, Dani, Mikayla ... you know, on and on ... one of them sees dollar signs in a tell-all book about the millionaire playboy and his conquests or something.”

“I doubt...” I started.

“You do, but ... okay. Most of those names, never. There are names. Mikayla, I think, maybe. Not that you slept with her, unless I missed a memo, but Carole. Some others.”

“Could happen, I guess.”

“I really think it’s unlikely, but dollar signs fuck people up. Which ... I mean, I watch myself. Like ... am I seeing dollar signs? And I’m not. I was hooked, totally, before Ang told me there was money. Jas was, even more. Oh, I’m sure as hell not saying no, but I want the whole thing. ‘Til death and beyond. Still ... that’s a book, too. Either us as gold-diggers or you two as sugar-daddy and sugar-momma. Or whatever. Who knows?” she said.

“And, again, distracted.”

“Good distractions! Anyway ... yeah. Honeymoon. Maybe it’s where you guys go to point A, we go to point B. Then we meet at point C and hang out there. Probably the parents only get a couple of pictures from there. Then points D and E respectively, after which we go home. Plausible deniability, even with them knowing about point C.”

“I can see that working,” I said. “It makes a lot of sense.”

“The idea of not seeing you and Jas on ... well, see, this is what settles it, because I was going to say on our honeymoon, and ‘our’ means us. Not two, four. The weddings are just two by two, and the ... other couples ... don’t need ceremonies, not even little private ones, but I think they’re implicitly there, too.”

“So do I. And ... maybe little private ones.”

“We’ll all four talk. Somehow, I bet that’s what happens. Not because anyone pushes it but because it does make sense,” she said. “I started out this trip eager to get some time alone with Ang because that’s how you propose. I’m glad you two figured it out, because now it feels silly.”

“Maybe we were planning on splitting up tomorrow. Or at Disney. Or...” I said.

“Nah. If you were, you’d have done it, I think.”

“For the record: we weren’t.”

“Knew it! Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“And ... thank you, again. For ... everything. For your part in making Ang Ang, right down to the nickname. And for being patient with me, and an amazing friend, and sharing Jas with me, and...”

“I don’t share Jas. She makes her own choices,” I said.

“She would drop that if you needed it.”

“But I don’t, and it would make her ... less her.”

“It would make all of us less us,” she said.

“It would.”

“That’s the whole thing, anyway. Honeymoons. I feel like we’ll just all agree, and we have a ton of time, but...”

“But it matters,” I said.

“It does. So ... sleep? Or more lovemaking?”

“Sleep, I think.”

“I do,” she said. “I am totally getting old and boring!”

“Paige,” I said, “I think we’ll be ninety-something, sitting around the retirement home — or whatever passes for that for rich folk — and you’ll be anything but boring.”

She sniffled a bit, hugged me, and said, “Thanks! I ... love the image.”

“Me, too.”

“Even if I’m ugly!”

“I don’t think you’ll ever be ugly to us,” I said.

“Honestly? Me, neither. Just our grandkids. They will think we’re old, wrinkled prunes.”

“If they only knew what us old fuddy-duddies got up to when we were young.”

She grinned.

“Oh, that I’m telling them. I’m going to be the really cool Grandma. The one who tells the best stories!”

“It’ll be a blast.”

“It will!”

We kissed a few more times, then snuggled up.

Monday, December 30, 1985

We didn’t have a morning encore, but only because Paige reminded herself that we had nearly a week in a ski lodge and would undoubtedly get more time there. She wasn’t wrong!

Instead, we were up and off to breakfast fairly early.

After that, the day went as planned: beach, beach, and more beach. We swam, splashed each other, floated on floats the hotel provided, lounged for hours, and sipped fancy drinks with umbrellas.

And drank lots of water. No one wanted a hangover, and we were all well aware that a hot day and umbrella drinks would be a bad idea without copious hydration.

We took a break in the early afternoon to call our families in Houston. The parents stuck to the script, thankfully. Camille and Francis were ‘out, until very late’ on New Year’s Eve. No destination mentioned, but it seemed clear that Jas imagined what they wanted her to imagine.

Tony and Jean were also going out, which wasn’t a real surprise. The big surprise came from Mom and Dad, who said one of Dad’s customer friends was holding a New Year’s Eve party and they would treat it as a date night. I thought they might actually be telling the truth. I couldn’t imagine they would stay until midnight, but they were clearly having more ‘date nights’ than I thought first-life Mom and Dad ever had.

Each of them begged off from New Year’s Day morning calls, too. ‘Sleeping in’ for Camille and Francis, brunches with friends for the others. The nominal plan was for us to call them late in the day. By then, everyone would know where they actually were, though.

I was nearly certain Jas and Paige were both convinced. Maybe not — they were outstanding actors, after all — but it felt plausible and should hold up.

Once we were finally done for the day, we rinsed off, then stopped at the concierge desk to figure out dinner plans. After a number of high-end restaurant suggestions, all of which we nixed, we figured out that what we really wanted was a place that felt more like a family restaurant. Something we maybe couldn’t easily get at home, maybe, and perhaps ‘worthy’ of tourists, but not a glossy, fancy place.

The answer turned out to appeal to all of us: Wo Fat’s. Or, more formally, Wo Fat Chop Sui. Yes, with that spelling, which I had never seen used elsewhere. No one used the words ‘Chop Sui’, anyway, so it hardly mattered.

It was iconic enough that the creator of Hawaii Five-O named his chief villain Wo Fat. There were, apparently, endless stories of famous people eating there, but it was also a neighborhood place that appealed to residents of Hawaii of all ethnicities. Tourists, too!

We could certainly get authentic Chinese food elsewhere, but this sounded too good to pass up and something we would definitely enjoy. We weren’t planning to have Chinese food anywhere else on this trip, either, so that perhaps made the decision easier.