I was waiting for the fireworks on the west (Ewa side) of Waikiki, on the hill behind the Fort DeRussy museum, when I saw her walk by with her family. A thin, brown-haired girl, couldn't be a day over 20, lightly tanned skin so she couldn't have been living here too long, probably a tourist. A thin bikini barely hid her string bean body, but it was her glance at me, brief but intense, that set me off.
She was with family, but I couldn't be certain of relationships; a teenage boy was probably a younger brother or cousin, and another woman but too young to be her mother, too old for a school mate. I don't know what it was about her, or me, but our eyes locked. She kept glancing at me, and I at her. I smiled, and she returned it, trying not to give herself away to her companions.
Well, that might've been it. I was nearly twice her age and couldn't expect that this would amount to anything. I'm moderately athletic, and have been complemented on my well-built thighs, but I'm no muscle man. Some women are attracted to my intellectual look, and I'm easily pegged as a college professor. Not everyone finds that sexy, but I've occasionally found that women who do find it sexy find it *very* sexy. But it was unusual to happen at a glance.
They sat a hundred yards away or so, and I got a look at her skin a little more. Well, that at least would be a pleasant addition to the show, which was still an hour away. It was just starting to get dark and a few more groups were straggling in to find spots on the grass. Then I saw her look at me again. Not a long look, but we saw each other and stared continuously with interest while it lasted. Then she resumed a few words with her companions, but kept stealing looks my way. I got the feeling she was doing this in order to communicate in the only way she could. A simple stare could just be curiosity, or even showing offense at my interest. But the way she kept evidently trying to look at me without her companions noticing suggested something else.
It wasn't more than 10 minutes later that she seemed to give some explanation to them and started heading back across the way she had come. She glanced at me several times, with a knowing look, but no obvious signal. Perhaps it wasn't dark enough yet and she was afraid her companions would see. She walked 20 feet in front of me and kept going.
I might've been misinterpreting this entirely, but curiosity got to me, and I didn't want to be rude, and this could be the chance of a lifetime. So after a minute I got up and headed the same way across to the left end of the hill. I turned the corner and there she was, looking straight at me like I was expected.
"Hi" she said, as if this was both a perfectly natural and very strange meeting.
"Hello there."
We were both smiling madly, but with a serious edge to our thoughts. Something was up and we were under some constraints.
"I'm Careen."
"Steve, good to meet you. I..."
She edged closer to me without touching. I advanced a foot in turn. We stared at each other. She was about six inches shorter than me and lifted her head slightly as we approached. That look again, simultaneously expectant and uncertain, risking and yearning beyond hope.
I had to suggest something. People were walking past us along the sidewalk towards the beach, chairs and towels in hand. "Do you want to talk..." "Yeah, where can we go?" She sounded glad that I suggested something decisive, relieving her of some necessary coyness and encouraging her to interrupt me to get more specific. I grew bolder. "The top of the fort has some good places to sit, we just have to climb over the bushes up there." "OK."
I led the way, and it was dark enough that her companions surely didn't see us walk through the shrubs along the corner at the top of the hill. We stepped over the low wall onto the deck, which housed a helicopter and a huge cannon on display, the latter set into a kind of amphitheatre with a series of concentric steps. It seemed like a decent place to watch the fireworks from itself, yet no one else was up there.
"I told my cousin I was going back to the hotel room."
She didn't say any more, or explain why. She didn't need to.
