When I puttered up to the house in the Iroc, Leon was sitting on the front porch, on the phone, smoking, and drinking a Corona. Probly talking to that slutty Swedish tourist he met last week, I thought bitterly. I parked the old wreck and jumped out.

"Le," I called. "How you livin'?" Leon stopped talking, smiled at me, and raised his Corona. I grabbed my book bag from the backseat and slammed the rusty door shut. As I approached the porch, I heard music. Some ska-punk Jamaican shit that was floating through the house. Leon and I had been renting the house since we got to Oahu. It was a great house, two seconds away from the ocean. The house had screens for windows and wild Hawaiian jungle plant-life decorated the front and back yards.

"Listen, lemme call your hotel room back later, Olga. Letty's here.yeah, we're probly gonna go eat. Okay.sure thing, babe. Later." I heard Leon hang up the phone and the sound of his chair scraping back as he got up from the little table he was sitting at. He put out his cigarette and turned to face me. He looked down at the busted-up knuckles of my right hand. He sighed and began to walk through the front door, me at his heels.

"What happened, Lett?" he said, not turning around.

"Why you always gotta be fucking those skanks, Le?" I asked him, totally ignoring his question. I let the screen door slam shut. Leon whirled around to face me.

"Olga ain't no skank, Lett. She's Swedish."

"Okay, so she's a Swedish skank."

"Lett, don't do this now. Listen, we're gonna go have somethin' to eat, then get wasted on the beach later, okay?" I threw my book bag on the tattered sofa and looked up at him. His plan did seem pretty good, and I needed to forget about the pain in my hand for a while.

"Where we eatin'?" A slow smile crept across my face. Soon, Leon caught it and smiled back.

"That's my girl."

An hour later, Leon and I were seated across from each other at the Big Kahuna Café on Main Street, watching the orange sun fade behind the horizon. I had thrown a vintage t-shirt and short shorts over my bikini and Leon had a black wife beater on with wildly patterned board shorts. We looked like a coupla freakin' surfers, for Christ's sake. I had to laugh - Leon out of a car and on a surfboard. Pretty fuckin' funny.

"So you gonna tell me what the hell happened to your hand?" Leon asked me, munching on a pineapple wedge. I took a sip of peach iced tea and glanced around at the waiters and waitresses, bustling about the restaurant. Someone had come to take our empty plates away from us after we had paid the bill.

"I hit some guy."

"Big surprise."

"Ha! It was a joke. The asshole deserved it."

"Must've, for you to have split his shit like that. Broke his nose, huh?" Leon finished off his pineapple wedge and sipped his strawberry daiquiri.

"No, his jaw. I told him good luck finding a dentist that can Bondo your teeth back in." Leon laughed.

"So, what brought it on?" pressed Leon.

"He was playin' kinda rough with a chick. I couldn't let it continue so I told him to back off. When he didn't, I gave him a knuckle sandwich. Simple as that." I snagged a piece of pineapple and shoved it into my mouth.

"Hmmm, impressive."

"But the chick ran off! After I was done beating his jaw to mush, I wanted to say something to her, but she was gone, man! I saw her when I was leaving. She got into the sweetest Mustang Cobra I've ever seen. Supercharged," I said. "I wonder if I'll ever see her again."

"Maybe. The North Shore's a small little place, Lett." Leon finished off his daiquiri.

"Maybe. Hey, how much money are we sitting on, anyway?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Enough to live here forever." Leon smirked. I grew quiet.

"I don't wanna live here forever, Le. I wanna go home to Dom." I stared into the splintery wooden picnic table.

"We can't, Letty. It's too risky. Stupid Spilner or O'Connor, of whatever the fuck his name is probly turned 'em all in. He probly tried to turn US in, but we're here in Hawaii. We told everyone we went to Mexico." Leon lit a cigarette and took a long drag. He offered me one, and I accepted. I didn't smoke very often, just when I was feeling sorry for myself. Which was 24/7. "It probly won't be long 'til they find us here."

"I think we should call them, or Mia at least. We haven't had any contact in a year and a half, Le. We owe it to them to let them know we're all right." Leon stared into space, letting his cigarette burn into a stick of gray ash. A few minutes later, he spoke.

"Okay, as soon as we get home, call Mia. But then, we're getting drunk!" Leon said.

"Sure thing, pal. Knee-walking drunk!"

"So drunk that you'll need a shovel to scrape me off the ground tomorrow morning!"

"So wasted that two-foot waves will seem like tsunamis or somethin'!" I began to crack up. Leon joined me and we got up from the picnic table. As we headed to my junk Camaro, Leon put his arm around me in a best friends way. He was, of course, my best friend. The only thing I had left in the world. Or, so I thought.