They spent the evening sitting on the sand, just where the surf couldn't reach it, until the hue of the sky shifted from purple and orange to the blue shades of dusk. Then Hawk stood up to stretch, offering to go grab them a couple of drinks from one of the local stands. Miguel raised no objection.

After Eli walked away, he simply rested his chin on his folded arms where they relaxed on his folded knees, staring out ahead at the ocean, at the flat rock in the distance he hadn't been able to swim to earlier, concentrating on blocking out the other beachgoers so only the sound of the crashing waves reached his ears.

It should have lulled him into a calm, but there was too much going on his head for tranquility to even be on the table. Miguel thought again about his evolving relationships, which had become as tempestuous and unpredictable as the sea itself lately.

How long would Sam wait for him? How long could he expect her to wait? How was he acting any different than when Robby refused to answer the emails she'd sent him when he'd been serving his sentence in juvie? Wasn't that the reason Sam had rekindled things between them in the first place, because Robby had ghosted her?

You think I broke your heart? You broke mine, too!

Hadn't he been breaking Sam's heart these past couple of weeks? Were there any pieces left to reassemble at this point? Or had he shattered it completely?

"Earth to Miguel! You thirsty or not?"

Miguel blinked, lifting his head up to see Hawk offering him a bottle of soda. "Oh, thanks," he said, accepting the glass bottle of Coke. Taking a deep drink from the pop, he joked, "What, no Coronas?"

"Not after all that tequila last night," chuckled Hawk, giving him a pat on the back as he sat down beside him, flashing him a big grin. "Figured I'd cut our livers some slack."

In an attempt to return the smile, Miguel could only recall again what had happened between them the previous night, after all that drinking. And with the fresh worries of Sam swimming around in his head, he was confronted with the reality he now found himself in: his girlfriend was two-thousand miles away and his best friend was "joking" about getting gay married to him if he was down leaving their whole lives behind them.

Taking another big swig from the Coke before digging the bottom of his bottle in the sand, Miguel laid down on his back, deflating with a deep sigh.

Turning over, Hawk lied down on his stomach beside him. "Uh oh, I know that look," he remarked, reaching out to brush some sand off Miguel's shoulder with a forefinger.

"What look?" asked Miguel, eyeing where Eli's finger was tracing up and down his shoulder softly.

Hawk's brows rose up his forehead. "You're thinking about something from home again, right?"

Wasn't he always? "Someone, yeah," conceded Miguel, swallowing hard before turning his eyes up at the darkening sky. The stars were visible now, and the moon had come out from behind the violet clouds. "I miss Sam."

The finger picking at the sand on his shoulder stopped. From the corner of his vision, Miguel watched Hawk withdraw it, folding his arms in front of him instead and resting his chin on top of them. "Makes sense," Eli said, his voice carrying an air of nonchalance that sounded forced. "Still haven't unblocked her number?"

Miguel's cheeks burned at the question. He wanted to bury himself in the sand. "No. Be honest, how much do you think she hates me right now?"

"On a scale of 'vagueing about you on Twitter' to 'wishing you were dead'?" Eli flashed him a small smile to show he was joking. "She's probably more worried than mad. But what do I know? Despite everything Sensei Lawrence taught us, I don't exactly have great insight into girls' minds."

Miguel let out a dry laugh. A far cry from the Hawk who'd told him he was planning to get a full cycle of girlfriends at the start of the school year.

But his modest merriment died quickly, trying to put himself into Sam's head and imagining how she must have reacted to what he'd done. If she had run off with nothing more than a goodbye kiss, wouldn't he have been upset, even if she'd also had a good reason?

And Miguel knew he didn't have a good reason anymore. Even if Sam could wrap her head around why he'd leave her in the dark about wanting to find his father, he no longer had that excuse. Now she would wonder why he couldn't find himself back home, why he couldn't do it with her help.

She would demand to know why it was that Miguel expected her to remain unchanged, exactly as he had left her at the All-Valley Tournament, while he spent weeks trying to get his life together.

How hypocritical was he to wish for things to stay the same between them when he'd upheaved everything by coming down to Mexico without telling Sam and then blocking her like everyone else? How much of a hypocrite was he to both be irritated at Hawk for hinting that he had more than platonic feelings for him while also wishing that Hawk would go back to tracing his finger up and down his shoulder under the guise of picking off sand?

If things between him and Sam were ruined when he returned home, Miguel knew that would be all on him.

"I should've left her a note before I took off," mumbled Miguel, remembering the last time he saw Sam, seeing the look on her face that evening in the hallway at the All-Valley Tournament. His cheek warmed when he recalled the way she'd cupped it so tenderly as she kissed him. It had his heart aching. "Or at least I should've waited and watched her final fight. Then I could've seen both your matches."

If he had been there for moral support, would that have helped Sam in her match against Tory?

Miguel released out another frustrated sigh, bringing up a hand to rub against his brow. He forced himself to remember that none of them were to blame for the loss against Cobra Kai. It wasn't his or Sam's or Hawk's faults. It was Sensei Lawrence's and Mr. LaRusso's faults. They would've won if they'd remained Miyagi-Fang. If he'd been there, he wouldn't have made any difference in the outcome of the fight.

But that didn't mean he'd handled everything perfectly by choosing to take off right before the finals, did it?

"Don't sweat it, man," Hawk assured him. "We can go back to the mall tomorrow and you can find her a souvenir or something to bring back as a gift."

Miguel scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Pfft. Yeah, I'm sure that'll make up for all this," he said, words dripping with sarcasm, thinking about the way that would play out if he showed up to Sam's door with a novelty t-shirt and a sorry. "Is that how you plan on making it up to your girlfriend, picking Moon up a few seashells and calling it good? Have you texted her lately? Or are you being a shitty boyfriend and ignoring her, just like me?"

The questions came out so snappish, so harsh, so accusatory. So obvious to Miguel that what he really wanted to ask Hawk was, Isn't what we have enough? Couldn't they stay bros and concentrate on their girlfriends?

He watched surprise stretch over Eli's face before his brows knitted together in chagrin, his blue eyes flitting down to the sand in front of him. "Well, you're not wrong."

"Hey, dude, I'm sorry," Miguel apologized, sitting up and shaking his head; some sand shook loose from his hair, falling on his shoulders. "I didn't mean that."

Hawk shrugged, not turning his eyes back on him yet, picking instead at his fingers; Miguel once again thought about those fingers cleaning sand off his shoulders. But Hawk muttered back, "It's cool. I mean, you're right. That's why I told Moon I wouldn't blame her if she doesn't want to wait for me. It's not fair to her."

"At least you told Moon you were coming down here," Miguel pointed out, swallowing thickly. "Sam probably found out from my mom. So I get the shittiest boyfriend prize."

"Oh, so now it's a competition?" chuckled Hawk, turning over to lean on his elbow, glancing up at Miguel with an arched eyebrow.

Taking in a deep breath, Miguel exhaled slowly, wishing it would do something to unknot the tight muscles in his shoulders that had been straining under the weight of his guilt. "I'm ruining things with her for no reason," he confessed. It was self-pity at this point. He knew it. That didn't make fixing the problem any easier. "I'm just too much of a coward to unblock her number and talk to her."

Eli's face pinched, and he sat up beside him. "A coward? You? C'mon, Miguel."

"Well, how else would you describe it?" challenged Miguel, mouth pressing down in a firm line, daring him to suggest otherwise.

Hawk paused for a moment. Then he reached between them to brush some sand out of Miguel's hair. "You're just going through some shit," he said, combing his fingers through the locks.

Thinking he might choke on his breath at Hawk's forward gesture, Miguel pushed his hand away, tucking his own hair behind his ear in discomfort. "And that makes it okay?" he retorted. How was any of this okay?

Withdrawing his hand, Hawk's eyes fell again. "I dunno," he mumbled, shifting back a little. "I guess not."

Keeping his own eyes on Eli, Miguel wondered whether or not his friend would care if things between him and Sam fell apart. Just how serious had he been in his drunken stupor when he said he'd be willing to lay roots with him down here, even if their girlfriends wouldn't follow them?

"Would you really be okay if Moon didn't wait for you?"

A guilty expression hardened the edges of Hawk's features, and for a few seconds, he didn't answer, making Miguel suspect Hawk knew that he knew things between them were threatening to change.

Finally, Hawk said, "I know I gave you a lot of shit about simping for Sam after she dumped you, but after Moon dumped me, I finally got it. I was such an asshole, I ruined everything with her, just like I did with you and Demetri. And I'm so glad she was willing to give me another chance, too, even if I didn't deserve it. She was so nice to me at the Tournament, she helped me get my confidence back. I probably wouldn't have won without her. And then I told her I had to go find you and I…and now I'm ruining things with her again because I also got too much shit going on. So, y'know what, you probably shouldn't even be asking me for advice."

Miguel watched Hawk's face darken from the blood rushing to it, overcome with embarrassment. And he imagined Sam and Moon back home, probably wondering how their boyfriends could be enjoying themselves on vacation while they were worried sick about them.

And what would Sam think if she knew he didn't completely hate the intimacy he'd come to share with Hawk on their trip? That Hawk had been on his mind more than she was? Even if she could forgive him the betrayal of running off without telling her anything, would she forgive him for that?

"I wish I'd never left home," mumbled Miguel, a deep sadness sinking in his chest. "I was such an idiot. This whole trip was a mistake."

A shaky sigh escaped Hawk as a heavy silence hovered between them for the next few minutes. Then he stood to his feet, wiping the sand off his legs before kneeling down to grab his Coke bottle. "I'm gonna go for a walk, clear my head a bit," he announced. He turned away from Miguel, leaving him with only the hawk tattoo on his back to stare at as he started strolling down the shoreline, calling out behind him, "See you back at the hostel."