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our minds. An ideal in yours, and in mine, the possibility of something beautiful that I instinctively doubted.”
    Then it was my turn to feel guilty.
    “Although it would still be beautiful even if it was just a metal statue with sand stuck onto it,” I said.
    “Ah! The key word… just a metal statue. Just .” He pulled out the newspaper clipping. “‘Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.’”
    “Question eight?”
    “Question eight.”
    “All right, I’ll start. Three things.” I looked him up and down as though I would find those three things written somewhere on his person. “First thing. We appear to be wearing the same clothes, or at least the same material.”
    “Okay. That was a little unfair, but I’ll let it pass.” He smiled. “I guess one of us was bound to use it.”
    “Second thing. We both like to live a little dangerously, since we both sneaked out at night.”
    “You’re taking all the easy answers. No wonder you volunteered to go first.”
    “Third thing. We both enjoy mochi green-tea ice cream. Your turn.”
    We were walking by the information desk, and the woman in the business suit looked up at us and smiled. I had to restrain myself from asking about the sand sculptures, but Arash didn’t give her a second look. He was deep in thought.
    “Neither of us like to be yelled at,” he said finally.
    “I thought you said you preferred it to the whole disappointment thing.”
    “I prefer it, but I don’t enjoy it. Hey, allow me some slack. You took the easy answers, and it’s not exactly like we know each other well.”
    “Okay. Second thing.”
    “Second thing. I sense a fighting spirit in you that I think we share. I think you stand up for yourself, or at least that’s my impression. Third thing,” he went on without waiting for me to agree or disagree. I happened to agree, though. “Well, we’re both extraordinarily good-looking, but that one’s too easy.” He laughed, and I thought nothing of it except that it was a joke. But I did think he was gorgeous. The more I was around him, the hotter he became, so different from the guy I first saw in the cookie store. So different from the stranger flagging me down on the street.
    Or was he?
    Or was it me?
    “I meant that as a joke, Dorothy.” He looked over at me shyly. “I know I’m not extraordinarily good-looking, but you are…lovely.”
    I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound either conceited or pathetic. I blushed wildly and flung my hair over my right shoulder, instantly cooling my left ear and the back of my neck.
    I wasn’t lovely. Not in the way I thought of as lovely. There were girls in my school who looked amazing.
    I wasn’t one of those girls.
    “Ha-ha,” I said lamely, and fortunately he let it go without further comment.
    “Third thing,” he went on, kindly allowing me to regain the natural color of my face. “We both have a taste for adventure. Again, I’m not sure about this, but it’s what I sense in you.”
    “But isn’t that what I said? Living dangerously?”
    “Living dangerously isn’t the same as having a taste for adventure.”
    “It’s not?”
    “Not at all.”
    “How is it different?”
    “In so many ways I couldn’t even list them all in the limited time we have together.”
    “You’re in luck, because I’ll accept your answer. Look, here’s the pool. It’s my favorite pool in Waikiki.”
    “Yes, I know this pool,” Arash said. “From the other side. My friends and I walked that passageway along the beach yesterday. We walked right by here.”
    “I know, me too. I always walk past here during the day, on the beach side. Then I look up at all these people floating around in the pool with their drinks in their hands, and they look like they’re having such a great time and I’m jealous I’m not in this pool.”
    “You’re here now,” Arash said.
    “Yeah, but it’s closed.”
    “Maybe they’re not having as great a time as