Sarah sits staring out the little round window at a wing silhouetted against a blazing, golden horizon. They're flinging west, racing the sun, when time fast backwards and the day suspends a few hours.

She stares and wonders what it'll feel like the next time she does the exact same thing as she's doing now, the next time she sits on the plane and the only difference would be flying northwest into Minnesota.

"You guys going on a honeymoon?" asks the grandpa in the Hawaiian shirt sitting next to them, in an overly fervent manner.

"No. Business," she says curtly, across from Connor, who nods in concurrence.

And there she remembers when he invited her to take this trip with him the morning they woke up in her apartment.

"So, I'm headed to Hawaii in a few days," that was the first thing he said to her that morning, as he came out of her bathroom still red-eyed, taking her offer of milk and an opened box of cereal from the counter. She shot her eyes up at him, startled. "There's something that Downey asked me to do for him," he fills the bowl with milk and then stops to look at her. "Maybe you wanna join me?"

It took her just a little moment to figure out what he was referring to, and still couldn't bring herself to find the right words. Thankfully her mouth was full, even though she almost choked on her food.

Silence fell between them as he takes seat beside her, not that it was in any way awkward. He was well aware that she needed time to process what he had just asked her.

They finished their breakfast in silence, and it was almost like that evening by the food truck.

They did their dishes side by side, just like when they did surgery they could go by with hardly anything to say to each other, leaving whatever entanglements in their lives completely outside the bubble, and it was strangely reassuring. And no, she wouldn't consider it escaping or avoiding their problems. It was just how they got by.

"Yes," she said to him as abruptly as he'd brought it up to her, as he was dutifully stowing away her bowl and she turned off the tap. "I'd like that."

And so it was it. He just nodded, apparently relieved. It wouldn't have been their coincided day off hadn't he taken some personal days, but anyway they went out wandering the streets of Chicago and wound up in Lincoln Park. They took a long walk down the harbor, chatting about work and nothing in particular, and she told him about this private vacation retort in Hawaii that she knows of, and the big check her mother had sent her, and they settled on fixing themselves a little place for just two nights before she leaves for Rochester. That evening she went about making the reservation and he booked their flight, and of course she had to postpone hers.

That's how they ended up together on a plane to the world-renowned vacation island and inevitably mistaken for a couple, at which they both had a good laugh secretly inside. Seriously though, she still can't quite figure out what they are. The best she can do is that they're good friends who choose not to fall in love, or not just yet. Turns out she can live with that just fine, the ambiguity of their relationship. By now she thinks she must have been pretty used to all the uncertainty in her life already.

It is a long flight, but interestingly enough she's never been one to find it tiring. Some time in the middle they get up and go to the bathroom together, just so they don't have to excuse themselves to grandpa more than once, and then she watches him sleep, a little habit that seems to have grown into an obsession.

It is quite a drive in rental car down to the beach. They take turns just so they can both catch a good glimpse of the view speeding by, in a dream-like sense. By the time they make it to that little cabin awaiting amidst the trees and sand with its little wooden deck stretching out into the sea, it has simply become impossible to believe that all that they're seeing is real.

It really is a small cabin with one open-plan bedroom and living room and no kitchen and to their panic no chips or expired yogurt or any of the quick bites they usually grab at and after work. Other than that, it virtually is her dream house. She embraces the airy, minimalist quality to its furnishing, redwood flooring and walls painted white. Everything is refined and delicate, with a fragile sense of impermanence that at one point or another it gets washed up here only to be redeemed by the unremitting tide, a reminder that nothing lasts forever.

They take quick showers, him after her, just to wash the plane off of themselves. They order an overly fancy dinner and take it to the Honolulu sunset out on the porch, a golden purple watercolor pouring out of a vast sky that seems to stretch on forever. How is it possible that one can feel so small and enormous at the same time? She wonders. Everything other than themselves is a silhouette, the sky-scraping coconut trees, the neighboring islands floating on the skyline, the kissing couple standing on the deck not far from theirs.

Sarah goes to grab a book and sits on the far end of the deck with her feet dangling off the edge, and reads, while Connor, without her realizing, stands leaning against the door frame watching as her silhouette starts to blend into the night, and he comes up and sits close to her, not physically touching but just close enough so they can hear each other over the sounds of the birds and the waves.

"Well, this is different," he remarks, turning to look at her. "Thanks for finding this place."

"Yeah, sure," they exchange a heartbeat of a look.

"It's like—it feels really secluded out here and...it makes me sometimes get the feeling that we could just—"

"Disappear? Maybe freeze time and stay here forever?" He laughs as she jestingly finishes his sentence, before she turns all serious all of a sudden, "you know how they say, you have to live in the moment? I used to be a reverent believer, but when you think about it, at times, where's hope in that?"

"Well, I don't know what I believe," he confesses after thinking. "Not anymore."

"Hold that thought," she straightens up, demanding. "You'll find out for yourself. Take my word for it. And when we come back in a few years you'll prove me right."

"Last time I checked, I was the older one of us two."

"Doesn't make you wiser," she teases. "To tell you the truth? There was a time when I was little, I thought I wanted to become a philosopher."

And it's one of those surprising fact you find about someone and can't take for a lie in retrospect.

"I'm sure you'll make a great one."

"Well then I'm flattered."

There he doesn't think he can ever forget that nifty grin that's stolen its way onto her lips and eyes.

After a little while she gets up and goes inside, deciding to continue her reading in bed. She's nearly finished the book by the time he comes back in ready to sleep on the couch.

"You don't have to do that," she tells him, offering the empty side of the bed. "I don't mind if you don't mind."

He thinks about it for a moment and decides that he doesn't mind, and crawls in beneath the covers next to but not touching her. She curls up with her back to him, and quickly falls asleep, only to wake up out of nowhere in the middle of the night. Somehow in their sleep they've turned face-to-face posing out the shape of a heart, with Connor hugging close a heap of the comforter that fall in the space between them. For a long time she lies awake counting his breaths, and gets thrown back to that first night in his apartment, and the second, to the third time in the on-call room, then to the other night when he'd fallen asleep in her arms. The desire is there, always has been, that is undeniable, and so is that those were the times when she dreamed and craved and itched for the physical, for a savage kind of pleasure that she knew would betray something otherwise sacred.

The next morning they take a long walk down to another beach where it's Dr. Downey's favorite spot on the island. It being early enough is just them, and the sand, air, trees, and water, and it feels like they were the last two people on earth and that all they have is time.

"So you've never been here before?" At one point she asks him.

"Well, I always wanted to come as a kid but," he looks to her and they lock eyes for a beat. "Dad never could find the time."

"Me too. I mean I don't remember ever going to the beach with my family when I was little and—then it was just my mother and I..." Now that she's thinking about it, the words just seems to slip out of her mouth, "what about your mom?"

He looks startled at first, his head whipped to her. Then he looks away, focusing on the sand beneath their feet, "one day, that's what she always said. And then—well, I guess that day never came."

She wants to argue that it isn't true because he's here now, but then realizes what he really meant, that he never wanted to be here alone anyway.

"Wow. Do you see right there?" She says in a light voice, pointing out to the ocean. "Where those two waves collide and become one? It's like...how far have you traveled? Years? Thousands of years? Lifetimes? For this one moment, right here, right now, to find each other, and then to crash, and go back out to sea in search of one another again."

Somewhere in all of this, her eyes have found his and they're standing incredibly close. There's this moment when they both see what's about to happen in the next, or think they do.

"And here we are," he says in a low voice, holding her gaze, but then and there she pulls away, turns her back on him and resumes walking on.

"No," he calls after her. "I was saying that we're here. This is the spot."

She freezes, turning back to take it all in, the myriad of coconut trees so dense that almost all of the beach behind them are in the shade, and the sky's reflection in the water, the bluest blue ever.

For a little while she can't find him anywhere. Then with a second look she spots him standing in the water not far off shore, melted into the blue in his blue T-shirt and swim shorts. She lingers in the back watching as he scatters the remains of his beloved mentor into the ocean, and when he's finished she comes up beside him and takes his hand. At the touch he looks down and sees her doing it, but does not pull away, only he holds tighter onto the metal urn in his other arm, and together they muse for a long time at the gray ashes drifting away with the waves.

It's in that afternoon, as he nods off in the drowsy island heat, sprawled in the hammock dangling on the porch, that Connor dreams of his mother for the first time as a presence in twenty-two years, and not an absence. Of all the times he dreamed of her when he was a child, he never could find her, and then he dreamed no more over the years that he didn't think he'd find her ever again, until now. He turns to look and there she is, standing in the bedroom of the bungalow looking out the window, an embodied presence, an otherworldly existence and psychic reality, as if the blue-painted window frame was the magical opening to whatever place she lives in. Somehow he knows he isn't allowed to go inside, that to look at her directly would violate the laws of both worlds. And that's okay because all that matters is the moment when their eyes touch through the glass—her beautiful dark blue eyes with that sparkle of intelligence and affection—and she is saying to him, in that airy, hypnotic voice of hers, "One day, honey bear. What did I tell you?"

And then somehow as he realizes, she has made her way around to him, and reached out to touch him in the shoulder. Or rather, it isn't her but that doesn't matter. He lets her fragrance wrap around him. She smells freshly of sea air and sand, her hair tangled in clammy, salty locks.

"Hey there, sleeping beauty," her voice gently tugs him back into the waking reality. She has one hand on his shoulder and is fisting something in the other. He opens his palm for her to drop it in. "It's for you."

He holds it up to the light, a seashell, one of a cowrie's, glossy milk-white spotted with tortoise specks, and no more than two inches in length, yet it feels solid and durable to the touch.

"Thanks Sarah," he smiles up at her, enclosing it in his hand. "It's beautiful."

He knows then that it's her promise to him, just like the spinning top was his promise to her, one that they will always hold onto, be it fulfilled or not.

They sit side by side on the deck as the the sun goes down and the stars come up. At one point inadvertently she looks him in the eye, and sees the reflection of those stars twinkling in his eyes that are dark blue in the low light. She can imagine that he's seeing it in her eyes too, and there they find themselves on a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being and time ceases to exist.

He pulls her close and she feels his lips on hers, a soft, gentle touch. She breathes and takes in the sweetness of his skin, and returns the kiss with the same amount of remain in their entanglement for a long while, their lips connected, their thighs rubbed together and their arms entwined around each other. It isn't until she tastes the saltwater in her mouth does she realize she's crying, and when they pull apart he holds onto her, his eyes searching hers that are shying away. He cups her face with his hands and when she looks up at him her eyes are wide with tears that cannot be put into words. They wrap themselves into an embrace and there she finds herself whispering in his ear something she could've said a long time ago but never did, something they both knew well enough without her ever needing to say it out loud, and that is, of course, "I love you too."