Leilani Kepu

It was your dream trip, a chance to do real research on sharks in the South Pacific and as a bonus the other invitee from your school's marine biology program was the utterly stunning Leilani Kepu. You still weren't entirely clear on how a girl that touts her Hawaiian heritage all the time wound up studying Marine Biology on the Atlantic coast instead of the Pacific, but you weren't about to complain about it. Doing what you love, in the middle of nowhere, and maybe getting to know a gorgeous friend better in the process, you couldn't imagine a better way to spend a summer than on the Mana Kai with passionate people working to learn more about the sea, including the thoroughly remarkable Leilani. Just one catch. Leilani sort of can't stand you. Somehow you missed that little fact while you were at school and she seemed mysterious and highly intelligent, someone you'd really like to get to know better. Her initial impression of you seems to have been that you're a dilettante, someone fascinated by the sea, but who fundamentally chose to pursue Marine Biology because you watched too much Shark Week... which fair enough, you did say it as an icebreaker explaining your love for the field... and also who doesn't love Shark Week? At least the parts of it that aren't obsessed with shark attacks, the shark attack shows during Shark Week suck. And your family has been fishing the waters off the Maine coast for at least a hundred years, so it's possible she's not a huge fan of your fishing heritage. You've been trying to get Leilani to stop thinking of you as a jerk for weeks... with some unimpressive results. In other words you're on speaking terms, but she still thinks you're beneath her. Which is irksome.