Documentary (43 page)

Kai’s phone buzzed and Dylan passed it to him. After reading the screen in silence, he said, “Car’s here. We should go.” After she got off him, Kai continued, “We were friends when the band first started. He became close with my friends and got to know all of them. He was my brother.
Jeremy and I started that clinic together. His family became the one I didn’t have anymore. They essentially became like my guardians while we were minors, but not legally, obviously. I was emancipated, but it was nice to have someone looking out for me sometimes. I could always go to the Bunyans without calling first. They had a bedroom in their house for me. We all went on vacations together. I had what I wanted all along. They gave me that normalcy I craved, which was and continues to be so important when you’re living in the spotlight.

“I loved that band our first year, even with Jeremy singing lead all the time. So many good memories. But after the first album, something was changing inside
of him…or maybe it was always there, and I just wanted someone to love me so badly that I didn’t see it. In hindsight, he had this bravado and a belief in his unwarranted entitlement to things, and I imagine he felt the same way about people. He became so power hungry. He made it clear he was lead singer and Evernight was
his
creation, and I guess that’s what the label wanted, too. If you look at old posters and our CD covers, he’s always in the front. He talked the most during every interview, and he would even sit the closest to the interviewer. He was the star. You listen to nearly every song, and it’s
always only
him singing lead. And what’s really disturbing is that he sang songs that came from a place inside of me that scared me, but my feelings were genuine, and all the while he was filled with these hateful thoughts.

“Eventually, even my memory of the night at that mansion party seemed like it got warped. I even started to question whether I was right about what I saw, and I starting thinking maybe I was drunker than I knew. I’ve read things about eyewitness testimony and how people’s memories are easily influenced by external factors
, like time, intoxication, lighting, talking with other people, stuff like that. I actually started to doubt myself. Completely. Maybe he
was
facing the door. Maybe the girl was really drunk, but maybe she
did
say hi to me, and wave. Maybe I had overreacted about the hospital thing.

“But I know better now. He’s a monster. I know what I saw, and it’s so much clear
er in hindsight, even if it didn’t rise to the level of a crime. I didn’t invite him on that Thailand trip, and he hadn’t been there with us in a while, but he stayed friends with my friends even after Evernight was over. One of my other friends invited him. Probably Abe. Jeremy reached out a few times when I lived in Bali. He flew out for a few days and surfed, and he got drinks with me, Abe and Wes. Were we working on a friendship? Doubt it. Me just being civil? More likely, especially because he had become good friends with Abe and Wes by then…and he was already friends with Erica, too. Only Ribs and Lek knew about that mansion party incident. You never know how people are going to take you telling them something like that. You never know if they’ll believe you, or if they’ll judge you for saying something or tell you that you’re overreacting.

“But, anyway, word got out that Jeremy and I were spending time together because someone saw us standing next to each other at a surfing contest that Abe was in, in Bali.
Some gossip site picked it up from pictures taken at the contest. When I got my record deal, we ended up in a lot of the same places and at a lot of the same events. Music industry was eating it up…all of a sudden we were ‘reconciling,’ according to the media. There was talk of an Evernight
reunion. None of it was true, but it increased blog traffic for the people who write about that stuff.” Kai shrugged. “After the alley fight, I actually called his manager and told him that he needed to constantly be on the look out—not for Jeremy, but for any woman he came into contact with.”

Dylan picked up her tote and walked with him toward the hotel room door as Kai slung his arm around her shoulders. “I just know that I’ll never, ever forgive myself for being the reason he’s in my friends’ lives now. Never.”

              Dylan found an empty house in Lahaina and a note from Jamie saying that she had gone to the Big Island a day early. Kai readily admitted that he had encouraged it, but Dylan couldn’t say that she was really upset. With both her roommates gone, she was happy to have the place to herself. She and Kai didn’t talk much more about Erica, but Kai spoke to her briefly over the phone. And Dylan had been thinking about her. She didn’t know much about extradition laws, but it was probably an arduous exercise trying to get someone prosecuted for a crime committed in another country when the person was already outside of it. Kai tried to keep his mood light for Dylan, but she could tell that he was upset that he couldn’t do much for his friend.

They spent Christmas
morning at his house with a group of his friends and she Skyped with her family for a while. She felt a lot of guilt for not being home, but she discovered that they had gotten last minute travel deals to Acapulco, Mexico, and had skipped out on celebrating at home, anyway. Dylan still had work to do, and she wanted the next few days to actually be vacation, so she wrapped up her editing and writing in the wee hours of the morning. There were also lots of emails from potential summer employers in the film industry. Professor Jordan had forwarded a list of people she sent Dylan’s
résumé
to, and they were all responding about jobs, internships and fellowships. A few details about Kai’s confrontation with Jeremy had made the blog rounds accompanied by pictures, but no one had actually captured him trying to attack Jeremy thankfully. To cheer him up after both Nina and his lawyer reamed him out, she shared the incredible news of her potential jobs and the mostly positive reviews of Lava’s
Set the World Ablaze
film. His albums sales were increasing steadily too.

By Christmas afternoon, they had moved over to Jamie’s house.
Kai insisted on a ban on her use of her laptop and cellphone for work-related things, and over the few days they fell into a routine of talking in bed, him trying to teach her how to play guitar (her failing miserably at it), laughing hysterically with each other, cuddling on the couch as they watched movies, and ordering food before ending up in a secluded part of the beach very late at night because the paparazzi had been lurking around.

Dylan wrung out her wet hair as she stared up at the silver globe moon from the dark water below. It was essentially the only light source on the beach, and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. From beneath her, Kai hoisted her up in the air so that she was sitting on his shoulders. Her shriek echoed against the quiet night as she
nearly lost her balance.

“I got you,” Kai said, laughing, when he put his hands on her thighs. “How’s the view?”

“Amazing. I still can’t believe you live here and you can do this pretty much whenever you want.” She held her arms out to the side like she might fly away. “How’s
your
view?” she said seductively, running her fingers through his wet hair. Kai kissed the side of her knee before lowering her back down into the water. When he pushed up through the surface, she wrapped her arms and legs around him. “Now, I want to hear the rest of the story. You and Abel. Mexico. Go.”

             
“Okay, so Abel and I are on the way to Mexico because Wes is in trouble, apparently. I had turned twenty-one already, and we had planned this huge party, and now we had to postpone it. We hadn’t been out of Bali for too long, so I’m thinking to myself,
what the hell has Wes done already
?” Kai hooked his thumbs under the side edges of her bikini bottom when she kissed him on the neck.

             
“Jesus, Dyl, you sure you want to hear the story? ‘Cause you’re making it hard to keep telling it.” Kai tugged on one of the strings of her bikini bottom until it unraveled completely.

             
“Kai!” Dylan screamed in a fit of laughter as she pushed away from him. “What happened in Mexico!” She re-tied it and Kai pretended that he would pull the other.

             
“So, anyway, he’s panicking on the drive, and I’m trying to talk to him about how we can get a good lawyer and everything will be all right, even if I have to clear out my entire savings to get him back home. Turns out, it’s a lie. They’ve thrown this huge party weekend for me in Tijuana, and Wes was there setting it up. All our friends are there and everything. I end up having a great night, but I wake up the next morning and my passport, wallet and cellphone are gone.

“
Wes tells me that they have burned my passport, and hidden the other stuff, and the only way they’re taking me to the Embassy to get a new one, is if I do this stupid list of things they’ve put together. So I spent three days doing stuff like bungee jumping, stripping, lucha libre, and scorpion fighting. Oh, and my passport was fine. Never destroyed.”

Dylan raised her eyebrows
and added a mischievous smile. “Stripping, huh?”

Kai winked.
“Great memories that trip though, that entire summer. I love those guys.”

             
“Are you going to call them?” Dylan waded out to him, and he supported her lower back when she folded her legs around him. Kai spun her slowly. She unlocked her legs and hugged him against her, laying her head on his wet chest.

             
He shrugged. “Yeah…I should. I owe them some sort of an explanation. I’ve had to weigh Erica’s privacy against making sure my friends knew Jeremy was a bad guy. You know the minute you say ‘rapist,’ people automatically want to know who and when and how. It’s natural ‘cause the word triggers a reaction out of everybody. They want to know how you know that. When you’re in our line of work, you really have to be careful what you say and who you say it to. If he comes after me with a huge defamation lawsuit for ruining his reputation, especially without someone making a claim of rape, or the press gets wind of a story, then Erica would be forced to choose between filing a report against him
just
to clear my name, without really deciding if it’s something she really wants to pursue, or not saying anything at all and watching me get sued, or sitting and watching the press dig into this story, fearful one day they might figure out it’s her, even though papers generally don’t print the name of rape survivors.

“
So I told everyone he wasn’t a great person to be around without getting into specifics ‘cause the story didn’t belong to me, you know? We have other mutual friends outside of my regular group of friends, so I really tried to tell everyone to stay away. The guys don’t really hang out with him, except for the twins. It’s been hard for me to break it to them because I’m sorta afraid that if I tell them with even a few more details, they won’t believe me, and I’ll lose two friends I really like but, babe…” Kai lifted her chin so that their eyes met. “...I’ve been holding it in how angry I am that they took you to
Coasters
. I think Abe sometimes buys into Jeremy’s manipulation and nice guy act. Wes goes along because he loves his brother, and in Abe’s defense, Jeremy’s pretty good at it.”

“They d
on’t really know, Kai,” she said in an attempt to soothe him. She knew he felt guilty. “Maybe it’s worth just talking to them, and if they don’t believe you, there’s nothing you can really do.”

“If something had happened to you…I wish I had told you…it’s just not something you can really bring up to people all the time
. And with Jeremy, you can find a few people who know he’s an asshole, but there’s triple the amount of people who can vouch for him being a really good guy, so it ends up drowning out all the bad stuff. Anyway, I’ll make sure to talk to the Elliotts about my outburst though.” He smiled finally, looking ready to switch gears. “Are you having fun? I mean with the tour and being here the past few days?”

Dylan hooked her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Are you kidding? I can’t begin to describe how incredible this whole experience has been.” She held his face and her stomach got jittery. “You.”
Him. The guy you’ve fallen for so hard that it’s going to break your heart when you realize you can’t have this anymore.

Kai kissed her before she had a chance to lean in. Then he kissed her chest, and his tongue flicked over the exposed part of her breast and Dylan giggled.

“You ready to go in?” she purred.

“Yup.
” They raced each other to the shore and walked up the hill to Jamie’s house holding hands. She didn’t want the night to end, and she sighed in sadness. Tomorrow was the last day before they were back on the road. There were shows in San Diego and L.A. before everyone headed to Vegas for her birthday and New Year’s. Wintervention Redux would be her last event before she had to go back to real life and responsibilities.

             
“What do you think about Dan Middleton’s company? Sounds cool, right? I think I’m going to apply.”

             
“Oh, yeah? For the summer, right?” he asked. “Filming your own doc, possibly. I bet you’ll be amazing. You have been.” His smile was small before he pressed his lips to the back of her hand. He looked miserable, so she kissed his back, too.