Recklessly (13 page)

“Not really complicated…” she parroted but she was agreeing, too. “So, lots of disease-free sex, catching up on missed seasons of TV series, at some point, we’ll probably just be friends, and I can put you in my emergency contacts…”

“And no purposeful or planned sleepovers…”

She opened her mouth, preparing to speak again, but the ringing of her cell phone cut her off. She stared at her bag with that same look he’d seen crossing her face every time it rang. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it, so he wasn’t going to say anything. She pressed her lips together once the phone stopped ringing. “So, about that pizza…”

*

Sometimes, Wes questioned if he was truly deserving of his life. Like who had sold their soul for a twenty-four-year-old arrogant fuck like him to be able to travel the world with his best friend, doing a job he’d wanted since he was six, and making decent money at it? Or why there was a line of excited people waiting to meet with him at the Lava booth and have him sign their calendars and magazines?

After several grueling days of training with Ian in the pool and along the Southern California coast, he and Abel, and their friends, Ribsy, Leko and Dylan, had driven down to Orange County for the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, the biggest annual surfing event of the year, with over a hundred thousand dollars in overall prize money waiting for the victors of the varying competitions. And from the stands to the pier to the sand, a choked crowd was packed into the contest viewing area, while food and surfing apparel vendors peddled their wares to another frenetic throng nearby.

The U.S. Open was one of the best opportunities for Wes to meet his fans, whom he adored, and his chance to throw his and Abel’s “Lose Your Liver/Kill Your Kidneys” party. They had arrived hours before they were scheduled to be there so they could walk around. He got to see a few old friends that way, but he did it mostly for the fans who didn’t have the patience to stand in lines; they actually got a bigger benefit of chatting with him one-on-one without the worry of other waiting fans.

He and Abel were sitting beneath the Lava Energy Drink tent during their preset timeslot for the meet-and-greet along with a few other Lava surfers, including their friend, Christian. Abel, Christian, Wes and another surfer who wasn’t there were unofficially known as the Reaper Crew, the guys whose opponents were usually dead on arrival, or as Wes liked to say, dead in the literal water. The event coordinators weren’t letting people walk up to the tables yet, so Wes used the idle time to check his missed texts from Lana.

Lana: I re-read Madame Bovary and I still wholeheartedly disagree with you

Wes smiled as he remembered the discussion they had gotten into. He typed,
Keep reading. Her suicide is just as romanticized as Edna’s in The Awakening
.

She responded immediately:
Okay. If I’m convinced I’ll keep my heels on next time ;)

             
Wes: I’ll even show you evidence when I see you. Keep your heels on, anyway

              Lana: Deal. BTW, I cheated and watched a few episodes of Veronica Mars

without you

              Wes: Dude

Lana: LOL. It’s your fault. It’s so damn good

Wes: Not cool. I gotta work. Convo not over though

Lana: Make it up to you with a pic later ;) Bye

Lana, it turned out, was definitely no Kiera.

In the weeks prior to the U.S. Open, she neither strayed outside the boundaries of their casual relationship nor did they ever stumble into that awkward but common friends-with-benefits territory of developing issues with the “other people.” They were both instinctual about not “lingering” or overstaying when the conversation or time spent together reached a lull. And he appreciated that she never used some poor attempt at subtlety to figure out whether things were going to move toward a more permanent state.

But they got to know each other during the mundane moments of flat-out friendship, too: when she made fun of his choices in cereal, when they argued over the Netflix queue watching order and the DVR hierarchy or just sitting on his surfboards out in the water at night talking when the waves were dead. He had gotten so used to hanging out with her that he was actually disappointed that he had to be at the Open this year and she wouldn’t be. He missed her, genuinely and deeply, and he smiled as he put his phone away when the first set of fans approached: two guys about their age.

“Man, you’re my idol. I can’t believe I’m meeting you!” one of them said as he shoved a hat with a Lava logo on it in front of Wes.

“Thanks, dude. Good to meet you,” Wes said when he scribbled his signature across the bill in black Sharpie marker. A trio of swimsuit-clad young women came up next with individual calendars featuring the guys surfing all over the globe, but a few of the months were purely gratuitous shirtless shots of them standing next to surfboards, which opened them up to even more fandom.

“Hi. Can you make it out to Cadence?” one of the women said as she leaned down and rested her elbows on the table in front of Wes, nearly spilling out of her bikini top. “‘Love, Wes’? You’re my favorite surfer ever.
Ever.
You should let me show you how much sometime.” She drew her thumb across his wrist. “Can we get a picture with you?”

“Of course.” Wes rounded the table and ripped off his shirt to the screams of the other waiting women in line. The three women huddled around him, two standing at his sides, one knee slightly bent on each of them, the way women always posed in pictures. With one of the women clutching him around the middle in the front, he hugged either arm around the waists of the other two and felt three different sets of hands land somewhere on his chest before someone snapped a picture.

The surfing industry and deliberate marketing on the part of their manager and sponsors had forced a bad boy-but-heartthrob label on him and Abel, and Wes didn’t think it was necessarily accurate (really good-looking, a parent-scaring amount of tattoos, general lack of fucks to give…okay, maybe it
was
accurate), but he didn’t mind wearing that title if it meant attention from women and a few extra zeros on his paychecks.

“We’re at
The
Seashore
, the little boutique hotel right off Main. Room two-twelve. Come by. Bring Abel,” one of the women whispered before she smashed a kiss on his cheek. “I’ll suck your dick. Them too.”

Damn, he loved his job.

“Goddamn show-off,” Abel whispered to him as he signed another woman’s calendar when Wes sat down and put his shirt back on.

“How else will I keep food on our table, honey?” Wes ticked up the edge of his mouth. “They invited
us
to their room, you know.”

Abel shook his head as a fan walked away, her phone number left in ink in his palm. “So did she. We’re gonna get in so much trouble this week.”

“Yeah, but without pictures, they’ll always just be rumors, dude,” Wes said back. “Dyl, what the hell are you doing?” he asked his friend, tapping her arm. Her camera was trained away from them and on a group of guys nearby.

“Sorry. Lots of cute surfers here,” Dylan admitted, raking her hand through her dark, wavy hair.

“How about you film the only one who counts,” Wes said. He had invited her along to film some scenes of him at the U.S. Open that one of his sponsors wanted for its website. She had recently graduated with a BA in film and was working for the independent film company she’d interned for as a junior in college. His manager had liked her work on his friend and her boyfriend musician Kai White’s documentary web series from two years ago so much that Wes was mulling over doing one of his own. But he also liked the idea of having a record of how awesome his life was right now.

Suddenly, an electrified murmur swam through the crowd, and it parted roughly as someone tore through, slicing the throng right up to the tent. “That’s Brody Swift,” a male voice said, and Wes cringed as anger saturated his blood at the mention of
that
name. “Holy crap!”

That fucker
would
think he was Moses.

“Minus the ‘holy’ plus infinity on the ‘crap,’” Wes muttered.

“Guess he didn’t lose his sponsorship after all,” Abel mused out loud. Brody surfed for Team Lava Surf and he was Reaper, too, but his endorsement had been at risk recently following an exposé article about rampant drug use in the industry that had ensnared him in the allegations. But Wes knew they were more than
just
allegations.

To chants of his name, Brody emerged from the mass—Lanky, dark buzz cut, outfitted in Lava gear and cloaked in tattoos. The minute Brody took the empty seat next to him, Wes’ skin tightened with tension. They had history, and way before their marketed surfing rivalry existed. During his earlier surfing days—they both might have been about seventeen at the time—Brody lived in one of the houses owned by a corporate surf company that were scattered along the beaches on the North Shore of Oahu for a few months. Wes respected him back then; he was competitive, inclined to risk-taking in the water, and just really good at surfing. So, basically,
him.
But he broke sacred rules. He had no respect for the locals or the veterans when it came to waiting his turn for the waves in the lineup. Wes hated the system too, but he deferred to it, because while he knew he could out surf any other guy out there, earning their reverence was worth suppressing his impatience. Also, Wes and Abel had immediately drawn attention for being twins who surfed, but they were talented too, and working on becoming innovators in the water.

One day, he and Brody were in the water—the rivalry had been just friendly back then—and they both had been waiting all day for a turn. Someone offered Wes a chance to paddle in his place, an older guy he had taken on as sort of a mentor. Brody paddled, too, probably irritated that it wasn’t him, put himself in Wes’ path, and Wes wiped out. It was totally normal to fall off a surfboard, and even for someone to purposefully get in your way, albeit dangerous and annoying. What
wasn’t
, was his inability to then swim back up to the surface right away. Wes had been tangled in his surfboard leash and a bit disoriented, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it had also felt like an actual person was pulling him farther down. When Wes had finally broken through the water’s surface, gasping and coughing, Brody’s concern for his welfare was muted and caught up in what looked like a gleeful, vengeful expression as they both bobbed around in the water. Then a physical fight had ensued on shore between them because Brody never outright denied Wes’ accusations.

Word got out over what had happened, rumor and innuendo spread that Brody didn’t play fair, and Wes noticed that Brody started going after every wave he ever attempted. Brody hung with rough guys, and surfers avoided him in the water or they took their chances and met with his crew’s wrath. So instead of ridding himself of his growing notoriety, Brody solidified it. Then he capitalized on it. He portrayed himself as misunderstood but unapologetic and unrepentant in magazine interviews—people either really loved him or really hated him—and sponsors who knew all attention was good attention came calling. He got rich by becoming the bad boy of surfing, but their friendship never recovered, even after Brody got his Lava endorsement…even after he was anointed as a member of Reaper Crew. Even after nearly a decade. And maybe, in hindsight, it was a smart move on Brody’s part. To co-exist with one of surfing’s rising stars, Brody had to adapt, and adapting meant the creation of a forced rivalry.

“Douchebag,” Wes said in a curt tone, jaw clenching.

“Asshole,” Brody responded in the same tone. Surf media photographers charged to the front of the crowd to snap pictures, and Brody would’ve been his arch nemesis if not for the photo ops and moneymaking, so Wes smiled until the flashes vanished. And he rarely ever saw Brody, except at these types of events, so usually he found a way to relax around him just to get through his professional obligations.

The signings went on for another hour or so, but Wes and Abel stayed longer to pose for pictures to stave off the disappointment of people who had been in line past the allotted time. Leko sent him a text to say where he and Ribsy were watching the surfing, so Wes and Abel strolled toward the water while Dylan filmed.

“I love the energy here! Reminds me that I’m doing something other people actually love, too. All these people—I think they said three hundred thou show up for the week—get it, they
get it,
they get why I want to be out there. They completely appreciate why I’d risk my life for this,” Wes said at Dylan’s camcorder. “We’ll never be loved like football, but it’s nice to know the people who love you,
really
love you.” He swiveled the bill of his Lava cap as he squinted against the sun’s brightness. It had crossed the sky already, but it would continue to bake them all for a few more hours.

Everyone was pretty near to naked, and these were some of the most miniscule bathing suits he’d ever seen in his life. Wes always wondered why if a woman’s butt was wholly visible, the presence of the vertical strip of material running down the middle made it not indecent. But he wasn’t complaining. At all.

“Okay, Dylie, now is when you film everyone else, babe,” Wes said, gesturing, as if to present the crowd in front of them.

She frowned at him. “I’m not filming girls’ asses, Wes.”

“You’re fired.”

“Whoa.” Abel suddenly threw his arm against Wes’ chest and halted their steps. “Hey, bro, isn’t that…Lana?” He started to tell his brother he was wrong because she had said she wouldn’t be there, but Wes turned his head anyway and scanned the area where Abel pointed. He spotted Brody first, chatting with a group of women, and then he saw Lana. A feeling reminiscent of the first time he had ever seen her trickled into his chest, the intense attraction strengthened now because he knew what it was like to be with her. And she looked amazing: brown hair blowing in waves around her face, her pink and white-striped bikini top peeking out from beneath her long, loose tank top, and her toned legs stretching down from dark denim cutoffs.