Recklessly (39 page)

“P…we should roll, man.” With a hand on the shoulder, Abel steered their friend toward the front door.

Paul took a doubtful glance at his watch as he walked. “Dude, I haven’t headed out to a party this early since the days my parents used to drop me off.”

“Oh, well, I’m DD’ing tonight, so I make the rules,” Abel said as he shoved Paul out the door, and Wes let out the breath he’d been holding. He owed Abel big time because without the physical manipulation, Paul would’ve rooted himself to a spot on the sofa and had a few beers before they left.

A few hours of mindless television later, Wes pulled a box of microwave dinner from the freezer just as his phone rang.
Never Fucking Answer
appeared on the screen, and a fusion of fury and sadness curled in his chest as he sent it straight to voicemail. There was nothing he wanted to say to her right now.

It rang twice more as he ate and this time he simply ignored the calls altogether without touching the phone. After he saw that it was still Lana’s cell, Wes unleashed the burst of angry energy he’d been suppressing all day in a cleaning rampage—his room, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the patio and
all
ten of their surfboards. After doing loads of overdue laundry and organizing his closet and drawers, Wes went for a three-mile run down at the beach in an attempt to soothe his thoughts, and when he returned, his cell, which he had left on the counter, was ringing, like the caller had been timing him.

Never Fucking Answer
flashed on the screen. Lana
again.
Wes chucked it onto the sofa. She could call until the image associated with her contact info embedded itself in the screen, but he wouldn’t answer. Wes braced himself on the edge of the counter, his nerves fraying a little more every time the phone released a chime. If only she had put this much fucking effort into fixing their relationship. He held his breath until the place was silent. But it didn’t matter; he was already brimming with frustration again.

He needed to do
something
.
Anything
to make the hurting stop.
Maybe he should’ve gone out with Abel and Paul. In an empty house, his memories and tangle of emotions could dominate him more than he was prepared for.
Shit. When sexy, tattooed, blondie surfer hurts, he hurts,
Wes joked to himself.

He lifted a bottle of Ciroc vodka from the cabinet near his feet and set it on the counter in front of him. He uncapped the bottle and drank straight from it, gulping down until the scorch from the alcohol became unbearable and then he pushed past it. It was Arizona wildfire in his stomach within seconds.
Love, that anesthetic for the agony of the knife in your back, the twisting and shoving of it so hard it scraped your heart, while the person you trusted kissed you…and told you about love,
he thought.

His cell phone rang again, and Wes took another long swig from the bottle. He drank until he was surrounded by silence. A tingly sensation wrapped his legs, like it always did when he drank too much, too fast. Wes plopped down on one of the stools and he stared at the bottle as a sick thought hammered into his mind. What if he drank every time it rang with her number? What if he drank until he couldn’t hear it anymore?

Suddenly, as if to challenge the proposition, his cell chimed. Anguish, the kind so violent it was almost physical, crashed against his chest. He knew it was her, and the rational, but fading and weak, internal mechanism still functioning within him urged him not to look, but he couldn’t help his lumbered steps to the couch.
Never Fucking Answer.
There it was.
A new more potent wave of emotions—a cocktail of sadness and helplessness—rolled over him.

“Go call Brody…” he muttered as he shut it off. Wes stumbled to the sliding glass door, opened it and smashed his cell phone to the concrete with the strength of his pain behind it. He picked it up
.
Goddamn protective cover.

Wes slammed it into the concrete over and over, before he tossed some of the pieces beyond his patio and others into a garbage can they had out there.
Back to the vodka.
When he stepped into the house, the landline was ringing. Wes stomped to it, completely intent on ripping it off the wall until he saw that the screen on the mounted cradle was lit with Abel’s cell number.

“Hey.”

“Wesley? Hey, some dude named Rick just called my cell. He said he’s been trying to reach you. It’s about Lana.”

*

He was in a cab, panicking, drunk, and now regrettably short a cell phone, a little while later and headed for
Vices
in Venice to get Lana. He had called Rick back and learned that in some strange sort of symbiosis, Lana was grossly intoxicated and needing assistance to get home. She was refusing to leave with anyone who wasn’t him. God, he hoped she was okay. He didn’t want anything to happen to her. Barely able to contain his anxiety, he threw the door open when the cab pulled up and pleaded with the guy to stay.
Where is she? Oh God, please be okay.

              “Wes! Wes Elliott!” Rick was waving at him. “Over here!” He gave him a tight, strained smile when Wes approached. “Thank you so much for coming. It’s been a bad night for her. She didn’t eat much today, and she kept wanting us to do shots. She threw up a while ago, and
Lana
doesn’t
throw up. She said earlier tonight that you guys were broken up…”

“We are,” he said. “Where is she?”

“Bathroom. Should be out in a sec. Grayson’s waiting for her. I’m sorry to impose on you, and I don’t want to guilt you into taking care of her. You don’t look like you want to be here…”

“It’s complicated,” Wes said.
But I love her…and that’s why I’m here.
But he wasn’t about to get emotionally intimate with Rick, even as he smiled a little at Wes’ response. They stood in silence for a few minutes, each staring in opposite directions.

“We, uh, call her Lana Bird, because of migration, you know…she just can’t be in the same place for very long. I don’t mean that physically. She just isn’t good with keeping anything constant in her life, by choice, you know…maybe just Sadie and that bike, but with you…it seems different. You have been here longer than anybody. I was skeptical before—”

“Jealous,” Wes said with a smile.

“Okay, yeah, that. But whatever my feeling, there must be something about you…” He pressed Lana’s keys and purse into Wes’ hand. “So, thank you.”

His heart twisted the minute she and Grayson stepped out of
Vices
, with Lana slumped against him and her head on his shoulder.

“Hey, Wes Elliott. She’s better now, sort of…mouthy again,” Grayson said as he tried to move Lana toward Wes but she resisted when she saw him.

“Whoa…Wes is here…hey, Wes…” she said, stretching out the words in inebriated lethargy. “I swear…I…I’m not…drunk girl. I can hold my liquor. And my own hair, you know…”

“I’m sure you can, Lan,” he said, unable to control his smile as she stumbled into his arms. His anger was peeling away at the sight of her and he was trying so hard to hold on to it, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at this woman he loved so deeply, in spite of all the pain he felt, and walk away. Not when she was like this. “Let me take you home, okay?”

“But you hate me…I fucked up…”

“I don’t hate you,” Wes said, kissing her forehead. He waved good-bye to Grayson and Rick as he carried her over to the waiting cab. He cradled her in his lap the entire time, listening to her soft breaths as she slept. Wes kissed her forehead and she smiled. When they got to her place, he doubled what he owed the cabbie and carried Lana up to her apartment. It was dark and he stumbled a bit as he tried to find the light switches on the way to her room. She groaned when he set her on the bed and went to get her t-shirt—his t-shirt—that she normally slept in, which was slung over her easel.

“You don’t hate me?”

“No, Lana, of course not.”

“I was just so scared, Wes…” she whispered.

He peered back into the room. “Tonight?”

“Oh fuck, I’m going to be sick…” she whispered and he whisked her to the toilet. She vomited twice, and he sat on the floor with her until she was sure she’d be okay, even though she continued to grip her stomach when she sat on the closed toilet.

Wes grimaced. It really upset him to see her like this. He never wanted to see Lana hurting, especially after the way he had treated her a few nights ago. He would’ve preferred seeing her enjoying herself tonight. It would’ve killed him, but this was severely more brutal. “I’ll get you some water.”

“No, I can get it from the tap. Hand me the cup…please,” she said, and she stuck it under the faucet so he would turn it on.

“Do you need anything at all?” he asked, petting her disheveled hair as she drank.

“No…” She smiled reassuringly then brushed her arm across her lips. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

“Here’s your shirt.” He took it off his shoulder and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” Lana lifted her dress over her head, pulled off her bra, and they traded. “I haven’t drunk like that in a long time. It was stupid,” she added as he helped her back to the bed. Lana quickly slid beneath the covers, her gaze pinned him until her lids slowly closed, and with ease, she slipped into a heavy, sound sleep.

Wes rubbed his hand against his upper chest; it felt like a shard of something was lodged in his diaphragm as he sank on the floor with his back against her closet and tapped Dylan’s number into Lana’s cell. He really hoped she’d answer. He was fun-loving Wes, party-throwing, panty-dropping, fuck-buddy-having Wes, and right now, he was sitting on the floor of his ex-girlfriend’s bedroom, burning up with misery.

“Lana? Is everything okay? Is it Wes?” Dylan spoke quickly, her voice thick with alarm when she answered.

“Hey, Dyl, it’s me…”

“Is Lana okay?”

“Yeah. My phone’s not, though. Did I wake you?” he whispered.

“No…I was trying to stay up to see if Kai would call.” She yawned.

“Oh yeah. He’s in Tokyo, right?”

“Yup. What’s up? Are you all right?”

“No.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay...okay,” she said.

“Just…just tell me anything…anything…please…”

Dylan sighed but she wouldn’t pry. “Well, I know you opted not to do the web documentary series, but I wanted to surprise you with the stuff I filmed. I’ve been putting it together. Camera loves you, Wes, and I did an awesome job, if I do say so myself.”

“Nice.” He was far more appreciative than his tone was representing, and he hoped she knew that. “Tell me more about what you’re putting together.”

“Sure, Wes.” This is why he had called Dylan. He could stay on the phone with her in complete silence and she’d let him. Dylan went into lively chatter about her footage of him until his eyes grew too heavy for him to be more attentive.

“Hey, baby…I’m about to pass out,” he told her after about half an hour. “Thanks for talking to me.”

“Okay. Glad I could help but, hey, one more thing. So, when Kai and I were in bed the other night—”

“Dyl, as much I love how often you entertain my inappropriateness, I don’t want to hear about you and Kai boning…”

Dylan chuckled. “Just listen. He noticed this scar on my leg, and he asked me about it. Well, when I was younger—I think I was, like, fourteen—I had a crush on my brother’s best friend, Stefan. We used to ride our bikes down this really hilly path in some woods by our houses to go make out near this creek—”

“I knew you were the freaky type…”

“Would you listen!” Dylan said, laughing. “One day, we were racing and something, like, a squirrel ran out into our path. I dodged it and lost control of the bike. I flew forward and landed really hard on my leg. Oh, God, I cried. I think my future kids will feel the pain, that’s how bad it was. You know how stubborn I can be, so I thought I could ignore how bad it hurt, and it would just go away. It didn’t. For two weeks, I was hopping around and telling everyone I was fine. My ankle started to turn purple—the deepest purple I’ve ever seen—before I finally broke down and said something to my parents. They yelled so much when they found out how long I had been ignoring it. It turned out to be a bone contusion, a mild one, thankfully. The lesson I got out of all of that?
The pain was there for a reason.
And never something that should be ignored.”

              He understood her bleak message instantly; it made his stomach bunch and made him nauseated, but he didn’t speak right away. He only shifted his eyes from where he’d been staring on the carpet up to Lana.

“I get it, Dyl. It’s a sign something is really wrong.”

*

“Wes?” Lana called from the bedroom as he shut off the faucet. He stepped back in and she was sitting upright on the bed, knees hugged to her chest, head on her knees.

“Hangover?” he asked with a laugh.

“Mmhmm…” Lana said as she scooted over so he could sit. When he pushed her pillow out of the way, he spied the book beneath it.

“
Memoirs of a Geisha,
” he said, picking it up. “I haven’t read this one in ages.” The nostalgia of being in this room with her with a book in his hand was almost too much to bear when it swept him up.

“I hadn’t either. I have a whole stack I’m working through…and I think that’s what I’m going to do today…” She ticked her head over to her desk. Lana smiled at him before dropping her hand on his. “I owe you for last night. Thank you. Do you…do you want to stay?”

Wes didn’t respond, and although he just
fucking
ached for her sometimes, he couldn’t say yes, especially with Dylan’s words in the back of his mind. Not because they had been the catalyst for some epiphany, but she only made him acknowledge what he already knew. Lana sensed what was happening, and her smile vanished. She knew his frown was a harbinger of the disappointment to come, and a somber silence swathed the room before he finally spoke. “Lana, did you purposefully get drunk because you knew I’d come?”

Lana’s eyes widened. “What? No!”

“Because it really hurt me to see you like that, and I bet you knew that, and I’ve been wondering if this was payback for what
I
did. Like you wanted me to see the pain I had caused you.”