Reckless Hearts (10 page)

Patting Cameron's forearm,
Jake's mother reminded him it was Christmas Eve. “We've got so many reasons to be happy,” she said, glancing meaningfully at Jake. “Don't let Nathaniel ruin the holiday. You'll just be giving him what he wants.”

“I won't,” Cameron told her, but the edge in his voice implied that he already had. “But, really? How do you get booted from the Roderick School? They're used to dealing with overweaned fuckups. That's what we pay them for.”

Here we go again
, thought Jake, staring out the window at the silvery-pink water, trying not to get involved.

They were seated in plush white leather chairs at the
exclusive back corner table at the Spanish Armada, the fanciest restaurant in Dream Point, right on the water on a peninsula that curved into the ocean on the north side of town in a converted antebellum-style building that, if the legends were true, had once been used as a kind of money-laundering bank by pirates. The dark, moody leather and wood interior of the space had been spruced up for the holidays with discreetly placed wreaths and tableaus of holly and candles.

It was almost six. They were on their fifth and sixth plates of prime rib, lobster, sushi, and roast goose from the luxurious holiday all-you-can-eat buffet and Nathaniel had yet to make his appearance.

Cameron poured himself another glass of pinot noir, his fifth—filled right up to the top. “It's his life. He can waste it if he wants,” he said. Jake had never seen him drink like this. “At least now we know why he's so afraid to show his face.”

“He passed gym,” Jake's mom said, and Cameron gave one abrupt, arch laugh. She was in full-on management mode, her voice peppy and soothing, like a captain refusing to admit that the ship was going down. Jake couldn't help thinking about all those times she'd acted this same way with his dad. The difference was that Cameron was brooding over things outside himself while Jake's dad had been more likely to be getting lost in his own sense of failure. His mom had barely touched
her champagne except to fish the raspberry out of it with her spoon.

“Of course he passed gym. How does someone not pass gym?” Cameron took a long gulp of his wine. “What I want to know is how he failed economics. If you're gonna run a black-market Adderall business out of your dorm room, you should at least know how to play the margins.” He shook his head ruefully and ran his hand through his mane of hair. Then, holding a shrimp up by its tail and studying it like it contained some runic message, he said, “I should never have purchased that drugstore chain.”

Jake couldn't help noticing that, even in his blackest mood (and Jake had never seen him angrier than he was today), Cameron's mind still fired on multiple cylinders at once. It was scary—and also impressive—like nothing was ever out of his control.

“Did you see the dessert bar?” Jake's mom said, trying to change the subject. “There's, like, thirty different flavors of macaroon.”

Jake, who had been quietly judging the dinner up to now, saw Nathaniel standing tall across the room. He was wearing a tailored black suit with a black shirt, like he was going to a celebrity funeral. After speaking briefly with the hostess, he headed toward the table, carrying himself with an elegance that clashed disorientingly with the image of him that the headmaster of the Roderick
School had painted in the letter that had arrived that afternoon. When he reached the table, he stood silently, ramrod straight, with his hands on the back of his chair, that wry smirk Jake knew so well plastered on his face.

Cameron smiled to himself, lost in thought. He was so consumed by his mood that he didn't notice that Nathaniel had arrived.

“I could get us a platter,” Jake's mom said. She hadn't noticed Nathaniel's presence, either. “To share.”

Cameron tilted toward her until his shoulder touched hers. He smiled, letting her kindness soften him for a second. “I'm not in the mood for sweets, love,” he said. “I'll take the tart. But by all means, get some for yourself. Fill your purse up for later.”

Jake wondered, with a mixture of concern and hope, how long she'd be able to affect Cameron like this. He seemed to be able to turn his affection on and off.

Finally, Jake's mom realized Nathaniel was there. She patted Cameron's chest, a gesture that was both calming and loving, and said, “Hi, Nate. Merry Christmas.”

A second later, in a delayed reaction, Cameron turned toward Nathaniel himself. “The man of the hour,” he said acidly. “Sit. Eat. Gorge yourself. You should get it while you can, 'cause we're almost ready to leave.”

Nathaniel just smiled and took his seat.

For the next half hour, while Jake and his mother nibbled at the desserts she had piled onto a plate for
the table, it felt like they'd all fallen into the Twilight Zone. Nobody talked about the news from the Roderick School even though they all felt its chilly shadow. Instead they listened to Jake's mom fill up the time with a long-winded description of the lengths she'd gone to in order to ensure that Tiki Tiki Java had authentic, locally sourced eggnog for the holidays. Cameron seemed quietly pleased to let her carry the conversation. Nathaniel just smiled his cryptic smile, not saying a word, and Jake couldn't help feeling like he was the target of that smile. Every time he glanced in Nathaniel's direction, he felt like he was looking at one of those paintings where the eyes weirdly follow you around the room.

“Okay, time to go,” Cameron finally, abruptly said.

Outside, he handed the valet a set of keys, and a couple minutes later, the guy returned, not with the Lexus they'd arrived in but with a black Mini with a checkerboard hood. He held the door open for Cameron to enter, but Cameron backed off. He placed a hand on each of Jake's shoulders.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

It took Jake a second to realize what he meant.

“Go ahead. Drive it home.”

Jake glanced at his mother, who beamed at him—she'd been in on the plan and Jake could see all over her face how proud she was to have been able to facilitate his getting something she knew he'd always wanted. Jake
looked to the heavens, trying to control his excitement.

“Nice,” said Nathaniel coolly. “Good to see we're all getting such killer presents this year.”

Cameron nodded, not looking at him. “Don't push it, Nate. Your present is getting me to clean up your mess one more time so you can graduate from high school.”

Not even this rattled Nathaniel, though. He just went on smiling as though nothing in the world could ever touch him.

Jake could feel himself blushing in embarrassment. “Thanks,” he said to his mom.

“Don't thank me, thank Cameron,” she said. “I just told him what you might like.”

“Thanks, Cameron,” he said.

He wasn't sure what to make of the gift. It was definitely the most extravagant thing he'd ever been given, and it was true that he'd been dreaming of owning a Mini since before he got his driver's license, but something about the way Cameron was displaying his favoritism so blatantly like this made Jake uncomfortable. He couldn't help but feel like Cameron had an ulterior motive, as though he was using Jake to get back at Nathaniel somehow. He hoped not. From what he'd learned so far, that was a mess he wanted nothing to do with.

Cameron patted his shoulder. “You deserve the best,” he said.

Jake had to say something, so he told Cameron, “I
can barely believe this is actually happening.”

“Oh, it's happening,” Cameron said with a chuckle. “You're in the big leagues now.”

Jake knew better than to check Nathaniel's reaction.

He climbed in his new car and tooled out of the parking lot.

It wasn't until he was out of the long, winding driveway and off the peninsula, back on the shore road, heading home through the bright gaudy tunnel of decorations the city had strung through downtown for the holidays, that he fingered the guitar pick hanging from his neck, realizing that if Cameron thought he was the big leagues, he must mean Jake's dad was the minors.

Bastard.
Jake was starting to see where Nathaniel got it from.

Electra is spinning.
She bounces around like a satellite circling some point of gravity, her arms and legs flailing, ping-ponging, sometimes twirling in circles. She floats in darkness, spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning, growing smaller with each turn around the circle.

We're pulling away from her. She's growing smaller. We move through a pane of glass, the window of a dryer. And Electra's trapped inside. We're in a Laundromat—bright fluorescent lights, crisp rows of machines.

She's spinning faster now.

Faster.

Faster.

The dryer begins shaking, rattling. A crack forms and grows until the dryer has split in half.

Out steps Electra.

She tries to march out of the Laundromat, but she's chained to the wreckage of the dryer. Pulling it behind her, one jerking drag of her leg at a time, she makes her way to the front door. A thick, wide man in a guayabera shirt and fedora stalks after her, hands on hips. He's joined by a posse of Laundromat employees. They shake their fingers admonishingly.

But she makes it to the door and she's almost out, though the dryer is still dragging her down.

And peeking outside, she realizes the Laundromat employees weren't after her, they were after the gang of faux hawked, tattooed thugs gathered out front. The thugs block her way out. They carry bats and chains and crowbars and buzz saws. They're jumping up and down and swinging their weapons around.

Electra's trapped between them and employees. She calls out for help from a fat girl wearing a pink sweatsuit, but the girl just laughs and sucks down a Big Gulp, throwing the empty container at Electra's head.

She's being overwhelmed, overrun, disappearing under a mountain of bodies. They pile over her. They pile over one another. They battle one another and she's the one who gets hit.

Cracks appear in her skin every time she gets hit. Light
shoots out of the cracks. With each elbow to the gut or flailing punch to the head, another part of Electra glows hot white. Parts of her begin to fall off. The chain holding her to the dryer shatters. She's a glowing ball of light, growing brighter and brighter.

And brighter.

And brighter.

Until she suddenly kicks her legs and swings her arms and sends the whole pile of thugs and Laundromat workers flying.

In the space that's opened up around her, Electra begins to dance an aggressive salsa. Shooting off sparks, she dances up a pathway, also made of light, that rises from the earth and weaves over the town, into the clouds, and out of the atmosphere. She dances among the stars.

The image gradually washes out into a field of white and these words appear on the screen:

Where are we going?

Anywhere. Everywhere.

Out past the
end of the public beach, where the grasses grew to five feet tall and dunes rose and tumbled toward the shore, the land looked, if you squinted, like it must have looked four hundred years ago, when the deer and the lizards ruled the beach. If you knew where to look you could find a footpath through the grass that would take you to an old, dilapidated pier, bleached by the sun, rotting in spots, shooting into the water, then breaking where the central portion of pier had collapsed, and then, farther out, rising up again, a wooden island propped above the waves.

Jake and Elena had come here every Christmas since they'd first discovered the place when they were twelve.
It was their secret place, a magical spot that they sometimes felt like they'd invented themselves just so no one could find them.

On Christmas afternoon, Jake sat on the last slats of pier, dangling his feet off the edge and studying the way the shore line curved out before him, trying not to think about the possibility that Elena was standing him up. He'd been there for twenty minutes already and still there was no sign of her.

He knew he shouldn't worry. He was early and there were still ten more minutes to go before the time they'd agreed upon to meet. He couldn't help it, though. He was a ball of unraveling nerves today because what if she saw his gift—his whole heart, that's what he was giving her, his undying love—and didn't want it? What would he do then? How was he supposed to keep going after that? Just the possibility blotted out his ability to think.

He patted his guitar, strummed the strings just once, as though somehow the instrument could calm him down. He checked the time on his phone again. Gazed down the pier, squinting, searching for a rustle in the grass that might imply she was about to appear. Checked his phone again. Kicked himself for arriving early instead of playing it cool and showing up fashionably late.

Five minutes went by. He checked his phone again. Maybe she'd figured out what he had planned and instead of facing his truth, she wasn't coming.

He checked his phone again.

He was almost ready to give up when he saw a flash of color rising over the dunes. Could it, was it . . . Yes. It was her. Wearing a sun hat and a ribbed white tank top, her tight faded jeans distressed and torn in numerous places, Elena trudged through the sand toward him. God, was she beautiful today. More beautiful than he'd ever seen her. She seemed to glisten, to glow, in the light.

Cymbals crashed in his ears. It was going to happen. She'd finally know how much he loved her and why he'd been acting so weird lately. He couldn't back out now. Well, he could, but he wouldn't.

“Hey,” she said when she reached the pier. “You been here long?”

“No,” he lied. “Just got here.”

“I saw the Rumbler parked up there and wondered if I had the time wrong.”

He'd left the Mini at home. He wasn't ready to really drive it yet, not in his everyday life. To do so felt too much like a declaration, like he'd be saying,
Yes, now I'm Cameron's son
.

“Naw,” he said. “I was actually a little early.” He stood up and pulled his Ray-Bans off his eyes, propping them on in his hair. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

She made a funny face, crossing her eyes momentarily and sticking out her tongue. “Ho, ho, ho,” she said. Then, more seriously, “Merry Christmas, Jake.”

When he held his arms out to hug her, she rushed right in and held him tight. He felt her ribs under her tank top. He felt her forehead pressed into his chest. Her body heat rubbing up against his. And he knew this was either the last time they'd ever hug or the beginning of a whole new world for them.

She excised herself from his arms and pulled back, gazing around at their secret place. “Here we are again,” she said. “Another Christmas and the pier hasn't rotted away.”

He smiled awkwardly. “Yeah.”

She must have sensed that his mood needed an injection of excitement, because she plopped down on the pier and began digging in her backpack. “It feels like it's been forever and I'm expecting a full report, every single detail of what you've been up to since we talked, but first—presents!” She held up a small rectangular box wrapped, ironically, in Kwanzaa paper.

Jake settled across from her, cozying up as close as he could without invading her space. He knew exactly where their knees might inadvertently touch and he both wanted it and was afraid of it happening.

He opened her present carefully, not ripping the paper. The box was made of black leather, with a silver latch. Inside was a green frosted sea glass finger slide. He held it up to the sky and peered through it, turning it in the light. “Wow,” he said. “Where'd you find this?”

“A girl never tells,” she said.

He studied it some more. “It's sort of perfect,” he said.

He pulled the thumb drive on which he'd burned new versions of all his songs—replacing Sarah, the fake name he'd used in them, with Elena, the name he'd heard in his head when he'd written them—out of his back pocket and twirled it in his fingers. This was the moment of truth. Once she listened to the songs, she'd know how he felt, even if he didn't tell her today.

“Jake?” she said. “You still here?”

“I . . . Yeah.” He handed her the thumb drive. “Sorry. My usual masterful wrapping job.”

“A thumb drive,” she said, flicking it open and shut. “Just what I've always wanted.”

This was the moment. He could tell she was waiting for an explanation. He could feel his nerves splintering under his skin. His heartbeat sluiced in his ears. For a second he wished he could dive into the water and swim away and never return. But he'd come too far to back out now.

“So, okay,” he said, pointing at the thumb drive. “That's a compilation of all my songs. Like, the demo versions. The
real
versions. You'll see. They're different from the ones I play in public. But first . . . I'm an asshole.”

“Well, we all know that,” she teased.

He smiled in recognition of her joke and tried not to
let it rattle him. “That stunt I pulled at Tiki Tiki Java. It was just . . . That's not what I had planned. I was upset. And I'd gotten some crazy-bad advice.”

“Let's not talk about that,” she said. “It's over. It's done.”

“But it's not over. I need to explain. I'd been planning on playing a song for you, just not that song. I'd been . . . and then . . .” He could sense himself getting lost in his words. “You know what, it'll make more sense if I just play it.”

He picked up his guitar and cradled it in his lap, then, making a show if it, slipped the slide she'd given him over his finger.

“So, this is called ‘Driftwood.' I wrote it for you,” he said. He strummed the guitar a couple of times, psyching himself up. Then he began to play.

Don't hate me for loving you

Oh-o'delay

Don't let the sea wash me away

Throughout the first verse, he kept his gaze fixed on his fingers as he played, not because he needed to watch them in order to get through the song but because it was safer to do this than to see Elena's expression. He could feel her listening and as he reached the chorus, his voice cracked. He tried to pretend she wasn't there—or that
wasn't exactly it: he tried to pretend that the possibility of her rejection wasn't there, to imagine that she already knew how much he loved her and that she'd already embraced everything that meant. But it wasn't that easy.

He closed his eyes and reminded himself to think of the song, to become one with it, and as he continued through the next couple verses, his connection with the music grew stronger. He threw every ounce of his being into the song. This was the performance of his life. He knew he had to make it good.

Strumming out the final fadeaway, he could feel himself exiting the dream.

He looked up at her. She had tears in her eyes. Maybe this was a good sign.

He reached out and took her two hands in his, held them lightly, thrilling at the feeling of her skin against his.

“They're all for you,” he said. “They've always all been for you. There is no Sarah. No girlfriend in the Keys. There's just . . . you. Elena . . .” He could see she was struggling to keep herself from sobbing. But she hadn't pulled her hands away and she hadn't told him to stop, so he pushed on. “I love you. I always have.”

Then, not knowing what else to say, he fell silent and gazed into her dark eyes. He'd revealed everything. He was totally exposed. Now it was up to her to decide what to do with him. If only she'd stop crying.

“Oh, Jake,” she said finally, wiping her cheek with the back of her arm. “Oh, my sweet Jake.”

And just like that he knew he'd made a mistake.

She patted his hands and let them go, but she kept her eyes locked with his, gazing deep into his soul.

Was that pity in her eyes? Why didn't she say something? This waiting for a response was excruciating. He wished he could just disappear.

“I'm sorry. This was a stupid idea,” he said, trying to grab his dignity back.

“Don't say that, Jake,” she said. She wiped more tears from her cheek. “It's not stupid.”

“Does that mean you love me back?”

She tried to smile at him. “I don't know what to say. I mean, Jake, of course I love you. I adore you. But . . .” She took a deep breath and he could tell she was searching for the words that would allow her to let him down easy.

“‘But,'” he said. “That's great. That's terrific.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” she said.

“How did you mean it, then?”

“Jake, you're my best friend. You mean more to me than anyone in the world. I don't want to . . .” Her eyes pled with him, asking him not to make her say it. It was like she wanted him to think this hurt her more than it hurt him. “Remember all those conversations we had when we started high school? About how sex changes
things? How love can come and go, but friendship is forever?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “So?”

“So, I don't want to mess it up.”

“I don't want to mess it up, either,” he said. “I can't help how I feel, though.”

She furrowed her brow, thinking about this. “I don't know what to say,” she said again.

“You don't mean that,” he said. “What you mean is you're afraid to tell me that you don't love me back.”

She sat there, a tragically sad expression on her face, and said nothing.

He couldn't bear to hear any more. He couldn't bear any of this.
What a fool. What a total fool.
That's all he kept thinking. Slinging his guitar over his shoulder, he climbed to his feet. “I gotta go. I'm sorry.”

“Jake, please don't go,” she said.

Then he was race-walking away. He could hear her calling after him, “Wait, Jake. Don't just leave like this,” but he didn't dare turn to look at her or slow his pace. His heart felt like it had shattered in his chest. A million achy shards, each one causing its own pain.