Recklessly (17 page)

“Silly? That’s high-class seduction, girl. I can hear the elastic in your panties snapping free as they prepare to drop.”

“You’re in an understandably good mood. So, how does it feel to be number friggin’ one?”

“Pretty damn good.” Though, Brody was right; he had gotten a preview of some of the guys he’d be up against for the wildcard spot, this was just entertainment and a mostly friendly match. Tahiti would be ruthless, the competition unforgiving.

“You did good tonight, Wes. Thank you.” She hugged him suddenly, pressing her head to his chest, and Wes breathed in her scent, dropping his chin to the top of her head. These tranquil moments together were starting to cast an unexpected wave of comfort over him. It was new but familiar, in the way instinct was familiarity. It was protective, him of her; that was the instinct.

“I told you, you’re my friend, and I’m always going to stand up for you…”

Lana was frowning when she looked up. “What are you talking about?”

Shit.
He had gotten caught up in his thoughts. She didn’t know about his confrontation at Brody’s car.
“Nothing…nothing. What were
you
talking about?”

“Uh, I was thanking you as a joke for not waiting for some magnificent moment to show off during the night surf.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she walked ahead of him, and she didn’t speak again until he was at her side. “Why did you have to stand up for me? Was it because of Brody? He said shit about me?”

Wes sighed. “No…but one of his friends did.”

“What did he say?”

Wes hesitated for a moment, not wanting to repeat words that would offend her. “He made a stupid comment about your past with Brody, and I swung at him.”

She groaned but was surprisingly unaffected. “They try to make it so salacious. We were teenagers, and we were in love. I was a virgin when we met, and Brody wasn’t some sex god. I’m sure he’d love for them to know how he barely used to last five minutes. And one time he cried.”

“Well, I certainly don’t love knowing that,” Wes said.

Lana sighed. “Thank you for standing up for me.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lan.”

“I need to tell you something. Do you mind if we sit?” Lana asked, gesturing at the sidewalk. Wes nodded and eased down to the concrete shortly before she did. “I’ve known Brody Swift since before he was Brody Swift, when he was Percival Brody Michelson. Before he changed to a cool name—”

“His real name is Percival?” Wes asked with a smirk.

“Yeah…” she said, laughing for a beat. Lana scrolled through her cell phone with several sighs before flashing a picture to him. The glowing, smiling face of a small girl. “This is Sadie Olin, age six. Parents are Mike and Sarah Olin…bio parents are Brody Swift and Lana Langston.”

“Oh…oh! She’s what you have in common…” Wes said solemnly, and he suddenly saw the resemblance.

“Yup. He’s my
baby daddy
,” Lana said with a small but flat laugh. “And there was no fancy TV show for me to go on and air out my drama. It was just four pregnancy tests, Grayson asking me over and over, ‘What the hell are you going to do?’ and a whole lot of crying. So, I guess you were right about what you were mad about earlier. Brody and I
indeed
had sex before. She’s the proof. Brody and I first got together pretty early in our teens. He was my first boyfriend…and he eventually he became my first. I was on birth control, but we had a pretty tumultuous relationship—lots of breakups and make-ups. One time we broke up for a long while, and I stopping taking them. We had
one
night together, where he assured me he knew how to pull out. Wrong! When I went back to get a refill, the doctor asked when the last time I had my period was, and it had been much longer than usual, even for an underweight dancer. I took a pregnancy test then and there and, well, the rest, as they say, is history. Well, three more pregnancy tests at home again…and then history.

“Brody and I were pretty much on the same page immediately. He wanted to be a surfer and I didn’t want to be a mom. We never fooled ourselves into thinking something like a quickie marriage or promises of being together forever would work. I didn’t want to tough it out. Our baby deserved better than the teenage parents we would’ve been. The Olins were a family that was friends of my family, and they had wanted a kid for years. It was a private, open adoption, and we did it through family court. The only thing I asked—and it was still up to them to decide—was that they please name her what I’d been calling my giant belly, Sadie, after my grandma. They did. They’re really good people.

When I got pregnant, there were all these rumors that I had been trying to trap Brody because he was going to be a famous surfer, and that he had paid me to force me to give the baby up. Brody and I had been together for years on and off, but I was some piece of shit, gold-digging ho now, especially when he moved to Oahu and I was still going to contests, which everyone assumed meant I was on the prowl for my next victim or when I showed up with different guys who I was or was not with romantically at the time.

“Anyway, the real reason I’m down here was to see Sadie. The Olins live in Newport Beach, and we have an arrangement to where I can come see her at least twice a month. I told Brody weeks ago I was coming because he’s the one person I can really talk to about her, asshole or not. He’d been calling me because he wanted to come see her too. I asked the Olins, but we all agreed that he shouldn’t meet her directly right now, so he hung back at the park we were at for her friend’s birthday party. It was his first time seeing her since birth, and it brought a lot of emotions out for the both of us.”

“So, you really didn’t plan to come to the U.S. Open?”

She shook her head. “Grayson and I were going to make kettle corn, smoke the rest of his medical marijuana, and watch
Dawson’s Creek.
But Brody wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind when we left their house. I really just wanted to make sure he was okay. I think he got caught up in the emotions—I guess I did too—and that’s when you saw what you saw. We haven’t been together in
that way
in a long time, Wes. I’m not in love with him, but he’s the father of my kid, whether she’s with us or not. He’s the other reason that beautiful little girl exists. We made a baby, and I’m not shamed or sorry about it. Every time I look at her, I see him. And every time I look at him, I see her. So it complicates things.

I guess the reason I didn’t say anything was because I didn’t want you to judge me based on him. When I met you, Brody Swift was the furthest thing from my mind, just so you know. Later, I put two and two together, and call me selfish, but maybe I liked what we were doing already. Us getting to know each other, having as much fun as we’ve had, it all would’ve stalled earlier because of your rivalry. And I didn’t want that.”

“You’re probably right about that,” Wes admitted.

“He’s just jealous of you, you know. He’s rich in things. Not people. And I bet he hates that about you. Maybe a bunch of those people at your house are there for the free booze, but there are way more there who genuinely like you. Brody’s surrounded by nameless faces sucking him dry with empty compliments and frivolous small talk.”

He stared at the picture of Sadie in silence, taking in the subtleties of Lana’s passed down traits: the almond-shaped brown eyes and wild brown hair. He wondered if she had the same laugh. She and Brody had made a really cute kid.

“Were your parents mad when you got pregnant?”

“Maybe my mom at first. I think she was worried that I would try to take on motherhood the way I take on everything else in my life. I love Sadie, but she was never
really
mine from the day I saw that second pink line, if that makes sense.”

He smiled softly at her. “Tell me about her.”

Lana gulped down. “Sadie?”

The question had clearly been rhetorical, but he said, “Yeah…tell me…”

“I don’t know…” Even though they were sitting, she took on a recognizable defensive posture, hugging her knees into her chest and folding in on herself. “I don’t really talk about her…”

“I’ll trade you some dead girlfriend baggage…”

Lana turned to him with a crinkled brow. “Your girlfriend died?”

“Brutally. Fiery car accident five years ago. Her parents want me to attend this memorial thing and maybe even speak—it’s a dedication of some park bench. Erin didn’t even go to parks. Too many bugs, she always said.” Wes expelled a stale laugh. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved two of the tiny souvenir bottles of alcohol he and Abel had bought for the party, and he handed her one. He needed another drink if he was going to do this. His chest was tightening. “You know what’s weird… I haven’t stopped hating Erin, and I can’t say that to anybody anymore ‘cause people downplay my feelings. They’re like, ‘She’s dead, dude. She got the short end of the stick. How can you even have any ill-will—’”

“Whoa. Slow down. You don’t hate her because she’s dead, right?”

“No, of course not. I don’t even know if I hate her really. I guess I’m stuck back there. I was really into her, and she was cheating on me—had been for months with a friend of mine—and then she died. She literally died cheating on me. How the fuck do you even resolve feelings like that, especially when…?”
When you were in love.
“Can you mourn and be mad? Is that really a thing? Shit is…just…just kinda fucking twisted.”

“You…were…in love with her…” Lana said, like she was in his head, and he was unsure of if she was simply musing aloud or asking. Wes nodded once, not able to speak it, especially because that would mean admitting to the existence of that past version of himself, someone naïve enough to think that love didn’t hurt. “I guess we both suffered a loss,” she continued, “You lost Erin…”

“And you lost Sadie…”

“Giving her up was the best decision. I still don’t want to be her mom, but it’s hard not to connect with something living inside you for that long.” Lana spun the bottle between her palms. “Whoa, this just got pretty heavy, huh?”

“No big deal. This is the friendship part...it’s the benefit, too, you know.” He bumped her shoulder. “So, will you show me how you drew her—Sadie—sometime?”

“How do you know I’ve drawn her?”

“‘Cause you draw everything, Lan.” He smiled. “And I wanted to make sure I asked this time.”

She smiled. “Yes, she’s in
that
sketchpad…the one I got all weird over at your place. It’s more of a diary than anything. That’s why I acted like that. I read words better than I write them.”

“So, that sketch of me…it’s how you see me?”

“Cocky and smirking?”

Wes laughed. “Yeah…but I looked different…”

He had seen himself portrayed in a lot of ways in magazine editorials with witty headlines: rebellious, gifted, overconfident, “man whore,”
not
a role model. And all of them were representative of him; yes, Wes
was
a hard-partying surfer with a fondness bordering on weakness for women, who no one should emulate.

But she had captured something else in that drawing. It wasn’t the cliché view that she had humanized him by stripping the gloss away from his image. Lana saw the gloss, and she knew that he
embraced
it, but it was the subtlety in her depiction that struck him. His posture and smile had been all about confidence, but the big bright blue eyes, deep in color and emotion, held those complexities that some people probably doubted were there. She got
what
he was; she accepted it. She
understood
it.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

“So, was Erin, like, a
forever
kind of thing?”

He shrugged. “We were nineteen. As forever as that can get.”

They both grew silent, and when Wes peeked over at Lana, he saw the same uncertain look on her face that he knew was currently on his. Like him, she grasped that sex didn’t have to bear strings, but this…this was
intimacy
. This was fully clothed, soul baring, and if one was not careful, it became the kind of talk that led to unexpected strings.

Dead girlfriends and biological kids.

“Shit. We really just Oprah’ed.” He lifted his tiny bottle of liquor.

Lana lifted hers. “We totally Oprah’ed.” They tapped the plastic bottles against one another, and each downed their own in a few gulps. After the residual burn subsided, she was up on her feet again and yanking him up to his. “Now I’m curious, though, is this the one heartbreak that set you down this road of love ‘em and leave ‘em? I’ve noticed that about guys. Women…it takes, like, four or five bad relationships for us to
maybe
start hating love. With you all…it’s
one.
”

Wes laughed. “Yeah, I got my heart broken, obviously, but I had toned down who I was for Erin because I wanted to be with just her at the time. I’ve been like this ever since I learned firsthand what sex was like. So, since about sixteen. I don’t
hate
love; I just know it’s something that’s really tangled in pain, and I guess you have to accept that it’s going to hurt when you get in it.” Wes shrugged. “But being single is fun…and the truth is, I just really like fucking…and I enjoy having the freedom of doing it with whoever I want.” Once a psych major he was sleeping with had questioned whether casual sex was some sort of treatment for him when he wouldn’t get serious with her.
Like medicine?
he had asked.
Yes,
she’d said. Sure, Wes had things that needed numbing—like every living, breathing person—but orgasms on their own weren’t a good enough reason for having sex? He
had
to be using it as therapy, too?

“See…it’s so unfair that you get to say that as a guy. I half-expect someone to come running out of a house and high-five you and then give you a reality show. If I say it, I’m ‘what’s wrong with women today’ and every single societal problem will be blamed on me. Because women can’t
possibly
innately like sex. When you’re a woman, the amount of sex you have is always inversely related to your belief in your self-worth, which is actually accessible through your vagina, apparently, though no biology textbook can confirm this. Dem is the rules.”