Wilder Love

by Rose, Emery

  “My new album drops tomorrow,” Bastian said casually.

  “Oh God,” I groaned. My head fell back against the seat, and I banged it against the headrest a few times. Thud. Thud. Thud.

  Bastian laughed manically. That was the trouble with artists. They used everything—your stories, your life, your heartache and pain and bittersweet memories, and they channeled it into their art. Then they set it free in the world and it didn’t belong to them anymore. It belonged to the fans, to the critics, to the lovers and haters. Tomorrow Bastian would either be flying high or need to be peeled off the sidewalk. And I would be… I had no idea how I would be.

  “Stay away from the nose candy,” I said as I pulled out of my parking spot, the A/C on full blast, the backs of my sweaty thighs stuck to the leather seats.

  He just laughed.

  On that note, we hung up and I decided to go surfing. The cure-all for anything that ails you.

  33

  Remy

  From the comfort of my poolside chaise lounge, I snapped photos of Dylan, capturing all the dark ink on his back and the full sleeves on his arms as he glided through the water, oblivious that I was stealing pieces of his soul. He’d always hated having his photo taken. Fifteen minutes later, he swam to the side of the pool and pushed his dark hair off his face, leaning his forearms on the pool’s edge to catch his breath. Since I’d been out here, he swam twenty laps, but I suspected he’d been at it a lot longer. I snapped a close-up of his face and scrambled off my chair, darting away from the pool to protect my camera from the tsunami he’d unleashed.

  “Watch the camera, asshat.”

  He splashed me again, but I was out of range and only a few drops landed on my feet. Just for that, I snapped a few more photos from a safe distance, using the zoom lens. Ha. That will show him.

  After he got out of the pool, I returned to my chair and scrolled through the photos while Dylan ran a towel over his hair, making it stick up all over. I studied a close-up photo of his face, the high cheekbones, and stormy eyes fringed by lashes that were longer than mine, the permanent scowl firmly in place. “These are going in my beautiful collection.”

  He snorted and plopped down on the lounge chair next to mine, closing his eyes and basking in the last of the evening sun. I hadn’t seen much of him in the weeks that I’ve been here. He always seemed to be working. Last night he hadn’t come home at all and I wondered if he had a girlfriend or if he was still seeing Sienna who lived in LA. Not that he would ever confide in me. His personal life was still private, and I had no idea what he did outside work or who he did it with. Prying open Dylan and getting him to talk was still a chore, made worse after he’d let Sienna in and she had burned him. I didn’t know the full story but the last time I saw them together, I could see that their relationship was toxic. Yet they kept going back for more.

  Were Shane and I toxic? I’d never thought of us that way before but now everything had changed so much that I wasn’t sure what to think.

  “Why didn’t you ever like Shane?” I asked.

  “What makes you think I didn’t like him?”

  “Seriously? The dagger eyes. The attitude. You were never exactly friendly toward him.”

  “Guess not.”

  “Why? What did he ever do to you?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Shane was the guy I wanted to be back then.”

  My brows shot up, but he didn’t notice because his eyes were closed. “What do you mean?”

  “He was this chilled-out dude. So cool, you know. An awesome surfer. I fucking loved to watch him surf. It was like… he was at one with the ocean. I’ve never seen anything like him. Even now, he’s still got that extra something that a lot of guys don’t have. Not even Travis.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. I knew that. I’d always known that. It killed me that Shane was forced to give up the thing he loved most. But I never expected to hear those words come out of Dylan’s mouth. It almost sounded like a case of hero-worship which was so unlike Dylan. It also surprised me that he’d watched Shane so closely.

  “I admired him,” he admitted. “It used to piss me off though. I hated it that he was always trying to take care of things. Like paying the bills and shit. That was my job.”

  “It wasn’t your job, Dylan. It was Mom’s.”

  “Yeah, well, she wasn’t around, was she?” He sounded bitter. Hurt. I didn’t think Dylan had ever gotten over Mom leaving us like that.

  “No.” Mom was in Santa Fe now. Or, at least, that’s where she’d been the last time I spoke to her, about six months ago. She only called occasionally—when she was drunk and feeling low or when she needed money. Mom hadn’t changed much over the years. She was still a drifter and still delusional enough to believe that if she moved to a different town or city everything would be different. Whenever she asked for money, I gave it to her because she was still my mother and I had the money. I didn’t want her to end up homeless or dead in an alley somewhere. I suspected that Dylan gave her money too. Despite his insistence that he didn’t give a shit about her, I knew he was lying. He cared. So fucking much. He hid his fragile heart under his tarnished armor of ink and defiance.

  She once told me she was proud of us, that she knew we’d go on to do big things. In her own twisted way, she loved us, but some people just aren’t cut out to be mothers. Sometimes it still surprised me that she’d kept us, and that she’d hung around as long as she had when it had always been clear that she’d rather be somewhere else, doing something different.

  “I knew Tristan was bad news,” Dylan said. “I fucking knew. But I didn’t do anything about it. I just let you deal with your own shit because I was so fucked up with mine. It should have been me. I should have been the one to confront him, not Shane.” His jaw locked, and his fingers curled into fists. Dylan always thought he could punch his way out of any situation, and that was why I hadn’t told him about Tristan.

  “No. Dylan. I didn’t want either one of you to get involved. I wish I’d never told Sienna that night.” I chipped away at the polish on my thumbnail then forced myself to stop and fiddled with my camera settings instead. “Why did Shane show up at the worst possible time? I mean, I hadn’t talked to him in six weeks…”

  “It was me,” Dylan said quietly. “I went to talk to him that morning.”

  My eyes widened, and my gaze snapped to Dylan who was staring straight ahead. “What? You talked to Shane?”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yeah.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him to make it right. That you were a wreck.” Dylan shrugged. “I guess he came over to talk to you.”

  Having dropped that little bomb, Dylan disappeared inside the house, leaving me to mull over that new information. I’d never known that. It made me feel even worse. If Dylan hadn’t gone to Shane, he might never have come over, never heard what I told Sienna, and never gone after Tristan. But you couldn’t think like that. What was done was done. You just had to deal with what was and not what could have been.

  He returned to his seat, a beer in his hand and a cigarette clamped between his lips. I watched him light the cigarette and take a drag, blowing the smoke out of the side of his mouth and resisted the urge to ask for a drag. “I used to hang out with Jimmy sometimes,” Dylan confided.

  What? I sat up straighter in my seat, my head swiveling to look at him. My twin, the keeper of secrets. “When? You never told me that.”

  “You were gone. Shane was gone. I used to see Jimmy surfing. Or I’d stop by the surf shop. A few times I stopped by for dinner. I brought my own six-pack and hotdogs.”

  That made me laugh. Dylan was laughing with me.

  “That’s just… so weird.” I laughed again at the thought of Dylan showing up at Jimmy’s house with a six-pack of PBR and hotdogs. “Why don’t you ever tell me anything?”

  “I don’t know.” He squinted at something in the distance and took another drag of his cigarette.
“I guess he was kind of like a father figure.”

  Dylan had this way of making me laugh and two seconds later, he’d say something that made me want to cry. I prodded him with more questions, but he was done talking. He’d used up his maximum word count for the evening and remained tight-lipped when I pressed for more information.

  Dylan and I ordered pizza and started watching a movie—Black Panther. We set the pizza on the coffee table and ate it straight out of the box, not even bothering with plates. “That kitchen is just for show, isn’t it?”

  “It came with the house.”

  I laughed. Dylan texted throughout the movie and I went down the rabbithole, reading reviews on Bastian’s new album. Rolling Stone called it “sparsely arranged, largely acoustic, and haunting… Blue Ghost shows clear-eyed, uncompromising strength in one of the most fragile-sounding sets he’s ever made…. the songs address loss, letting go, and moving on…”

  That’s the beauty of music and lyrics. People can interpret the songs any way they want and inject their own meaning.

  The doorbell rang as the credits on the movie were rolling. Dylan and I exchanged a look. “Expecting someone?” I set my wine glass on the coffee table and got to my feet.

  Dylan checked his phone as if he needed confirmation. “No.”

  I elbowed him out of the way, trying to get to the door before him. Zero chill on my end. I knew who was on the other side of that door. “I’ll get it.”

  Dylan was right beside me, a personal bodyguard ready to defend me from intruders. I opened the door and arched a brow, my cool composure the complete opposite of the butterflies invading my stomach. Dylan retreated, but he was still right behind me. “Hey Shane. Just in the neighborhood?”

  He leaned against the doorframe and ran both of his hands through his hair, chuckling under his breath. It looked as if someone’s hands had been running through it all night long. His hair was just rolled out of bed after sex messy and his hazel eyes were glossy, bloodshot drunk. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  “Hey Remy,” a guy called, dragging my attention away from drunk Shane to the Prius idling in the driveway. A guy with a brown man bun hung out the open window of the backseat and waved.

  “Oz,” I said, his name finally coming to me. “Hey. How’s it going?”

  “All good. You’ve got my boy, Shane?”

  I let out a sigh. “Yeah, I’ve got him.”

  “Good deal.” He gave me the peace sign and I watched the Prius back out of the driveway then turned my attention to Shane who had somehow stumbled into the Bougainvillea next to the front doorstep when I’d taken my eyes off him.

  “Oh shit.” He got to his feet, rubbing the scratches on his arm, and glared at the innocent plant as if it had attacked him. Dylan was laughing, and I shot him a look that made him laugh harder. Grabbing Shane’s arm, I dragged him inside and slammed the door closed behind him.

  “Hi Firefly.” He gave me the sweetest smile and tugged a lock of my hair. Adorable drunk Shane had come out to play. “I could use a drink.”

  “Catch you later,” Dylan said, heading toward the garage.

  “You’re going out?” I called after him.

  “I have plans.”

  I didn’t think that was true, but he left quickly, and in true Dylan fashion he didn’t waste his breath on greetings or goodbyes. Neither did Shane who had stumbled to the kitchen and was banging around the cupboards.

  “Where’s the liquor?” he asked, slamming another cupboard shut.

  I grabbed him a bottle of water from the refrigerator and pressed it into his hand. His brow furrowed, and I tried not to notice how adorable he looked with his disheveled hair and the puzzled look on his face like he’d never seen a bottle of water before. I reminded myself that I was mad at him and he was drunk.

  Was I mad at him? I wasn’t even sure anymore. Our relationship was in ruins. A total disaster. How naïve of me to think I could come back here and find a way to make things better.

  “Water?”

  “You love water,” I said, picking up my glass of wine from the coffee table on our way out to the patio with him close on my heels. My palms were starting to sweat, and I needed something to do with my hands. Like slide them under his T-shirt and run them over his smooth golden skin and six-pack abs.

  No. I didn’t want to do that.

  I flicked on the pool lights and dimmed the living room lights. Mood lighting, for what I wasn’t sure. Shane plopped down on one of the patio sofas and propped his feet on the table. I sat on the sofa cate-corner to him. Getting too close seemed like a bad idea. He stared at the vines twisted in the rafters and the Moroccan lanterns hanging above our heads then out at the pool before his eyes found me. “Nice place.”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe this is Dylan’s life. It’s so different from the way we grew up.” But then, I didn’t need to tell Shane. He was one of the few people who knew that. He had been there, and he had seen it all.

  “You’re so far away. Come closer.” He patted the seat next to him then his lap. “This’d be better.”

  “I’m close enough.”

  “Are you?” He smirked.

  We needed music. Or something. It was so quiet you could hear the crickets chirping and the hum of the motor in the swimming pool. I slid my cell phone out of my pocket and scrolled through my music. Nothing felt right so I hit random play. Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” piped from the surround sound. Good enough. I tossed my cell phone on the table.

  “Your music still hasn’t caught up to the twenty-first century,” Shane said, sliding further down on the sofa.

  “I’m still stuck in the past.” He didn’t comment on the double meaning in those words.

  “Firefly. Where’ve you been?” The corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes were so sad it made my heart ache. “How’s the world been treating you?”

  It used to be me asking him where he had been and what he had been doing. Begging for details of the places he’d traveled, of the adventures he’d had while he was away. Shane used to tell me about the waves he surfed, about the beaches and the food and the scenery. He used to tell me stories about Tahiti and Bali and South Africa. About the Great White that had come too close to the shore, so the officials had canceled his heats for the day. About getting towed out when the waves were too big to paddle out. He had surfed the big waves and he had traveled the world. Swam with dolphins. Cliff dived in Hawaii. Bungee jumped off a bridge in Australia. Once upon a time, Shane had been fearless. Once upon a time, Shane had been an optimist.

  I toyed with the stem of my wine glass, not sure what to tell him. I’d wanted to talk to him about everything but not like this. Not when he was drunk. I didn’t know how much he’d remember tomorrow.

  “I live in New York City. In a loft in Tribeca. I used to try to picture you there, but I never could. Maybe that was why I liked it.”

  “So you could forget me?”

  “No. I never forgot you. It was just easier to be in a place with no memories. I think you would have hated living there. It’s too crowded for you. A concrete jungle. And not close enough to the ocean.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “No.”

  He nodded like he already knew that and fiddled with the dials on his watch. Shane wore a watch now—a diver’s watch—he never used to wear one. Funny how he’d chosen to keep track of time now that his dad was running out of it.

  “You live with a rock star.” He swept his arm in the air and let it fall to his side. “Everyone wants to be a rock star. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Tell me about your rock star boyfriend, Remy.”

  “I live with a friend who happens to be a rock star.” Bastian wasn’t a rock star when we met. He was still a struggling musician, playing seedy clubs and bars in LA.

  “Are you sleeping with this friend?”

  “Bastian and I… we’re not… it’s not like that.” We had almost slept together once in LA when we were both really
drunk but thankfully, Bastian had passed out and it had never happened. Sex with Bastian would have ruined our friendship. Ruined me. For Bastian, sex was just physical. He was a hit and run kind of guy and saved his emotions for his music.

  “What’s it like then?” he asked, his eyes on the pool that glowed under the lights.

  “This is what you want to know? After seven years apart, you want to know if I’m sleeping with Bastian.”

  “Yep,” he said, popping the P. “That’s what I want to know, Remy.”

  It pissed me off that of all the things he could have asked about me, that was the only thing he really wanted to know. “How many girls have you slept with in the past year?”

  “One.” He held up his index finger and waved it in the air like a flag.

  One. One girl who wasn’t me. I wasn’t expecting it to hurt as much as it did, but I should have known better. I’d always hated the idea of him with other girls. I hadn’t even planned to ask but now I was going down this path too. “Did you… do you love her?”

  “I’ve only loved one girl. She was the siren and I was the sailor. We all know how that story ended.” Loving me had been a curse, not a blessing. “Do you love the rock star?”

  Honesty was my new thing, and I didn’t want to lie to Shane. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t, so I chose this opportunity to tell the truth. He probably wouldn’t remember this conversation anyway. “Yes. But not the way I loved you. I love him as a friend and I care about him. He was there for me when I was really messed up and we’ve been through a lot of tough years together, as friends. And no, we’re not sleeping together.”

  I wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear. I wasn’t sure why this was the road we’d chosen to go down. Was he angry that I had gone on with my life without him? I took a sip of my wine, tempted to chug it. He moved on to his next line of questioning.