Recklessly

by A. J. Sand

  “You ride a motorcycle. A freakin’ unsecure, uncovered crotch rocket that could toss you fifty feet on a really bad day and kill you. You don’t subscribe to what the world expects from you, even when maybe you should. And you don’t care what most people think. You do whatever it is you want. You live your life moment to moment. And I fucking love that about you.” Wes turned to look at the guy Lana was with. “We fuck…we fuck…” he said a little too loudly before turning back to her.

  “Wes…” Lana cautioned, but the corners of her mouth pushed up just slightly, and he wanted to kiss her so badly.

  He brushed his lips right up against hers and kept speaking, though much quieter now. “We fuck each other senseless. Everywhere. I’m thinking about it now and I want to put you up against that wall, and watch your eyes roll back into your head, I want your nails to dig into my skin, I want to feel how tight and wet you are. I want to hear you come. I want to fuck you senseless right now. Even though I usually can’t move afterward, and I can’t breathe…and still all I want to do is get back in and do it some more. And I always…” He trailed off when she gasped from the dig of his fingertips into her side. “…I always have the taste of you inside my mouth.”

  “So, we’re just going to pretend like you’re not you and I’m not me?” she asked.

  “The only thing we are, is reckless, baby. And that’s perfect.” Wes pressed his lips to hers fully in a quick kiss.

  “Wes,” she moaned after a smile, gathering the front of his shirt in a fist, and he tightened his hands over her waist then kissed her again, not ready to let her go or give her a moment to find a reason to refute what he was saying.

  “So, let’s be each other’s drop from the helicopter, and the plummet into the pit of the ocean. Let’s be each other’s free fall. ‘Cause I’m in love with you, Lana Marie Langston; I think you’re in love with me too, and for people like us, what the hell is more reckless than that?”

  “Thank you, man,” Wes said to the cab driver when he pulled up in front of his house. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he was hopeful it was Lana, but the screen said Dad. He slammed the cab door shut after he handed the driver cash and a tip as he pressed the phone to his ear.

  “Hey—” Noise immediately cut through. It was just harsh voices riddled with expletives, and Wes immediately knew the call was accidental. His parents were arguing, spewing vile words to each other, and he couldn’t make all of them out but their tones were sufficient enough to figure out that they weren’t being friendly. How could two people who cared so much for him and Abel, who could be nothing but loving and supportive and kind to them, be so hateful to each other and feel no desire to change the situation?

  Wes shook his head as he ended the call, hoping he wasn’t in for a night of constant calls. He filled with dread when he remembered that there was a voicemail that had probably captured one of their arguments earlier. Don’t shoulder it. Don’t let it get to you. Let it go. But he wasn’t Abel. The only upside to doing this as an adult was that alcohol made for better treatment than playing G.I. Joes. Wes ambled to the cabinet in the kitchen for the bottles of liquor they kept there, went back to the couch with tequila in tow, and watched two shows on his DVR. His parents combined with the run-in with Lana had really made for a shitty night in general. But a great one for drunk texting. He pulled his phone from his back pocket.

  Wes: Me ant every Th/ingI said I miss

  Wes: You s o muc

  Wes: muuc.h Lan A

  Wes: Lana Mess yo,u

  Wes: Miss

  The front door opened suddenly and Wes shoved his phone between the cushions when Abel, Dylan and Charlotte walked into the house. Charlotte laughed when her eyes landed on him, but the other two were far less amused.

  “Are you still drinking?” Dylan asked, her hands propped on her hips.

  “I didn’t…yet…” Wes tried to get up and collapsed back to the couch as the room tilted.

  “I’m over it,” Abel said in a mocking tone.

  “Eat me,” Wes replied.

  “Abel…help me…” Dylan motioned to him. Hoisting Wes up, they dragged him up the stairs and straight into his room. After they dumped him in his bed, Abel just shook his head at him, maybe in pity, maybe in disgust, but he didn’t speak to either of them at all before he left.

  “You’re a hypocritical prick, Abel!” Wes yelled. “Jamie has a boyfriend and that didn’t stop you!”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up!” Abel yelled back through the wall. “Drunk dummy.”

  “My brother is mad at me,” Wes said, a bit amused, but he got solemn when he turned to her. “Are you mad at me, Dyl? Did I kill your night?” He peeled off his shirt and tossed it into the laundry basket as Dylan pulled another out of his drawer.

  “Of course not. But I don’t like seeing you like this. What the hell happened after Tahiti?” she asked as she walked back to the bed and sat.

  “She’s been ignoring me. Tonight, she said I was crowding her and she needed some space. We’re not exclusive, so it’s fine, but I’ve never had a girl I wasn’t even dating break up with me. Those were breakup words.” Wes scoffed. “She was acting like I was her ex or something, you know?”

  “Uh…don’t act like she’s the only one treating it like a breakup, Mr. I Can Do All Those Shots in Under Ten Minutes.”

  Yeah, she was right about that. “I drunk texted her too. Fuck. Okay, the shit got to me. It is getting to me.” Wes put on the shirt Dylan had gotten for him. “Fuck, Dylie, I want her. I want her so bad. To myself. And it’s stupid to go down this route because anybody would look at this and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got the perfect situation. You get to sleep with a beautiful girl, who gets you so well, without ever having to take her to dinner or stay up late on the phone with her, and she’s really okay with that because she’s not anxious to do that stuff with you either. So why are you trying to ruin it,’ but I can’t talk myself out of not wanting more. I’m in love with her. And I saw it in her eyes. She loves me, too, and she’s trying to talk herself out of it.”

  Intoxicated or not, he’d seen her putting up a wall. Ms. Glutton For An Orgasm was also Ms. Stingy With the Feels.

  Dylan placed her hand on top of his, a sympathetic expression settling on her face before she spoke in a frank tone. “Sounds like she’s afraid…or she’s afraid and actually trying to get over it, Deuce. That’s a reality you might have to deal with, but I’m thinking it’s the first, though.”

  “I think it’s the first, too.” Wes put his head on her lap. “I just want to try, Dyl…but I’m not going to be some puppy dog following her around if this isn’t what she wants. I just want to try.”

  “Okay. And I think you should. But if she explicitly tells you to leave her alone, you know you have to quit, right?”

  “Jesus, Dyl, I’m not a stalker!”

  “I know, but guys can think a girl is playing hard to get when she’s not. Just make sure there’s a point when you’ll give up. This isn’t the movies…‘cause sometimes those romantic gestures border on restraining order-eligible. ”

  Wes laughed. “Oh, definitely. And I’m broken up about this, but I’m not about to get under the covers with the lights out and listen to Kai White slow jams, either.” He sighed after Dylan chuckled. “But what do you think I should do?”

  “No idea, puddin’.”

  “Speaking of movies, though, didn’t that guy in that one movie all you girls like do something really cheesy but romantic, I guess? Build a house and write letters for a long time? The guy with the wife with Alzheimer’s who’s telling the story?”

  Dylan leaned back against his headboard and smirked. “The Notebook? For someone so foggy on the details you seem to know a lot about the plot.”

  Wes laughed. “I spend time with tons of women! It may have come up once or twice…or watched once or twice... with me in the room. Okay, I watched it voluntarily.” He shut his eyes to stop the room from spinning. “So, how’d Kai win you over fin
ally?”

  “Honestly, he had me from the moment we met, but…” Dylan got silent for a moment as she pondered further. “…When it came down to it, I had to figure out on my own that I had something to lose. I had something really, really wonderful to lose. For Lana, maybe that wouldn’t work. She seems like the type who’ll need to see she actually has something really, really wonderful to gain.”

  Chapter 9 Believe

  It started with the picture of her he took on the beach.

  A picture he thought was too beautiful to stay on his camera. So, he approached one of the artists on the Venice Beach Boardwalk after surfing one day with a proposition to sketch and paint it for payment. He wanted to give it to her. And then an idea blossomed. Lana understood books, pictures, drawings and paintings, because art was the language she spoke most fluently. It was the language through which she could be reached. So, he pored over some of his favorite books and even enlisted, Dylan and Odette, “the (pretty much) marrieds,” looking for a way to speak love to her through art and literature.

  Eventually, he chose five stories, each of which the artist would depict in separate drawings and he would send them to her with the books. He had never considered himself a romantic, and Wes had never wooed a woman before, but he decided if he was going to do it, he was going to go all out. It was the only way he knew how to do anything, anyway.

  Five drawings. Five drawings and then he would give up like he’d told Dylan, if Lana didn’t respond to him. And so far, she hadn’t returned a single text, so he wasn’t getting his hopes up. If she didn’t send the first drawing back, he’d continue until he reached his self-imposed time limit.

  He mailed a drawing of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice first. The perfect story of how two people ended up in a place, in love, so far from where they had started. The next drawing was of Odysseus and Penelope, from The Odyssey, where Penelope waited for the love of her life to return for twenty years, the ultimate story of sacrifice and taking the chance that he would return to her. He sent the third drawing, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre because he had always admired Jane’s unwillingness to accept a life as Rochester’s mistress after finding out he was still married. He loved plucky women, like Lana, even if she was breaking his heart right now. Orpheus and Eurydice were in the last drawing he mailed, and definitely the most tragic, but it felt like the most poignant for Wes’ feelings. As the myth went, Orpheus missed his wife so much after her death that he ventured to the Underworld to beg Hades to let her return to the natural world. Hades agreed, though, with a caveat that Orpheus not look back at her as she was trailing him until they were above ground. Orpheus looked anyway. He wanted her so badly; he was willing to risk breaking the rules, willing to take the chance, regardless of what might happen. The last drawing, the one of her, was contingent on how receptive she was to the others. Its unveiling was dependent on her now.

  It pained him to be ignored—still no retreating beneath the covers in his dark room—but she didn’t send any of the drawings back. Not one. But maybe she’s not even looking at them, he thought each day when his phone had no acknowledgement from her. The weather sucked in L.A., one of those random rainy times that made everyone in the city freak out, so he, Abel and Christian made an impromptu trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for several days with a bunch of their filming buddies. He passed the days with training and surfing, keeping a schedule that was as busy as possible, staying in the water as much as possible, pushing himself harder each day, so that he would be so exhausted, he would fall asleep instantly and not stay awake mentally toiling over her.

  He laughed at his friends’ jokes, he drank at the bars, he flirted with fellow tourists at their hotel, but none of it could drown out the anguish and uncertainty that was so settled in his core. And all he could do was push his body so the pain on the outside could be bad enough to forget the one on the inside. After a week of doing that, he was drained on the drive home from the airport and passed out in the backseat.

  A hand collided with the side of his face, jolting him awake. “Bro!” He took another hard hit to his jaw. Several actually, before he managed to swing back from his supine position.

  “Fuck, Christian…seriously?”

  “Wake up! Trust me, you’re gonna wanna be awake right now.”

  A heavy downpour was encasing the car and they had slowed, and through the nearly opaque windows he made out the neighborhood; they were a few houses down from home. Wes’ eyes widened suddenly. Lana. Lana! Her bike was parked out front. She was sitting on the stoop, knees against her chest, drenched and making no attempt to shield herself from the rain.

  Unanticipated anger coursed through him, though he stared at her like she was some long sought relic. Wes swung the door open even though the car was still rolling very slowly, and he jumped out and nearly lost his balance when his feet hit the ground.

  “Whoa, Wesley! Dude, calm your tits,” Abel said, jerking the car to a full stop. To Christian, he said, “My brother is fucking insane. My side of the egg must’ve been the one where all the sense was.”

  “Stay out here for a few,” he shouted back to them before walking up to her. “Oh, now you show up? Now, you show up?!” Wes fumbled with his keys as he swung the front door open, and she stomped inside after him just as Abel and Christian pulled away.

  “You are so goddamn infuriating, Wes Elliott. We had a nice, simple thing—” Her voice went dead as her gaze floated up the wall to the painting of her: windblown brown hair trapped between her fingers, legs stretched out in the sand, expression pensive but sweet as she stared out into the ocean like every hope and dream she ever had would be brought on shore in the waves. She stared at it, her hold on her bag loosened, and it flopped to the floor.

  The room was scary silent. She was still looking at it, and his heart was racing as he watched her, his exasperation melting away. “It’s the only way I knew I could talk to you…and you’d listen, Lana.”

  She spun to face him. “This isn’t what we wanted, Wes… This isn’t—”

  “It isn’t…but fuck what I wanted,” Wes said as he took steps toward her. “You know what I want now? Everything you have. Everything you are. That’s. What. I. Want. I want the way you look at me. I want the way you touch me. I want to hold you. I want to talk to you every day…about books, about nothing. I want to hear you laugh….” His gaze pulled down her wet clothing, his eyes catching how her skin was almost visible through her drenched top. He pressed her hips against the wall behind her, felt her hands settle on top of his as she bit her lip. Desire so potent it seemed to slow time and heighten his senses as he took her in, poured into his blood. “I want the way we kiss and fuck like the world will end if we don’t. I want to tell you I love you, ‘cause I do…I love you, and I want you to tell me you love me…or you don’t love me.” Wes narrowed his eyes on her. “Tell me you don’t love me, Lan. Say it,” he demanded. “Say you don’t love me. Just say it and walk out the door.”

  Lana’s eyes narrowed, too, in momentary defiance that cut through her own look of passion. “We weren’t supposed to get here...” She pushed him away from her. “…And you started talking about me being fucking perfect. Fucking perfect for you and—”

  “Say you don’t love me.”

  Wes caged her back against the wall, leaned in closer than he had been before, and saw her lips trembling from his nearness, felt the press of her nails in his arms. He brought his lips down hard against hers before she could even take the breath necessary to respond. Lana reciprocated the kiss, matching the intensity he’d started. She gripped the back of his damp neck with one hand and fisted his shirt with the other, drawing him against her. Wes suddenly pulled back, leaving her lips puckered and eyes closed.

  When she opened them, he leaned in again, just letting his lips graze hers without any pressure. “If you say it, know that I won’t believe you,” he said as he stepped back and gestured for her to exit the home. “You can go, but I d
on’t fuckin’ believe you, Lana!” he yelled as she slammed the door behind her.

  It took a moment for everything that had transpired in the few minutes to register. She left. Holy shit. But she hadn’t just left, she’d crushed him under her shoe on her way out. Wes moved to the couch, stunned, and sat with his head in his hands. He had taken the leap, gone down the rabbit hole (again) and it was over. The good thing they had was destroyed. The good thing they could’ve had was ruined. Wes looked around the dark house, listened to the rain pick up, and reluctantly dragged his eyes to her portrait, the only face he’d been able to see for weeks. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  The emotions he’d been stifling for weeks roared up to the surface and he choked on them. His throat tightened, heat flared at the top of his esophagus and his eyes stung. He wasn’t a crier though, so he just had to wait for the feeling to subside. He stood and pulled his wet t-shirt over his head. Shower. Bed. Nothing else. But a thought suddenly pulsed through his mind as he tossed the shirt to the floor. He hadn’t heard her bike pull off.

  She’s still out there. She’s still here. Wes dashed for the front door and swung it open to find her leaning on his SUV. Soaked, so much so that her jeans were several shades darker, her t-shirt was completely see-through, and her eyes were red. His heart jumped so high, he was sure he had actually tasted it. She’s still here. She’s still here.

  “Lana?” Wes screamed, shivering from the cold rain coating his exposed skin. He was mad. He was happy. He was relieved. He was upset. He was feeling so much at once, he went numb.