Reckless Hearts

by Sean Olin

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.

  23

  Worst Christmas ever. Those are the words that went through Elena’s mind, over and over again, as she stood on the grass at the edge of the lawn watching the police wrangle Matty down the front walkway and into their cruiser. First Jake—poor Jake—had proclaimed his love for her and she’d inadvertently broken his heart. Now this.

  Her father was there, too, fists on hips, his usually perfectly greased-back hair hanging in wet spikes down over his forehead. He shouted an unending string of curses at Matty in Spanish, punctuating them every once in a while with an accusatory jab of his finger toward the cop car. “How dare you!” he shouted. “How dare you steal from me! You think I don’t notice what’s going on in my own house?!”

  She should have seen it coming. This morning, before she’d skipped out to see Jake, she’d noticed that her father had been brooding like a king, growing brittler and barkier by the hour. Three or four days were about as long as Matty could last before everyone got fed up and wanted him gone. Whatever he’d done this time, she was sure, he deserved this.

  The saddest part was that Nina’s clothes and hair products and personal accessories were strewn all over the lawn and she herself was slumped on the concrete lip of the porch, sobbing her eyes out. Elena didn’t have to be told what must have gone down—she didn’t want to be told; it was too depressing. Nina pleading with her father, pulling on his arm, begging, lying about how Matty would make it up to him, maybe even claiming that it was her who’d been stealing. Her father looking at his pregnant daughter and giving her an ultimatum. Either stop covering for him, stop enabling him, or you can leave with him. It’s your choice.

  And Nina, being Nina, rising to the bait because no one, not even her father, got to speak to her li
ke that without a fight. Then the inevitable moment when Dad goes to slap her and, seeing her pregnant belly, stops himself in horror. Everyone jumping and banging around the house like firecrackers, popping off in a cacophony of noise. Dad ripping the drawers out of Nina’s dresser and dumping her stuff out the front door.

  Worst Christmas ever. No doubt about it.

  Elena couldn’t help but wish that Jake could see this scene with Matty and Nina, this constant craziness and resentment, everyone yelling all the time, unable to control their passions, unable to stop themselves from hurting one another. Maybe then he’d understand why she couldn’t seriously consider him romantically. She knew she could be as hotheaded as the rest of the Rios family. Why would she ever want to subject him to this?

  She tried to make herself small. She crouched under the magnolia tree at the edge of the property and hoped they didn’t see her. But inevitably, they would, no doubt about that.

  Crawling away, she darted around the bush that marked the edge of old Mrs. Rodriguez’s property and then she popped up and raced down the block.

  On another day, Elena would have called Jake. But she couldn’t do that. She didn’t want to do that. It would be cruel. It would be like she was rubbing his face in it somehow.

  She dialed the number she had for Harlow. It didn’t even ring. Straight to an electronic auto-message. “The caller you are trying to reach is unavailable at this time.”

  It figured.

  His words from yesterday echoed in her head. “Where are we going?” she’d asked. And he’d responded, “Anywhere. Everywhere.” Yes, Harlow, she thought. That’s a great idea. Let’s run away.

  Race-walking up the street, barely looking where she was going, she checked her AnAmerica account on her phone. Maybe she could reach him that way.

  One new message. It was from Harlow. Just the sight of his flaming motorcycle glyph evoked the thrilling sting where he’d bitten her lip.

  “Hey, babe, sorry I had to jet like that yesterday.”

  “It’s cool. Shit happens,” she wrote. “Is everything okay?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. You miss me yet?”

  “I was just thinking about you, actually,” she responded. Then, because she needed someone to tell her she was good, she typed, “And you? Do you miss me?”

  “Sure.”

  He was playing it cool. Or maybe he just was cool. But she’d take what she could get from him right now.

  “I think we’ve got some unfinished business, yeah?”

  “Definitely,” she typed. Then she added, “My lip still hurts.”

  “Good pain or bad pain?”

  She imagined Harlow’s voice whispering in her ear and a flash of heat rushed up her neck. It felt slightly dangerous. It scared her a little.

  But not enough to make her stop wanting him.

  “Good pain.”

  Romance was a treacherous game. All the more proof she could never get involved with Jake.

  Another message came in from Harlow. “You around New Year’s Eve? Wanna go to a party?”

  “Maybe.”

  This seemed like a good place to break it off. She slid her phone into her pocket, abruptly ending the conversation with Harlow, thinking, Two can play this game of cat and mouse.

  Plopping down cross-legged on the grass, Elena watched the colored lights strung around the archway over the door of the house on the corner blink on and off and on and off and on and off. Jake’s song floated through her head. The one he’d written for her. It really was a beautiful song.

  She thought about how vulnerable his face had looked as he’d sung it and she felt guilty about the way she was drawn to Harlow. It didn’t seem fair. She hadn’t chosen to feel the sparks with him. It had just happened. And she couldn’t help resenting Jake for putting her in a situation now where just by being herself she’d inadvertently become the kind of callous, soulless, selfish girl that the two of them had always hated.

  24

  Even as he knocked on Arnold Chan’s bright red front door, being careful not to jar the wreath that had been loosely mounted on it, Jake told himself he shouldn’t be doing this.

  He’d been bouncing back and forth between deep, drowning sadness and a frantic anger—at himself, at Elena, at Harlow, who, he’d decided, must be the real reason Elena had rejected him.

  He knew this was crazy. He knew that the situation was much more complicated than Elena just liking some other guy. But he had to blame someone and he couldn’t blame himself and to blame Elena hurt his heart too much. So why not blame Harlow? The guy—or whoever it was catfishing Elena—wan’t just hurting her. He was hurting Jake, too, now.

  His adrenaline rushed like a waterfall. One word and only one word reverberated in his skull. Harlow. Harlow. Fucking Harlow. Harlowharlowharlow. How dare this guy take his Elena away from him?

  He heard shuffling inside. Then the door opened a crack, pulling against the chain lock, and Arnold peered out at him under his side-parted hair with one bleary eye.

  “Jake!”

  Arnold shut the door again and unlatched it. Then, throwing the door wide, he gazed out at Jake with an overeager smile.

  “I can’t believe you’re here. Wow.” Arnold’s expression went vacant, like he was starstruck. Then he said, “Wow. You want to play Xbox?”

  Even though it was winter break, he’d covered his doughy body with his usual uniform of pleated tan pants, gray polo shirt, and rumpled Windbreaker, the same exact thing he wore every single day.

  “I need your help, Arnold,” Jake said, struggling to play it cool. He was conscious of the fact that Arnold fell somewhere mildly on the autistic scale and he didn’t want to upset or overly excite him. He knew from experience not to make any promises he couldn’t keep. To do so risked confusing and agitating the kid.

  “Okay,” Arnold responded, much too quickly.

  “Do you want to know what it is first?”

  Arnold thought about this for a second. “Yeah. I should know what it is, shouldn’t I? But I want to help you, Jake. How cool would it be to be able to help you?”

  “Well, first, how about we go inside.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Good idea.”

  Arnold stepped back from the stoop and let Jake enter the meticulously tasteful foyer with its pale-blue-and-yellow striped wallpaper, its polished mahogany table and antique mirror, like an imitation of a Victorian drawing room.

  “Are your parents home?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Jake glanced up the stairs and into the fully dressed dining room, seeing no one. Still, he didn’t want Arnold’s parents to know what he was up to, so he said, “Should we go somewhere private?”

  “We can go to my lair,” Arnold said.

  He led Jake down the carpeted stairs to the basement, and then through the unfinished space to a dark room at the back where he’d set up his electronic command center. There were three computer screens lined up side by side. On one, Arnold was streaming a Civilization V mod. On the next his Second Life avatar appeared to be sleeping. On the third, he’d been playing some sort of medieval strategy game with a timer saying he had 8.4 hours to wait before his next move. They sat down on the metal folding chairs in front of these screens, and Arnold, still awkwardly eager, still a little too pliant, gazed at Jake, waiting to be told what to do.

  Jake took a deep breath. He felt weird using Arnold’s adoration like this. The guy had a hard time of it. He’d had his one moment of notoriety, after inadvertently being responsible for projecting that Jules Turnbull sex tape at graduation last year. For a while people had made fun of him for this, until they went back to ignoring his existence, and Jake had always felt distantly protective of him. But he didn’t know anybody else who could possibly help him.

  “So,” he said. “We might be breaking the law a little bit. You know how to hack?”

  “I think so,” Arnold said shakily.

  “I need you to find out everything there is to kno
w about somebody. Anything incriminating. Anything I can use against him.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh,” Arnold said, not challenging Jake any further.

  “He lives in Dream Point,” Jake said. “Or near Dream Point, anyway. Driving distance. His name is Harlow. I don’t know his last name. And he hangs out sometimes on the website AnAmerica. Is that enough to go on? Can you help me?”

  Arnold’s brow pinched slightly for a moment and he glanced at his various computer screens. Jake wasn’t sure if he was concerned about doing something illegal or about letting him down. He reminded himself that Arnold’s greatest pride was his external hard drive full of stolen movies.

  “Arnold?” he said, feeling like an asshole. “I really need the help. I’ll owe you a huge favor.”

  Arnold blushed and rushed his words. “Will you write a song about me?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Jake.

  “Wow,” Arnold said. “Wow. Okay. Wow.” He furrowed his brow, and then, in that abrupt, awkward way that always sounded nervously half-rehearsed to Jake, he said, “I can track down this Harlow character for you. He must have done some very bad things to get on your wrong side. We’ll track him down and hunt him like the dog that he is.”

  25

  Ever since Harlow had picked her up, Elena had been feeling surges of light-headedness, like she’d drunk too much champagne or floated too high into thin air. She felt it speeding around the corner as they raced away from her house on the motorcycle. She felt it at the stoplight on Pelican, where he’d twisted back and given her a peck on the cheek. She’d felt it the one time she’d dared to loosen her grip on his waist enough to lean back and gaze up at the stars streaming past above them. It wasn’t that she was drunk—she was stone-cold sober—more like, she was overwhelmed by the heady fact that this day she’d been dreaming of for a whole week now had finally arrived.

  She felt it again now, as they rolled into the packed parking lot of StarFish, the newest, coolest hotel on the strip. The slick, black facade of the hotel glowed purple and green from the artful night lighting. The place seemed like a magical palace, like everyone who set foot inside would be transformed into a refined, sophisticated, infinitely more interesting person than they’d been before they arrived.