Reckless Hearts

by Sean Olin

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Elena flicked her finger across the hair on his arm. Jake wondered if she realized how intimate the gesture was. A few moments later, she allowed herself to wrap her hand around his arm and hold him tighter, massaging his skin. Just like she would if he were her boyfriend, but it was also possible that she was oblivious to the erotic way he was experiencing her touch.

  He wondered what she would do if he allowed himself to shift his hand from where it sat on his knee to her smooth tan thigh like he desperately wanted to.

  He didn’t dare.

  He didn’t dare move a muscle, didn’t dare do any single thing that might bring this exquisite moment to an end.

  35

  Elena felt the breeze on her face.

  As she pedaled her fixed-gear bike past the shadows of the stilt houses of the Slats, making her way toward the slope that would take her home, she felt a kind of calm she hadn’t experienced in weeks.

  It was funny. She’d missed the stability she felt in knowing Jake was always there. What she hadn’t realized was that she missed all these other things about him. The way he moved his long, knobby arms around, not knowing where to put them. His sad, soulful face and the way, when he became inspired—like he did today talking about Comic-Con—it would betray with a mischievousness so subtle that nobody but her could see. She imagined him with elf ears on his big round head and laughed out loud at the image.

  Most of all, she’d missed his caution—the careful way he absorbed the details of her life and made observations she knew she could trust. Just talking to Jake calmed her down, even if nothing got resolved. He hadn’t given her any specific advice—he hadn’t needed to—but she knew now that she was strong and sharp enough to persuade her father to give Nina another chance. She’d slather on the charm. If need be, she’d put herself on the line and tell him that he could blame her for whatever trouble Nina caused this time.

  Turning up Sunrise Avenue, which cut diagonally across town on a slow rise until it eventually looped around Seminole Park and was the quickest way to get to Greenvale Street, she leaned into her handlebars and let herself grin like a delirious fool.

  The whole thing had felt so warm and safe. So intimate. So natural. Was this what Nina had meant when she’d told Elena that Jake was in love with her? That he’d accept whatever craziness was going on in her life without any judgment? Well, there was also the way he looked at her. She’d noticed today that his eyes lingered slightly longer than they had to on her bare thighs, that he had surreptitiously sized up her breasts. He’d desired her, no question. And she had to admit that she liked the feeling of being looked at by him. She liked the thought that he might go home and replay his time with her today, that he might ache for her and wish he could touch her and kiss her like he wanted to. She liked the power of knowing that he wouldn’t dare, that he was powerless to do anything with his love for her. It was all very erotic in a kind of cruel psychosexual way, and she felt a little bit wrong just noticing it. She didn’t want to ever become the kind of person who would take advantage of Jake’s desire.

  As she made her way up the hill, her legs burned a little more with each turn of the pedals. She crossed A Street Southwest against the light. She was out of the Slats now, in the no-man’s-land between the two neighborhoods where the blocks went on forever and the boxy beige buildings of Maritime Industrial Park sprawled like tombstones. Halfway home.

  She wondered if Jake had noticed her finger on his arm. She hadn’t meant anything sexual by it. She’d just felt close to him. But thinking about it now, she couldn’t deny that it had been sort of sexy. Had she been teasing him? She hadn’t meant to tease him.

  Her phone vibrated in the front pocket of her jean shorts.

  Slipping off the pedals, she let the bike roll to a stop and planted one foot on the pavement, straddling the bike while she pulled the phone out to see who was calling. Jake? Nina?

  No. It was Harlow.

  A flare went off in her head, sending her reeling, erasing all thoughts of Jake.

  “Jesus,” she said, when she answered. “I thought you’d died.” She was only half joking.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet. How’s tricks? I’ve missed you.”

  He was trying to play it off like his disappearing act was a normal thing to do. No way was she going to let him off the hook this easily.

  “What the hell, Harlow?” she said. “You turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight and the only explanation I get is ‘I’ve missed you’?”

  He didn’t respond at first. She could hear him struggling with how to go about explaining himself. “I wanted to call earlier, but . . . it wasn’t safe.”

  “You could at least tell me what’s going on . . . Harlow?” Had she lost him again?

  “Yeah. I’m here,” he said, finally. He was whispering now. “I’m trying to figure how where to start. I guess, with that guy I saw at the hotel on New Year’s Eve. It’s crazy. He’s crazy. He’s all hooked in with the Cuban mob. He thinks I owe him a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Oh shit.” Elena’s heart raced. “What did you do? How did that happen?”

  “Nothing! I don’t know!” Harlow whispered emphatically. “I met him in a club in Miami one night and he seemed like a good guy. We had a couple of drinks and talked about baseball and suddenly he was accusing me of being involved with some other gang he was at war with. He went totally insane. Started waving a gun around. And he’s been after me ever since. Somehow he got my number. And my address. A guy like that, he really would kill me. That’s why I haven’t been in touch. I had to leave town. And I can’t come home unless I give him the money or . . . I don’t know.”

  Her brain couldn’t process what he was telling her fast enough. The whole thing sounded far-fetched until she remembered the stories her father used to tell her about how ruthless the mob had been when he was growing up in Miami, how he’d had to watch his back every second of the day and be prepared to fight over the smallest, most inconsequential insult.

  “God, that’s horrible,” said Elena. “You should have called me. I’ve been worried. I mean, I thought we . . .” She stopped herself from saying anything embarrassing about relationships and her own hurt expectations. Instead she said, “I’m on your side, remember? And didn’t you tell me I was the only one you could trust?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I’ve got issues. Listen—”

  She wasn’t done chastising him. Suddenly she understood how Nina felt with Matty. She just had to get it out of her system. “If you trust me, you shouldn’t disappear like that. Or anyway, you should take me with you.”

  “You’re right. It’s just, it’s dangerous. I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

  “Where are you? I want to see you.”

  “That’s not a good idea right now. I mean, it’s impossible. Listen, I’ve only got a couple minutes to talk.” She could hear an urgent, anxious edge in his voice now. “I need to know if I can really trust you.”

  “I just told you you could.”

  “Even if things get real? ’Cause shit’s starting to get pretty real right now.”

  “You can trust me, Harlow. I promise.”

  She stood there, still straddling her bike, in the growing darkness, waiting. She was suddenly aware of how empty the street was. How dark. There were streetlamps every fifty yards or so, but anything could be lurking in the darkness between them. She hopped off the bike and began walking it up the hill, eager to get herself locked up safely at home as quickly as possible.

  When he finally spoke again, he said, “I knew I could. It’s just hard to believe. You’re . . . you’re the only one. I’m not used to it.” He paused and she could hear his head spinning in the silence. “Thank you,” he said.

  “So tell me what I can do. Let me help you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve been scrambling to find some way to at least buy myself some time.” “And?”

  “And I’ve figured out who
he’s sent to hurt me. One of them goes to Chris Columbus, actually. I think there might be a way to scare him off. If you’re willing to do one tiny thing for me.”

  “Sure,” Elena said, gulping. “Anything.”

  “Okay. I don’t know the guy’s name, but I know he drives a black Mini with a checkerboard hood . . .”

  36

  The Roderick School’s campus sprawled across fifty acres of wooded hills on the outskirts of Atlanta. Its brick colonial buildings, which reminded the students of the long tradition they were a part of and, theoretically, inspired a sense of pride and respect in them, were clustered around one corner of the estate. The rest of the land was there for strolling, daydreaming, pickup games of soccer and lacrosse, and, if you were Nathaniel, who knew every inch of the place, hiding out among the oaks and smoking cigarettes.

  His favorite spot for this was a shady patch of dirt encircled by trees out past the track field. He and his friends had been coming here since freshman year. They’d carted logs in to use as makeshift chairs. They’d found a squirrel hole in one of the gnarled old oaks in which to hide their cigarettes and their stashes of drugs.

  And just because Nathaniel had been caught flouting the rules once—well, he’d been caught many more times than once, but he’d been suspended once—didn’t mean he had any intention of giving up his vices.

  As he explained to his friend and sometimes client in the Adderall trade, Alex, a stocky guy with dark preppy hair and permanently blushing cheeks, “What’s the point of living if you aren’t having fun while you do it?”

  It the last day before the new semester would start, and they’d snuck out here to avoid the tedium of Sunday-morning chapel. They were sitting next to each other on one of the logs and as he spoke, Nathaniel poked idly at the dirt with a stick he’d picked up somewhere.

  “I don’t know, man,” Alex said. He had a weird way of holding his cigarette like a joint when he smoked, which made him look like a con man, always afraid the cops were around the corner. “I’d be worried that now that you’ve been kicked out once, they’ll do something even worse next time they catch you.”

  “Like what? Call the cops? They can’t call the cops. They’re too afraid of the bad publicity that would create. Anyway, Cameron gave them enough money to build a new campus on Mars if they wanted.”

  “What about college? They could screw you there.”

  “Not likely,” Nathaniel said, laughing scornfully. “I’m a Stanford legacy. There’s a dorm there named after Cameron.” He pulled his flask out of the back pocket of his jeans and took a long pull. “Want some? It’s Grey Goose.”

  “It’s ten in the morning,” said Alex skeptically.

  Nathaniel shrugged and threw back another slug of vodka. He drew a face in the dirt and added shaggy hair to it so it would look vaguely like Jake.

  Alex shook his head in wonder. “Must be nice,” he said. “I’d lose my scholarship in a second if I got caught doing half the shit you get away with.”

  “Yeah, well, you know,” Nathaniel said. He lit another cigarette and took a long satisfying drag. “It’s not all fun and games. Cameron’s planning to torpedo my trust fund.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Totally not kidding. His new wife’s got this son who’s, like . . . I guess Cameron pities the guy or something. Kid can do no wrong.”

  “Dude,” said Alex. “What are you going to do?”

  Nathaniel idly jabbed the sharp end of his stick at the face he’d drawn in the dirt, poking its eyes out, slashing at its mouth. Then he smiled a malevolent smile.

  “I’ve already done it. Bro’s in love with some chicky. A totally naïve, anime geek girl. I fucked her last week. Or let me rephrase that. A friend of mine, ‘Harlow’”—he made air quotes with his fingers as he said the name—“fucked her. I catfished her. Man, you should have seen her. I’m telling you, it felt so good to take her away from him. The power of the penis, brother. She was putty in my hands.”

  Alex chuckled cynically. “And?” he said.

  “And Harlow’s a real bad dude and since she’s a naïve little geeky chicky, she’s fallen totally in love with him. He’s in serious trouble and she’ll do anything to help him. She’s going to annihilate the threat for me.”

  “How?”

  Nathaniel locked eyes with Alex.

  “If I told you that I’d have to kill you.” For a second he held a dead-serious poker face, but then his expression cracked and the self-satisfied smirk that Jake had come to loathe so much spread across his face. “Let’s just say he’s allergic to bees.”

  37

  As Jake drove his shiny new black Mini to school on Monday morning, he marveled again at the Mini’s responsiveness. It seemed to know what he was going to do before he did. Tapping the brake at every stoplight, turning the wheel at every corner, he remembered how much effort the same action would have taken with the Rumbler.

  He felt guilty liking the car so much, like he was betraying his father somehow, though he knew that was silly. When he’d mentioned his reservations about the Mini to his dad on the phone last night, the old man had laughed and said, “Jake, that old Jeep was a piece of shit two years ago when I gave it to you. By now you must have to stick your feet through the rust holes beneath the driver’s seat and drive it Flintstones style. It’s sweet that you’re so worried about my feelings, but take the gift. I would.”

  It was like Jake had been released. Now that he had his dad’s permission to like the Mini, all his sentimentality and weird fears that the Rumbler would feel bad if he abandoned it disappeared just like that.

  Jake wasn’t the kind of guy who generally drove around town with the stereo turned up so loud that the car shook with sound, but as he navigated the twists and turns of Shore Drive, with the beach on one side and the boutiques on the other, he couldn’t help testing what his speakers could do. It was such a novelty—listening to his own music, streaming from his own phone via Bluetooth. Yes, he was listening to the Monsters of Folk rather than the salsa, or hip-hop, or classic rock that usually blared from decked-out speakers, but it still felt good to sing along and tap the beat on the slippery molded steering wheel.

  He turned up Pelican and rolled along past the evenly spaced palm trees in the median.

  He kept noticing more aspects of the experience.

  For example, the soft leather driver’s seat was so cozy. He’d worried that, given how the Mini was so small and he was so tall, he’d have to fold himself like a fan to fit inside, but it turned out there was a lot more space than there appeared to be.

  Or the old-school feel of the small, boxy mirrors.

  And that smell. There was nothing quite like that new-car smell.

  When his phone dinged with a new text message, the sound carried through the car stereo, such an upgrade over the old tape deck system of the Rumbler. He wondered if it was Elena, checking in like she used to do in the morning, wondered if they’d left the discord of Christmas break far enough behind to resume their old rituals.

  Jake was a conscientious driver. Much as he might want to, he resisted checking to see who the text was from. There’d be time for that later, when he got to school. Right now he was too busy savoring how cool he felt driving a Mini Cooper around town, heading to school from the north, where the rich kids lived, rather than from the southwest, where people like him came from.

  He could see Chris Columbus up ahead, the faded tan and blue buildings lined up like shoe boxes. The quads crawling with students searching for their friends. The hill and the glimmering theater complex sitting atop it like some sort of temple.

  He turned onto the unnamed access road that separated the parking lot from the school’s campus, slowing to make way for the students traipsing across it. He peered through the throngs, hoping to see Elena somewhere, but all he saw were people he didn’t know. As he waited for an opening in which he could turn into the lot, he couldn’t help imagining them gawking at him sitting
in his Mini. He felt conspicuous, notable, important in some new mysterious way.

  He crawled through the parking lot looking for a space and finally found one way near the back in the northeast corner. And turning off the engine, he finally checked his text messages.

  Sadly, no word from Elena, but second best, it was Arnold. Finally.

  Jake did a quick survey of the Mini to see if it had accumulated any dirt in the fifteen minutes it had been on the road. A new car was like a new pair of sneakers—you dread the moment that it gets its first scratch. It looked good, though. Still pristine for now.

  Then, hoofing it through the lot, Jake tapped through to see what Arnold had to say.

  “I HAVE THE DROIDS YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR.”

  Oh, Arnold, Jake thought, if only we could all be as awkward as you. He’d thought a lot about the plan he’d hatched with Arnold in the two days since he and Elena had met at the pier. Part of him had felt he should call Arnold off. Now that he and Elena had made up, he didn’t want to do anything that might push her away again. But if his suspicions were true and Harlow was really Nathaniel—God. He had to find out for his own sake as much as Elena’s.

  He wrote Arnold back. “GREAT! MEET FOR LUNCH?”

  “YES,” Arnold responded. Then he added, “YOU WILL BE PLEASED.”

  Jake smiled. It took everything in his power to resist texting Elena right that second to tell her the bad-good news. But no. That would be jumping the gun. And it would upset her. He didn’t want her to think he was back to obsessively prodding her about Harlow.

  He put his phone away. He felt unstoppable. Like he was, at least momentarily, king of the world.

  38

  All morning, Elena had tingled with anticipation, feeling weirdly jittery, as though she were the one in extreme danger.

  She’d been extra-conscious of the larger, tougher Cuban dudes wandering around campus, sizing up each one and wondering if he might be the guy Harlow was worried about. It could be anyone. Maybe some little weasely guy like Matty. And the most unnerving thing was that everyone looked so normal. Nobody was wearing a sign above his head saying, This one, he’s a foot soldier for the Cuban mob. And yet, every guy she walked past felt like a threat.