Drift (Lengths) (8 page)

I drop my head into my hand and try to stop myself from playing out the many, many worst case scenarios that are clawing through my brain.

“Isn’t there something we can do?” Cohen asks, holding his beer up and out like he wants to rally us all to action, storm my law office, and hold Richard hostage until he confesses.

I shrug. “I don’t really know, Cohen. I never considered anything like this happening to me. Now that it has...I just don’t know what to do other than wait.”

“Which is why you’re taking classes at campus,” Cece blurts out before she pinches her guilty lips shut.

I put my beer bottle down slowly. “How did you know that?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “It’s stupid. You have every right to take a class without announcing it to everyone. I just assumed it was a night class or a recertification kind of thing. I never realized—”

“But who told you?” I ask, my thoughts immediately going back to the way Samantha stormed away when she saw Isaac and I walking at the gallery.

I hold in a deep breath. I really don’t need to deal with that kind of conniving.

Cece tugs on one of her curls and finally lets it bounce back into place before she answers. “It was Adam’s lab partner, Cody. He mentioned in passing that he shares an office with Isaac Ortiz, and I guess he mentioned you were in his class.”

“Isaac mentioned me?” I ask, my entire body going hot and sweet over the thought of him and those magnetic green eyes.

“You call your professor ‘Isaac’?” Cohen snorts. “Please don’t tell me we’re gonna have to break in another nerd
-boy like Adam.”

Maren rolls her eyes. “Don’t be irritated just because your sisters weren’t dumb enough to fall for a lazy beach bum like I did.”

Cohen drags her closer to him, snarling and gently biting her neck while she laughs and pushes at him. I want to roll my eyes. I do. I’ve always thought that those big, silly public displays of attention were ridiculous. Richard would never have dreamed of doing more than holding my hand or pecking my cheek in public.

Hell, he wouldn’t have done much more in private unless we were actually having planned sex. And, yes, we did write it in our day-planners, coded as ‘popcorn’ for no reason I c
an remember.

But, watching the easy way Cohen and Maren tangle limbs and press against each other’s skin, I realize I want that. I want what they have. Or my own version of it.

“I’m going to get some, uh, ice. You want to come with me, Lyd?” Cece asks, eyeing our brother and Maren, who are paying no attention to us at all.

I’m glad whatever crap Cece and I had between us has smoothed over. I’m also not interested in watching Maren and Cohen christen our parents’ lawn furniture. My sister and I head into the quiet house. Our parents are in the den, watching movies snuggled on the couch. Ugh. Love is all around me, and I hate feeling like that kind of contentment is out of my reach.

Lydia gestures me to her room, the one we shared for years growing up. I got my own space when the addition was added, but there were many long, giggly night where Cece and I strung frozen juice can phones between our beds and whispered secrets long into the night. Since Cece got her on-campus place and stripped all the posters and knick-knacks she could actually use, what’s left makes the room feel very childish. I sit on the narrow twin bed with the flouncy cream bed skirt and run my hands over the rosebud wallpaper.

“Why didn’t you ever change the wallpaper? Or just paint?” I ask, suddenly wanting to know like it’s the most important question in my life and I absolutely need to know the answer.

Cece drops on the floor, reaches under the bed, and finds a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. She pulls one out, pops it between her lips, and fishes under the bed for a lighter. “I guess I wanted it to stay the same.”

“Why?” I press, accepting a cigarette she hands me. I really don’t smoke at all, but this feels illicit and secretive. Not all that far from hearing Cece’s thin, raspy confessions through the orange juice can when we were just girls.

She lights up, holds the flame out to me, and takes a drag. The cigarette seems stale to me, but I puff on it anyway. “Because it was our room for so long. Maybe I just wanted you to know it was still your room. If you wanted to come back to it.”

I think about my chic teal and black room in the new addition, the one Cece wrinkled her nose at and called an ‘eighties horror show.’ I felt so grown up back then. I take another drag and cough a little.

“I forgot the smoke bothered you.” Cece pops her window screen out and blows the smoke out in a dispersing cloud. “You don’t have to smoke.”

“I want to,” I lie. “I’m sorry I was a bitch at the art show. I was just worried. You know, with the internet, things are forever and all that.”

Her smile is weary. “That’s kind of the point, Lyd. Think of all the art that’s been lost because there was no way to mass share it. I love that what I did will still be around, getting stumbled on, for years to come. Hopefully.” She holds her smoldering cigarette between her lips and ties her hair up in a loopy ponytail. “Forget it anyway. I overreacted. I was being a brat. You know champagne makes me edgy.”

“I’m glad you’re not pissed,” I say, letting my cigarette burn close to the window as I avoid smoking it. I flick a long cylinder of ash and watch it float down into the backyard.   

“Not about that.” Cece pulls her knees up to her chest and frowns. “Lyd, what the hell is going on at work?”

“I don’t know,” I whine. “I feel like I have no option but to wait it out.”

“Are you going nuts?” she asks, taking a long, deep drag. I’m worried about the health of her lungs. How much does she smoke? “I know you like to be in control of stuff.”

I roll my eyes. “You mean I’m anal retentive?”

“You’re
focused.
You graduated magna cum laude and made junior partner by the time you were twenty-four. When
I
was twenty-four I decided to get off my ass after a two year break post-undergrad degree and stop procrastinating about filling out my PhD program paperwork.” She blows out a long breath. “I know we haven’t always gotten along that well, and it’s probably my fault. You’re intimidating, Lyd! And sometimes you’re a goddamn know-it-all.”

“Sometimes I feel like the rest of you have this secret language. Like you rag on each other and joke around, and when I try to get in the mix, I come off sounding like a stuck up egomaniac.”

I think back to the many quips and pokes I was sure would be hilarious, but wound up sending one of my sisters stomping away furious or in tears. Or one of my brothers shaking his head and telling me to tone down the asshole.

Cece stubs out her cigarette, grabs mine, and takes a last, long drag before she stubs it out too.

“It hurts to watch you pretend to smoke. You’re like a horrible after-school special.” She unwraps a Lifesaver and hands it to me, then crunches on two. “Maybe when we were younger, you did come off that way. You can be really tough. And I think things were super hard for us girls when Gen was finding her way. You know how sensitive she is, and you could be a little callous when it came to her feelings. I tended to side with her because it felt like she needed someone to defend her.”

Cece’s gentle tone doesn’t make her words stab at me any less intensely.

“I know.” I trace my finger over the ornate stitching on Cece’s sari bedcover. “A lot of times, I felt like I had nothing to offer. You know? I’m not this reliable go-to person like Cohen. I’m not this crazy intellectual like you are. I don’t have Gen’s sweetness or Enzo’s charm. I feel like I’m the least Rodriguez-like out of all of us.”

Cece snorts. “I always felt like you were the
most
Rodriguez-like, and the rest of us just never measured up.” She tugs on the edge of my skirt. “You know, things are changing now that we’re all getting our shit together. I love my friends. But you’re my
sister
. It would be really cool if you could also be my friend.”

“I’d like that,” I say, trying not to sniffle too hard.

Damnit! The pitbull lawyer part of me seems to drift further away every second.

“And friends are honest with each other.” Cece clears her throat and raises her eyebrows at me. “You need to confront Richard. You need to get your job back. You worked too goddamn hard to just let him rip it away from you.”

“I know.” I press my fingers to my temples. “But how?”

Cece’s laugh cuts through my burgeoning headache. “If anyone could figure it out, it’s you, Lyd.” My sister hands me another Lifesaver. “And while you’re coming up with your
master plan, there’s something kind of personal I need to talk to you about. I want you to keep a very open mind.”

I suck on the minty candy and nod. “Go ahead.”

“It’s about Isaac.” She tugs her curls down and starts shaking them, the way she does when she’s super nervous.

“Cece, I have no idea what you’re going to say, but could it possibly be worse than what I confessed about my stupid career disaster?” I laugh. She doesn’t. My eyes go wide, and I’m very thankful these lifesavers are equipped with a hole in case you swallow them accidentally. Otherwise I’d be very dead. “What is it?” I wheeze.

“Isaac is a brilliant artist.”

“I know that.” My heart punches in my chest.

“He’s a genius. I heard from the girl I share an office with that he’s a card-carrying member of MENSA and all that.”

“I did
not
know that,” I say, mint mixing with the sour taste of nerves on my tongue. I knew he was smart, but beyond brilliant? That’s another bonus. These are good things. So why the nervousness?

“A lot of people would describe him as an old soul,” Cece says with this bright kind of hope in her voice. Like she hopes I’ll agree with her, but isn’t sure. She’s not looking at me, but at the paint peeling off the window ledge. “I mean, now that I met him, I get why. And it makes perfect sense
—”

“Cece!” The lifesaver lodged in my throat aches. My curiosity aches. My patience is a frazzled, aching mess. “
Please
. Just tell me.”

“I think you two have incredible chemistry. It’s undeniable.” She says it like she’s pleading a lost cause. “When you’re together, you’re about to set the room on fire. He brings out something in you I’ve never seen before. And I think that might be a
really
good thing.”

I blush. And stammer. And think of him, his white shirt, the buttons sliding out of their holes, my fingers creeping places they have no business creeping...and wanting to creep to other, more expressly forbidden areas...

“I...he’s very...we—”

Before I can finish flopping around, looking for words, Cece interrupts me.

“He’s nineteen!”

I stare at her face, but she doesn’t look back. Her eyes are squeezed tight and she’s tensed, like she’s waiting for me to explode or weep or break down in front of her.

But I can’t muster a single reaction because the shock is so profound and so damn embarrassing. I’m thoroughly numb.

“The cougar comments…” I say slowly, numbness replaced by deep shame.

The kind of shame that comes when you realize you’re the pathetic butt of someone else’s joke.

Cece shakes her head, her eyes glinting. “That was uncalled for on my part, Lyd. I’m so sorry. I was drunk, and I honestly thought I was being funny. Now I realize I was being crass. And an asshole. I should have told you that night.”

Nineteen?

I think about those green eyes, drinking me in like he knows what to do with a woman’s body.

Nineteen?

I think about the soulful, educated lecture I took diligent notes on, delivered in that rich voice tinged with that gorgeous accent.

Nineteen?

I want him. Want him so badly, my body takes a running start and butts my mind out of the way just for the chance to get one more grab, one more touch.

But I can’t.

I absolutely
cannot
. My first instinct was the right one: he and I are trouble. Not a risk I’m willing to take.

This new fact is as much a relief as it is a letdown. Nineteen is way too young to even consider, so I won’t.

Because I can’t.

But I
can
pretend that the lump in my throat is just a trapped circle of candy, and not my rising, growing regret.

And so I do.

9
  ISAAC

California beaches are all ragged coast and luminous, breaking waves. The artist in me should want to paint them, but they don’t appeal to my eyes as much as they do my body. They call to my muscles, my bones, my flesh.

My father fancied himself the Ernest Hemingway of the art world. I was twelve the first time he ordered me to go shot for shot in a midnight rum drinking contest with him. Six months later he let me smoke a Cuban cigar so strong, it was all I could taste for days even after I was sure I’d puked the last remnants of it into my mother’s lavender bushes. He took me to Sicily and pushed me into the churning water, spear gripped in my hands, when I was thirteen, telling me not to come up for air til
l I had a fish. By fourteen, I was being treated for altitude poisoning when he wanted to keep climbing a mountain in Tibet against the guide’s strict instructions to stop.

My mother encouraged me to go on these “father/son bonding” outings. My uncles took me aside and told me my father was a lunatic and a masochist. That I had nothing to prove and could stop at any time.

But I wasn’t doing it to bond, like my mother assumed. And it wasn’t because I was being bullied, like my uncles thought. I did it because I couldn’t stand to have him look at me with those mocking eyes. The ones that said,
Ah, I thought you couldn’t handle it. And I was right!

I guess, in the end, I did have something to prove.

I’m scarred and tough because, even if my father was right about me inheriting my mother’s love of leisure and inability to tap into true passion, I absolutely inherited his stubbornness.

Which is why
I’m on a surfboard again today when I should be finishing my chapel painting. I was able to see the enormous lantern cross shining from the glow of the candles the parishioners held last night, and it was a thing of unquestionable beauty. Instead of heading home to paint it, I headed out to drink and flirt with women. I shouldn’t be allowed to drink in this country, their laws say I can buy a weapon, but not alcohol, but that didn’t stop me. I was successful at both, but I went home alone, with a buzzing head.

Nothing felt any more right by morning, and I couldn’t decide which irritated me more: the canvases with the half-done cathedrals or the completed ones of Lydia, her dark eyes following me all over my apartment and teasing me incessantly.

A gorgeous, caramel-skinned Mona Lisa with twice the mystery and so much sexuality, it seemed like the canvases were wet with it.

I paddle out again, my arms strong in the water so chilled, it only bites for a second before it numbs my skin completely. I’m able press up, find my balance, and ride the wave, but only at the outlier section. I’m nowhere near close enough to where the power curls and hammers.

I need to be there.

I need to throw myself into something that has nothing to do with the failures I’ve been piling high in this new life.

This life that had so much damn potential. I shake the salt water out of my hair, sit down on the sand and take inventory of what’s out there, what direction I can hit next and hard enough to forget it all.

“Hey, man!” A tall, scruffy guy runs to me, holding something out. “You drop this?”

The sunlight glints off something gold and my hand automatically goes to my neck.

“
Mierda
,” I mutter. I walk over and he tosses the cross necklace, the one my grandfather gave me before he died, to me. “Thank you. Truly, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. It was my grandfather’s.”

“No worries. I’m glad I saw it before it got washed out.” The guy nods and points to the waves. “It’s busting up out there. Just the way it’s been hitting lately. I don’t even surf with my wedding ring on anymore. Makes the missus nervous, you know?”

As if on cue, he throws a flash of a wave to a few pretty things in tiny bikinis who walk by and shake their glossy hair, giggling as they chorus, “Hey Deo!”

“Ladies! Remember, we’re having a sale on quad-fins this weekend. I guarantee you improve your times the first chance you have to paddle out with one of those beauts.” He winks at one girl with dark hair who rolls her eyes at him.

“I’ll be by on Saturday,” she calls. “But I want to talk to Whit. You told me to go with the gloss finish, and she was totally right. Sanded made all the difference.”

“I’ve never argued the fact that my wife is a thousand times smarter than I am!” he yells, and they laugh. He looks back at me and grins so wide, it’s almost contagious. I find myself smiling back. “Ludicrous. My wife being nervous about me not wearing the ring. Every beach-bunny up and down this little strip knows my wife and worships the sand she walks on. Me, on the other hand? They’d throw me to the sharks for recommending the wrong wax.” He squints at me and shakes his head, his smile spread impossibly wider. “For their boards, dude. Mind out of the gutter. I’m Deo, by the way.”

“Isaac.” I shake his hand. “You know a lot about surfing?”

He shrugs, but I know false modesty when I see it. “I shape ‘em. And I’ve been bumming around on one since before I could walk.” He tilts his head. “Something tells me you’ve got a pressing surf question. Hit me, bro. If I don’t have your answer, my gorgeous wife will help our dumb asses out.”

“Actually…” I point at where the waves curl beautifully, the sweet spot where I want to be when I’m out there. “I’m too slow to get where I want to go. Any tips for speeding things up?”

Deo takes the board out of my hands and eyes it up and down. “You need a flatter board. How long you been surfing?”

“Three weeks,” I tell him.

Deo whistles between his teeth. “And you’re looking to crash those waves? Alright, man. Alright. I’m gonna hook you up, because you look like good people. Come with me. You eat yet?”

“Uh, no, I haven’t,” I say as I follow him. He has my board under his arm and is talking a mile a minute over his shoulder.

“Well, let’s eat, right? I think Whit put some chili in the slow cooker. I hope you like shit hot, because that girl goes wild with the jalapenos. And her cornbread? Dude, you’re gonna
want to steal her away once you taste her cornbread.” He whips around after he says that, so fast I almost crash into him. “That was a joke.” His voice is totally still and serious. “I’ll have to hunt you down and beat the crap out of you if you ever actually tried anything with her. Clear?”

He grins, I guess at the look on my face. I’m not a small guy, and I’ve been in my fair share of fights and come out looking a hell of a lot better than the other guy, but this surfer has that maniacal gleam in his eyes that only the unhinged and
love-struck share. My father calls it the
la mirada de un mante desesperado
—the gaze of a desperate lover.

It’s a look you do
not—
under any circumstances—fuck with.

I hold my hands up like a prisoner surrendering. “Crystal clear. I would never dream of getting between you and your lovely wife,” I vow.

He shakes a finger at me. “I like you. You worry me a little, cause you’re such a handsome asshole, and you’re shredding water that would make some ballsy dudes do a serious double take. But I can tell you’re a good guy. You got a job? You need one?”

“No. I mean, yes. I do. Have a job. I work for the university. I guest lecture and am part of their artist exchange hosting.”

There are times when I pop out of the world my father has me drowning in and realize there are many men who don’t give a damn about art. Many men who make things with their hands that don’t wind up hanging on museum walls, but that are used. Useful.

I tense, ready for
judgment, but Deo seems interested in what I do.

“Really? You gotta let me know when your show is. I love some free wine and cheese. And art, of course. Maybe you know Cece Rodriguez?” He asks it lazily, but his words are a punch to my stomach.

No matter how I seem to try to avoid Lydia Rodriguez, she’s always everywhere I turn.

“I know her sister,” I say slowly.

“Ah, Genie? Did you meet her before she took off to Belgium? I always knew that girl was way smarter than she let on. That scholarship she won is freaking insane.”

He waves me into a small, neat surf shop with boards in every state of finish stacked all over. Long curls of wax lie on the floors along with fiberglass shavings and abandoned bottles of water. I take it all in because my over-thinking brain never seems to stop, but I just want to hear more about how he knows the Rodriguez family.

“Not Genie,” I clarify and wait.

He undoes his wetsuit. There’s an enormous tattoo on his chest: a gorgeous half-woman, half-horse. She has dark, curling hair and is drawing back a bow, looking over her shoulder. The arrow is aimed straight for Deo’s heart.

The face of the woman is too specifically detailed, too lovingly rendered to be a mere artistic image. This is a lover’s tattoo, and I’m willing to bet I’ll be able to identify the much-loved Whit based on that ink alone.

I’m immediately taken by the mix of beauty and brutality in the image. My father would tell me to be careful around this man. He obviously loves with incredible abandon, and that makes him even more dangerous than he is loyal if he’s tested.

“Shit, bro. You in trouble?” he asks, letting the wetsuit flop around his waist as he pulls on a threadbare t-shirt that advertises ‘Rocko’s Tattoos’ in a bold, clean font.

“Am I?” I think about Cody’s warning and worry. What is it about the Rodriguez family? Perhaps there’s some kind of gang affiliation? Some kind of underworld connections? Or just a general lean toward the darker aspects?

“Well, no one uses Lydia’s firm unless they need to win. They don’t deal with any case that won’t make it into the headlines or law books. Is it immigration shit? Because Genie’s husband has ties to this dope agent if you need. He’s not supposed to, but he totally sends her those edible arrangements on her birthday. She helped him when he was getting his green card.” Deo rummages in a small fridge and holds a beer bottle out to me.

I accept. “No. Not legal trouble. I know her as a student.”

He nods. “Those Rodriguez girls are, like, perpetual students,” he says after a long pull of beer. “I guess she’s getting her PhD? I’ve always been the dumbest one in the bunch, but it’s going to be official soon.”

“You know the Rodriguzes well?” I ask. Just how many people in Silver Strand have their lives tangled around this family?

“I’m practically a long lost Rodriguez son. Kind of like they’re the Corleone’s, and I’m Tom Hagen.” He shrugs.

I choke on my beer. “Like
The Godfather
?”

“That’s right.” Before he can say more, the bell over the shop door rings and a girl walks in.

I see her carrying a pile of books, her hair in neat curls, her dress sexy, her face smiling. But, in my mind, I can hear the sound of her hooves and see her arm pulling back the string of a bow.

“Whit, this is Isaac. He’s a friend of Lydia’s, and I found his grandfather’s cross on the beach before it washed out. Also, he needs a flatter board because he’s embarrassingly good, but not fast enough on the beginner’s shit he’s trying to make work.” He circles his arms around her tiny waist, buries his face in her hair, kisses her neck, and holds her tight.

It’s both incredibly affectionate and a clear warning. He may as well have pissed in a circle around her: he’s telling me that this woman is
his
.

I respect that.

“It’s nice to meet you, Whit. I hear you make very spicy chili. That’s exactly how I like it.” I hold out my hand and she takes it from her place inside Deo’s arms and shakes, then cranes her neck to look at her wild-eyed husband.

“Did you just meet him, like, five minutes ago?” she demands, her dark eyes full of flabbergasted delight.

He snorts. “How could I have gotten that rundown in five minutes? It’s been, like, a solid fifteen.”

She looks back at me, her pretty brown eyes flashing. “He’s so like this,” she says, as if he can’t hear. “He’ll just start talking to anyone, and he’s instantly got a new friend. Seriously, don’t let him scare you. You look nervous. He’s a huge teddy bear, I promise. Even if he seems like some kind of crazed
stalker.” She waves us both out. “I was actually coming to tell you that dinner is almost done. And, yes, I do make a really spicy chili. I’m so glad you like that. Deo only pretends to.”

He shakes his shaggy hair. “Woman! I love all your spice.” He raises his eyebrows at me. “Sorry if I spooked you, man. If you don’t wa
nt to have dinner, that’s cool.”

“I’d love to join you for dinner if you have enough. I have a change of clothes in my car. How far is your home?” I ask.

“We definitely have enough. And we can walk it, man. Whit and I are true beach bums. Grab your crap and away we go.” He claps a hand on my shoulder, but his eyes are glued on Whit with this kind of obsessive magnetism.

My father warned me to stay away from men like Deo. But his more urgent warning was to never
become
a man like Deo.

A woman is to be sampled, enjoyed, explored, and left for someone else to love. Give your heart to a woman and you lose your sanity, your passion for your work, everything that makes you a man.