Читать книгу Reckless Hearts - Sean Olin - Страница 7

Jake had never seen a house quite like this one. It was like something out of a magazine. It had been featured in a magazine, actually. Luxury, it was called. Jake had never heard of it, but the name said everything he needed to know. It was hidden from the street by a solid white gate and the first time Jake had seen the surreally lush lawn he’d wondered how many thousands of dollars Cameron spent every month on landscaping. There were no trees, just this vast flat green space perched above the beach and the house sitting there like a sculpture.

From the outside it looked like a set of blindingly white boxes, each one set off-center from the ones above and below it, like children’s blocks that had been placed precariously on top of one another. Inside, it was a cavernous, flowing open space with different platformed levels connected by brushed concrete stairs that seemed to float free in the air.

The interior was so tasteful that there weren’t any Christmas decorations, not even a wreath. Jake felt like he was in an art gallery, not someplace people lived. But people did live here. He lived here now. It would take some getting used to.

That first night, as he sat at the hand-carved, blond-wood dining table—positioned in just the right off-angle location in the big oblong main room that was, all by itself, larger than his old house across town—he had the strange feeling that he and his mother and Cameron were guests at a five-star restaurant that only served one party a night.

They were served by a waiter with artfully mussed hair and a carefully untucked linen shirt, which he wore over crisp jeans and white no-brand sneakers. He looked casual but brought their duck confit and shaved fennel salad to the table with regimented efficiency. Jake wished Elena were here to see it—he could imagine the arched eyebrow she’d throw his way, the way she’d poke him under the table and slowly twist her silver custard spoon in the air, studying it like a mystifying artifact from an alien civilization until she finally got Jake to chuckle over the pomposity that was surrounding him.

Cameron didn’t seem to notice the waiter was even there. He held court, telling stories about the various adventures he’d had over the years, most of them involving the yacht he owned and small islands in the Caribbean. He was a small guy with big hair, a smaller guy than he seemed like he should be, given how much space he took up. He was the kind of man who never buttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, even when he wore a suit. Throughout the meal, he’d been leaning all over his seat and sprawling into the empty chair next to him, stretching his arms and legs out like he was inviting everyone to take their shoes off and chill.

“So, we looked out from the top of the cliff and Wickman points toward the bay and says, ‘Hey, check it out. Someone’s boat is floating away,’” Cameron was saying now. “And I look, and holy fuck. It’s my boat!”

Jake could tell his mom was in awe of him, that this new life she’d pulled Jake into was a kind of fantasy to her, a life of stylish leisure that she’d always dreamed of. The way she gazed at him, her chin on her hand, barely blinking her big blue eyes—it was like she was disappearing into his aura. Cameron hardly noticed how starstruck she was. He seemed to assume that women would respond to him this way.

“It was drifting sideways, a good hundred yards out already. The bay was so deep that the anchor hadn’t reached the bottom. So we had no choice, we had to dive. Operation Save the Boat. My first foray into extreme sports.”

Pouring with one hand while gesticulating and illustrating his story with the other, he almost unnoticeably kept Jake’s mom’s wineglass full of pinot gris.

Jake quietly took it all in, trying to make sense of his new reality. His mom’s romance with Cameron Pendergrass had been a whirlwind of frantic change. She’d met him only four months ago, when he’d hired Tiki Tiki Java to cater a reception at StarFish, the glitzy hotel he owned in Dream Point. Jake had barely met the guy before they’d suddenly gotten engaged and then, two weeks later, married, in a secret ceremony that not even Jake had been invited to on that yacht somewhere off the coast of St. John. He was happy for his mom, of course. She’d been lonely for a long, long time. But he was baffled by how to relate to Cameron. The guy intimidated him.

“You want a pour?” Cameron asked Jake, pointing the half-empty wine bottle at Jake’s glass.

Jake glanced at his mother, who subtly shook her head no. “No thank you, sir,” he said.

“It’s Cameron to you, Jake. We’re family now.”

A voice from the other side of the room called out, “I’ll have a glass. Since you’re offering.”

Everyone turned to see a guy Jake’s age leaning against the wall near the front door to the house like he’d been there for a while, watching them. He was tall, though not as tall as Jake, and fit under his formfitting rich-navy-blue T-shirt in a metrosexual way. He had stylishly cut blond hair and was wearing sunglasses that must have cost as much as Jake’s car.

The way Jake’s mom lightly touched Cameron’s hand, as though to brace him and calm his nerves, made Jake think that the guy wasn’t welcome. He wondered who he was and how he’d gotten here.

“Glad you could make it,” Cameron said. “You’re only, oh”—he made a show of checking his Omega watch—“two hours late.”

When the guy smirked it was like he was flashing a switchblade. “Well, you know, anything for you, Cameron,” he said. “How ’bout that wine?”

He sauntered toward the table like he owned the place and the waiter appeared out of nowhere to silently set a fourth place setting at the table.

As Cameron grudgingly poured a dollop of wine into the glass that had appeared with the new place setting, Jake caught his mother’s eye and mouthed, Who’s that?

She cleared her throat. “Jake, this is Nathaniel. Cameron’s son. He’s in town from the Roderick School in Atlanta. Nathaniel, this is my son, Jake.”

With a flourish, Nathaniel reached out his hand to shake. “How are you,” he said, and then after a pause he added, “brother.”

His grip was a vise, like he’d been told by someone—Jake couldn’t imagine it would have been laid-back Cameron—that a firm handshake was the key to success in the world and he’d turned this wisdom into a competitive dare.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, glancing at his father. “I had, you know, other things to do.”

Cameron patted him on the back, shot him a sharp glance, and said, “You’ll do better next time.”

Jake’s mom chimed in. She’d always been good at playing the gracious hostess. “We’re just glad you could make it at all,” she said. “It means a lot to your father. And I can say, for me, I’ve been dying to meet you since he first mentioned you.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel said drolly, “he mentioned me?”

“Of course he did. He loves you, Nathaniel.” She gave Cameron’s hand one last pat and then withdrew her own hand back into her lap.

Nathaniel grinned at this, showing off his sharp white teeth, and seeming, briefly, touched by what he’d heard. “Aww. Shucks,” he said.

The tension between Cameron and Nathaniel was overpowering. Jake could sense it in the way Cameron subtly adjusted his posture to make more room between himself and his son. He could feel it in the sharp end to Nathaniel’s charm, the way he was displaying his refusal to defer to his father.

He again wished Elena could be here to see this. He tried to imagine her making one of her silly faces at him, secretly letting him know she was noticing the same weirdness he was and reminding him simply by sticking out her tongue that he shouldn’t take it too seriously.

“Now—” Nathaniel took a swig of wine, downing the small amount his father had allowed him in one swallow. “That cliff. It was a hundred-foot sheer drop. The water was so clear that you could see the floor. I have this right, Cameron? Should I tell them how it ends? They survived. They saved the boat. That’s Cameron for you. He’ll do anything to save that boat.” He raised his empty glass and said, “But cheers to that, hey?”

Cameron met his challenge and graciously, indulgently, touched glasses with him. “Cheers to that,” he said.

Jake got the sense that Cameron could squash Nathaniel any time he wanted and it was just his good heart that stopped him from doing so. He wondered what had brought the two of them to this point, and how long their antagonism had persisted. Nathaniel’s behavior didn’t seem like the usual teenaged rebellion.

It felt uncomfortable just being in the room with them. There was a story here, a lifetime of resentments and secrets that Jake might never know. If Elena were here, she’d be taking mental notes so they could go over it all together later, dreaming up explanations filled with dangerous intrigue. But she wasn’t here. And even though she was just a couple miles across town, she seemed farther away than she ever had. It struck him that this was the first time in forever that he’d have spent an evening away from her.