Page 62 of Malibu Rising

“I mean, do you know how many men come up to her on a daily basis and do exactly what you’re doing?” Kit asked.

Brandon looked to Nina, raising his eyebrows to ask if this was true. Nina, mildly embarrassed, shrugged. Since the poster started selling in record shops and pharmacies, Nina had been getting hit on every time she left the house. It was a new reality she didn’t much care for.

“She gets about four marriage proposals from strangers a week lately,” Kit said.

“That’s a lot,” Brandon conceded. “Maybe I’m out of my depth here.”

“Maybe you are,” Kit said. “Although, you’re at least one of the less annoying ones.”

“Oh, good,” Brandon said. “What a lovely distinction.”

Nina laughed. “Kit is not an easy audience,” she said.

Brandon looked at her. “I’m starting to get that.”

“I’m actually a very easy audience,” Kit said. “I just think you should probably ask my sister out to dinner and let her get to know you first before you ask her to spend the rest of her life with you.”

Brandon looked at Nina and smiled. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong.” Nina kept his gaze, found herself smiling back. “I really can be a pretty good dinner companion. Would you consider doing me the honor?” he said.

Kit nodded. “There you go.”

Nina laughed. Even just three minutes ago, she had been readyto turn Brandon down. But now here she was, changing her mind. “OK,” she said. “Sure.”

• • •

Brandon had picked up a tennis racket for the first time at the age of six and had a perfect serve by his seventh birthday. And so his father, Dick, put him on the court every hour he wasn’t in school or sleeping.

His father taught him two things: You always win and you always act like a gentleman. And at the age of twelve, Brandon started training with renowned tennis coach Thomas O’Connell.

Tommy was punishing in his exactitude. There was no almost, there was no good try. There was only perfection or failure. Brandon rose to the challenge, bought into the premise, hook, line, and sinker. Either you win or you are a loser. Brandon became relentless in his pursuit of precision.

He would triumph, always. And he would act like a gentleman, without fail.

Brandon hit the global stage when he made it to the finals of the Australian Open at the age of nineteen, courtesy of his signature slingshot serve, which ESPN was calling “the Snap.”

He went on to win the title. And the very second he won the last point, Brandon did not drop to his knees and raise his racket to the sky. He did not pump his fists in glory. He did not rejoice in any way. He held back a smile, walked to the net, and shook the hand of his opponent, Henri Mullin. The camera, close up, could see him mouth the words “You played beautifully.”

And the media called him “The Sweetheart.”

By the time Brandon turned twenty-five, he had won the U.S. Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open, some multiple times. And the sportscasters no longer called him “The Sweetheart.” They called him “BranRan” and they called him a phenom.

But they always kept the camera on him. And people tuned in to see him crush his opponents, as humbly and graciously as any athlete in the history of sports television.

Nina liked that about him. She liked it about him a lot.

“My father always said …” Brandon told her on their first date, sitting at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica. “It’s easy to be gracious when you’re winning. So you have no excuse not to be.”

His father had passed away just the year before and Nina admired how eloquently Brandon could talk about him. She found it hard to share anything about her mother without her voice catching.

“And if you lose?” Nina asked.

Brandon shook his head. “You just work harder to make sure you win on the next one. And then you haven’t lost anything at all.”

“And you can stay gracious then, too?” Nina asked.

Brandon laughed. “The cameras zoom right in on me when I lose,” he said. “They’re just waiting for me to slip up. So yes, I stay gracious then, too. But it’s harder, I’ll give you that. But we are talking about me too much. So, the first time you were on a surfboard. Tell me everything.”

Nina smiled and told Brandon the story of all of her siblings on the beach that afternoon in ’69. Brandon laughed when she told him about not letting Kit go on her own, but instead pulling her along on Nina’s shoulders on the board. “I realize I barely know her,” Brandon said. “But I feel like I already know that she hated that.”

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