Page 97 of Malibu Rising

Tarine had been wrong. Brandon wasn’t packing Nina’s things. He had taken a bottle of Seagram’s upstairs and sat down in the first open bedroom, one of the guest rooms. And now he was wallowing on the floor.

This was the room he’d imagined would belong to his first child. Now, he was sitting in it, crying by himself, back against the nightstand, drinking whiskey out of the bottle.

What the fuck is the matter with you, Brandon? Either one of those women would have made you happy, would have given you more than you ever deserved. How did you fuck that up?

God, this was bad. He really didn’t want to be left alone at the end of all this.

He drank more of his whiskey and gagged at the sheer amount that was flowing down his throat. He wiped his mouth.

He had to fix this. He had to get one of them back. He had to. And he could! He knew he could. All he had to do was convince one of them that he wasn’t a shit. Which was easy enough because he really had not been that much of a shit until recently. Even the tabloids would tell you, he really was a good guy!

He just needed to listen to his gut and choose the love of his life. And then he would get her back and be a good husband and have children and win more titles and have his life look just like it looked on the pages of the magazines. Just like it was supposed to.

Brandon Randall was about to pass out but once he woke up, world, watch out. He was gonna go get one of those women back if it was the last thing he did.

Jay was searching for Hud everywhere.

He scanned the crowds in every room, pushing through people giving him dirty looks at being moved aside, smelling cigarette smoke and skunkweed, body odor and perfume. Hud was not in the front yard, downstairs, or upstairs. He was not in the backyard as far as Jay could see through the windows.

Jay made it back to the bottom of the landing. He turned to a brunette woman in a polka-dot dress smoking a joint. “Have you seen Hud?” Jay said.

“Who’s Hud?” the woman asked, completely uninterested.

Jay looked at her sideways. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked her.

“Heather,” she said, smiling.

“Well, Heather, Hud is my brother and he’s fucking my girlfriend and I need to find him.”

Heather put out her hand, offering Jay the butt of her joint. “You need this more than I do.”

“No, thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

Jay frowned and took the joint from her. He put it to his lips and pulled in the smoke. He closed his eyes, let it permeate his lungs, sink into his body. He opened his eyes back up.

“Do you feel better now?” Heather asked him.

Jay thought about it. “No. Not at all.”

“OK,” Heather said, shrugging. “Well, that’s all I got.” She turned away from him and resumed her conversation with the Laker Girl she’d been talking to. “OK, but, like, Larry Bird is good though.”

Jay closed his eyes and pinched his nose, wondering why the fuck anyone would be defending the Celtics, but he didn’t have time to fight her on it.

He made his way to the backyard again, still trying to find Hud. He was still seething inside but his rage had nowhere to go. He tried to relax, tried to calm himself down. He didn’t see Hud anywhere.

Now Vanessa was sitting in the lap of Kyle Manheim, making out with him.Jesus, Vanessa.Jay made a note to himself to tell her she could do better than Kyle. But for now he simply tapped her on the shoulder.

Vanessa turned and looked at him. “Hey,” she said. She seemed tipsy but far from blotto.

“Have you seen Hud?” Jay asked her.

Vanessa shook her head. “No. And you know what? I don’t care that I haven’t seen him. How’s that? For once in my life, I can honestly say I just don’t care.”

Jay had already stopped listening. His eye caught sight of the cliff’s edge and the stairs to the beach. “Yeah, cool.”

He walked, slowly and deliberately, making eye contact with no one until he got to the edge of the lawn.

---