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There was a young woman sitting by the grill, reading a book. Casey looked closer. “Is that the girl from Flashdance? ” she asked.

Nina nodded. “Jennifer Beals, yeah. Love her. ”

Casey’s eyes went wide for a moment. What a world.

Nina spotted Jay talking to a very tall blond woman. He seemed to be showing her the ocean from the cliffside.

“See that guy? ” Nina said. “The tall one talking to the blond woman? There on the side? ”

Casey leaned in. “Yeah. ”

“That’s my brother Jay. ”

“Oh, OK, ” Casey said, nodding.

“So he might be …”

“Might be my brother, too. ”

Nina looked at Casey, trying to process how bizarre this conversation was. “Yeah, ” she said. “Might be your brother, too. ”

Nina looked for Kit and spotted her talking to someone on the far corner of the patio. Nina put her finger up to the window. “The girl in the crop top and Daisy Dukes talking to that skinny guy …”

“Potentially my sister? ” Casey asked.

Nina nodded. And then she started looking for Hud. She scanned the area, cataloged every person she could see. She could not find his broad shoulders and barrel chest anywhere. “I’m trying to find my brother Hud, but … Doesn’t look like he’s down there. ”

As she kept looking, Nina thought of what would have happened if Hud’s biological mother had never left him in June’s arms. Would he have shown up? At some point? Wanting to meet them? Wanting to know about his father?

Nina imagined feeling like a stranger to him, imagined him feeling like a stranger to her. What a loss that would have been—to have gone her whole life not knowing this person who felt like he owned one third of her heart. To not have been there during Hud’s obsession with Frisbee or to see how excited he was when he got his first camera, to not know Hud’s gentleness, to not know that Hud can’t eat too much vinegar or he starts to sweat. He was hers.

Nina looked at Casey. Did some of the same blood run through their veins? Nina didn’t know. She was not sure if she thought Casey might really be her sister or not. But if Casey was, Nina was already sad for what they had lost.

Casey continued to look out the window, stealing glances at Nina. She was trying to gauge just what, exactly, was going on in Nina’s mind. She was reminded that she did not know the woman whose bedroom she was currently sitting in. She had no basis for trying to guess at her inner thoughts.

“Sorry for crashing your party, ” Casey said.

Nina shook her head. “Everyone’s invited. Sounds like you might even belong here. ”

Casey gave a downcast smile. And Nina did, too. And their smiles were completely different, nothing alike.

“My mother died, too, ” Nina said. “She was the only parent I had. We had. So I … I’m sorry. No one should have to go through that. What you went through. ”

Casey looked at Nina and felt like she wanted to melt into her arms. Maybe this had been all she wanted. Just someone who understood, someone to tell her she didn’t have to pretend to be OK.

Nina reached out and took Casey’s hand for just a moment. She squeezed it and then let it go.

And then the two of them—somewhere between strangers and kin—watched the party in silence from the second-floor window.

Midnight

Mick Riva was standing in front of the mirror in his bedroom straightening his tie.

He looked good for fifty and he knew it. His once jet-black hair was now more salt than pepper. His once smooth face now creased at his forehead, eyes, and mouth. His good looks had not faded but instead had grown roots.

He was wearing a black suit and thin black tie—the look he had been known for for decades, the look he had perfected.

Beside him, on his vanity table, was the demo of three songs he’d recorded for his new album. All of them had been softly rejected by his record company. They’d sent a mostly sycophantic note that included the very unsycophantic kicker “We worry these tracks are too ‘classic Mick Riva. ’ But what excites us is looking forward: Who is the Mick Riva of the 1980s? ”

Just looking at the thing made him mad. How had it come to pass that someone like him—a luminary—was expected to listen to the musings of a twenty-something A & R guy with pierced ears and a preoccupation with synthesizers?

Angie would have fought back and made them release the tracks—and any others he decided to record. But unfortunately, they were no longer together.

Angie, as both his manager and his sixth wife, had always understood that Mick just needed to be allowed to do his thing and the world would come running. It had been working for the past thirty years. Angie always got that.

He wished he could go back in time and warn himself not to cheat on her, or not to let her find out, or maybe, perhaps, not to fall for her back in 1978, when she was just the young new redhead in his manager’s office. Because now he was not quite sure who was supposed to fight his battles for him.

When you fall in love with your manager’s assistant, fire your manager, promote his gorgeous assistant, marry her, and then divorce her, you’re left with no wife or manager.

Which is how Mick got to be fifty years old and living alone with his butler, Sullivan. Just him and Sully in this white-brick and ivy mansion that Angie had picked out and decorated. She had loved the oversized eat-in kitchen. Now Mick refused to let Sully make him dinner because he didn’t want to feel pathetic sitting at the table all by himself. It was a table for six.

The other day he’d had the thought that it would be nice to have a big family, have all of his kids come over for Sunday dinner. They could fill the place up, make it feel alive in there again. He thought about calling them. Nina, Jay, Hud, and Katherine.

They were young adults now. He could understand them, maybe offer them advice, or be useful to them all. Maybe they would like that, too.

He had been considering picking up the phone.

But then he had received a handwritten letter in the mail.

• • •

Despite the fact that there were no invitations for the Riva party, Kit did actually send one invitation every year.

Sometime in mid-August, she would take a piece of notebook paper and write down the date and the time and the address. And then she would write, “You are cordially invited to the Riva party. ”

And she would address it to her father.

Mick Riva

380 N Carolwood Drive

Los Angeles, California 90077

After decades on the road, he had settled down in a home in Holmby Hills, less than thirty miles from his children. Five years ago, Kit had tracked him down. And since then, every single year, she addressed that envelope the exact same way.

This year was the first year he’d noticed.

• • •

Mick slipped his dress shoes on, grabbed his keys, and walked out the door.

He got in his brand-new black Jaguar and put his foot on the gas. He sped down Sunset Boulevard, toward the ocean, with a handwritten invitation sitting on the passenger’s seat.

It was just after midnight when Wendy Palmer took off her dress and slipped off her underwear. She stood there, bare, in the backyard, just to the side of the Jacuzzi, and then began to slowly step down into the steaming water.

The far corner of the Jacuzzi was in the far corner of the pool, which was in the far corner of the lawn. So only a few people saw her, at first.

Soon, Wendy was submerged in the bubbling water, floating over to the only other people in the Jacuzzi at that moment.

The two men stopped talking to each other in order to look at her. She smiled and raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. “Hi. ”

Stephen Cross and Nick Marnell both stared at her, instantly intrigued. They were the bassist and drummer of a British New Wave band with the number three song in the country.

This was not the first time they’d found themselves in a Jacuzzi with a naked woman.

“Hi, ” Nick said.

“Hello, ” Stephen said slowly.

Wendy kissed Nick first. And then Stephen. And then moved them all into a spot where people could watch before continuing with her plan.

“Are we really doing this? ” Nick mouthed to Stephen.

And Stephen shrugged.

And so it began. Just as Wendy wanted.

Wendy had come to the party with the intention of having sex with two hot guys while people watched. She didn’t want people to watch her for their sake. She wasn’t trying to entertain anyone. She was not there for anyone’s amusement but her own. This was something she’d always wanted to do. She’d thought about doing it from time to time when she got a little too drunk or found herself pressed up against a man, wishing they weren’t alone. But she’d known when she woke up that morning that if she was ever actually going to do it, it had to be tonight.

Because the Riva party was Wendy’s last hurrah.

It was time to leave Los Angeles. She had made the decision to give up on her acting career, quit her job at Riva’s Seafood, and end the lark once and for all. Soon, her partying days would be over, too.

She’d grown homesick for Oregon. And she had finally decided that it was time to go home and marry the son of her father’s best friend.

His name was Charles and he had loved her since they were children. She, a waiflike blond girl with a headband. He, a brown-haired, round-faced sweetheart who always picked up his toys. Now, Wendy was small-town gorgeous in a big city. And Charles was losing his hair at the age of twenty-six.

Last Christmas, Charles had confessed to Wendy that he still loved her. “If you told me to wait, I would …” he’d said in the hallway of her parents’ house on Christmas Eve, just as her mother was setting the ham down for dinner. “I’d wait if there was even a small chance. ”

Wendy had kissed Charles on his cheekbone. And they’d both walked away from it suspecting she would make her way back to him.

When she returned to L. A. right after New Year’s, she could smell the smog the second she landed at the airport. Her studio apartment depressed her. She kept being called in to audition for the roles of nagging girlfriends and nagging wives. She kept losing the parts to Valley girls who raised their voices at the ends of their sentences as if everything they said was a question. The only part she scored was to writhe around in a bikini on top of a sports car. They had teased her hair with so much Aqua Net, she had to wash it four times afterward.

When her agent told her that at the age of twenty-six she was too old to play Harrison Ford’s girlfriend, Wendy knew she was going home.

She would marry the sweet man with the thinning hair and the money. And she would have kindhearted children, whom she would love with all of her heart. And she would probably gain some weight. She would lose herself for long stretches of time, when the rush of dance recitals and sleepovers and basketball games took over with such force that her own personality began to drift away. But that was all OK by her. That life now sounded sort of wonderful.

This morning, she had booked a one-way ticket to Portland. She was leaving L. A. for good next Tuesday.

But first, she needed to fuck two rock stars in a Jacuzzi while everyone watched.

Lara had gone to the bathroom at least ten minutes ago, so Jay was killing time. He was by the fireplace in the living room talking to Matt Palakiko, a retired surfer. As a teenager, Jay had idolized Matt. He’d even stuck some of the photos of Matt’s greatest waves on his bedroom wall. But now Matt was a father to twins and lived back home on the Big Island of Hawaii. He was in L. A. for the week taking meetings about licensing his name for swimwear.

Jay was listening to Matt talk about how the purity of surfing had returned to him when he stopped competing.

“But that’s a ways off for you, man. You have a long career ahead of you, ” Matt said. “Everybody’s saying so. ”

“Thank you, ” Jay said, nodding.

“And, look, if you play it right, a decade from now you could be doing some of the shit I’m doing, putting your name on stuff, taking paychecks. Everyone’s throwing money around now. It’s like there’s too much of it all of a sudden. It’s all just gonna get bigger and bigger. And I’m telling you, sometimes the financial security and the peace is even sweeter than the victory. I get up every day and surf because I want to. Not because I have to. Do you know how long it’s been since I could say that? ”

“Right, ” Jay said. “I bet. ”

“When it’s just you and the wave, and you’re not thinking about stats or training or …”

Jay was half listening, fixated on his uncertain future, the one he still could not bear to say out loud to anyone but Lara. His retirement wouldn’t be like Matt’s. He had to retire and give up the act itself. There was no real “purity” to exchange for what he was losing. He was just losing everything.

Jay had only begun to be considered one of the best—his career was just taking off. It had been for only a couple years he’d even had all of this attention. But it had not taken him long to acclimate to the adulation. And now, his heart was going to cost him the very thing that made him feel exceptional.

He was the eldest son of Mick Riva—wasn’t he supposed to be the best at something? For a moment, Jay considered the idea that he would rather die being great than live being ordinary. He wasn’t sure he could bear the stain of obscurity.

“Look, I gotta head out, ” Matt said, looking at his watch. “I got a flight back home in the morning. If I miss it, my wife will kill me. ”

“All right, man, take care, ” Jay said, and then he added, “I’d love to come out there and pick your brain sometime. You know, about the boards you’re shaping. What you’re up to now that you’re, you know …”

“Old? ”

Jay smiled. “Retired. ”

“Sure thing, man. Talk soon. ”

Just as Matt walked away, Jay felt a hand intertwine itself with his.

“Sorry, the line took forever, ” Lara said. “There are way too many people at this party. Is it always like this? ”

Jay looked around, taking note of the bodies in the rest of the house. People were starting to pack themselves tight into small spaces. Couples had taken refuge on the stairs and girls were sitting on the floor. Through the windows it was plain to see that the front lawn was as packed as the back.

“Actually, ” Jay said. “This is a lot. Even for this party. ”

“Is there somewhere more quiet we can go? ” Lara asked.

“Yeah, ” Jay said. “Of course. What were you thinking? The beach? ”

“The beach feels a little …” Lara made a face that Jay tried desperately to discern. What did she mean? The beach was too romantic? Too cheesy? Too cold? Too dark? He wasn’t sure.

“All right, ” Jay said and he took her by the hand and out the front door, past the partiers, past the valets, and then into the relative quiet darkness of the makeshift parking lot the attendants had made of his sister’s side yard.

He walked right past two people making out with a fervor that struck him as immensely funny until he realized it was Kit’s friend Vanessa and that DJ they’d hired. He instantly looked away and then found himself looking back, stunned at the intensity. He had no idea Vanessa had it in her.

“Uh, ” Jay said, trying to forget what he’d seen. “Let’s go to Hud’s truck. ” Jay’s own car had no top and no doors, but he knew Hud’s truck would be unlocked. They headed straight for it.

Jay didn’t just want to get Lara alone because he wanted to have sex with her. Yes, if Lara made a move on him, if she laid her long bare legs across him, he would strike. But he also wanted to talk to her. He wanted to ask her how she had been and what she was up to and did she think she would still like him if he was a nobody? He wanted to find out where she grew up and what her favorite movie was.

Jay came upon Hud’s truck in the second row, toward the very back of the pack. He pulled Lara toward it, and opened the door for her. There wasn’t much room and Lara had to squeeze into the ten-inch crack between door and frame. She managed. And when Jay shut the door behind him, they were finally alone.

“Hi, ” Jay said.

“Hi. ” Lara smiled.

Then neither of them said anything more. They simply looked at each other, comfortable and silent.

“You’re different than I thought you’d be, ” Lara said, finally.

“What does that mean? ” Jay asked. He shifted slightly so he could face her, bending his knee and resting his leg on the bench seat.

Lara shrugged softly. “You’re much calmer than I figured. ”

“Calmer? ” Jay asked. He was eager to know how he seemed to her, eager to see himself reflected in her eyes.

Lara laughed. “You seemed arrogant, ” she said. “Before I really knew you. ”

“And I don’t seem arrogant to you now? ” It was a new feeling, this desire to glean what the other person wanted from you and then find a way to be it. If she liked arrogance, he would play it up. If she didn’t, he’d be the most humble guy she’d ever met.

Lara shook her head. “And you’re quieter than I thought, too. ”

“You thought I was a loud dickhead, ” Jay said, smiling.

Lara laughed and lifted her hand to her earring, playing with it. “I did, ” she said.

“Are you disappointed? ” Jay asked.

“No, I’m not disappointed. That’s not what I meant at all, ” Lara said. Her voice was reassuring. “I guess what I’m saying is that people are surprising. I always thought you were cute even when you were a loud dickhead. But I like that you’re not. You’re more complicated than that. ”

Jay knew this was a compliment despite the fact that he had never aspired to complexity. “Complicated, huh? I don’t know about that. ” What had happened to all the artificial indifference he normally relied on? Maybe this was the new him. Maybe he was becoming more like Hud.

Hud was always better with women than Jay. Jay slept with more women, hotter women, too. But Hud knew how to love them. Jay hadn’t known to be envious of that kind of skill until now. Until all he wanted was to know Lara, earn her trust.

Could they take vacations together? Would she come to Hawaii? His days surfing the North Shore were probably over but could he teach her to surf in the gentle, nonthreatening waves of Waikiki? He wanted to bring her to his favorite café in Honolua Bay. He wanted to order her haupia.

“I’ve been trying to impress you, ” Jay admitted.

“Impress me? ” Lara said. There was delight in the wrinkle of her eyes, in the curved edges of her lips.

“Yeah, ” Jay said, nodding. His head was down but his eyes were up and focused right on her. “Ever since …”

“That night, ” Lara said.

“Yeah, ever since that night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. ”

“You haven’t? ”

Jay knew he was a fish on a hook, that she was reeling him in. He wanted to be reeled in. It felt good to be drawn in, to become intoxicated. It was the first time he’d ever desired someone so strongly, and he liked the feeling, the sweet ache of this specific wanting.

“I can’t stop thinking about you, ” he said. “I’ve … I’ve gone into the Sandcastle I don’t even know how many times, trying to run into you. ”

“I know, ” she said, smiling. He had been exposed and it thrilled them both.

He leaned toward her and put his lips to the spot on her cheekbone that bumped right up to her eye. It was hard like bone and smooth like velvet.

“Is it crazy to think I might love you? ” Jay whispered in her ear.

“It sounds a little crazy, yeah, ” Lara said, laughing. “You don’t know me all that well. ”

Jay was barely listening to her. He was lost in the commotion of his own heart.

“I don’t know …” he said, kissing her collarbone and running his hands up her legs. “I think I know enough. ”

He kissed her on the mouth and held her in the front seat of his brother’s truck. He thought of what they were about to do as more than just sex. It was a way for him to show her what he felt for her. It was a connection, a sacred act. He put his hands slowly up Lara’s shirt, unbuttoned his pants, kicked off his shoes. Lara’s skirt was pushed up to her hips. And Jay slipped his hands underneath. He gingerly, and with great appreciation, slipped her underwear off, leaving it hanging at her feet.

“Do you have a condom? ” Lara asked.

He didn’t. But he figured Hud might have some in the car. He turned to the dashboard and grabbed the keys from where the valet had left them. He took the smallest key and fit it in the glove box. With a turn, the box fell open with a thud. And there were condoms. Three. All in a row, in their shiny foil packets. Jay picked them up, ready to tear one off.

But then.

Jay grabbed the photo in the glove box that had now entered his field of vision, only to see that it was a full stack of photos. Photos of his ex-girlfriend blowing his brother.

Photos that broke his already malfunctioning heart.

Hud and Ashley had taken their shoes off and neither one of them knew where they’d left them. They had walked so far down the beach that they did not exactly recognize where they were in the dark.

Hud had already asked her a list of questions. “How long have you known? ” Three days. “How far along? ” Seven weeks. “Was it the weekend we went to La Jolla? ” I think so. “Are we ready to be parents? ” I don’t know how to know something like that.

And now, as they walked hand in hand along the water, they were both quietly considering two futures: one with a baby and one without.

Hud was thinking about renting a house; an Airstream was no place to raise a child. He was thinking about a two-bedroom and he imagined himself painting a nursery yellow. He thought of the sort of master bedroom his mother had. He had always liked that it had two sinks in the bathroom. He had always liked the idea of a mother and a father, together, at those sinks, every night.

Hud suddenly stopped, and Ashley stopped with him.

“What’s the first thing you thought? ” he asked her. “When you found out? When the test tube turned whatever color it turns. ”

“It’s a ring that appears at the bottom. ”

“Well, then, when the ring appeared. What was the first thought that popped into your head? ”

“Well, what was the first thing in your head? When I told you? ” Ashley said.

“Honestly? ”

“Yes. ”

“I thought, How is it possible to love something that fast? Because I feel like the minute you said it, I felt it. And that doesn’t make any sense at all. ”

Ashley’s eyes started to water and when she smiled, a tear fell.

“You didn’t think, Oh shit, or Fuck, or How do I get out of this? ” Ashley asked, wiping her tears away.

“No, ” Hud said, pulling her toward him. “Did you? ”

“No, ” she said, shaking her head. “Not once. ”

“So we’re having a baby, ” Hud said, holding her.

“We’re having a baby. ”

And they stood there, the cold water swirling up and chilling their ankles, smiling at each other.

There would be rocking chairs and swaddles, mashed bananas and high chairs, the pride of a first step. There would be a wild and beautiful future.

But for now, right now, Hud had no choice but to stop dancing around a lie. His families, old and brand-new, were his to reconcile, his to fight and fight for. And he would do that now. He did not necessarily feel up to the task, but that hardly mattered.

“Should we turn back? ” he asked.

Ashley looked up at him and gave him a gentle smile. She leaned into him farther, held his hand tighter. “All right, ” she said.

It was time to tell Jay the truth.

1: 00 A. M.

Brandon was in the guest bathroom of his own home looking in the mirror. He was pretty buzzed already, heading straight to drunk. And he was staring at himself wondering how he had made so many mistakes in such a small span of time.

How could he have done all of this to Nina? She had weathered so many things so young and he had always liked to think of himself as the beginning of good things for her. He liked to think that maybe, in some small way, he was her knight in shining armor.

And then, like a moron, he’d started sleeping with Carrie Soto. There should be a way to undo your fuckups. Not just redeem yourself for them but actually undo them, make them so that they never happened. He wanted to take back every second of heartbreak he’d caused his wife. She did not deserve any of it, had done nothing to deserve his complete and disastrous breakdown. He wished the world would let them all just pretend the whole thing never happened.

Brandon stared into the mirror and looked at his face, looked at the lines that had started to form. Every day of your life feels like you’re climbing up the mountain. And then you get there and you stay for a bit. And it’s nice at the top. But then you start sliding down the other side.

He hadn’t seen that part coming. And it had hit him hard.

• • •

This had all started because, nine months ago, Brandon had been the number one seed in the Australian Open. Then he lost in the second round in an upset to a seventeen-year-old Scandinavian named Anders Larsen.

From his first serve, Brandon had begun to worry that he was spinning out. He used his signature slingshot, something very few players could return. It cut fast and clean across the court.

But Larsen returned it.

It knocked Brandon off his feet, having to volley back and forth for the point. Point went to Larsen. So did the next one.

The serve after that, he double-faulted. He found himself growing angry, looking at this teenager in front of him. The crowd started muttering, some of them cheering for Larsen.

Larsen smiled at Brandon as he waited, crouched over and ready.

It went through Brandon’s mind that all the papers were anticipating Brandon and Kriek in the finals but now it was looking like he might not even make it past round two.

He began overthinking. His shoulder started feeling tight. For a moment it was as if his muscles did not remember. His serve got looser, slower. Every time he hit a forehand without spin, without precision, he grew more and more angry. Every backhand that missed his intended mark pushed him further into his own head and out of the game.

Break point.

When he missed the return on Larsen’s last volley, he instantly felt the cameras on him. He’d felt this way before, trapped by the camera. The feeling had been manageable enough to shake off when the camera had caught him in victory, or even in a loss to a worthy opponent. But this had been a slaughter. He was Goliath and he had just lost to David.

Larsen turned to the stands and shook his fists in the air, having beaten the current number one player in the world. The crowd cheered.

Brandon, as he usually did in his rare moments like this, held his face tight, showing no sign of distress. He walked, his whole body tense, to the net. But this time, try as he might, he could not muster a smile as he shook that little fuck’s hand.

He knew his father would have been disappointed by his lack of sportsmanship. But that was the least of his problems.

As he slinked into the locker room, his coach, Tommy, trailed behind him. “What the fuck was that! I’ve never seen you so in your head! You don’t have much time left on the court if that’s all you have to bring! ”

Brandon was silent, his heart pounding. Tommy shook his head and left. And when he was gone, Brandon punched a hole in the wall of the men’s locker room.

Obviously, he’d lost before. But in the second round of a tournament he was supposed to win?

• • •

Brandon had gone home to Nina. But the second he opened the front door and saw her, he could not stand the look on her face. Her eyes were wide and welcoming; her mouth was turned down softly in a kind frown. “How are you doing? ” she had asked him.

He’d wanted to jump out of his skin. Nina had put her arms around him and hugged him. And then she’d put her hand to his face. “You are a great man, ” she’d said. “You’ve already proven that. I mean, you have ten Grand Slams. That’s unbelievable. ”

Brandon had taken her hand and moved it away from his face. “Thank you, ” he’d said, as he got up and went to take a shower. He could not bear to look at her.

Next up, in January, he was out in the third round at the U. S. Pro Indoor. Fucking McEnroe. Then he lost in straight sets at the Davis Cup in March; the U. S. team didn’t even make it to the quarterfinals. At the Donnay Open, he lost in the semifinals and chucked his racket on the ground. It made headlines. He pulled out of Monte Carlo on account of his shoulder.

Brandon stopped coming home directly after his matches. He told Nina he had to visit his mother or his brother in New York. He made plans for himself and Tommy to stay longer in Buenos Aires and Nice. When he did finally come home, he would talk to Nina about dinner, and the restaurant, and her siblings, and his travel plans, and her schedule, and what art to buy for the downstairs den. He would not talk to her about tennis. He would not tell her his shoulder was killing him. He would sneak out to doctor’s appointments—never told her he’d begun getting cortisone shots.

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