Most weekday mornings, Evan wakes to the sound of a horn blaring in the drive. Usually it’s Mary’s navy Range Rover, Emmeline in the passenger seat: on the mornings Mary doesn’t appear, then Evan picks Emmeline up himself on the drive down to the bluff. The others change with the day, bobbing up beside him in the line-up. Afterwards, breakfast. They squeeze round a table with damp hair and salt drying on their skin, shifting chairs to make room for whoever else wanders in. Sometimes they stay until the breakfast things are cleared from the other tables.
Then Evan goes home to Clarissa Bloom.
The script is nearly finished. There are still scenes that need work, lines he keeps coming back to, but he can read whole stretches now without wanting to tear them apart. Once or twice, he catches himself smiling at something she says. He thinks it might actually be good. He works with the windows open, the morning’s salt still in his hair. Occasionally, a remark from breakfast finds its way into Clarissa’s mouth. By evening, the pages are usually pushed to one side and the walkie is out on the deck beside him. Most nights James’s voice crackles out while he’s eating, or reading, or watching the last of the light leave the water.
“You there Ev?”
Evan reaches for it, smiling. The first weekend invitation comes on the Thursday after James and Harry come for dinner. They’re going down to the beach in Pedro on Saturday. Does he fancy it? Marls is there when he arrives, and Fab and Gid. Harry waves him over from a hole he’s digging and immediately puts him to work. Later, Evan sits with sand drying on his legs while an argument passes back and forth over his head. Someone hands him a drink. James moves a bag so he can stretch his feet out in the shade. The following Saturday, James makes tacos. Rem is there this time, and Harry has a new toy bulldozer, which Evan is required to inspect the second he steps through the door. Then, he ends up at the kitchen counter chopping tomatoes for salsa while James stands beside him pressing out taco shells.
After that, there are beach days and afternoons at James and Marls’s that run on into dinner. Marls is usually there, and Fab. Gid comes and goes; Dory, the girl with the braids, turns up sometimes. Sometimes Rem is there too. Evan learns which cabinet in the kitchen holds the glasses. He learns which kitchen chair has a loose leg, and that it should be avoided at all costs, and that Harry insists he doesn’t like mushrooms, but will eat them happily if they are disguised as something else. And then somehow without Evan realising it summer arrives—fully—Dora calls and says she’ll be flying out the second week of June. The days are hot—and golden—Evan’s tan settles into his skin like something permanent, like the sun has found a home in there—his hair going is several shades lighter than it was when he arrived—the daily salt and sun lightening the ends to near white blonde. He stops to stare at himself in the mirror above the sink in his ensuite as he’s brushing his teeth—he barely recognises the face looking back at him: it’s strange—it’s not just that his skin is a dark copper brown that he hasn’t seen since he left for New York, or that his hair is colour of the beach—it’s something in his eyes—they look clearer—a deeper blue—the faint line between his brown that had been a permanent feature of his face for as long as he could remember was gone, replaced with new lines around the corners of his eyes, the kind you get from smiling, or laughing. He looks, he realises with a slow sort of realisation, happy. For the first time in a long time—perhaps even the first time ever—he looks happy. Like someone who likes their life.
The feeling stays with him all week—follows him into the weekend. He watches Harry splash through the waves armed with a bodyboard. The beach is busy with families, the air thick with sunscreen and the smell of salt and grilled corn as summer begins to set in. Marls has a cooler full of sandwiches and drinks. James falls asleep within ten minutes of lying down, stretched out on his front, dead to the world. That happens a lot. On the couch after dinner, halfway through a movie with Harry; on the beach; once in the back seat of the Wrangler when Evan gives them a lift home. Evan knows James works two jobs, that sometimes, after Harry has gone to bed, he picks up shifts delivering pizzas. James hasn’t told him about that part, but Evan has seen the Papa Pedro’s uniform stuffed into the boot of his car. He wishes he could do something. The money would barely register in his own account, but he can’t think of a way to offer it that James would accept. So offers to run to the video shop and pick up whatever video they’re watching, to the grocery store for whatever is needed for dinner, slips the cash James hands him back into the pocket of James’s jacket hanging in the hall. Settles the bill when James isn’t looking, when he’s taking Harry to the bathroom: lunch, coffee, pizza—he tries to make it add up. Tries to make a difference where he can. It’s not enough—but he hasn’t worked out how to do more without James noticing. Not yet, anyway.
Evan watches Harry wipe out in shallows—his dark head disappearing beneath white water only to pop up again a few seconds later laughing—from this distance he’s just a blur of dark hair and skinny limbs—for a second time shifts and it’s not Harry he’s watching but a six year old Reg. All dark curls and gangly brown limbs—before he’d lost California tan, back when his skin had been almost as dark as Harry's instead of the pale white it was now. Memories crash over Evan like waves breaking on a reef— Reg flinging wet sand at Sirius’s back, and then shrieking with laughter as Sirius chased him down the beach in revenge. Dora with hair in pigtails sitting cross-legged beside him on the beach beside him as Sirius and James play fought in the shallows. Of a teenage James teaching Evan to surf, and Evan thinking he was the coolest person he’d ever met. It’s funny, Evan thinks, the people who end up holding the place of family. It should be his mum. His dad. But it’s not. It’s Dora, Sirius, Reg. And, in a way, James too. None of them related to him by blood and yet still the first faces he thinks of when he thinks back over his childhood. It’s always them.
Sirius comes back the first week of June. He lets himself into the house on a Friday evening, the front door slamming in announcement.
“Where you at pretty boy—daddy’s home!”
Evan, who’d been in the study, stands, stretches, and follows the sound of clinking glass into the kitchen.
“Please never refer to yourself as daddy in my presence ever again.”
Sirius glances up from the counter where he’s cracked open two beers, mirrored Oakly’s still firmly in place.
“No way man,” he says, sliding a bottle across the marble counter toward Evan, “you know you’d be all over this hunk of burning hotness if I gave you the chance.”
Evan eyes Sirius’s violently loud tie-dye T-shirt and cargo short combo. “You got me,” he deadpans. “I want you. I need you. Take me now.”
Sirius points at him with his beer, triumphant. “You know what they say—once you go Black, you never go back.”
“Yeah, pretty sure that’s not what that saying means, man.”
“Semantics, bro. Semantics.” Sirius pulls out one of the stools and drops onto it. “So—Friday night. What’s the plan?”
Evan shrugs. “My friend’s having a party—could swing by if you want.” He pauses, casts another look at Sirius’s shirt, then adds, “But only if you change. I’m not going anywhere with you dressed like that.”
“Don’t hate on the garb just because you couldn’t pull it off,” Sirius counters.
Then he gives Evan a long, assessing look. Even behind the mirrored lenses, Evan can tell the word friend hasn’t slipped past Sirius. He’s never really had friends outside Sirius, Reg and his sister. Never been the one invited to a party. He goes along with Reg, or Dora, or Barty—always someone else’s plus-one. The “you should come too” added as an afterthought because he happens to be standing next to the person who the invite was really meant for.
“That chick—Mary. She going to be there?” Sirius asks eventually, letting the rest pass without comment.
“Yeah,” says Evan.
Sirius considers this for a moment. Then he grins, a flash of white teeth.
“You know, I think I’m in the mood to party.”
They’re an hour late. Evan, true to his word, refuses to leave the house until the tie-dye atrocity is gone, eventually bribing Sirius with the promise that Mary will definitely be more receptive to someone who doesn’t look like a hungover camp counsellor. Sirius finally changes into jeans and a black Henley and—miracle of miracles—doesn’t look half bad. Evan privately thinks Mary owes him for the assist. He hasn’t been to Pete’s house before. The long, tree-lined drive is already packed with cars, so he parks the Wrangler on the street. Bass drifts down towards them through the still-warm air as they make their way up the steep drive, the house hidden beyond the trees. When it finally comes into view, set into the hillside above them, they both stop.
“Shiiiiieeet,” says Sirius, drawing the word out over several syllables. He turns to Evan. “How’d you say you know this guy?”
For a moment, Evan doesn’t answer. He’s too busy staring at the house rising above them. Despite the cars parked along the drive and the music drifting down from an open terrace, he wonders whether they’ve come to the wrong place.
“We surf together,” he says eventually.
Evan is accustomed to beautiful houses—or, at least, houses furnished at considerable expense. Palos Verdes Estates is full of expensive houses with swimming pools and tennis courts beyond them, garages standing open on rows of polished cars. This house is small by PVE standards, only two storeys, set into the hillside.
But he can’t stop looking at it.
Pale flowing stone, glass and timber settle into the hillside, each long, clean line following the fall of the land. An exposed seam of rock disappears beneath one wall; above it, a terrace reaches out among the trees. He can see through the house in places: across an open room, past the people gathered inside. Broad steps descend between banks of grasses, their pale seed heads stirring at the edges of the stone. It’s not what Evan is expecting at all. A bungalow, maybe, with lava lamps and movie posters on the walls. Something caught between a frat house and a stoner’s cave. Certainly not a work of art—the sort of house you’d find spread across several pages of a glossy design magazine. They climb the steps to the open front door and follow the flow of people inside. From what Evan can see, the house is just as beautiful within: expanses of raw concrete warmed by timber, soft pools of light falling across pale stone floors. Plants spill from recessed beds beneath the windows. Through an opening in the roof, the branches of a tree reach into the night.
Beyond the open glass doors, the garden slopes away in broad terraces. A pool curves into the limestone of the hill, its irregular edges disappearing beneath overhanging greenery. Underwater lights pick out the contours of the rock; from somewhere above it comes the sound of running water. Lanterns hang among the trees, lighting faces and bare shoulders, the scattered glasses on low tables. Evan looks around for someone he knows. At the far end of the garden, two familiar hulking figures interrupt the view: Flint is halfway through a keg stand, with Bones gripping his ankles. Evan heads towards them. As he gets closer, he spots Emmeline sprawled on a sun lounger, cheering Flint on. Mary sits beside her, laughing, her sun-streaked hair catching the lantern light.
“New York!”
Mary notices him first. She’s up in a flash, throwing her arms around his neck and enveloping him in a cloud of perfume and tequila.
“Mary, you remember Sirius—”
“Hey, Black.” A wicked smile tugs at her mouth.
“Hey back at you,” Sirius says.
Evan settles on the end of Emmeline’s sun lounger. She nudges him with her foot in greeting.
“This is a really nice place,” he says, glancing around again.
“Right?” She watches him for a moment. “You want a tour?”
Evan looks towards Sirius, who has already slung an arm around Mary’s shoulders and is in the process of laying it on with everything he’s got.
“Sure,” Evan says.
Emmeline stands and he follows suit.
“Does this tour include somewhere I can get a drink that doesn’t have Flint’s mouth attached?” he asks as she links her arm through his.
Inside, Evan spots Pete holding court near the sliding doors with a group of guys he doesn’t recognise—button-downs unbuttoned just enough to show off the tan, Rolexes flashing under the string lights.
“Pete’s work friends,” Emmaline says, drawing the word work so it’s several syllables longer than they should be. “All of them will like totally bore you to death within five minutes.”
She tugs his arm.
“Come on, Mac’s got margaritas going—”
Mac is in the kitchen, holding court behind an arrangement of limes, agave syrup and two cocktail shakers.
“Organic marg?” he offers.
“I didn’t know margaritas could be organic,” says Evan.
He regrets the words instantly. Mac sets down both shakers and looks at Evan with a very serious expression. Half an hour later, Evan knows which small batch distillery Mac’s tequila comes from, how the agave he’s using is grown and which of his mothers first became concerned about pesticides on citrus. He has also made the mistake of finishing his drink, which Mac takes as an invitation to make him another. Their escape arrives in the form of two blonde girls looking for beer cups. Emmeline’s fingers close around Evan’s wrist and tug him out while Mac is distracted.
Emmeline keeps hold of his wrist until they’re safely past the kitchen. At the foot of the staircase, a red velvet rope—the kind used to cordon off VIP sections in nightclubs—has been strung across the stairs. A sign hangs from it.
No fiesta this way, muchachos.
Evan glances at it, then at Emmeline, who ducks beneath the rope without hesitation and gestures for him to follow. After a moment, he does. The music dulls as they climb. Upstairs, a narrow window runs the length of the landing, framing a strip of hillside silvered by the garden lights. Evan pauses beside a large framed photograph on the opposite wall—and grins. Pete, Mac and Frank stand on a white-sand beach with impossibly blue water behind them, smiling at the camera. All three are apparently naked, each holding a strategically placed surfboard. Farther along, Emmeline pushes open a door. Inside, a low sofa faces shelves crowded with books, records and objects Evan can’t immediately identify. An orange lava lamp glows beside an expensive-looking turntable. He eyes it with amusement. He hadn’t been completely wrong, after all. By the time he turns, Emmeline has opened the glass doors onto a balcony. He follows her outside.
The balcony sits above the trees, sheltered beneath the long reach of the roof. Below, the hillside falls away towards the ocean, houses and gardens nestled into its dark folds. Lights trace the winding streets down to the shore, then follow the sweep of the bay until they blur into the distance, the last glimmers of twilight painting the horizon in shades of blue before it deepens to black above them. Evan steps up to the railing. Somewhere below, someone laughs, but the party feels much farther away than a single flight of stairs. The lower roof stretches out beneath him, following the slope; beyond its edge, the garden terraces disappear among the trees. From here, he can barely tell where Pete’s garden ends and the hillside begins.
Neither of them speaks for a while. They stand shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the darkening bay. Evan sips his second margarita, which, to the credit of Mac and his organic ingredients, really is very good. After a while, Emmeline nudges him with her shoulder. He looks down. In the dimness, her dark brown eyes look almost black. She’s watching him with an uncharacteristically serious expression.
Neither of them speaks for a while. They stand shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the darkening bay. Evan sips his second margarita, which, to the credit of Mac and his organic ingredients, really is very good. After a while, Emmeline nudges him with her shoulder. He looks down. In the dimness, her dark brown eyes look almost black. She’s watching him with an uncharacteristically serious expression.
“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m, like, kinda stoked your lame emo ex broke your heart.”
Evan frowns at her. “Thanks?”
She fixes him with a very direct look. “Obviously, that part sucked for you. The guy’s a total tool,” she says, and then tBut if he hadn’t, you wouldn’t have come out here, and we never would’ve met.”
Her lips curve into the familiar sharp edged smile.
“And that would’ve sucked way worse. For me.” She takes a sip from her glass and then adds, casually, almost off hand, “kinda crazy you know? Like it feels like we’ve been best friends forever.”
Best friends.
It’s a childish concept. Something kids say. Best friends. It belongs in school playgrounds, not to people in their twenties.
And yet the rush of warmth Evan feels is anything but childish.
He’s only ever had one best friend. The possibility of having another—of being called someone’s best friend by anyone other than Reg—has never really occurred to him. And as silly as it might be, those two words, coming from Emmeline, feel like something special.
He ducks his head, trying to hide the smile breaking across his face. He’s too slow.
“What?” she asks, amused.
“Nothing.” He takes another sip of his margarita, embarrassed at being caught.
She narrows her dark eyes at him. “Nuh-uh. Spit it out.”
Evan gives in. He knows better than to think he stands a chance against her.
“It’s stupid.” He shakes his head, then looks at her, grinning. “I’m just really glad we met too.”
“Aww.” She nudges him again, light and teasing, and he can tell she doesn’t quite understand what he means.
Suddenly, he wants her to.
“No, for real,” he says.
Something in his voice makes her turn towards him. He looks back out over the bay, watching the lights along the shoreline for a moment before he speaks again.
“I didn’t have a lot of friends before I went to New York. Or in New York, either. I had Reg—Sirius’s brother, the one I told you about.”
She nods.
“I had him and Sirius, my sister, and James, I guess. But that was it.”
Emmeline studies him for a moment, then shakes her head.
“I don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“Why you didn’t have, like, a ton of friends. It’s not like you’re shy, or weird, or hard to get along with.” She pauses. “Okay, you’re a little weird, but like in a good way.”
“Thanks.”
“But you’re awesome. Was Chadwick just full of losers or what? Because if you’d gone to my school, you would’ve been, like, one of the most popular guys there. For sure.”
Evan considers that for a moment, then shrugs.
“I guess it felt safer not to let people in.”
“Safer?”
“Yeah.” He turns his glass slowly against the railing. “When I was really little, it was different. I had loads of friends, at least according to my mom.”
He casts her a sideways look.
“She sent me to a kiddie shrink for while after we moved here. Thought I was ‘socially withdrawn.’ The guy used to try to get me to draw pictures of my feelings.”
“Did you?”
“Mostly I drew dinosaurs.”
That makes Emmeline smile—
“I think I just wanted someone to talk to. I was lonely. My English wasn’t that good back then–”
“Wait.” She says. “What do you mean, your English wasn’t that good?”
“I grew up speaking French, mostly. I spoke English too, just not as well.”
“Why did you speak French?”
“I was born in Quebec,” Evan says. “We lived there until I was about five.”
Emmeline stares at him.
“No way. Are you shitting me right now? You’re Canadian?”
Evan smiles. “Only Half. My mom’s Canadian. My dad—my real dad—is American. He’s from Texas.”
“That’s crazy.” She frowns at him. “Wait, do you, like, still speak French?”
Evan smiles at her. “Oui, mais je parle comme un enfant de cinq ans.”
Emmeline stares at him. “What?”
“I said yes, but I speak like a five-year-old.”
“Oh my God. That is so cool,” says Emmeline. “I can’t believe you speak French.”
“I don’t speak it well,” Evan points out.
“Still cool,” Emmeline says, with the kind of decisiveness that makes arguing pointless. “So, you moved here when you were five. Then what?”
“We lived in San Marino for a while. About a year, I think. I don’t remember a lot of it. Apparently, I sort of shut down. Stopped talking.”
“That’s when your mom sent you to the shrink?”
He nods. “I guess it didn’t occur to her that I was just lonely. Mark—that’s my stepdad—didn’t speak French. He’s from here, Southern California. He didn’t like it when Mom and I spoke it in the house, so she stopped speaking it to me altogether.”
Emmeline’s mouth tightens, but she lets him continue.
“And the kids at school couldn’t understand me properly. They made fun of my accent, so I stopped wanting to talk there, too.” The memory of it sits less easily than he expects, it’s been a long time since he’s thought about his early years—and he’s not sure he’s ever talked about them to anyone, not even Reg. “I was scared,” he says slowly. “Confused. Everything changed so fast. Suddenly I had a stepdad and a stepsister. Dora and I didn’t get along at first. We’re almost exactly the same age, actually. My birthday’s the second of February; hers is the eleventh.”
“Of February?”
“Yeah. Same year and everything.”
“Huh.”
“Her mom had died about a year before. Our parents just sort of shoved us together and expected us to act like one big happy family. They couldn’t seem to understand why we didn’t.”
“You guys fight a lot?”
“Yeah. She used to bite me, and I pulled her hair. It was pretty rough for a while.” He pauses. “Then we moved out here, when we were about six. Next door to Reg and Sirius.”
He smiles at the memory—Reg’s small pale face peering curiously at him from around the gate that connected the Blacks’ garden to theirs.
“Reg went out of his way to understand me. Even when I couldn’t get the words right, he’d wait. Never seemed to mind. And Sirius sort of took me and Dora under his wing. Looked out for us like we were his kid brother and sister too. Him and Reg were so close. I think seeing them together made Dora and me realise we didn’t have to keep fighting, that there was another option. They taught us what being family could be. We sure as hell didn’t learn it from our parents…” He trails off, lost in the memories for a moment, when he comes back Emmeline is watching him intently.
Evan swallows. “Point is—sort of latched on to them. We both did. The difference is Dora managed to branch out in middle school—make other friends. I didn't. Then by the time I got to high school I’d started to realise something was off—-that I wasn’t like everyone else. Made the basketball team freshman year—boys in the locker room used to talk shit about girls, especially the older guys—” the memory of how uncomfortable he’d felt comes crashing back like a wave—-the feeling of being wrong in his skin—the anxiety of puberty and a changing room full of boys—and then—the memory of the way Evan’s heart had started skipping a beat every time James smiled at him—the shame an guilt he’d felt as he slowly realised what that meant, why it was that he wanted to look at James so much: how embarrassed he’d felt—how scared he’d been that James would somehow know, would somehow be able to see it on his face. He pushes the memory away—forces himself to keep speaking because Emmeline is watching him steadily now, expression sharp—waiting.
“Shit got really bad for a while after that,” he admits.
“Bad how?” Emmeline asks.
“Bad with my stepdad. Bad at home.” Evan looks down at his glass. “We were never super close, but when he wasn’t working he used to come to my basketball games in middle school. Came to a couple of junior surf competitions. Took us to Disney World one time.” He shrugs. “He was the closest thing I had to a dad, you know?”
Emmeline nods.
“Then, start of sophomore year, everything went to shit. There was this boy, Ryan. He was on the team with me—a senior, super popular, good-looking, dating the captain of the cheer squad. He invited me to his birthday party. I couldn’t believe he even knew my name, let alone wanted to be friends.”
He shoots Emmeline a look.
“Course, as it turned out, he didn’t just want to be friends.”
Her dark eyebrows rise. “No way.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Evan shrugs. “We hung out for a couple of weeks. Then one day he kissed me.”
He doesn’t tell Emmeline that he hadn’t really liked the kiss. Or that the only reason he’d let Ryan kiss him again—and again after that—was because he’d been scared no one else ever would. Ryan was good-looking and popular, and Evan was fifteen and so certain that nobody else would want him that he’d thought he ought to take what he could get. Even when Ryan ignored him in public, even when he pretended at school that he barely knew who Evan was. Even when it hurt. He doesn’t say any of that. It’s too embarrassing. Too pathetic.
“Then one day his older brother walked in on us. He flipped out. Told his parents.”
“Shit.”
“Ryan got shipped off to military school. And me?” Evan looks out over the bay. “Mark was furious. Beat the shit out of me.”
Beside him, Emmeline goes very still.
“Then, that summer, Mom sent me to this Christian camp up in the San Bernardino Mountains, near Big Bear Lake. Summit Ridge.” He gives a short, humourless laugh. “We weren’t even particularly religious. Went to church on holidays, that was about it. I think it was probably Mark’s idea. Maybe he figured he wasn’t going to be able to beat the gay out of me himself.”
“Evan…”
“The brochure said it was about building character. Leadership, outdoor skills, all that shit.” He picks at the label on his bottle. “What they didn’t put in the brochure was the part where they made us stand in front of everyone and confess our sins every day in this sick humiliation ritual.”
Emmeline doesn’t speak. He can feel her watching him.
“They read our letters before they sent them. We weren’t allowed to call home unless a counsellor was listening—sometimes they’d wake us in the middle of the night and make us run five miles for no fucking reason.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah. There was a lot of him.” Evan manages a faint smile, but it fades. “It was fucking awful. Worst summer of my life. By the time I got home all I wanted was to be left alone—and stay out of my step father’s way. So that’s what I did for the next two years—then when Reg said he was applying for school in New York I decided to go with him. Anything to get the hell away.”
There’s a long pause.
“I can’t believe you came back,” Emmeline says. “After all that.”
Evan lets out a shaky laugh. He feels oddly raw. He doesn’t think he’s ever told anyone that much before—not even Reg. Reg knew some of it; he’d seen the bruises Mark left. But there are things Evan never told him. He never told him just how bad the camp had been.
“Yeah,” he says. “Me neither. But I’m glad I did.”
He turns to face her. “Never thought I could be happy here, but I am. Happier than I’ve been in a really long time. And you—” He nods towards the sliding doors, the music and laughter drifting out from inside. “All of this? I think that’s a big part of it. Finally feels like I fit in somewhere. I’ve never really had that before. Never let myself have it. Was always too scared.”