Sean Olin - Reckless Hearts

And here they came. One, two, three, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five likes. It felt good to see them every time, though she didn’t know why—it’s not like they really meant anything. The comments started rolling in.

“ Toy Story is the best movie ever!”

“So sorry to hear Jaybird is moving away!”

“Very cool, Electra!”

As usual, everyone was so nice to her here. So why did she still feel so empty inside? Stupid question. She knew why.

The sound of the basketball game blasted from the TV in the other room. And her father’s voice: “So go somewhere else, Nina. It’s not like you forgot how to walk when you got pregnant.”

She whipped out her phone and shot a text to Jake. “YOUR VIDEO IS LIVE.” Then she immediately sent him another one. “I MISS YOU!”

His response came within seconds. “I MISS YOU TOO! RICH PEOPLE ARE WEIRD!”

For the first time all evening she felt in some small way connected to the world.

Jake had trainedhimself to know when a new song was coming on. He could feel the rhythm in the fingers on his strumming hand. He’d unconsciously start miming out the chords and catching strings of lyrics in his mind. He’d learned to take note of these phenomena, to mark them and memorize them and hold them tight until he could begin doodling around them and teasing them into a musical form. Or better, to drop what he was doing immediately and follow the music wherever it was leading.

And tonight, after that uncomfortable dinner, he’d caught sight of the night view of the ocean from his new bedroom window for the first time—all that endless black water beyond the gray moonlit dunes—and known a sweet and slightly sad new melody was beginning to form in him.

Sitting on an unpacked box, surrounded by stacks of other unpacked boxes, he strummed at his favorite guitar, a worn old Gibson his father had given him way back when he was twelve, and tested various chord progressions. He had two phrases in his head— everything a boy could want, everything but you and don’t let the sea wash me away . He knew they went together but he hadn’t figured out exactly how.

He gazed out the window again and studied the way the blackness of the sky met the even darker blackness of the water. A new line came to him. I carved your name in the sand with a stick. Maybe it could be the first line. He tested the line out, fingerpicking in a slow minor key beneath it.

To inspire himself, he’d propped his computer on one of the stacks of boxes and pulled up Elena’s AnAmerica page. Her talent, and the energy she put into developing it, always inspired him. He had a notion that this song could be a response to the beautiful video she’d made for him, though he still wasn’t sure if he’d admit this to her. For now, it might be better to continue pretending he was pining for “Sarah,” the free-spirited Key West beach bunny he’d invented to explain to her where all his love songs were coming from.

A new fragment came to him as he stared at her page: don’t hate me for loving you . He knew this one would find its way into the song. It was the most honest line so far. It described what was going on inside him exactly.

Don’t hate me for loving you

Oh-o’delay

Don’t let the sea wash me away

Maybe that could be the chorus. It was a start.

He sang the lines again and again, changing his intonation and phrasing in little ways, running through the possible variations in search of the perfect version.

When he looked up from his guitar again, he was startled to see Nathaniel sitting on the sleek Scandanavian dresser across the room, slouching against the wall, smirking at him. His feet dangled off the edge and he tapped the drawers rhythmically with the heel of his polished black shoe. He seemed nervous, like there was a bundle of energy trapped inside him, bucking against his skin, trying to get out.

“Not bad,” he said. “Where’d you learn to pick like that?”

Jake clutched his guitar as though he could hide the music he’d been making. He didn’t like being distracted when he was composing. But like everything else about this foreign house, the bedroom didn’t feel like it belonged to him enough for him to tell Nathaniel to leave.

“I … My dad’s a musician,” he said. “He taught me.”

“Oh yeah?” said Nathaniel. “Have I heard of him?”

In his right hand, Nathaniel held an ornately decorated silver flask that had been inlaid with an image of a stalking tiger, delicately carved in ivory. He raised it to his lips and poured a nip of whatever it contained into his mouth as he waited for Jake to respond.

“He used to be in a band. Hope Springs. Kind of folky-bluesy stuff. They had a song called ‘Dandelions.’ You might have heard that one.”

“That song was huge. That guy’s your dad?”

“It wasn’t that huge. Nobody got rich off it. It went to number eighty-six.”

Jake glanced at his guitar, wishing he could get back to work.

“Still …” Nathaniel warbled a few lines of the chorus to Jake’s dad’s minor claim to fame. Then, tipping the flask toward Jake, he said, “Want some forty-year-old, oak-cask rum?”

Jake shook his head no, but then realizing that since Nathaniel showed no signs of leaving, he wouldn’t be getting any more work done on the song, he changed his mind. He felt like he should probably get to know his new stepbrother, anyway. “Know what, sure,” he said.

Popping down from the dresser, Nathaniel handed Jake the flask. The ivory inlay was impossibly intricate. It depicted some sort of Chinese landscape complete with mountaintop and weeping trees and a wise old man with a cane climbing a lonely path.

“How do you like the room?” Nathaniel asked, wandering around and poking his nose in the various boxes Jake had opened but not unpacked.

“It’s okay, I gu—”

Cutting him off, Nathaniel went on. “It used to be mine. That dresser? Mine. That bed? Mine. That bookshelf? Mine. I guess what’s mine is yours now, though, brother. Enjoy it.”

This was news to Jake. “They gave me your room?” he said, wincing at the burn as the rum hit his throat.

He felt a tug of guilt over having taken Nathaniel’s room, though Nathaniel didn’t seem all that upset about it. He just kept on poking around in the boxes, lifting things out to study them and then putting them back.

“Fuck it. That’s what happens when you don’t come home for two years.”

Every new detail Jake learned about this guy led to a hundred more questions. “Two years. Wow. That’s a long time. You didn’t come home once?”

Nathaniel threw him a look as if to say, Isn’t it obvious? “You’ll see,” he said. “Once you know Cameron like I do, you won’t be asking questions like that.” He peered at the screen of Jake’s computer. “Who’s this?”

Jake blushed. He felt exposed, like just having Elena’s profile open like this was a betrayal of the secrets of his heart. Instead of answering, he said, “Did something happen between the two of you?”

“You’re hilarious,” Nathaniel said. He took the flask back and downed a large shot of rum. “He’s my father. Is that not enough?” He went back to studying Elena’s profile. “Electra. And that makes you Jaybird.”

Jake could tell that he shouldn’t push the topic too hard, but he had to ask. “Why aren’t there any photos of you anywhere? I mean, I didn’t even know you existed. That’s sort of weird.”

“Ask Cameron, not me.” Nathaniel pulled up a box and sat in front of Jake. “Let’s talk about Electra. She’s obviously much more interesting to you than the ongoing saga of Nathaniel and Cameron. That song you’re writing for her is pretty sweet. But eventually you’re going to have to come clean with her.”