Lost, p.9
Lost, page 9
He jogged this time, deciding against a flat-out run as he headed for the Pacific Coast Highway. There were more people out down this way, but he didn’t recognise any of them, and it made for a nice change of pace. Back home he would have known almost everybody that he passed, would have constantly needed to stop for conversation. Today he was glad for the peace. He needed the time alone.
Despite there already being a number of people strewn across the sand, sunbathers and early morning exercisers and a young family playing in the tide, the beach was as tranquil as Lysander had expected it to be. Taking the lead from others around him, he tugged his sneakers off and allowed his feet to sink into the loose grains beneath him.
It was cool between his toes, not at all as uncomfortable as he had expected, and he dug in deeper. Coupled with the sound of the waves pulling in and out and the sun warming his bare arms, he could have stood there all day and been perfectly content. Maybe trading snow for sand hadn’t been such a bad thing after all. This was bliss.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
The salt on the breeze was more prominent than he had anticipated. He committed the scent to memory, marking it as what it was — the coastline; Mapleton Beach; the smell of his new home.
“Aren’t you Zack Bennett’s son?”
Lysander’s eyes snapped open. That was the last thing he had expected to hear, and for a moment he wondered whether he’d imagined it. But there was the source of the voice not five steps to his left — a girl a few years his senior, wearing a fluorescent green bikini and a curious expression. She smiled widely when their eyes met. Lysander was so stunned by the intensity of her gaze that he almost took a step back.
“Oh my God, it is you!” she gushed. “I had no idea you were in California!”
Lysander baulked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His mind shot back to the message that Zack had posted online. He’d said he wasn’t ready for people to know about him, and Zack had respected that. He hadn’t told anybody. He’d seen the message himself, and there was definitely no mention of him in it. Had Zack gone behind his back and posted another? No. He wouldn’t have, not without asking. He trusted his father that much, at least.
But then how did this girl know who he was?
“You’re Dakota’s brother,” she went on. She nodded emphatically, as if she were trying to convince herself as much as she was him. “You guys are twins, right? That’s what the captions said.”
Lysander’s mouth was dry. “What captions?”
“On the photos. The ones on her socials!”
Lysander didn’t have accounts on the sites Dakota had frequented, and he didn’t know every little thing that his sister had posted to hers. But of course she had photos of him, photos of the pair of them together. It wasn’t a stretch to think she might have posted them for her friends to see. And now, for all the world to see.
His stomach flipped. His head spun.
“What’s it like?” the girl asked. She didn’t bother trying to hide the eagerness in her voice. “What’s he like? Zack. Christ, he’s such a goddamn ho—”
“I have to go.” The words came out in a rush. Lysander could barely hear them, muffled by the rushing sound in his own ears. “I’m sorry, I… I’m gonna be late for something.”
He was running for the highway before the disappointed look had finished spreading across her face, kicking up sand in his wake. So much for feeling free. Now it felt like everybody he passed was staring at him for a different reason. He found himself looking at them more closely. Did they know? Did everybody know?
He ran the same path back to the house, practically flying through the front door the second he had it unlocked. It snapped shut a little louder than he’d intended, but neither his father nor Georgia called out from upstairs. He stood with his back to the door for several moments, taking the time to catch his breath, to calm his racing heart. The wood against his back let him know that he was safe.
He hadn’t bothered to put his shoes back on after leaving the beach. His feet would be paying for it later, but there was nothing to be done for it now. He gave his toes an experimental flex. They felt fine. His feet had been put through worse, anyway. And anything was better than being back on the beach with that girl.
It’s fine, he assured himself. It was just one girl. Probably a one-off. She didn’t even try anything.
He felt stupid as soon as the thought hit him. It probably was a one-off. And it wasn’t like it had been that bad. The girl hadn’t tackled him or anything, just…surprised him. Hardly something to get worked up about. He’d probably made things worse by running off the way he had. She probably thought he was a maniac. What an idiot.
Pull yourself together, Maverick.
He was careful not to make a sound as he headed back upstairs, first depositing his sneakers in his room and then heading for the bathroom. A shower would help him clear his head. And he was going to need it to get through the rest of the day. He had people to meet — something he wasn’t particularly looking forward to, especially after his morning encounter, but he’d agreed to this. Better to get it over with.
Neither Zack nor Georgia emerged from their room until almost midday, by which time Lysander had pushed the morning’s meeting with the girl to the back of his mind.
The Harmons' house was exactly as Lysander had expected: as grand as Zack’s, spacious and open, but also child-proofed for the benefit of their baby daughter. She was the first new face he saw when the door was opened. She squirmed gleefully in her mother’s arms, evidently thrilled by all the people showing up at her house.
“Hey, guys,” a blonde greeted them, a genuine smile crossing her face as she opened the door wider to grant them access. “Glad you could make it.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Georgia said as she stepped inside. She was quick to take the squirming child from her friend’s arms. “I could never pass up a chance to see this little darling!”
Zack motioned for Lysander to go in ahead of him. Lysander did, smiling politely at the woman he presumed was Brendan’s wife as he passed her. Zack gave the woman a swift peck on the cheek by way of greeting.
“Good to see you, Nat,” he said earnestly as she shut the door behind him. “Not late, are we?”
“Of course not. Pat and Vicky are the only ones here.”
Pat. Lysander felt a twinge of relief. Pat had been around to the house a handful of times since the first time they’d met, and he’d come to be comfortable around the man. And another familiar face at the party wasn’t a bad thing. So far, Pat and Brendan’s wives were the only ones he didn’t know. Them, and the bouncing baby in Georgia’s arms. Maybe today wouldn’t be as bad as he’d anticipated.
Zack placed a hand on his shoulder, and Lysander straightened at once.
“This is my son,” his father introduced him, “Lysander.” To Lysander he said, “This is Bren’s wife, Natalia.”
Natalia was a supermodel with her perfect make-up and neatly done-up hair. Weren’t mothers of babies supposed to look exhausted? She looked more like she’d just stepped off the front cover of a magazine.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Harmon.”
“Nat,” she corrected him with a smile. “Please. We’re all family here. And this is Melody,” she added, gesturing to the child in Georgia’s arms. “My pride and joy.”
Lysander looked to the tot just in time to see her attempt to shove her entire fist into her mouth.
“Takes after her father,” Zack chuckled.
She did, though for different reasons than what Zack was implying. Melody had the same hazel eyes that he remembered Brendan having, and the same rounded nose. Those golden ringlets were all her mother’s doing, though. He smiled at her. She giggled right back.
Zack led Lysander to the back of the house, leaving Georgia and Nat to gossip. A set of French doors led to a wide timber deck where Pat, Brendan and a woman who could only be Pat’s wife were already seated. He had to take a second look when he caught sight of the brunette — she looked so much like Natalia that for a moment he almost believed that the two women were one, despite their differing hair colours.
Sisters, Dakota’s voice rang through his mind. He recalled her telling him that the singer and the lead guitarist had married siblings.
He fixed his eyes on Mrs. O'Sullivan as she did the same to him. The two sisters had the same piercing brown eyes, the same full lips, but their differences were more easily noticed when Natalia took a seat beside her sister: she had the narrower face; her sister smiled wider. Even without the obvious difference in hair colour, there wouldn’t have been an issue telling them apart.
Pat and Brendan both smiled and greeted Lysander warmly, the former going as far as to add, “It’s nice to see you again.” He smiled back. Pat’s wife stood to greet him before his father had the chance to introduce them, taking his hand in much the same way that her husband had the first time Lysander had faced him. Her shake was steady, her smile friendly.
“Vicky,” she introduced herself. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Lysander,” he replied. He was getting sick of hearing his own name.
He took the vacant seat beside Brendan, leaving the two on the other side of the deck to be occupied by his father and Georgia. Zack let him go with a proud sort of smile that Lysander didn’t feel he deserved.
He listened to the adults chatter away with each other, only speaking when it was necessary or he was needed for another introduction. The day became a steady stream of names that he was supposed to remember: the band’s bassist Jackson Kristovski (“Chris, please.”) and his wife Juliet; their drummer Aaron and his new girlfriend Amber. They all blurred together until Lysander found himself forgetting the names almost the second he learned them.
The last people to arrive were Brendan’s family. It was easy to remember his father’s name, as it was something that the two shared, but the step-mother and the younger brother’s names were lost on Lysander immediately after they introduced themselves and wandered off to say hello to everybody else. The party was spread out all around the backyard now, but Lysander found himself still seated in the same place he’d begun. Only now, he was alone.
“Hey.”
He looked up, preparing himself for yet another introduction. He hoped it would be the last.
The girl smiled down at him, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. In one arm she held little Melody, and with the other she held out her fist to him. For a moment he stared at it curiously, but then he realised it was her form of greeting. He bumped his own fist against hers lightly, feeling like an idiot. It must have shown on his face, because she chuckled.
“It’s Lysander, right?” she asked, a smile tugging at her lips. He nodded. “Awesome. I’m Marina.”
“Marina.” The name struck a chord within him; he knew of her. “Brendan’s sister, right?”
“That I am. It seems our reputations precede us both.”
Now that he’d had it confirmed, he recognised her. He’d been familiar with her face three or so years ago, when Dakota had tried in vain to contact her in an attempt to get in touch with their father, but she had changed quite a bit since then. She was maybe eighteen now, and the purple hair she had once sported had returned to a natural light brown, though it still had a blue streak or two.
“Any particular reason you’re sitting all the way over here when the party’s obviously moved over there?”
“Not my sort of crowd.”
“Come with us, then,” Marina said, nodding toward the house. “Mel and I are going to watch a movie. Aren’t we, munchkin?”
Melody grabbed a fistful of Marina’s hair in response.
Continue sitting alone in the yard, or hang out with someone his own age. Lysander didn’t need to think about it. He followed Marina back into the house, into the pristine living room that was both brighter and messier than Zack’s but still boasted the same fantastic entertainment set-up. Marina set her niece down on the floor before grabbing the remote to put on a movie. Lysander chuckled as Melody scooted closer to the widescreen and squealed with delight as the title screen for The Little Mermaid popped up.
“One of her favourites,” Marina said apologetically as she pressed play and dropped down onto one of the couches. “You can sit, y'know?”
He did, taking a seat at the opposite end of the couch so that Marina had room to kick her shoes off and stretch her legs out between them. Despite being three years his senior, she was a few inches shorter than his five foot seven — only just tall enough for her toes to scrape his knees if she tried hard enough.
And she was about as interested in watching a fish-girl as he was. “So how do you like the family so far?”
“They seem nice enough.” Lysander shrugged. “Pat and Brendan are both great. I don’t really know anybody else. Today’s my first time meeting them all.”
“What about Zack and Georgia? Are they what you expected?”
“Zack’s not.” He frowned as he thought back on those days leading up to his first meeting with his rockstar father. “I thought he was gonna be a stuck-up rich guy. And that he was gonna hate me. But he turned out to be decent, so that was great.” He was silent for a moment before adding, “I never really thought about Georgia before coming here. She’s nice, but…I don’t think she likes me much.”
Marina didn’t say anything to that, for which Lysander was grateful. As lovely as he knew his step-mother was, he didn’t want to hear anybody defending the way they thought she must feel about him. That was something only Georgia would ever be able to prove to him. They were going to need to work out their relationship on their own.
“So what’re you doing inside?” he asked her. “Not in a partying mood?”
“I’m grounded,” she admitted with a grimace. “Mom and Dad dragged me along so they could keep an eye on me, and so I could babysit while they all get drunk. Not that I really mind. I love my family, and I love babysitting Melody, but my band and I were supposed to be recording today.”
She sounded whiny, and the playful pout that she sent him said she knew it.
“What’d you get grounded for?”
“I borrowed Dad’s car…without asking.”
Lysander laughed outright. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
She grinned at him. He grinned right back. And just like that, he knew he’d made a new friend.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
These parties weren’t what they used to be, Zack lamented. Long gone were the days when they would stay up into the ungodly hours of the morning getting wasted. Sure, they still did it on occasion, but not nearly as often as they used to. Their wives seemed to steer completely clear of it these days, and Brendan would no longer allow it to happen in his house — understandable, given his young and impressionable daughter.
Even the almost-alcoholic Chris had calmed down through the years, much to the surprise of everybody who knew him. It had happened sometime after Tommy’s had passed, so gradually that nobody had noticed at first. Zack wondered if it was a direct reaction to Tommy’s death, their old drummer having fallen to his own addiction. Zack’s own drinking had slowed for the same reason. Today, he realised, it had slowed even more.
Because he had to take care of his son. The thought was at the forefront of his mind no matter what he was doing, and he found himself looking toward the boy more often than not. Lysander hadn’t moved from the chair he’d claimed when they’d first arrived, and had said little more than a hello to everybody who had been introduced to him. It was perfectly clear to Zack that the kid wasn’t enjoying himself. Maybe it had been too soon for this after all. He was about to start saying his farewells to his friends when the situation took a turn.
Marina, God bless her soul. That girl could make a friend of anybody.
“Dude, are you ever gonna finish that?”
Zack looked down at the bottle in his hand. He’d been nursing it for an hour already, and he shrugged in response to Chris’s question. Once upon a time he might have taken up the challenge, but things were different now. Lysander would be in the car when they drove home later that night — and even if it was only a short drive, anything could happen out on the road. It no longer seemed worth the risk.
“You’ve gone soft,” the bassist mused as he took a swig of his own drink. “Just like Bren did.”
“Ah, shut it, Chris.”
“Seriously, though,” Chris said, still grinning, “he seems like a good kid. I think you got lucky.”
Zack nodded. He couldn’t have agreed more. He could only imagine the stress he’d be going through now if he’d been landed with a teenage version of himself. He remembered well the almost daily fights that he and guys used to get into, but Lysander wasn’t like that at all. In fact, the boy rarely complained about anything. It was making things just that little bit easier.
All that panic in the days before he’d arrived had been for nothing, it seemed.
“How’re things with Georgia? You mentioned something about a fight.”
Zack looked across the yard to his wife. She was beautiful with that vibrant smile on her face and the sunlight gleaming in her hair. Her laughter drifted across to him on the breeze.
“Things are good,” he said after a moment. “Better. She’s been on my back about kids again is all.”
“What, one ain't enough for her? Two, since you’ve got another on the way.”
“She doesn’t see them as hers.”
The look Chris gave him was one of sympathy. “She’ll come around. They always do.”
They didn’t. But Zack wasn’t in the mood to argue.
His cell phone sang out from the pocket of his jeans. He excused himself from the conversation, Chris simply waving him off and going back to his beer. Zack stepped back inside, closing the French doors behind him to block out the sounds of the party, and picked up the call.
