Malibu Rising: A Novel

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “You said her name is Nina?” Brandon asked the photographer. Before the photographer could stop shooting and confirm it, Brandon called to her.

  Nina turned toward him. Kit looked to see, too. That’s when, in full view of the cameras flashing at him, with his racket now down by his side, Brandon shouted, “Can I get your number?”

  Nina laughed. And it seemed genuine, the way her head fell back ever so slightly. Brandon thought then that her smile looked effortless, that joy must come to her with ease.

  “I’m serious!” he called to her. Nina shook her head, as if to say, “You’re crazy.”

  Brandon felt a little crazy. He felt like he’d discovered a hidden treasure and he had to make it his. He had to hold it in his hands.

  “Would you excuse me?” he said to the photographer. “For just one brief moment?” And then, without waiting for an answer, he ran to her table.

  Up close, Brandon felt that much more intoxicated. There was something casual about her, the way her bikini top was tied up around her neck under her T-shirt, the way her flip-flops were worn down. But there was grace there, too: the elegant shape of her feet, the smoothness of her skin, the warmth of her brown eyes.

  Brandon hung there, on the rail that separated the beach from the patio.

  “I’m Brandon Randall,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Nina Riva.” Nina accepted his hand and then gestured to her sister. “This is Kit.”

  “Kit,” Brandon said, bowing his head ever so slightly. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” Kit said, amusing herself.

  Brandon smiled, fully aware that Kit was making fun of him. He turned to Nina. “Marry me,” he said, with a smile.

  Nina laughed. “I don’t know about that …”

  Brandon leaned toward Kit. “What you do you think, Kit? Do I have a shot here?”

  Kit looked Nina in the eye, trying to gauge what her sister might want her to say. “I don’t know …” Kit said, as if she was sorry to disappoint him but still entirely entertained. “I don’t think it’s looking good.”

  “Oh, no!” Brandon said. He put his hand on his chest, as if to protect his broken heart.

  “I mean, do you know how many men come up to her on a daily basis and do exactly what you’re doing?” Kit asked.

  Brandon looked to Nina, raising his eyebrows to ask if this was true. Nina, mildly embarrassed, shrugged. Since the poster started selling in record shops and pharmacies, Nina had been getting hit on every time she left the house. It was a new reality she didn’t much care for.

  “She gets about four marriage proposals from strangers a week lately,” Kit said.

  “That’s a lot,” Brandon conceded. “Maybe I’m out of my depth here.”

  “Maybe you are,” Kit said. “Although, you’re at least one of the less annoying ones.”

  “Oh, good,” Brandon said. “What a lovely distinction.”

  Nina laughed. “Kit is not an easy audience,” she said.

  Brandon looked at her. “I’m starting to get that.”

  “I’m actually a very easy audience,” Kit said. “I just think you should probably ask my sister out to dinner and let her get to know you first before you ask her to spend the rest of her life with you.”

  Brandon looked at Nina and smiled. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong.” Nina kept his gaze, found herself smiling back. “I really can be a pretty good dinner companion. Would you consider doing me the honor?” he said.

  Kit nodded. “There you go.”

  Nina laughed. Even just three minutes ago, she had been ready to turn Brandon down. But now here she was, changing her mind. “OK,” she said. “Sure.”

  • • •

  Brandon had picked up a tennis racket for the first time at the age of six and had a perfect serve by his seventh birthday. And so his father, Dick, put him on the court every hour he wasn’t in school or sleeping.

  His father taught him two things: You always win and you always act like a gentleman. And at the age of twelve, Brandon started training with renowned tennis coach Thomas O’Connell.

  Tommy was punishing in his exactitude. There was no almost, there was no good try. There was only perfection or failure. Brandon rose to the challenge, bought into the premise, hook, line, and sinker. Either you win or you are a loser. Brandon became relentless in his pursuit of precision.

  He would triumph, always. And he would act like a gentleman, without fail.

  Brandon hit the global stage when he made it to the finals of the Australian Open at the age of nineteen, courtesy of his signature slingshot serve, which ESPN was calling “the Snap.”

  He went on to win the title. And the very second he won the last point, Brandon did not drop to his knees and raise his racket to the sky. He did not pump his fists in glory. He did not rejoice in any way. He held back a smile, walked to the net, and shook the hand of his opponent, Henri Mullin. The camera, close up, could see him mouth the words “You played beautifully.”

  And the media called him “The Sweetheart.”

  By the time Brandon turned twenty-five, he had won the U.S. Open, Wimbledon, and the Australian Open, some multiple times. And the sportscasters no longer called him “The Sweetheart.” They called him “BranRan” and they called him a phenom.

  But they always kept the camera on him. And people tuned in to see him crush his opponents, as humbly and graciously as any athlete in the history of sports television.

  Nina liked that about him. She liked it about him a lot.

  “My father always said …” Brandon told her on their first date, sitting at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant in Santa Monica. “It’s easy to be gracious when you’re winning. So you have no excuse not to be.”

  His father had passed away just the year before and Nina admired how eloquently Brandon could talk about him. She found it hard to share anything about her mother without her voice catching.

  “And if you lose?” Nina asked.

  Brandon shook his head. “You just work harder to make sure you win on the next one. And then you haven’t lost anything at all.”

  “And you can stay gracious then, too?” Nina asked.

  Brandon laughed. “The cameras zoom right in on me when I lose,” he said. “They’re just waiting for me to slip up. So yes, I stay gracious then, too. But it’s harder, I’ll give you that. But we are talking about me too much. So, the first time you were on a surfboard. Tell me everything.”

  Nina smiled and told Brandon the story of all of her siblings on the beach that afternoon in ’69. Brandon laughed when she told him about not letting Kit go on her own, but instead pulling her along on Nina’s shoulders on the board. “I realize I barely know her,” Brandon said. “But I feel like I already know that she hated that.”

  Nina laughed. “Oh, she definitely hated it,” she said. And then she sipped her wine and caught Brandon’s eye. How nice it is, she thought, to laugh in this way.

  After Brandon drove her home that night, he kissed her on the cheek as they sat parked in her driveway.

  “I like you, Nina,” he said. “And I know you’ve got guys coming at you every which way nowadays. But I want to be the real deal. Can I see you again?”

  Nina smiled and nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow and plan something good.”

  “OK,” Nina said. “You do that.”

  Despite his fame and his fortune, Brandon did not woo Nina with expensive dinners. He did not ask very many questions about her fancy father. He did not whisk her away to penthouse apartments in foreign lands.

  He made her stir-fry at his place in Brentwood. He showed up at her house with flowers. He went to the beach with her and watched her surf.

  When she cut her arm on some coral, he pulled a first aid kit out of the back of his Mercedes and bandaged her up. When she said thank you, he kissed her on the temple and said, “I like taking care of you.”

  Tha
t April, the cover of Sports Pages was not BranRan in Big Bear or BranRan in Joshua Tree. It was BranRan with his back to the ocean, his racket down by his side, calling out to someone off-camera.

  The headline said BRANRAN: TENNIS’S NICE GUY IS LOOKING FOR LOVE. It was the only issue of Sports Pages that sold out that year. Kit thought it was cheesy but she still bought Nina three copies.

  By that point, Nina and Brandon had started seeing a lot of each other. And Brandon almost always invited Kit, and soon Jay and Hud, out with them, too.

  The five of them all went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark together. They went hiking together. They went on road trips to chase waves. Brandon drove and waited out on the sand for them.

  When they all tried to teach him to surf one afternoon at County Line, he kept falling off the board. His strength and training from tennis didn’t seem to help him with his balance in the waves just yet.

  “Fall off nine times, get up ten, right?” Brandon said, after he bit it the first time.

  Nina laughed and helped pull him up onto his board and he leaned over to her and kissed her and said, “I guess you’re better at this than me.”

  Nina laughed. “I’ve been doing it longer.”

  “Still,” he said. “It’s sexy.”

  Kit had overheard him and smiled to herself.

  “All right,” Brandon said after falling off for the fourth time, frustration growing in his voice. “I’ll be in charge of lunch, meet you all back here in an hour.”

  Jay and Hud laughed. Kit convinced him to order them all steak sandwiches. And when they came in from the water that day, he was there, with five steak sandwiches laid out on a towel. Nina’s had no cheese, with a sliced tomato on the side. She kissed him on the cheek but found that she had to stop herself from welling up.

  Later that evening, after Nina and Brandon had gone home to his place, they made love in his bedroom, slowly and sweetly. And afterward, as they lay in the dark together, sharing the secrets of their hearts, Brandon told Nina that he wished he loved his brother the way she loved her siblings. “I want you to know that if we do have a future together … if we ever … buy a house together, I know it needs extra bedrooms, for all of them, just in case. I know they are a part of the deal. And I love it about you.”

  Nina smiled and turned to him and kissed him. “I love you,” she said and she meant it with all of her heart.

  If she was totally honest with herself, she thought he was sort of blandly handsome. She found his white-bread style a little bit embarrassing. He didn’t make her laugh very hard and he didn’t blow her mind in bed. She didn’t like how often he would simply refuse to do something that he wasn’t immediately good at. And while she knew it mattered to him that he was famous and talented and rich, none of those things intrigued her.

  But when she thought of a life with Brandon, her muscles relaxed and breath came easier. He felt like falling into a warm, soft bed. And she was so tired.

  • • •

  That fall, Nina and Brandon got engaged. They were married in the spring of 1982. Nina wore a crown of flowers in her hair, her bare feet buried in the cool evening sand. Brandon wore a white linen suit, picked out by Hud.

  Nina felt the hole where her mother should have been. All three of her siblings walked her down the aisle.

  • • •

  Brandon looked at homes with a real estate agent every day for six weeks before finding the perfect one. 28150 Cliffside Drive was big and airy like he wanted, with a tennis court that overlooked the ocean. It had just enough bedrooms upstairs and a pool that he imagined teaching his children to swim in.

  “I’ve found exactly the place,” he said to Nina that night at dinner in the city. He’d been taking her out to restaurants in a lot of areas of Los Angeles she had never thought to explore. This time they were in West Hollywood, eating at Dan Tana’s. There had been a photo of her father on the wall and she’d chosen to ignore it.

  “Tell me all about it,” Nina said. “Is it on the water?”

  “Better,” Brandon said. And Nina could think of nothing better than to be right on the water but she listened anyway. “It’s on the edge of Point Dume. You’ll be able to surf Little Dume every day. You can walk down there from the backyard. Westward Beach is just a stone’s throw away. It’s literally on the edge of the cliff. It’s on the edge of the world, honey.”

  “Oh, OK,” Nina said, eating an undressed salad. “Sounds cool. I’m excited to look at it. I can do it tomorrow if you think it will go fast.”

  “No need,” Brandon said. “I put in an offer. It’s ours. It’s all taken care of.”

  “Oh,” Nina said, breathing in deeply and hiding her annoyance by sipping her red wine. She would much rather have renovated her current place. Or bought something near it. She thought he knew that. But maybe she hadn’t really explained herself well. “Great. I’m sure it’s great. I’m sure it’s perfect.”

  The next morning, Brandon took her to the new house and showed her around. “This is where the couch will go. And I’m thinking my Warhol will go here …”

  He kept talking and talking and talking but Nina wasn’t listening. This house was gorgeous but it was too much. Too big and too beige and too industrial and … there was no soul in here.

  “What do you think?” he said. “Is it not perfect?”

  What could she do about it? It was already done. “It’s perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He pulled her into him, put his arms around her. He put his chin to her neck, buried his face by her ear. His body was always so solid. Every time he held her like that, she felt so much less alone.

  “Pretty great party house, right?” he asked her. “You all can throw your end-of-summer party here every year for decades to come, I bet.”

  Nina smiled and pulled away from him ever so slightly. “You already thought of that?” she asked.

  “Thought of it? I said to the realtor, ‘It has to be walking distance to a great break, great for parties, and at least five bedrooms. Those were my stipulations. I wanted you to have the chance to surf every day, have room for Jay, Hud, and Kit, and be able to throw the Riva party every year.”

  Nina laughed. She looked at the home again. “It is great for a party.”

  “Stick with me, kid,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m always going to make sure you have everything you ever wanted.”

  There wasn’t much she wanted. But it enchanted her nonetheless. “I love you,” she told him, grabbing his hand and pulling him up the stairs.

  “I love you, too,” he said, allowing himself to be pulled. “With all of my heart, forever.”

  When they made their way to the empty master bedroom of the home that was not yet technically theirs, Nina pulled Brandon down onto the plush carpet and made love to him. Sweet, and slow, never rushed, never wild, only tender and wholehearted.

  And it was that very spot where Nina fell to her knees a year later when Brandon walked out.

  • • •

  He’d just come home from winning Wimbledon. They had a vacation to Bora-Bora planned with Jay, Hud, and Kit next week. She was reading a travel guide.

  She heard him walk in the front door and heard his footsteps coming up the stairs. But when Brandon walked into their bedroom, he wasn’t smiling.

  “I’m sorry, Nina,” he said. “But I’m leaving.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said, laughing. She put down the book and stood up, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of his old boxer shorts. “Leaving for where? You just got here.”

  “I’ve met someone else,” he said as he went into the closet and stuffed some shirts into a duffel bag.

  Nina stared at him, her jaw slack. He walked out the door, now rushing down the stairs. Nina followed him.

  “I don’t understand,” she said quietly. “What do you mean you’ve met someone else?”

  Brandon did not turn around to answer her, he just kept walking away.

  “Brandon
!” Nina said finally as they got to the driveway. “Look at me, please.”

  “We’ll talk about this more at another time,” Brandon said as he got in his car. And then he drove off.

  Nina stood there watching his car turn onto the road. She started gasping for air, stunned at what had just happened, what she’d just seen with her own eyes. “What?” she kept saying over and over, in between panicked breaths. “What?”

  She sat down on the front stoop of her home to gather herself. Only then did it really sink in that her husband was leaving her for another woman.

  She began to cry without even realizing it, wiping her cheeks but unable to keep up with the tears. Her eyes grew red and swollen. She could not move from her place on the stoop, heavy and dead, like an anchor tied to nothing.

  She cried until the sun started to set, until the birds settled into their trees. She’d have to tell her siblings he was gone. She felt embarrassed, thinking of how excited she’d been to take them to Bora-Bora. She grew cold, sitting outside in Brandon’s underwear.

  And then she stood up and dried her eyes. And she thought of June. She’d lived this all before, of course. Watching her mother go through it.

  Family histories repeat, Nina thought. For a moment, she wondered if it was pointless to try to escape it.

  Maybe our parents’ lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins.

  Or.

  Or maybe we are free the moment we’re born. Maybe everything we’ve ever done is by our own hands.

  Nina wasn’t sure.

  She just knew that, somehow, after everything that had happened in her life, she had ended up all alone on the front stoop, left behind by a man she had dared to trust.

  Part Two

  * * *

  7:00 P.M. TO 7:00 A.M.

  7:00 P.M.

  The clock struck seven and Kit’s best friend, Vanessa de la Cruz, pulled up to Nina’s house, the first to arrive. She was immediately approached by one of the team of valets and stepped out of her car.