Almost Wrong

by Aubrey Parker

  I had a moment to wonder if I was being turned on by the exposure, then reached into the duffel for my top.

  I rummaged.

  Then I rummaged some more.

  It wasn’t in there. I couldn’t find it. I was under a pier on a public beach with my tits out, and I had nothing to cover them. I was going to have to wear my shirt after all — and because the shirt was slightly sheer and the sun was strong, I’d probably have to wear my goddamned bra, too.

  I turned back to my pile of clothes and saw Hunter standing in front of me, dressed in his board shorts. He’d just come around the pylon, apparently having no idea where I’d gone. He was holding my swimsuit top, which he must have grabbed by mistake.

  He was looking right at me. Right at me.

  I wanted to cover up. I should have turned away, or at least crossed my arms over my chest. But for some reason, I was frozen. I was only wearing bottoms, with everything from my flat belly to my wind-tousled dark-brown hair bare for him to see.

  “Your suit,” he mumbled, raising the top in his hand.

  I still hadn’t moved. He’d given me two seconds of courtesy, but he’d moved his eyes down since and was staring directly at my bare breasts. They were Bs — a bit smaller than I wanted, but cute enough, I thought, in the mirror.

  I found I enjoyed the feel of his eyes on them.

  Damn me and my shame; I didn’t want him to stop taking me in. And worse: in those few seconds, I very much wanted him to reach out and touch me. A twisted timeline spooled across my vision, and in a blink I saw us in the sand, his hands everywhere, me not as frigid as he thought but instead quite willing, quite ready, quite —

  “I’m sorry.” He shoved the top into my hand, finally turning away.

  Shame descended. I took the top and pulled it on.

  We picked up our gear. Hunter left the shade of the pier first. I followed at a distance of a dozen steps, my skin hotter than the sun could account for.

  It wasn’t just Hunter’s embarrassing attention that bothered me so much. It was also what I’d seen in his eyes. The horrid realization that in those few seconds, he’d wanted me — and I’d wanted him right back.

  We walked on in silence, a hot mix of emotions churning inside me: shock, disbelief, arousal. I wanted to hide my face and run.

  Hunter led the way, his mouth set, his hands hiding a protrusion in his shorts.

  It was half an hour before I found the strength to speak again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HUNTER

  I’ve never landed the chopper in Santa Monica, so it takes some time for the pilot to work out the details of our visit — but he does, because that’s what he’s paid so well for. He not only handles all the airport stuff to get us clearance or whatever; he also arranges to have a car meet us and makes a reservation at Mélisse on Wilshire. I know the maître d’, and slip him a hundred to get us the best table in the house. I imagine I’ve just bumped someone out of their well-planned evening, but the old, rude version of Hunter Altman rises inside me, and I find that I don’t care at all.

  We order Twenty-One Day Aged Liberty Duck with grated white truffle, parmesan, and brown butter froth, plus Swiss chard, forbidden rice, and red onion pomegranate chutney. Angela doesn’t seem to know what to think of it all, but she’s desperately underdressed anyway, especially considering that I’m still in my tux.

  After dinner, we head to the pier. It’s lit in every color, turning night into day. I wonder if she’ll want to ride some of the rides, but instead she heads to the end of the pier and sits on a bench, staring out across the water. I sit beside her.

  I honestly didn’t think this out. There’s no chance we ended up here — at this specific place, just the two of us — by accident, but I swear it didn’t come from conscious thought. The same part of me that was in charge earlier took us here — the part that responded to the birthday card as automatically as Pavlov’s dogs responded to that famous bell.

  She says what we’re both thinking before I do.

  “I’ve only been here once. Just that one time.”

  I look at her. Angela was spellbound in the helicopter and awed at dinner, blissfully, delightfully unaware of the other diners staring at her lack of proper dress. The way Santa Monica had drawn us home like a beacon occurred to me at least twice, but it was easy enough to stuff it down, assuring myself that Angela saw none of the meaning my subconscious had pulled us into. Maybe she’d been here since, I reasoned; it made sense, considering its proximity. Surely, she had many memories of this place to replace that single damning one.

  But Angela knew. I could tell by looking into her eyes.

  “Why did we come here, Hunter?”

  “It seemed like a fun thing to do,” I reply lamely.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t bother to look. That will be Samantha again, trying to reach me so she can yell at me for running out. She tries to keep me on a leash. I don’t allow it, but she keeps trying anyway. The leash is between her legs, and usually I’m helpless, but I suppose I’m also partly numb. I feel different now, betrayed by my sabotaging mind. Now that what could have been an innocent second beginning is tinged with baggage from the past.

  “I don’t know if you remember —” she begins.

  “I remember.”

  She continues to stare at the water. Again, I’m struck by her beauty. Angela’s cheekbones are high but smooth. Her lips are full without being too large. Her nose is gently sloped; her brows have that exotic tilt, and her eyes are soulful, shaped like almonds. She was just awkward back then. Nobody saw this beauty, through her armor of feigned exuberance and excellent behavior.

  But now she’s grown into herself so completely. I hate that I wonder if that extends to her body, and force myself to stifle the thought. That’s me pining for a forgotten and impossible past, ruminating because I’ve just had a birthday ending in a zero, feeling my mortality and time’s insidious liquidity.

  “Why did you come to see me?” she asks, turning.

  “I … I guess I missed you.”

  “What did you miss? What were you hoping to renew? Did you just want family again? Did you want sisterly companionship?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Take me home,” Angela says.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ANGELA

  The helicopter ride back is quieter than it should be.

  I try making small talk, and Hunter does his best to oblige. I ask him business questions, inquiring about his acts and the Grammys, what it’s like to work with a partner. I didn’t know Duncan at all back in the day, other than by name; today I know him only from the magazines and TV spots about the rising juggernaut that is Dreadnought Records.

  I ask about Hunter’s philanthropy and his goals for the future.

  Anything but his personal life.

  Anything but our past.

  I don’t know why he came. I don’t know why I went with him. I’m deflated and sad. My current malaise came like the flip of a switch. I don’t think my mind registered Santa Monica when we first arrived. Probably because I was watching the Ferris wheel lights from the sky, was busy being awed by opulence. Hunter is magnetic; the magazines have that right. I’ve been hypnotized by his charm, his flash, his smile, his confident bearing. And that’s made me forget myself.

  I hate this man.

  I hate him because I once loved him.

  But despite my mood I can’t see this evening as a total loss, no matter how I look at it. Can we continue with the evening? No, not after the memory of Santa Monica became apparent again to us both. Can I continue to be part of Hunter’s world like I’ve been tonight? No, I don’t see how. Will Hunter bless his father and my mother with wealth, enough to change everything? Impossible.

  But has there been healing?

  Yes, I think so.

  Before tonight, I hadn’t seen Hunter in years. He hasn’t been around in any meaningful way since he was nineteen. We — and by “we” I m
ean “I” — had to watch him from afar. Now there’s a chance to open communications. To at least thaw our little cold war.

  He’s still the icy, distant son of a bitch he’s always been. He’s still Hunter Altman, the billionaire tycoon cofounder of Dreadnought Records. But now I can see through a recently burrowed hole, to the boy I once knew — the boy I once loved but couldn’t have. And that boy, in turn, was two men at once: the hard shell he showed the world, and the soft meat underneath. Today’s billionaire armor is the evolved version of the shields Hunter carried in his youth; what’s behind them hasn’t changed.

  Before I know it, we’re lowering onto the roof of what must be Hunter’s building.

  “Why are we here?” I ask.

  “It’ll be faster for us to hop in a car here than the airport.”

  I nod.

  “We can take the elevator all the way down.”

  “Okay.”

  “Or you can come in and have a drink.”

  I sigh. “I don’t know, Hunter.”

  “Look,” he says. “I don’t know what went wrong. I’m sure it was something stupid I did. But there’s no reason for it. We were having fun, weren’t we?”

  “Yeah. And it was nice. But —”

  “I don’t think I propositioned you.” His smile widens, to show that he’s joking. He didn’t, no … but half of the problem is that I’m pretty sure that if he had, I’d have fallen right into him.

  “No, but —”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  It was. But it was also the first time we both realized how we felt — how, perhaps, we’d been feeling for months. It had taken me by surprise. After he’d seen me topless under that pier — after I’d known he’d wanted to see me, and after we’d both taken that uncomfortable walk along the beach — we’d found ourselves farther up on a deserted section of beach, somehow inconveniently alone. He apologized for staring; I apologized for being awkward.

  The tension between us had been almost unbearable. He wore the duffel on his lap the entire time, and at one point I pretended to sleep, squeezing my thighs together to see if I could come from pressure and fantasy. But I couldn’t, and the bubble didn’t pop. By the time we were driving home, I was ready to shatter every taboo at once. I wanted to unzip him while he drove, then take his cock in my mouth. I wanted to pull over and invite him to take me.

  It didn’t matter that it was wrong. There was only animal lust, no thought to consequence.

  Somehow, we’d made it home, both of us intensely aware of exactly what had happened and what had been unsaid.

  “Come in for a drink,” he says now. “One drink.”

  I probably shouldn’t agree, considering.

  I do anyway.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HUNTER

  My tri-level penthouse is the best in LA.

  The building has a lounge, pool, and spa; an outdoor kitchen and cabanas; a fitness center with massage and yoga rooms; and a business center. So does my penthouse.

  The whole place looks like an Architectural Digest centerfold. Pierre Matte cabinetry; soaring, finished concrete ceilings; showroom lighting; a kitchen that would make Gordon Ramsay smile. Four of the six bathrooms have eggshell soaking tubs. Mine has a Hansgrohe Axor Starck brushed nickel shower head — it definitely cost more than my old Ford.

  My place is a chick magnet. Samantha practically stained my PlumeBlanche sofa’s leather the first time she was here — and that’s Samantha, who’s as hard to impress as they come. She practically grew up in champagne baths, and seems to have spent most of her adult life working to improve the vintage.

  After we take the elevator down, two things occur to me. The first is that I suspect I’m wasting the property’s magnetism on Angela, seeing as she’s sort of decided we’re in too perilous a position to head in that direction. And the second is that I do still technically have a girlfriend, seeing as I forgot to break up with Samantha. Maybe I can do it by text. It’s a throbbing item on my to-do list; although she’s bendy and hot, Duncan really missed the mark with her. Samantha’s dragging me down, making me more jaded than I already am.

  The space feels different with Angela by my side. She’s not immune to the charm. As we walk the floor plan, I find myself doing the opposite of what I normally do when giving the tour. I’m playing it down instead of playing it up. I show her the kitchen without pointing out the Sub-Zero refrigerators, the wine cooler, or the Viking six-burner stove with dual ovens. I’m sure she notices the matching dishwashers, the jaw-dropping woodwork, and the rich stone countertops with under-counter lighting.

  I merely point into the master bedroom. She doesn’t need to see the Kluft bed, or hear about the premium English springs encased in calico cotton. We go nowhere near the master bath.

  Something has changed between us. Angela’s still as plain as can be, still in the jeans and shirt that so offended Santa Monica’s finest diners. I was following her as a woman before, but now that she’s rejected our deeper relationship in advance, I’m following her more as a friend. For long moments, the pressure is gone and I feel comfortable. I’m usually trying to get laid. When you have money, fame, and power, you see pussy everywhere.

  But Angela’s different. She says nothing can happen, and that hurts something inside me but I believe her. We’re two people hanging out. I want to underwhelm her because the more she sees what I have that she doesn’t, the greater the chance she’ll resent me.

  I’m realizing that Angela came with a set perception. I’m not dying to prove her right — especially since I think she might be.

  Maybe I’ve changed.

  Or conversely, maybe the worst parts of me — the nonredeemable parts of the damaged kid I used to be — haven’t changed at all. Maybe money’s devolved me with even worse vices.

  I give plenty to charity but treat people like shit. I don’t mean to. It just comes out.

  I’m an excellent businessman with a keen eye for talent. But where I once dabbled with drink and drugs, now I have unlimited access. I probably get messed up way more than I should.

  My shrinks tell me I’ve matured. That I’m a better person than I used to be. They tell me I’m dealing with my issues, growing, getting better at facing my pain rather than numbing it. They tell me I’m less of a womanizer, that I’m improving at relationships.

  But considering how much I pay them, what are they supposed to say?

  I’m walking on polished wood and eggshells. Angela’s never been here. She knew me when I was penniless. She knew me when I was just a punk. She maybe even loved that punk, as awful as he was. Right now, she’s judge, jury, and executioner. I don’t like giving others control; that’s probably why Samantha’s sexual proclivities secretly turn me on.

  I tell others what to do. I don’t let others tell me.

  Yet, right now, if Angela thinks I’m an asshole it will bother me way more than I’m comfortable with. I wonder if I should have brought her here after all. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened this wound.

  It’s late by the time we get to that drink. My penthouse has a professionally stocked bar, but Angela wants something cheap. Something classless and overly sweet. I have that, too.

  Whatever changed between us, it might be changing back. She’s still here, across from me, apparently not as disgusted with my excess and imagined billionaire’s cruelty as I’m afraid she will be. She looks out of place in her everyday clothes, yet all I want is to sit beside her — to feel the warmth of her leg, even clad in jeans, beside mine.

  I remember Santa Monica.

  I remember that moment when everything changed.

  In my head, that’s always been the beginning of our end. It got better before it got worse — or worse before it got better, depending on measurement — but when all was said and done, I had no choice but to go, to leave her in peace and try to make my life bearable.

  The lights dim. They’re on a timer because when it gets this late and I’m still awake,
my penthouse helps me score. I can do it fine on my own, of course, but low lights and money have a way of loosening girls.

  “I guess we should talk,” Angela says.

  I’m still wearing my tux shirt and pants, because going into the other room to change when she has nothing to swap seems rude. But at least I’ve ditched the jacket and tie. My sleeves are rolled up. She touches my forearm and gives me a chill I haven’t felt in forever.

  “About what?” I ask.

  “About us.”

  I run a multibillion-dollar empire. I could buy and sell countries. People practically bow when I walk down the street. Still, those two words flutter my stomach.

  “Okay. In what way?”

  She doesn’t answer immediately. Her hand makes firmer contact with my arm, her fingers soft and splayed. She’s already turned toward me, and as juvenile as it seems, I keep wanting to look at her cleavage.

  This is so messed up. She’s my stepsister. Has been forever. And we’ve been through all this before, a thousand years ago.

  “You know what way,” she says.

  I swallow.

  “What happened,” she says, “I won’t lie. I wanted it.”

  I nod. I wanted it, too. But right now I can’t breathe a word and risk breaking the spell between us.

  “But Hunter … it was wrong. We grew up together.”

  I think that’s stretching it. We spent two years in adjacent rooms, and I was gone most of the time. I never wanted to be there at all.

  I say none of that.

  “At the time,” she says, “I was just a kid.”

  “Me too.” I don’t like how I say it — almost like begging, as if I’m waiting for Angela to feel sorry for me.

  “I didn’t know what was going on back then. You remember how I was, kind of in my shell. I guess you’d say I was a late bloomer. We happened to become … closer … right around the time I finally started to bloom.”

  I don’t like this talk of blooming. I remember how she’d bloomed. I remember how she felt to the touch.