Malibu Rising

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  Nina sometimes felt as if her soul had aged at a rate ten times that of her body. Kit still needed to graduate. There would still be bills that Nina knew she might never be able to get out from under. She still didn’t have a high school diploma. But she felt somewhat renewed in that moment. And so she wiped her eyes, and did what she had come out on the beach to do in the first place.

  She grabbed her board, paddled out past the breakers, and took her position.

  • • •

  That April, Nina was spotted by a magazine editor on vacation while she was surfing First Point. It was hotter than she’d expected, so she had unzipped her wet suit, letting her yellow halter bikini top show through. The waves were larger than normal, and Nina was having one of those days when you are fully connected, when ease comes easy. She was taking wave after wave, compensating for their speed with the low crouch of her body, riding in long stretches almost to the pier.

  The magazine editor—on the thicker side, with graying hair and a chambray short-sleeved shirt somewhat chicly unbuttoned to his chest, had made his way down to the beach from the pier from which he’d seen her. He approached her as she was coming out of the water and introduced himself just as her feet hit the sand.

  “Miss,” he said, moving toward her eagerly. He looked to Nina to be about fifty and she was afraid he was going to ask her out.

  “You are a wonder to look at,” he said to her, but Nina noted there was not an ounce of lasciviousness in his voice. He was merely presenting what, to him, appeared plain fact. “I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. He’s a photographer looking to do a surf spread.”

  Nina was drying her hair with her towel and squinted slightly.

  “It’s for Vivant magazine,” the man said, handing her a business card. The moment it was in Nina’s hand it was already wet. “Tell him I sent you.”

  “I don’t even know you,” Nina said.

  The man considered her. “You’re a beautiful woman with great command of a surfboard,” he said. “You should make money off of that.”

  He left shortly after and as Nina watched him walk away from her, she was surprised by how easy it had been for him to grab her attention.

  When she got home, she sat at the phone, flicking the card with her thumb and forefinger. Money, she kept thinking. How much money?

  Nina didn’t love the idea of posing for photos, but what other options did she have? The restaurant was in the red from a slow winter. She knew for a fact it was going to fail a health inspection. Hud’s tuition for next year was going up. Kit needed her cavities filled. The roof had started leaking again.

  She called the number on the card.

  • • •

  The photographer and assistant kept insisting she wear these tiny bikinis during their shoot at Zuma. They shot for hours, her coming into and out of the water, her rolling around in the sand. She found it uncomfortable, the leering eyes of the men behind the camera.

  But then she saw the photos. She stared at the negatives with the photographer’s loupe and something ignited within her.

  She was beautiful.

  She’d known, on some level, her whole life, that she was pretty. She could tell by the way people sometimes lit up at the sight of her, the same way she’d seen them react to her mother all those years ago.

  But was this really how she looked to other people when she was in the water? This gorgeous? This carefree? This cool?

  It was jarring, but altogether lovely, to see herself like this.

  She was in the June 1979 issue of Vivant, a photo of her face—skin copper from the sun, hair slicked back by the water—set across from a headline that said, CALIFORNIA COOL: THE NEW BEACH BUM.

  When everyone pieced together that she was the daughter of Mick Riva, the phone started ringing off the hook. Where had this famous progeny been hiding? Her fame took off like a wildfire.

  A surf magazine, two men’s interest magazines, ads for two different swimsuit companies, a wet suit shop, and a commercial for a surf shop later, Nina Riva was the face of women’s surfing.

  She wanted to enter surfing competitions and see if she could place, see if she could make a name for herself as an athlete out there in the water. But her new agents discouraged it.

  “No one cares if you win contests,” her modeling agent, Chris Travertine, had said. “In fact, it’s better to not find out. You’re number one to everyone right now. Let’s not test it. Not put a different number on it.”

  “But I want to actually surf,” Nina said. “Not just pose for photos.”

  “You are surfing. You’re a surfer. We have the photos to prove it,” he said, exasperated. “Nina, you’re the most popular female surfer in the world. What more is there?”

  Before the year was out, she was offered a calendar. Twelve shots, all her.

  She took Jay, Hud, and Kit with her as she and her team set up shop at some of the best surf breaks in SoCal. She surfed the wild ripple of waves at Rincon, the crowded perfection of Surfrider, the isolated rugged cliffs at Torrey Pines, the larger waves at Black’s Beach, the far-out reef breaks at Sunset Cliffs, and spots all in between.

  It was watching Nina ride that showed Kit there was a future for female surfers.

  And it was talking to Nina’s photographers during shooting breaks that allowed Hud to get serious about surf photography.

  And it was the sting of the fact that Nina had gotten paid to surf before he had that made Jay realize he needed to get way more serious about going pro.

  “SoCal Babe: Nina Riva Gets Wet” featured Nina in bikinis of ever-changing colors, catching waves from Ventura to San Diego.

  When the calendar was done, Nina flipped through the final proof. Her at Trestles straddling a Lance Collins single fin in a red bandeau bikini, her at Surfrider hanging five as seven male surfers tried to get a wave behind her.

  But the most startling photo was placed squarely in the dead of summer, July. Nina was riding a wave at Rincon. The ocean was crisp, the water indigo blue.

  She was wearing a white string bikini on a hot pink surfboard. The angle of the camera allowed you to see the side of her face, smiling as she tackled the water—and you could also see the side of her ass barely contained in her swimsuit, and the side of her breast, escaping her top.

  She realized, looking at the photo, that her bikini had not been as opaque as she had been led to believe. The wet white fabric left very little to the imagination. Her nipple and the line of her ass were faintly visible underneath.

  Whenever Nina looked at the picture she felt uneasy. It was not a good wave, her stance was not great, and she knew that seconds later, she had fallen off the board. She was a better surfer than that photo could ever attest to. She was capable of so much more.

  But naturally, it was that photo that became a sensation. The one where you could see her body, unintentionally exposed.

  The photo made her career. It was blown up into posters that would hang in teenage boys’ bedrooms and closets and lockers for years to come. The photo was phenomenal to everyone except the woman featured in it.

  Nina had lived through enough trauma to know there were worse problems. So, instead of getting upset about it, she chose to go to bed every night thankful for the money.

  The money the money the money.

  The money that allowed her to promote Ramon to take over running Riva’s Seafood for her. The money that allowed her to finally reroof the house, let her pay off Hud’s tuition, pay for Kit’s dentist, pay off their medical bills, pay Jay’s first competition entrance fee. Get the restaurant kitchen up to code.

  That photo of Nina’s ass brought all of the Rivas security for the first time in their lives.

  After all of the bills were paid, Nina sat out on the patio and stared at her checkbook, marveling at the balance. It was not much. But it was not zero.

  And so, at the end of that August, when Jay, Hud, and Kit were all home, gathered around to grill some burgers, Nina said so
mething they never thought they’d hear her say.

  “Hey, guys?” she said to them, in a wild rush of impulsivity, as she brought out the chips and salsa. “What if we threw a party?”

  Jay and Hud were on their way back from the liquor store with twelve bottles of Seagram’s, ten bottles of Southern Comfort, and nine bottles of Captain Morgan loaded into the back of Hud’s pickup truck. Also in the back of Hud’s truck: the cashier from the liquor store.

  The guy had pleaded for the address of the party. And then he had pleaded for a ride. Jay said no. Hud said yes. And so, Tommy Wegman was now in the back of the truck. He was smoking a cigarette, feeling the breeze on his face, reveling in the delight of knowing he was going to the Riva party, imagining he might get to hit on Demi Moore or Tuesday Hendricks.

  “You’re such a sap,” Jay said, in the passenger seat, watching Tommy in the back through the side mirror. “Such a sap.”

  “There are worse things to be than a sap,” Hud said. “For instance, I could be an asshole.”

  Jay turned toward Hud and smiled. “Fair point.”

  It was quiet in the cab of the truck, aside from the hum of the engine and the crackling of tires on the road. And this felt like the time for Hud to admit what he’d done.

  Sweat instantly appeared along the edge of his forehead and his upper lip. This was a thing Hud’s body sometimes did. Usually it was because he’d eaten too much of something he was mildly allergic to, like vinegar. But it also happened in instances such as this one, when he was so nervous he began to get clammy.

  “Hey, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” Hud said.

  “OK …”

  Hud breathed in deeply, preparing himself to say her name. “Ashley,” he said finally.

  Jay was caught off guard by the mention of his ex-girlfriend. He was still uncomfortable with the thought of her.

  “What about her?” he asked. He didn’t get every girl he wanted, no one did. But he usually saw his rare rejections coming. Ashley had dumped him out of nowhere.

  Hud could hear the irritation in his brother’s voice and he started to worry. What if Jay wouldn’t give him his blessing? What would Hud do then?

  He’d had a whole plan in place, a flowchart in his mind of what he would say depending on what Jay said. But in that second, it all went out the window. All he could see was that he was going to tell his brother that he was sleeping with his ex-girlfriend. And then, in a panic, Hud told a lie. “I was thinking of asking her out. Wanted to know if you were cool with it.”

  Within seconds of the words leaving his mouth, Hud had calmed down. This could work.

  Jay whipped his head to look at his brother head-on. “Are you fucking serious, man?” he said.

  Already, Hud had all but forgotten that what he was asking was a lie in the first place. “Yeah, is it that big of a deal? I didn’t think you would care.”

  “I care, I definitely care.”

  It wasn’t about Ashley, per se. The truth was that Jay did not see—had never seen—Ashley as a girl of any particular significance. It was nothing against her. He didn’t see any girls to be of particular significance until he met Lara. Jay could see now—now that he had met the real thing—that the girls before her had been … well, not the real thing. Unimportant. Ashley had been unimportant.

  But Jay just kept picturing Ashley going out with Hud. He pictured her welcoming his brother’s advances. And that’s when his brain shut down.

  “Sorry, man, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I just don’t.”

  Hud froze. “All right,” he said, as Jay turned in to Nina’s driveway.

  “Cool,” Jay said, pulling his keys out of the ignition.

  Jay got out of the truck, but Hud sat for an imperceptible second longer, processing the fact that he was—to put it mildly—completely fucked.

  The doorbell rang.

  Nina was teasing her hair in the bathroom. She looked at the clock: 6:51 P.M. So eager, she thought. But the world is full of all kinds of people and some are the kind who show up for a party before it even starts.

  Nina opened her bedroom door and saw Kit considering herself in the mirror in the hallway and Jay coming up the stairs.

  Jay was shocked to find his little sister in such a tiny shirt but, after this morning with the dress, he knew better than to say anything.

  “Can you open the door?” Nina said to both Kit and Jay but to neither one of them in particular.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jay said, turning back around.

  Hud was stacking the extra liquor in the pantry. He came into the foyer to answer the door at the same time Jay reached the bottom of the stairs. And so, somewhat embarrassingly, they opened the door together.

  There, in a pair of Dockers and a Breton striped light sweater over a polo shirt, stood floppy-haired Brandon Randall.

  Jay, with his hand holding on to the side of the door, had the impulse to slam it shut. Hud, with his hand on the inside door handle, was inclined to open it farther to see what the hell Brandon wanted. And so, with the push and pull of the two brothers, the door stayed where it was.

  “Hi,” Brandon said.

  “Brandon?” came a voice from behind them. Nina had reached the foot of the stairs and was stunned at the sight in front of her.

  “Hi, Neen,” Brandon said, taking a step into the house.

  “What are you doing here?” Nina imagined that he had come to pick up some clothes or grab something from the safe. But as she watched the look on Brandon’s face—soft, hopeful—she felt a pit in her stomach, worried he was going to say …

  “Can we talk?”

  Nina breathed in deeply without even realizing it. “Uh …” she said. “Sure. Come on upstairs, I guess.”

  Jay and Hud watched as Brandon followed Nina up to the second floor. Kit, coming down, froze when she saw them. She stood there on the landing as Nina and Brandon walked past her, a look of disbelief on her face. When they were finally out of sight, Kit looked at Jay and Hud and said, very plainly, “What the fuck.”

  • • •

  Nina walked into the master bedroom—her bedroom? their bedroom?—and gestured for Brandon to join her. She found herself unable to decide what to say to him, what to even think of his being there.

  “What is going on?” she asked.

  “I love you, Nina,” Brandon said. “I want to come home.”

  1981

  It was February ’81. Brandon was doing a series of photo shoots for the cover of the Sports Pages April issue. It was timed to publish ahead of the French Open, one of many contests he was the favorite for in the upcoming year. The plan was to feature him playing tennis in what would look like exotic and unexpected locales. Fortunately, Southern California can deliver beaches, deserts, and snowcapped mountains.

  After shooting a day in Big Bear and a day in Joshua Tree, Brandon and the Sports Pages team set up shop just in front of the Jonathan Club, a Santa Monica beach club right on the water.

  At that very hour, Nina and Kit were seated at one of the tables at the restaurant by the sand. They had decided to go out for lunch—Nina’s newfound cash flow making certain parts of the coast available to them that had never been available before. Such as a beach club with white cloth napkins and four different types of glasses at the ready. It was still unusual to them, not entirely natural. Nina didn’t like how subservient the waiter was to her. Kit thought the other patrons were all assholes.

  Brandon was down the beach a distance, in the sand, wearing his tennis whites, holding a black racket, angled in front of a camera, the ocean to his back. He was tall and sturdy, with sandy brown hair, and mild features—average-sized blue eyes, wide cheekbones, thick eyebrows. His face was attractive but forgettable, as if fate had not taken a single risk in composing it.

  “Who is that?” Kit asked, watching him. There was a break between shots and Brandon sat down on a milk crate, holding a bottle of Perrier. “I know that I know him bu
t I don’t know where from.”

  “I think he’s a tennis player,” Nina said, picking at her salad. By this point, per her agent, Chris’s instruction, Nina had already cut out all cheese, butter, and desserts. She’d lost eight pounds. “You stay slim, you get rich,” he’d said to her. Nina had bristled when she heard it but still, she obeyed. And now she found herself quickly growing tense anytime she was hungry. Her body was their whole cash cow.

  Brandon took a sip from his Perrier and then screwed the top back on. He stood up, ready to get back to work. And as he did, his sight landed on the patio in front of him and then zeroed in on Nina.

  “Well,” Kit said, as if offering bad news. “He’s looking at you.”

  • • •

  When Brandon told people the story later, he would say that the moment he saw Nina he just knew. He never realized what he was looking for until he saw it all in her: long gorgeous hair, lithe body, bright smile. She looked sweet without being soft.

  “Uh …” the PA said. “Mr. Randall?” Brandon didn’t respond. The PA raised his voice and continued talking.

  “Sorry,” Brandon said. “What?”

  “Touch-ups. On your jawline.”

  “Oh, right,” Brandon said, finally tearing himself away from the sight of Nina. But he continued to steal glances at her as his makeup was fixed and he was put back in front of the camera. The photographer started flashing and Brandon was still looking over there. Did he know her from somewhere?

  “She’s the girl in the poster,” the photographer said, catching him staring. “Nina Riva.”

  Brandon was unsure.

  “Mick Riva’s daughter,” the photographer added.

  “That’s Mick Riva’s daughter?” Brandon said.

  “Yeah, she’s a surfer.”

  Brandon looked at her again, this time long enough to get her attention. Nina turned and glanced at him. He figured his chances were good. After all, he had eight Slam titles under his belt and was expected to grab a ninth.