I go for a different tactic. “He might be out of town—”
“Carter.”
“Okay, listen. I’ll call now and merge the calls, that way you can yell at him yourself when he answers.”
Traffic is stopped dead, so I glance down to my phone, switching the line and adding Jonah’s number. Right to voicemail.
“Okay, he didn’t answer,” I tell her when I switch back over, and let my head fall back against the seat. There is no way in hell I’ll be able to get out to his place and back again in time for my meeting. If he’s passed out in a drunken stupor, I am going to kill him. “Let me move some stuff around and I’ll drive up there.”
“Thank you, honey.”
“No problem, Mom.”
“Let me know as soon as you hear something, okay? And there’s a gate, so I’ll text you the code.”
“Will do,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my face.
• • •
I’m able to move my meeting to later in the day with only minimal trouble. Hours away, plenty of time.
Malibu is about thirty miles west of Beverly Hills; it takes an hour to get there. Most of the drive I’m making phone calls and deciding how I’m going to kill my brother if I show up and he’s not already dead.
I point my car onto Latigo Canyon, a two-lane road through chaparral-covered hills and steep, wooded canyons, with a view of the ocean along every turn. The houses are huge and spread wide up here, most of them hidden from view by tall fences and towering trees.
On Jonah’s street I stop to enter the security code into an illuminated keypad. An intricate metal gate opens up onto a long, winding driveway, and at the top of the hill sits the terra-cotta-tiled house. I’d forgotten how ostentatiously huge his place is. Two stories wrapped in white stucco, it has to be at least five thousand square feet. My apartment and my parking space could fit into his front room alone.
I spot the front of Jonah’s black Range Rover around the corner in front of the garage. He’d really better be dead.
The ocean wind whips at my hair and my clothes as I climb out of my car. A wide walkway leads up to a set of stained-concrete stairs and a massive double door, and I knock twice, turning to look around while I wait. Now that I’m closer, the yard looks a little more unkempt than I’d expect. A set of urns filled with dying flowers border a lawn that could definitely stand to be cut. It’s quiet, too. It’s still early, but not that early. Last time I came, there was music playing from the back near the pool and signs of life everywhere. People coming and going and multiple cars. A yard crew, a pool man, a housekeeper. This time, I don’t hear anything coming from inside the house.
It might just be my mom’s overreaction gene rearing its head, but anxiety gnaws at me, unease prickling along my skin.
I’m heading back to my car to call . . . I don’t know—someone—when the door opens behind me. The guy is shorter than Jonah, but fit and tanned in a way that one becomes from spending a lot of time outside. His shorts-only outfit is just one indicator of his cool casualness.
I have no idea who he is.
“Hey,” the guy says, waving the floppy slice of pizza in his hand at me. “You got through the gate, so I’m assuming you’re supposed to be up here.”
“I assume so,” I say, and look above the door somewhere for a house number, wondering if it’s possible I’m in the wrong place. “I’m Carter. Is Jonah here?”
Recognition dawns and the guy’s face lights up. “You’re the brother! Man, you two look so much alike.”
I push up my glasses, tamping down irritation. “Is he home?”
He looks back over his shoulder. “Think he’s on the patio,” he says, and then motions for me to step inside.
There’s a lot of white in Jonah’s house—white floors, white walls, white stairs—but not much else. In fact, there’s not much furniture at all.
“I don’t think I caught your name,” I say as I follow the stranger through the enormous entryway—my last apartment could fit in here, as well as my current one, and most of Michael Christopher’s house. We pass through the kitchen and head toward the back door. Pizza-and-Shorts Guy is about my age, with dark, wavy hair and a smile I sort of want to wipe off his face with the back of my hand. If I had to guess, I’d say “actor” by day, waiter by night.
Or . . . kept man?
Standing here in Jonah’s eerily empty house with this stranger, I realize that I don’t know my brother that well at all.
“I’m Nick,” he says, and stops in front of the back door. “Jonah is out there.”
And sure enough, there he is, sitting in a chaise longue in jeans and a leather jacket, next to the giant swimming pool.
“Thanks,” I say, stepping outside.
The view is spectacular, and again, I can see why Jonah bought this place. He’s high enough up that the horizon stretches out over the hills to reach the ocean from what feels like one side of the world to the other. Palm trees tower overhead and there’s just so much space.
But even finally seeing my missing brother, the feeling that things are a little off only grows. The pool is a dull, clear brown and a few stray leaves skip across the ground, spinning lazily on the surface of the water. Pots are empty; the patio has seen better days.
“Hey,” I say when Jonah doesn’t seem to notice I’m there. “You know it’s like seventy degrees outside, right?”
He looks over and watches me through his sunglasses. “What are you doing here?”
“Mom sent me. Said you haven’t been answering her calls.”
He looks forward again. “Yeah, don’t know where my phone is.”
I take a seat on the chair next to him. “Don’t you need it? For . . . I don’t know, work?”
He reaches for a beer bottle perched on a glass table by his side and takes a long drink. It’s not even eleven yet. I decide to try a different approach.
“Who was that?” I ask. “Inside.”
“Nick,” he says, and takes another drink.
“I got his name. I mean, does he live here?”
“Yeah.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my thighs. “Is he . . . is he the boyfriend?”
“Whose boyfriend?” he asks, squinting into the sun.
“Well . . . yours.”
Jonah turns his body to fully face me and gives me a look over the top of his sunglasses.
“Dude, I don’t care who you sleep with,” I say, shrugging. “It’s not like we talk all that much anymore. Besides, you cut the elastic off all my underwear when I drank your orange juice, threw away my clothes when I left them in the dryer too long, and look like you want to murder anyone who wears shoes inside. The first conclusion I’m supposed to draw is that you have a roommate? You’re a nightmare to live with. That Nick is your boyfriend seems the more likely explanation.”
He sits back again. “People do change, you know. I’m not that hard to live with.”
“Sort of. People might be influenced by things, but they don’t change who they fundamentally are.”
“So you’re saying that fundamentally, I’m a dick.”
I think about it for a moment. “Yeah.”
This makes him laugh. “And you’re an asshole.”
“Why did you get a roommate?” I ask, but looking around, I’m beginning to think I get it. “Is everything okay?”
“Are we about to have a big brother–baby brother talk?” he asks.
“I would surely get some Mom points for it. I guarantee she’s in New York right now telling the neighbors you’ve been sold into some sort of sex ring because you aren’t answering the phone. Are you going to let her know you’re okay?”
He shrugs, and I push my hands between my knees to keep from smacking the back of his head.
“Are you in trouble? Like . . . you bought a fucking mansion in Malibu. Money can’t be the issue.”
“Do you have any idea how much it costs to live here?”
“I can bare
ly afford my apartment, so, yeah”—I gesture broadly—“the scope of this is beyond me.”
“I probably couldn’t afford your apartment, either, right now.” He takes off his sunglasses and tosses them on the table. “Dude, it’s fucking expensive to be me. I live up here and have parties and have to be seen with the right people and wear the right things. I’d get in a little over my head, but it was always okay because I’d just do another layout or magazine cover, you know? It was fine because there was always more work.”
“ ‘Was’?”
Jonah leans his head against the back of his chair and exhales a long, tired breath. “I did a job for this designer—high fashion—and he wasn’t happy. I mean, normally I’m cool with some people not liking my work, it’s art and open to interpretation, but this . . . I sort of lost my cool. There was another shoot, but I couldn’t seem to get the lighting right. I did some touch-up work to correct the shadows and it made the rounds of every women’s magazine and gossip site, all talking about how I’d doctored the photos to slim down the model and done a shit job of it. Some fashion bloggers tore the shoot and me to pieces and . . . let’s just say things have been a little tight.”
“So you did a less-than-stellar shoot and your shitty diva attitude got you into trouble,” I clarify.
With a dead-eyed look he grabs his sunglasses and puts them back on. “It’ll be fine.”
I pull out my phone and for the first time Google my brother. It takes a little scrolling, but he’s right: on some of the trashier gossip sites there are archived articles with phrases like has-been and washed up and fashion feature poison. In this moment I’m eternally grateful my mom wouldn’t know how to Google if her life depended on it.
“It doesn’t look fine,” I say.
Jonah stands to walk into the house.
“How much debt are we talking here?” I ask, following him through the door.
He stops at a trash can, drops the empty bottle, and moves to the fridge to get another beer, which is about the only thing I see inside. Walking around a corner to make sure we’re alone, he closes a tall set of double doors, enclosing us in his massive white kitchen. “The credit cards alone?” he says, pulling at the label on his bottle. “I’m guessing about a hundred.”
“Thousand?” My pulse takes off with a lurch.
“Then there’s the house,” he continues, “and the Rover. I already got rid of the other cars.”
“Jesus Christ.” I sink onto a kitchen stool. “Mom is—”
“Not going to find out.” His voice is deep with warning. “It’s none of your business and it sure as hell isn’t hers.”
“She’ll want to help,” I start to say, but I can already read the answer in his expression. She can’t help. Mom and Dad live a simple life on a small budget. The scale of this is beyond their comprehension, too. If I didn’t routinely see the money floating around California and my industry, it would be well beyond mine as well.
I sit back and think for a moment. Jonah has made a name for himself for a reason, and even though I think he should go back to the kind of photos he used to do—hell, our mom has had one of his earlier photographs, a black-and-white shot of a fence silhouetted by the setting sun, hanging over her fireplace since he was seventeen—it’s clearly not what he’s built a career on.
“We’ll figure something out,” I tell him.
He nods but doesn’t look up from the floor, and inexplicably, my heart twists with protectiveness.
People fucking love a comeback story. I can do this.
“Bring me your portfolio. I’ve got some calls to make.”
• • •
It takes a few hours and a lot of arguing from Jonah, but I think I’ve come up with a solution.
“What are you doing the seventeenth?” I ask him. I have no idea how I’ll get Evie to agree to something like this, but I’ll have to figure that out later.
“Working on my tan,” he says with a shrug. “Just like yesterday and the day before that.”
“In your leather jacket?”
He rocks back on the rear legs of one of his massive dining room chairs, staring at the ceiling.
I lean over and kick him to redirect his attention. “Evie and I have a shoot next week, and—”
“Evie?” he asks, grinning.
“Dude. Shut up. Listen. I have a really good friend from New York who’s a creative director at Vanity Fair. He owes me a favor, so I’m pretty sure he’ll do this for me. I hope.”
“For a feature film?” Jonah asks, and I nod. He considers it before wrinkling his nose like he’s smelled something bad. “Who is it?”
“Jamie Huang and Seamus—” I stop. “Are you seriously asking this? I’m trying to help you by putting my own ass on the line and—” I suddenly realize I have no idea what time it is. “Shit, where’s my phone?” I find it under a stack of photographs and let out a tight “Fuck!” when I see the time. “I’ve got to go.”
Jonah has the nerve to look upset. “What? Where?”
“I have a meeting I moved so I could come out and look for your dead body, and now I’m going to be late.” I shove my phone in my pocket and find my keys on the dining room table, beneath another giant portfolio. “Get whatever you need ready and be there by nine on Friday the seventeenth. I’ll have my assistant text you the address.”
• • •
After a somewhat late night Saturday spent Uncle-Carter-trick-or-treating with Morgan and a Sunday recovering and researching, I get an email from Evie asking for some time in the morning to talk about the retreat. The mere idea sends a sharp spike of dread through my chest, not to mention the change to the photo shoot I have to tell her about now. There’s no way she’ll easily agree to it. Hell, I’m not even sure I would if the tables were turned. I’d ask myself what I was thinking setting the whole thing up in the first place, but the truth is, I wasn’t. Never in my life have I been so frazzled.
We exchange a few short emails and agree on a time, and though it would be easier—not to mention quicker—for her to just text me, I get the feeling that after the odd intimacy-retreat of our dinner on Friday, she’s trying to put some walls back up.
• • •
The phone call from my friend at Vanity Fair comes in just as I’m getting out of my car the next morning, so I’m running a few minutes late. Pulling a folder from my messenger bag—it’s full of information and ideas I’ve gathered for the retreat—I pray to the gods of happy-flings-turned-rivals that this is enough to soften Evie up and get her to sign off on Jonah as our photographer.
Upstairs, Jess points me in the direction of the conference room. All the way down the hall, I can see Evie through the glass, her head bent so that her hair obstructs her face while she scribbles something in her notebook. Her skin is this insane combination of flawless and rosy that I’ve seen makeup artists try to mimic for years. Her brown eyes have thick lashes and a knowing gleam. Evie has that way about her, as if she’s not often noticed in a crowd—maybe intentionally—but to me, she’s like a beacon. Small but mighty. Unassuming but poised. I really wish I could fucking see her without it feeling like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. It would make feigning indifference so much easier.
She has some sort of smoothie in front of her, and it matches the little jewels on a barrette in her hair.
Ugh, I am in deep.
“Sorry I’m a few minutes late.” I take the seat across from her. “Some stuff came up.”
“Stuff?” she asks, pushing the straw around in her drink.
“Work stuff,” I clarify, and I hate the way my words come out like I’m explaining myself to her, laced with guilt. “Anyway, Kylie sent me some things from the planner they used last year. I printed them up and added a few new ideas I thought might work.”
I place the packets on the table in front of her, avoiding her eyes and hoping she goes for the subject change. I’m sure she’s wondering why I’m suddenly so helpful and Johnny-on-the-spot
about this retreat.
I can feel her watching me, narrowed eyes tracking my movements as she picks up the papers I’ve given her and holds them warily. She still hasn’t said anything and when she looks down to the printouts, I busy myself straightening the rest of my papers, making sure she has a pen, and generally behaving as though I’m being a lot more helpful than I am.
“Oh, right,” I say casually, “I should mention before we get started: I need to switch the photographer for the VF shoot next week.”
She turns her face up to me. Her brows come together in confusion. “Why?”
I debate whether I should lie and realize it’s safer to just be honest. “I thought we might hire Jonah.”
“As in your brother, Jonah?”
“Right.” Scratching my eyebrow, I tell her, “He’s going through a bit of a rough patch, and I told him I’d try to get him on this job.”
She sets down the packet. “You think they’re going to be able to switch it out last minute?”
I lean in, relieved her first reaction wasn’t rage. I try on a smile I hope feels like the expressive version of triumphant jazz hands. “They already did.”
Only when her eyes go wide do I fully register what I’ve just said.
Oh. Oh, fuck.
“You did it without talking to me?” she asks slowly.
Shaking my head, I say, “I dropped my friend a line yesterday to see if it would even be possible, but he called and said it was a go before I got in this morning.”
Evie studies me for a few quiet beats. “I think it’s a conflict of interest. I think Brad would agree.”
There’s the edge of a threat in her tone, and I twist the cardboard band around my coffee cup while I think of how to respond. “I’ll talk to him.”
“I’m not sure I understand what led to this,” she says, confusion lacing her words. “You told me the two of you don’t get along. This is Jamie and Seamus’s first big shoot. Do you really want to—”
“How well Jonah and I get along isn’t the point. He’s the right guy for the job.”
“Then why didn’t you suggest him last week?”