Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

think. I have it all under control.”

Jay shook his head. “It’s so different from the old days.”

Hud laughed as he was chewing. He wiped his mouth and swallowed. “You mean when Nina cleaned the house and Kit was putting out the bowls of pretzels …”

“And you and I were convincing Hank Wegman at the liquor store to sell us three kegs,” Jay said. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“By the way, I’m mostly focused on beer and wine this year,” Nina said. “I mean, obviously the bar will have a few bottles of liquor for cocktails but I don’t want to go crazy. I don’t need somebody thinking it’s a good idea to jump off my top balcony into the pool again.”

“Oh, my God,” Kit said, laughing. “Jordan Walker’s nose still looks terrible! Remember when we saw Pledge for Eternity? Every time he came on-screen it looked like he had Silly Putty on his face.”

Hud laughed.

“But that wasn’t because he had a whiskey,” Jay said. “The guy was hopped up on mushrooms.”

“Still,” Nina said. “The caterer said beer and wine is cooler anyway.”

“Yeah, all right,” Jay said. And then he briefly glanced at Hud and in that nanosecond of time they both knew they were going to drive down to the liquor store and stock the bar the way they wanted.

“Guys, what if Goldie comes this year?” Hud asked.

Jay shook his head. Nina smiled.

“Would you stop?” Kit said, laughing. “You can’t call her Goldie—you don’t even know her.”

“I do know her.”

“Standing behind someone in the grocery store is not knowing her. Just call her Goldie Hawn like the rest of us,” Kit said.

“I lent her my basket!” Hud said. “Because her hands were full with her kids. And she said, ‘Hi, I’m Goldie!’”

Nina, Jay, and Kit all looked at each other, trying to decide whether or not to give it to him.

“I haven’t heard anything about Goldie Hawn coming,” Nina said, diplomatically. “But I do think Ted Travis is coming again.”

Kit smiled and rubbed her hands together, excited. “Yes!”

Ted Travis lived four streets over in a house built in the shape of a donut with a tiki bar and a grotto in the middle. Kit and her best friend, Vanessa, never missed an episode of his show, Cool Nights, about a cop in Orange County who slept with everyone’s wives and solved murders wearing a blazer and swimming trunks. “He jumped two speedboats on water skis last week and Van and I wanted to ask him about it.”

“Is Vanessa coming tonight?” Nina asked. “I know you said she might have to go to San Diego with her family.”

“No, she’s coming,” Kit said. Vanessa had been in love with Hud since Kit and Vanessa were thirteen. So Kit knew she wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to be near him. Kit kept hoping the crush would fade but it never did. Hud didn’t help matters by being so sweet to her.

“But is anyone surprised Ted’s coming?” Jay said. “He’d never miss an opportunity to come hit on Nina.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Ted is, like, old enough to be our dad,” she said, getting up from the table to grab a napkin off the counter. “And anyway, I don’t even want to think about getting hit on. I’m not sure I’m feeling my spunky best lately.”

“Oh, come on,” Jay said.

“Maybe just leave it,” Hud offered.

“You’re gonna let some tennis asshole make you feel bad about yourself?” Jay said, looking directly at Nina. “The guy’s a complete douchebag and, I’m sorry, but his backhand sucks. And I always thought that. Even when I liked him.”

“I mean,” Kit said. “Jay’s kind of right. Also, are we now allowed to acknowledge that he was balding?”

The last part made Nina laugh. Hud caught her eye and laughed with her.

“He really was balding,” Nina said. “Which would have been fine if he realized it. But he had no clue! It was, like, right on the top of his head and he’d wear those visors—”

“That just made him look more bald,” Jay said, plainly. “Why did you let him wear those visors?”

“I didn’t know how to tell him he was balding!”

Kit shook her head. “That is brutal. You let him walk out of the house and onto national TV with a bagel of hair on his head.”

And they all started laughing. The four of them, erupting, at the image of Brandon Randall unknowingly balding on ESPN.

They were good at this, they had experience. This was how they began the process of forgetting the people who turned their backs.

“At least it’s Carrie Soto’s problem now,” Nina said. “Let her find a way to tell him.”

The good thing about getting dumped by a dickhead is that you don’t have to deal with the dickhead anymore. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

1961

The day after Mick and June’s divorce went through, Mick married Veronica. Within weeks, Mick and Veronica bought a penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and moved across the country.

They had been married for four months before he started sleeping with the wife of a sound engineer he’d been working with, a redhead with blue eyes named Sandra.

When Veronica figured it out—she’d found an auburn bobby pin in his suit jacket—she threw a dinner plate at him. And then two more.

“Fuck, Ronnie!” Mick screamed. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“I hate you!” she screamed as she threw another one. “I hope you die! I really do.” Her aim was terrible; not a single dish so much as grazed him. But he was startled by the violence of it. The flush of her cheeks, the craze in her eyes, the cacophony of dishes breaking and a woman screaming.

The next morning, he had his lawyer file divorce papers.

As he had movers pack his things, Veronica stood in her robe screaming at him, mascara running down her face. “You are an awful man,” she