Documentary (14 page)

“You’re coming to the deejay battle tonight, right? It’s for charity and it’s Kai’s ‘going on tour’ party,” Leko said. “Should be fun!” The deep grin pulling across his face said she’d be crazy to decline, so she nodded. And she was trying to be less averse to parties again, especially because she was going on tour with a musician. Dylan
released a heavy breath. This would be a whirlwind for the next few weeks, and she needed to get used to it. 

The area transitioned to a small town and suddenly people were milling about in stores and shops and outside their homes. “I’m supposed to give you this.” Without looking away from the road, Leko reached into the center console and pulled out an envelope with her name on it. Inside was a ticket to the deejay battle with a note from Nina. “Your name will be on the list for the party. Here’s an extra ticket for you to bring someone.” Dylan nodded, reading between the lines. “Someone
who isn’t Kai.
”

“Welcome to your new home,” Leko announced happily when they pulled up in front of a cottage a few minutes later
in Lahaina. Dylan got out of the car, in awe, and waited for someone to tell her that it was a joke. She hadn’t done more than skim over Nina’s final email about housing so she had really come in blind. The weekly rent cost was affordable and it was “steps from the beach,” and that had been enough. It had a light brown wood panel exterior, and it was nestled within vast and untouched tropical foliage. It was perched on a soft-sloped mountain near an unpaved, sinuous trail leading down to the sand.

“Are Jamie and Odette here?” she asked of her new roommates. She was anxious to meet them. Dylan picked up her duffel and totes, still staring at the house in amazement, as she followed Leko to the front door. “
You know them, right? Are they cool girls?”

“I don’t think they’re here. And
, yeah, they’re really cool, actually. I’ve known Jamie a long time.” Leko dropped the keys in her hands so that she could do the honors. Her new roommates weren’t home after all, but they had been kind enough to leave her a welcome basket brimming with fruits and candy. Leko took her on a short tour of the place.  It was completely wood-paneled on the inside, too, with bright floral décor and large rectangular windows in every room. The living room had sliding glass doors, which opened to a deck that panned across the entire width of the back of the house. She would have an unobstructed view of the sun melting into the ocean every evening. When she walked outside to the deck, she got a friendly greeting from the couple staying next door.

“Shit…Dylan, I forgot to bring the camera and laptop. I gotta go get them.” Leko was standing behind her, bracing his elbows against the sides of the entryway. “Sorry, it’s been a busy day.”

“Actually, can I come with? What else am I going to do here by myself? Unpack?” Dylan did a swift raise and drop of her shoulders.

“That’ll definitely take all day,” he joked. He walked out, hooked his arm around her neck and they descended the deck stairs. Once in the Escalade, they drove close to half an hour before he pulled into a parking lot. She trailed him into a building, where he waved at a secretary and continued down some steps into a basement. Leko placed his finger to his lips before he pulled a heavy door open to the control room of a recording studio. Dylan had never been in one before. Two producers sat at a mixing console, which seemed to have hundreds of dials and buttons, bobbing their heads to music playing
in their headphones from the other side of the large plate of glass that separated them from the vocal booth. 

Dylan and Leko took a seat behind them next to a girl who was flipping through a magazine. Dylan’s heart slammed into the back wall of her chest cavity and she held her breath. Kai was in the recording booth, and he washed completely white, struggling through the lyrics when he saw her. He looked incredibly sexy, oozing in natural confidence, especially as his lips slipped into a light smile. Dylan snatched up one of the girl’s magazines in a veiled effort not to smile back. She hated that she reacted to him
so easily. She was pissed off. She felt entitled to an explanation about why he had ignored her for so long.
No smiles until then.

O
ne of the producers spoke into a microphone. “You changed that part. It was supposed to be ‘forgotten all the ways you touch/ the way you used to kiss.’”

“Shit.” After Kai took off the headphones, he stepped out
of the booth. “My time’s about up, anyway, dude.” Kai pulled Dylan into a hug when he reached her. She tried to numb herself against the warmth of his body and the way being in his arms felt, but still she pressed her face in his chest until they stepped apart. As much as she wanted to take a cynical view of him, it was likely impossible. “Glad you finally made it.”

Oh, now
we’re so fucking friendly?
“Thanks. Good to see you again.” She fidgeted as his gaze hovered around her a little longer before he shook hands with Leko, who took the opportunity to jab him in the stomach.

Leko cackled when Kai gasped and staggered back from the unexpected blow. “Payback, bitch!”

“You fucker!” Kai said, laughing as they slapboxed each other for a few minutes, until Leko put him in a headlock. Dylan stepped out of the way of the flailing arms, but she liked seeing Kai in a way she imagined few people did.

After Kai officially concluded his session, Leko grabbed the equipment she needed
, and the three of them walked out to the car. She slid into the backseat, right behind Kai in the passenger seat, hearing Nina’s words of warning clanging over and over in her head. But her good memories from L.A. were far more relentless. The way they had talked and laughed. The feel of his hands. The taste of his mouth. She re-imagined it all until her skin flushed, and an ache of desire pulled at her all over.

“How’d it go with Nina the other day?” Kai asked, startling her. He was smiling at her over his shoulder. Dylan opened and closed her mouth just once. He was being so casual, like things hadn’t gotten weird in L.A. She wanted whatever had caused his bout of amnesia, and she was willing to pay full price for it.

“Fine. Just business,” Dylan replied curtly. After several moments of silence when he turned back around, she pretended to fall asleep to eliminate the chances for further conversation, but actually fell asleep in the process. She awoke to the sound of a slamming car door. They were at Kai’s house apparently. It was a huge, ocean front manor on a hill and in a much livelier part of the town. The tangy smells of barbeque were in the air along with loud rock music. Girls in bright bikinis were standing and talking out front near a few large security guards. Kai chatted with Leko just a few feet away from the car before walking back to it.

“You’re coming tonight, right?” he asked, leaning into the back window.

Dylan straightened and sat up. A sharp pain fired in her side from the angle she had fallen asleep. “I think so. And tomorrow we can meet up so I can start filming?”

He nodded.
“Yup, come here as early as you can. Call Leko. He’ll pick you up.” She watched as he slipped into the house without diverting any attention to the girls. As Dylan switched to the front seat when Leko got back into the car, she saw more people walking up from the beach and straight toward Kai’s deck.

“Everyo
ne just kind of hangs out here?” Dylan asked as she put on her seatbelt. She was still amazed at how normal his life seemed.

“Pretty much.
Party here. Hang out. Some live here. I made him hire security for the house. Kai is the only person who still
really
thinks he can be that skinny kid who grew up on Akuna Boulevard, and he has a habit of taking strays in. Crazy stories end up on the Internet because of it sometimes, but I think he’s been trying to make a new family since he lost his,” Leko said grimly. The honesty of the comment tugged at Dylan’s heart. She could hear the constant drone of voices; there were tons of people there.

The drive to her house was less than two miles, and she felt more comfortable knowing Kai wasn’t too far awa
y. Leko told her that the path at the back of the house would lead her straight there. Her new roommates were home, and they greeted her like she was an old friend. They wanted to know all about her immediately and only allowed her to go as far as the living room before plying her with questions.

Odette Porter was an Australian pro surfer, who usually split her time between Perth and the North Shor
e of Oahu but was living in Lahaina this winter instead. She was a beautiful blonde with a lithe, athletic build and emerald green eyes. Jamie Tanaka was a college student on Christmas break, too, whose parents owned the house. She was Japanese-American, with dark hair and eyes, and she was petite and slim. Jamie was an old friend of Kai and Leko’s from their high school years, and Odette was her best friend.

“We were about to go grab some shaved ice. It’s a short drive to downtown. Wanna come?” Jamie asked, stretching as she stood.

“Yeah, definitely. Let me put this stuff away.”

The three of them got into Jamie’s car and drove down a main street into a picturesque, moderately busy area lined with simple
storefronts common of ocean side towns. There was a kind of shock that came with not hearing the mechanical grind of a big city or inhaling the choking smells. She was used to that from both coasts. Everything about the place seemed easygoing and a lot less stressful than life on the mainland.

The line for the snow cone shop was spilling outsi
de and down the sidewalk. When they finally made it inside, Dylan was the last of the girls to get to the register. Her phone buzzed suddenly and she tore through her bag, yanking things out with one free hand, to find it. Her parents were probably going crazy wondering why she hadn’t called yet. By the time her fingers closed around her cell, it had gone silent.

“Oh my God!” the
female cashier yelled. “Oh my God, you’re so lucky! I’ve been calling the radio station all week trying to win one of these.”

Dylan arched her eyebrows when she looked up. The cashier raised the ticket to the deejay battle right out of the pile from Dylan’s bag like it was the baby Moses, and stared wishfully at it. Dylan lowered her gaze to the woman’s nametag.

“Well, it’s yours if you want it,
Tiffany
,” she said as she counted out $3.50 on the counter. Tiffany pushed the money back toward her and looked like she had just wet her pants.

“Seriously? Oh my God! This has never happened to me before. Are you joking?” Tiffany’s mouth twitched and her hazel eyes flickered. She looked skeptical, and she seemed to be restricting her true sense of excitement.

“I’m on the list,” Dylan said with a shrug as she piled everything else back into her bag. And what use did she have for the ticket anyway? Odette, Leko and Jamie were guests, it was Kai’s party, and she didn’t know anyone else yet. Tiffany’s astonished stare followed her right out of the store before she finally screamed a thank you. Dylan caught the faint traces of Tiffany’s animated explanation to someone in the store before she and the girls went back to the house. She excused herself for a few minutes to call everyone to tell them that she was okay before joining Jamie on the deck in one of the chaise lounge chairs. They had a breathtaking view of the enclosing woods.

“So, what do you think of Kai?” Jamie asked. She sat up and folded her legs under her. She did a pensive search of Dylan’s face as she waited for a response.

Dylan sucked away a wedge of ice. “He’s nice. We hung out a little in L.A. not too long ago,” she said. She was testing with the answer to see if Kai had mentioned anything about her.

Jamie grimaced. “Shit! Brain freeze!” After she recovered, she screamed, “The Lava Surf party? You’re beer pong girl, aren’t you?” Jamie took a careful bite
of her treat before screaming again. “Dette, come here!”

Dylan sunk down in
the chair and tried to act casual and totally impassive by the news. She was confused though. He had told his friends about her but ignored her attempts to reach him.

Odette poked her head out
the sliding glass door. “What?” She dragged a hairbrush through her wet hair. Dylan watched as Jamie lunged for Odette and whispered into her ear. They looked conspiratorial when both of them turned to grin at her.

“Guys…what?” Dylan stood, looking anxious. Cold colored water dripped down over the edge of the flimsy paper cone holding the shaved ice
.

“He said
he met a girl in L.A., and she handled balls well,” Odette said, barely able to keep her lips from curling up into a smile.

“Oh my God. He didn’t say that! He never said that.” Jamie look
horrified, but Dylan, not offended at all, laughed. In a way, Odette’s crass comment relaxed her; at least they were being themselves around her.

Odette gave Jamie’s shoulder a soft push. “And, Jamie, don’t be modest!” Odette yanked her thumb in the direction of her friend. To Dylan, she said, “She cups balls like a pro.”

Jamie hid her flushed face behind her palms. Dylan was laughing so hard she dropped the shaved ice to the ground. Odette stepped out to the deck and high-fived her. Jamie squeezed Dylan’s shoulder, looking somewhat nervous.

“I’m so glad you didn’t take that seriously. I was afraid you would freak out,” she said. “Dette can be a bit…” Jamie’s voice trailed off as she circled her gaze to the light blue sky.