Jay made it back to the bottom of the landing. He turned to a brunette woman in a polka-dot dress smoking a joint. “Have you seen Hud?” Jay said.

“Who’s Hud?” the woman asked, completely uninterested.

Jay looked at her sideways. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked her.

“Heather,” she said, smiling.

“Well, Heather, Hud is my brother and he’s fucking my girlfriend and I need to find him.”

Heather put out her hand, offering Jay the butt of her joint. “You need this more than I do.”

“No, thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

Jay frowned and took the joint from her. He put it to his lips and pulled in the smoke. He closed his eyes, let it permeate his lungs, sink into his body. He opened his eyes back up.

“Do you feel better now?” Heather asked him.

Jay thought about it. “No. Not at all.”

“OK,” Heather said, shrugging. “Well, that’s all I got.” She turned away from him and resumed her conversation with the Laker Girl she’d been talking to. “OK, but, like, Larry Bird is good though.”

Jay closed his eyes and pinched his nose, wondering why the fuck anyone would be defending the Celtics, but he didn’t have time to fight her on it.

He made his way to the backyard again, still trying to find Hud. He was still seething inside but his rage had nowhere to go. He tried to relax, tried to calm himself down. He didn’t see Hud anywhere.

Now Vanessa was sitting in the lap of Kyle Manheim, making out with him. Jesus, Vanessa. Jay made a note to himself to tell her she could do better than Kyle. But for now he simply tapped her on the shoulder.

Vanessa turned and looked at him. “Hey,” she said. She seemed tipsy but far from blotto.

“Have you seen Hud?” Jay asked her.

Vanessa shook her head. “No. And you know what? I don’t care that I haven’t seen him. How’s that? For once in my life, I can honestly say I just don’t care.”

Jay had already stopped listening. His eye caught sight of the cliff’s edge and the stairs to the beach. “Yeah, cool.”

He walked, slowly and deliberately, making eye contact with no one until he got to the edge of the lawn.

He looked down at the water, at the sand. On the beach, he saw two people in an embrace and he could instantly recognize the asshole he was looking for. Hud.

Jay’s rage turned red hot once again as he realized Ashley was there with him. This was fucking rich.

Jay watched them start to make their way up the stairs to the backyard. He paced around, talking himself up and down, unsure of what he would do when they reached the top.

Mick pulled his car into the driveway of his daughter’s house. He handed his keys over without even looking at the valet’s face.

He stood in the driveway, gazing up at the full scope of Nina’s home, and fixed the knot of his tie.

Mick was surprised by the sheer size of the house. Nina’s husband must have bought it. Brandon something. The tennis player. He felt his hackles go up.

“Are you …” Eliza Nakamura said to Mick as he walked past her, toward the front door.

Mick looked at her. She was good-looking. If it had been the right time, he might have given her his signature smolder, lifted the edges of his famous lips to give her a grin. But Mick had learned nearly twenty-five years ago that his gravitational pull was such that he had to repel anyone he did not wish to actively attract.

“Not now,” he said to the young woman.

Eliza turned away from him, annoyed, and moved on. She would tell people for the rest of her life that she’d met Mick Riva once and he was a dickhead.

Mick did not care if people thought he was an asshole as long as they left him alone when he did not want them and flocked to him when he did. He ignored each and every person in the front yard who stared at him as he walked by them and headed straight over the threshold of his daughter’s mansion.

There was an audible gasp from one of the cocktail waitresses when she saw him. That made the two bartenders over by the record players look up toward the door and they both did double takes.

Seeing the bartenders out of the corner of his eye, Greg Robinson, still rippin’ it up, moved his eye to the door and saw a legend he once knew years before standing there. His hand slipped and the record scratched.

Then everyone in the living room looked up at the door—a house full of stars all staring at the biggest star in the room.

The gasps and whispers started and within approximately forty-five seconds of Mick placing his foot in the house, the entire party knew he was there.

The entire party except for Casey Greens, who was hiding upstairs in the master bedroom, and Kit, who was with Ricky Esposito in her sister’s outdoor shower, and Jay, who was outside looking for Hud, and Hud, who was down at the beach, and Nina, who had locked herself in the pantry.

Hud spotted Jay out of the corner of his eye as he was making his way up the stairs with Ashley. The moment he saw him, his heart dropped. It was clear that Jay already knew what he’d resolved to tell him. Jay had the gait and the fury of a man recently made aware.

Hud turned back to Ashley briefly as they came up the path. He looked at her with warning and apology, and in his glance she knew what he was trying to tell her. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Hud put his feet on the grass at the edge of the lawn and Ashley followed him and then stepped aside, out of the line of fire.

Jay was in Hud’s face in no time. “You are a real piece of shit,” Jay said. “You know that?”

“I know,” Hud said. He did not ask how much Jay knew or how Jay knew. He understood those questions would only serve to make things worse.

Jay shook his head, trying to speak but finding himself dumbfounded. What on earth could he possibly say that would come close to conveying his rage?

“Ashley and I are together,” Hud said. Ashley watched his face as he spoke, stunned at the forthrightness of his words, the evenness of his voice. “I fucked up in how I handled it. I lied to you and I went behind your back and I am sorry. But I love her.”

Hud caught Ashley’s eye for a brief second. “And she loves me.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jay screamed, losing control of his voice as he continued to speak, its volume rising higher and higher with every second. “That’s your defense?”

Hud stepped closer to his brother and had a moment of sharp clarity. He would see this thing through, he would face every moment of it. And he would come out the other side with a brother and a wife and a child.

“I’m an asshole,” Hud said. “I admit it.”

“That doesn’t even begin to—”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re right. But I need you to understand something. I’m not going to stop seeing her,” Hud said. “And I’m not going to let you stop speaking to me.”

A crowd had started to form and Jay was conscious of it—of the fact that every single person who became privy to this conversation was aware of his humiliation.

“So tell me what you need from me in order to put this behind us.”

“What I need from you?” Jay said. “What I need from you is to stop sleeping with my ex-girlfriend!”