When Luke came to sit down next to her, the river spray still shedding from his skin sparkled against the right side of her body and caused her to flinch. They sat in the awkward but pleasurable silence of unresolved sexual tension until Aria couldn’t sustain it any longer. “So what’s your story?” she asked. Though she was convinced she could most likely write the story of his life without him even telling her, the fact that they were sitting there naked had softened her judgmental attitude.

“What do you mean – like, what was my childhood like, or …?” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Well, yeah. I mean, people don’t just end up out here for nothing,” Aria replied.

Luke paused for a moment, looking down at his feet. “Well, I was born out here in LA. My dad was a surfer. He met my mom on a scuba-diving trip. He was the instructor. According to him, she was the one that came after him. Who knows.” He paused as if trying to sort through something in his mind and picked up where he left off. “According to my dad, my mom didn’t even want us. But he wouldn’t marry her unless she agreed to have kids. She told him that if they got a divorce, he was the one taking the kids. But that wasn’t at all how it turned out. My dad said that on the delivery table, my mom grabbed me and said ‘mine.’ And then she wouldn’t let him touch me until she was ready to let go of me. After they got married, my mom wanted to move away from here. So they took us to Park City, Utah. I would have been a surfer too, but I learned to ski instead. But that’s where everything went to shit.”

Again, Luke paused as if trying to untangle a knot in his head. It was clear that whatever had happened had cast him into a state of confusion.

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?” Aria asked.

“Yes. I had a younger brother. His name was Alex. He died. He ran his bike into the back of a parked van and died,” Luke replied. He fell silent again.

“Did your parents get divorced?” Aria asked, trying to help him start back up with his story.

“Yes. My dad started drinking. They hired us au pairs and pretty soon, my mom started making all the money. She didn’t respect him anymore. She fought him for custody of us, which made him drink even harder. And then it was kind of like we were dropped into thin air. My mom got married like five or six times, each time to a richer and richer man, and my dad developed this habit of driving drunk. He ended up in jail.