Millions? I must’ve heard that wrong. No, I’m pretty sure he said millions. I am so completely surprised, it takes me a moment to get my next question out.
“W-what … well, what kind of business did you have?”
He looks over. “Well, it started out with apps,” he says and then begins to reminisce. “I think Landon was born with a chip in his head—a technological genius, my brother.” He smiles distantly. “We played a lot of video games when we were younger, obsessed, like any kid, spending hours upon hours every day in front of the television until our parents thought it was time we started doing more things outdoors.” He glances over briefly. “So enter that camping trip I told you about—anyway, later, when my parents finally let us on the Internet, our game obsession intensified when we discovered our first online multiplayer role-playing game. We felt like gods.” He laughs out loud again, demonstrating how ridiculous he thinks all of that was, and then turns left onto another road, the car now zipping through the rain instead of crawling through it. “Eventually, Landon—being more into the creation process than the game playing itself, like I was—abandoned the games and started creating his own. I thought he was crazy, and in a sense he probably was, but before he turned eighteen and graduated, he was offered a full ride to two different colleges and eventually a job at one of the most successful gaming companies in the country.”
“Wow, that’s huge.”
“Yeah, he thought so too, until after the first year, and he dropped out of college and never took the job.”
We turn onto another blacktop road and the rain is beginning to die down to a drizzle.
“Landon hated being … suffocated,” Luke says sketchily. “I was surprised he even graduated high school. He hated school. He hated working in the same place for too long.” Luke shakes his head and flips on his blinker. “He just didn’t like being tied down to anything—with the exception of Kendra, of course, and a couple of girls before her.” He laughs. “No, Landon enjoyed being tied down when it came to women, but that’s another story. A really boring one.”
Luke is different when he talks about his brother—he seems really proud, but despondent and even bitter at times. I feel like he’s holding something back, and I’m still not sure yet if it’s OK for me to probe.
Ultimately I leave it alone. I don’t want to risk making too much of his business mine.
Finally we pull onto a concrete driveway shrouded by trees and bushes on either side, creating a canopy of lush green over it like an arch. A little blue house sits off in the distance amid more trees and bushes, and just beyond it, down a sloping, grassy hill, I can see the beach and then the ocean. Luke shuts the engine off and leaves the keys in the ignition. He looks over at me. “But to answer your question,” he says, “we owned a business called Trivium Studios. A few failed smartphone apps eventually led to one successful one, which led to our own online multiplayer game, which led to a few other things, which put a lot of useless money in our accounts and eventually drove a wedge between my brother and me.” He smiles faintly, maybe to bring the light back into what had briefly become darkness, and then he opens the door, the smell of rain filling my senses. “But that’s also a boring topic,” he says, and I get the feeling that boredom has nothing to do with why he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “And you’re not here for that.” His smile turns into a grin.
“Now, I haven’t had a chance to clean,” he says, unlocking the front door. “Oh, and for the record, I don’t have roaches like the nasty ones over on the mainland, but Hawaii is notorious for these large, freakish cockroaches and you might see one from time to time. Oh and centipedes. Just a warning.”
I know I must look pale all of a sudden—maybe he’s just screwing with my head. Or exaggerating.
God, I hope so.
He grins and says with a gesture of his hand, “Let’s get inside before it starts raining again.”
SEVENTEEN
Sienna
Luke’s place isn’t at all what I imagined on the ride over here, at least not since he told me about the money he and his brother made. When I step through the front door, I’m surprised to be standing in something kinda small with dingy white walls that need a serious paint job and a ceiling pockmarked by discoloration from water damage. The linoleum floor is old and beyond repair and the only thing that could do it justice would be to rip it all up and replace it entirely. But it’s only cosmetic, I see right away, as the house overall is livable and quaint in a bachelor pad sort of way.
Before I step farther in I take my sandals off at the door.
“Nah, you don’t have to do that,” he says, but I do anyway. “This isn’t exactly a palace, as you can see.”
I can also see a hint of slight nervousness hidden behind his eyes and that innocent smile of his, as though he’s quietly worried about what I might think of him now that I’m seeing his house. I don’t really know what to say. I want to say, If you had that much money, why didn’t you buy something bigger and more updated? Because that would be an obvious first question. But I don’t want to offend him. So I say nothing at all and continue to act as though I’m not bothered by it. Because, in truth, I’m really not bothered by it—I lived in a tiny two-bedroom trailer in a mobile home park for a long time growing up and I’m no stranger to the less extravagant things in life. In fact, I’m more familiar with it than any other lifestyle.