They desert the girls quickly and join us in our booth.
“Jailbait.” I smirk and punch Tristan in the shoulder.
“Not funny, you fuckers. That girl looks at least twenty, if not older.”
“You almost went for Bob’s niece, douche-face,” Dax says to me and throws a handful of popcorn into my face.
Tristan punches me back and declares, “We’re even. Now don’t punch me again.”
I shake my head and wince.
Girls are easy to find, especially here, but hooking up with Bob’s niece would have been a major problem—on so many levels.
“We should start asking these chicks for I.D.,” I say. “It would suck if one of us got nabbed for sex with a minor.” I look to my right and Tristan is twirling a straw in his fingers.
“Whatever, man,” he says. “I’m no trolling pervert, but there is no way you can tell those girls are only fifteen and sixteen years old. Their parents should seriously lock them up.”
Alex is silent, and he’s totally out of sorts today. He rubs his ribs and winces. Dax witnesses his discomfort and asks, “How’s the new tat?”
“What did you get this time?” I ask. Alex has been getting ink for as long as I’ve known him. He’s always been able to pass for a little older, and the tattoo parlors he’s gone to have never questioned his age. Now that he’s eighteen, he can get anything he wants.
“Nothing,” he says, dismissing my question.
“It’s dark. That’s all you need to know,” Dax says, protecting Alex as usual. Those two have a pretty strong bond, and at first I thought they were brothers. Alex has lived with Dax for a few years, and I only recently found out why.
Alex’s father killed himself four years ago after he tried to kill Alex.
Totally fucked up.
I can’t even imagine his situation. My dad was never abusive toward my mom or me. He put us in harm’s way when he owed tens of thousands of dollars in gambling debts, but he would never raise a hand to hurt either of us.
Thank God Alex was taken in by Dax’s family. I think he would have self-destructed otherwise.
“What’s next?” Tristan asks, addressing Dax. “When’s our next gig?”
Dax pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket and smooths it out on the table in front of him.
“Next Thursday, Friday and Saturday we’re back here. We play one gig on Thursday night, two on Friday and one on Saturday.”
Tristan groans. “Does that mean we’re playing Happy Hour on Friday, because the last time we did that, we were singing to fifty-year-old dudes.”
“Suck it up, asshole. Do you want to be able to pay your rent this month?” Dax says, annoyed.
Tristan pipes down and Dax runs through the next several weeks’ worth of shows. Apparently, there’s a record label interested in seeing us. Alex is skeptical, but the rest of us think it’s a major deal.
“We’ll use these next few weeks to get ready for the label rep to come see us next month. He’s coming here on the eighteenth.”
“My birthday,” I say, smiling.
“It’s going to be an epic night.”
Sam
Present
Villanova, Pennsylvania
Age 23
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” I yell at Aunt Peggy. I’m disgusted by what she just asked me, practically begged me, to do. “There is no way in hell I’m going to do this, so just back off.”
“Hear me out, Samantha.” Her tone is firm. There have only been two times she’s spoken to me like this and neither time was good. “I need you to listen to everything I have to say before you say no again.”
I flop onto the couch and yell again. “Do you have any idea what I’ve just been through? What I’ve done? I can’t possibly consider what you’re suggesting.”
I’m hanging on by a thread right now after the incident with baby Ben. I haven’t left my room for days. My guilt consumes me, and all I can think about is what I did wrong. How I killed a defenseless baby.