“Whatever. Let’s just watch the movie,” I mutter irritably.
We both stare at the screen again, but I don’t think we’re watching the same film. Instead of seeing Dad point a gun at a Nazi deserter, my eyes conjure up the sight of him spotting my Double Platinum record on the mantel next to his Oscar. What the hell is this trash doing here? Mom titters. Honey, Oak’s second album sold another million copies. Dad sneers. He sings songs that preteens buy for ninety-nine cents. He pulls it off the mantel and shoves it at Mom. Find somewhere else for that shit. The scene flips from the living room to the deck, where I come home early from the studio to find him screwing his latest assistant over the edge of Mom’s balcony. No wonder she gets the place redecorated all the time. There’s a fade cut and a new action shot of Dad standing at the end of Jim’s conference table, telling me that I’m a dumbass if I sign the contract for three more records.
And I’d have killed myself if I stayed in that house one more minute with him, so I signed the contract. It takes money to fund a legal emancipation, after all.
“This movie’s kinda boring,” Vaughn remarks, breaking into the lame drama that’s replaying itself in my head. She tugs on her messy ponytail.
I stretch my arm across the back of the sofa until the ends of her rich dark brown hair brush the back of my hand. “I’ll make sure to pass that critique along to my dad.”
She pinks up immediately. “Oh. Oh, my God. I forgot Dustin Ford was your dad. Is your dad, I mean. That must be awesome.”
Unbelievable. The first sign of enthusiasm from her and it’s toward my asshole old man? “Yup. The one and only Dustin Ford.” Do I sound bitter? I clamp my mouth shut.
“Oh,” she says for the third time tonight. But her embarrassment lasts only a beat, because she rallies to add, “Well, I’m not going to pretend I like it just because he’s your father.”
I don’t tell her that it’s the one nice thing she’s said to me tonight. Instead, I reach for the remote and turn the movie off.
She picks up her bottle of water and rolls it between her hands. “Should we try the get-to-know-you thing again?”
“Sure.” I flip my hand over and rub a few errant strands of hair between my fingers. Her hair does seem unreal. It’s a deep mahogany and there are a dozen shades of red and brown in it. It’s probably from a bottle. Nothing out here is natural.
“Okay, me first. Why wouldn’t you shake my hand?”
“I’m not a fan of being touched.” Ironic given that I’m surreptitiously fondling her hair. I continue to do it anyway. “I’m constantly being grabbed when I go out, even though I have Big D and Tyrese at my side. When I’m in private, I prefer to be the one to initiate contact. It’s nothing personal. And now it’s my turn. Why are you doing this?”
“Money.” She looks at me under her lashes. “My parents were kinda irresponsible and left us with a lot of debt. Paisley’s held our family together and it’d be incredibly selfish of me to not step up when I had the opportunity.”
I rub my forehead as the implication hits me. I’m being mean to an orphan. A family of orphans. And it doesn’t escape me that we’re both kind of in the same situation—two teenagers without any parents in the picture. My folks aren’t dead, but they might as well be, considering how often I see them.
“My turn again,” she says. She turns toward me, pulling a knee up onto the sofa and tucking her foot under a jean-clad thigh.
“Why are you doing this? Out of all the people in the world, I would think that you’d have the least amount of trouble finding someone to go out with—even a ‘normal’ person.” She air quotes the word normal.
It’s hard to hide that I’m fondling her hair when she’s staring at me, so I pull my arm away on the pretense of reaching for my beer, which tastes like warm piss.
“Everyone in LA says they want someone normal, whatever that is, but in the end they don’t because creative types are made differently, live differently. I’m crazy, and everybody else I run with is slightly crazy. You have to be to want to live in a fishbowl and have no privacy. Where ninety-nine percent of your relationships—whether they’re friendships or fuck buddies—are set up for publicity purposes.”
I throw back the rest of the warm-ass beer before continuing. “That’s a long way of answering your question, but the short answer is no normal girl can handle me.” Vaughn opens her mouth to object, but I barrel on. “I’m not saying it’s because I’m great, even though I am—”
She snickers.
“But it’s because she won’t be patient enough to understand there are times that I get so lost in the music I can’t remember to eat, drink or take a shit. All I want to do is sing and play my guitar until my fingers bleed and my voice is sore.” I can’t count the times that April would pound on my home studio door and whine that she was bored. “No normal girl is gonna be able to handle it when I go on tour and find a naked groupie in my hotel suite who got my room number from the bellhop she blew in the stairwell. No normal girl is gonna be able to stand the long concert tours unless she wants to come with, and I promise you by the third tour stop, she’ll be begging to be left behind because she’s tired of the long hours of doing jack shit followed by listening to the same damn set list followed by an endless amount of glad-handing with the tour promoters followed by another flight, bus ride, radio, print and television interview where the people ask the same damn question a million times. So that’s why you’re here and not someone else.”
She’s silent for a long time, and when she does open her mouth, she says something completely unexpected. “That was actually two long answers. Not a short one and a long one.”
“Does it answer your question?” I mutter.
Vaughn bites her bottom lip. “Yeah. It does.”
13
HER
1doodlebug1 @OakleyFord_stanNo1 They were out together again? Any pics?
OakleyFord_stanNo1 @1doodlebug1 No! just the tweet from
@OakleyFord.
1doodlebug1 @OakleyFord_stanNo1 is it serious? R they going out together? Why no pics?
OakleyFord_stanNo1 @1doodlebug1 Ugh. I kno.
Notification of date number three doesn’t come from Claudia or Oakley. Instead, it’s a khaki-clad delivery guy who sticks a white box with a big black ribbon in my hands and orders me to sign here.
I barely scrawl the tip of my finger across the screen before he’s down the steps and climbing into his white delivery van.
“Thanks,” I call after him, but it’s a wasted effort.
Gingerly, I carry the box into the kitchen where I’ve been answering Tweets for the last two hours. Claudia sent me a message this morning ordering me to respond to my fans—the ones that made the cut before the account went private.