Annie playfully slapped him as the dread filled me. "Fuck off, Lyle," she cooed. Then she turned to me. "Nails asked me to marry him. I said yes."
Something exploded inside of my head, right above my left eyebrow. "You what?!"
"We're getting married, Jax."
"Why… the fuck… would you do that?" My mouth was hanging open like I was an idiot and I closed it tightly, right before I exploded again. "You're getting married?"
"It's about time, we figured," Nails said, like this wasn't the stupidest thing anyone had ever said. "I love your mama. You know, that Jax."
"Whatever." I was being an asshole, but I couldn't help it. "This is stupid. You're old. Who cares, at this point?"
"We do," Annie said, all casually. She planted a kiss on Nails that went on for so damn long I had to turn and walk away before I really did vomit on my shoes.
But another explosion in my brain stopped me in my tracks. "Wait," I said, turning on my heel. "Does Lily know?"
Nails pulled himself back from pawing my mother long enough to reply. "Yeah, we still gotta call her," he said, just as casually as Annie. Both of them were acting like this was just a totally normal thing, like it was no big fucking deal that they should get married after fighting, fucking, and fucking each other over for almost fifteen years.
And Lily.
Fuck.
Liliana. Nails' daughter. This whole sordid and sorry state of affairs would make my Lil Bit—my secret shame, my sorry obsession—my fucking sister.
Chapter Five
Liliana
One of the main reasons why I've never been able to hold down anything resembling a "real job," is my utter inability to arrive anywhere on time. Everyone knows you should be at least two hours early for any flight if you want to have a prayer of getting through security on time.
I arrived forty-five minutes early and was extremely impressed with myself. That is, until I saw the line snaking through security.
The crowd was packed tightly around me as we moved through the maze of crowd control barriers that I felt like a cow on the way to the slaughterhouse. "Moo," I muttered under my breath. The old lady in front of me with the tightly curled perm darted a startled look over her shoulder, and then shifted forward to give the crazy lady some space. I took a deep breath, feeling the claustrophobia dissipate a little with the extra space. Maybe I should always pretend to be a crazy person. Maybe it would keep people from crowding around me like this.
I don't like crowds, or audiences. Or really, people in general. My father, though—he lives for that sort of thing.
They say rock 'n roll dreams never die, and never was that more true than for my father. I knew he loved me, somehow, the way small children instinctually can tell these things, but he was never any good at showing it. I was an afterthought, not so much of a hindrance as something he never really considered in the first place. My only memories of him being at home with us were of him smoking out in the garage, a guitar on his lap, and a faraway expression on his face. "What are you doing out here? Go find your mama," he would always say, if he noticed me standing and staring at him at all.
After a sad and futile stint at being a normal, suburban father, Lyle Nesbit succumbed to his rock 'n roll dreams once more, leaving my mother to raise her three-year-old daughter by herself.
"I don't hate him, honey," she used to sigh when I'd ask her, but she never could quite muster up the conviction to make me believe her. My mother married Graham, my stepfather, when I was five, and she and I moved into his big corner house. On that day, I got a new dad and two new stepbrothers in one fell swoop. But if I thought that would mean someone would notice me, I was sorely mistaken. Graham's boys were utterly wild, perpetually in trouble, perpetually fighting whether in fun or in earnest, with Graham shouting from the sidelines ‘til his voice grew hoarse. I stayed in the background, honing my talent at being completely ignored by father figures.
Graham was useless, all prim and proper, so unlike my father that it was almost comical. He fancied himself a scholar and took great pride in the shelves of leather bound volumes I never once saw him open. He was more of background noise in my life than a father figure, but one thing I did have to give him credit for: my motto. He grimaced it at me once after I verbally dressed him down, halfway out the door on the way to a friend's party.
"Though she be but little, she is fierce."
Shakespeare. Midsummer's Night's Dream. Of course I recognized it. I devoured any book that I could get my hands on, transcribing the bits that spoke to me into reams of journals that I scribbled in night and day. It made me stop and consider Graham in a different light for one moment.
Then he went right back to being an ass hat and the moment was lost.
Still, little and fierce. That's what I was. How I defined myself even when fierceness seemed far out of reach. When the tears pricked shamefully at my eyes and I lashed out rather than see them fall, I was always reminding myself: fierce. It was the mantra I believed in even when I didn't believe in myself.
I had daydreamed my way right to the front of the line. "Shoes off," the bored TSA agent intoned mechanically. "Put your belongings in a bin and step over here."
Everyone hurried to obey, grabbing the gray bins and slinging them about like toddlers with stacking toys. I had to duck out of the way before I got taken out. "Hey, watch where you swing that thing!" I barked at the harried-looking businessman.
He looked out, and then down. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you down there."
Then the bastard grinned at his own joke.
"I'm the perfect height for punching you in the nuts," I retorted loudly.
He opened his stupid mouth a few times, gawping like a fish. I seemed to have that effect on guys like him. The self-important ones who couldn't imagine that someone who looked like me, all small and elfin, could actually have a temper. Guys like him tended to be speechless when faced with ferocity. That was part of the reason why I was, as yet, still single.
Jaxson never condescended to me.
What the hell? Shut up.
Apparently my traitor brain, eager at the prospect of a reunion, was deciding to replay only the highlight reel of my former life. With a mental yank, I forced myself to relive the bad shit too.
Because there was a lot of bad shit. And as I settled into my seat on the plane, I knew that there was going to be no way I could stem the tide of memories.
Life in the corner house moved on with its predictable boringness. The only time I experienced anything approaching excitement was what my father decided to drop by. It was irregular and infrequent—two, maybe three times a year—but it gave me something to look forward to besides counting down the time until I could move out.
Seeing my dad was something that I always looked forward to… no matter how many times he disappointed me.
He'd eventually given up on being a rock star in his own right, and had started working as a roadie. He was perpetually broke, and perpetually on the verge of homelessness, but I had never seen him happier. He'd bring me souvenirs of life on the road and I'd sit on his lap, hoping like hell that this time he'd take me with him.
But just because he was happy didn't make him any less of a shitty father. As quickly as he dropped into my life again, my father would always vanish, called back to the road like a man possessed. Sometimes I would wish that he would fail completely, and give up to come back home to me.