“It’s OK,” I say when he’s been silent for a long while. “You don’t have to tell me. It doesn’t matter.”
He shrugs. “I know I don’t have to tell you. I’m just debating if I should. I never even told my mom this story and, as irritating as Linda is, we’re pretty close and I can tell her anything. Good listener, Linda. Practical about things. Always has your back.”
“I’m a good listener, too.”
Those green eyes lock on me. Intense and yet gentle, simultaneously.
“My dad is a jerk, OK? Len doesn’t mean to be, but he takes the guy thing too far sometimes. Wants his son to be a SON. Get it?”
“Not really.”
“There’s quite a few of us kids now. Every member of the band has at least two. We all started traveling with our dads, oh, maybe eight years ago, during the summer tours. I guess the moms thought it would tone things down. It was really fun in the beginning. Like camp in an airplane.”
Bobby’s story has the unexpected power to hurt me. So they all travel with their dads now. Except me, the daughter of the prick who won’t even acknowledge her.
I find Bobby staring at me and something must have slipped onto my face, because he says quickly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. Just trying to explain.”
I roll my eyes at him. “It’s OK. You’ve got me confused with someone who gives a shit.”
“Then I’ll go.”
I settle in my seat in a less combative way. “No, I really want to know.”
“I stopped traveling with my dad at thirteen. I practically don’t talk to him. I avoid it at all cost. I don’t want to hurt my mom any more than she’s already been hurt. It’s why they moved me to the pool house. My ‘hostility’ issue. Privacy to deal with my anger.”
“So what did he do to you?”
“Nothing. It’s lame, OK? Don’t expect some big tragedy, because there isn’t one. It’s just when I was thirteen, one night when we were traveling, he took me to the lockers alone, locked the door, and there were women waiting in the showers. He told me to have at it. They’d let me do anything I want to them. An initiation, he called it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as normal and horny as any guy, and until that night it seemed like a really cool thing, getting to hang alone with Dad, traveling all over the place and getting fucked if I wanted to. But it was my first time, get it?”
His green eyes fix on me, waiting until I nod.
“I was thirteen,” he continues. “I didn’t want it. Not like that, with a drunk man cheering me on. I left the showers still a virgin. But that’s not the part that pissed me off.”
He is quiet for a moment and I let him be. That story may not have pissed Bobby off, but it sure as hell pissed me off, because beneath his tough-guy exterior of indifference, even after one day I can see that he has a sweet kind of sensitivity to him.
“My dad thought the whole thing was hilarious,” he explains, his voice rough and angry. “He didn’t even get he’d just humiliated me. It was my dad’s laughter that I can’t shake off about the experience. That stupid, drunken laughter. Not cool at all. Get it?”
I nod.
“I wouldn’t talk to Len after that. I didn’t want to blow up in front of Linda. But Linda somehow knew something had happened that trip because she went off on him, tossed him out and it was like divorce was imminent. She was standing on the front porch, his clothes on the lawn doused in barbecue fluid and on fire, screaming, ‘I know you did something to him! You don’t fuck with my boy. You don’t fuck with my children!’ She was hysterical and half out of her mind. That’s when I realized how all right my mom is. Len got sober then. He’s been an OK guy since then. But I still don’t want anything to do with him. We sort of all live in neutral corners now and pretend to get along. It’s the only reason why I’m still there. For Linda’s sake.”
I lean into him and this time the kiss I give him is light on the cheek. “I’m sorry. Why did you tell this story to me when you’ve never told anyone before?”
Bobby shrugs. “I figured you’d get it. Everyone thinks it must be so cool being Len Rowan’s son. I figured you’d get it. And then figure out that I’m not a jerk. I’m not like ‘all guys.’ I get where your attitude comes from. If I wanted an easy hookup, I don’t need to mess with you.”
I turn to stare out the front window so that he doesn’t have a clear view of my face. Bobby’s sensitive heaviness burns like a glaring spotlight on my own self-absorption. Even in this ugly pit, he thinks of others, namely his mother and, strangely, me.
I am more myopic in my anger, more intense, and less reasonable. It’s something I’m going to have to give thought to later. The difference between us in that and what it makes us. Right now, what it makes me doesn’t seem at all fair to Bobby and, hell, I’ve only just met the guy.
“Text me later?” I say. “Maybe we can Skype while I do homework.”
“I was planning on de-friending you once I got home.”
“Bullshit. You are not going to do that.” I laugh, leaning across the center console so he can see me from outside the car. “I’m incredibly hot. Remember?”
He slams the car door without answering me. I watch for a while as he settles on his bike and turns the ignition, and then follow the puff from his exhaust as he leaves the parking lot.
It is after eleven when I pull into my driveway at home and if there is a God in Heaven Chrissie will be in bed. I wasn’t kind to my mom today, but that doesn’t mean that I want to suffer the shitstorm I deserve because of it.
The house is quiet when I enter and I make a fast beeline to my bedroom without bothering to check on Chrissie.
I’m still lying in bed awake shortly after 2 a.m., trying really hard to focus on an Econ paper due in the morning, when I hear a beep on my cell phone. I pick it up, read the text then shut off my phone. It was a nice touch that Bobby didn’t text me the moment he got home, but that he’d waited three hours. It would make it seem like I waited up for him if I answer now.
Good try.
Won’t do it.
I turn off my light and go to sleep.
CHAPTER 5
I wake up early the next morning, shower, dress, and quickly get out of the house before Chrissie can catch me.
As I climb into my Lexus, I feel a little crappy about not sticking around. But not bad enough to stay and face my mother directly.
Nope, not up for the lecture I’m definitely going to get since yesterday I blew the fucking lid off my mother’s carefully guarded secret. First with Bobby and Zoe. Then with Linda Rowan. It’s not going to go good for me when my mom finally catches me.
I stop at a fast food drive-thru window, order breakfast, and then park in the school lot to eat it. I grab my burrito from the bag. School is nearly deserted but, hell, I’m an hour early. I chomp on my meal and watch the students arrive.
An hour later every parking space is filled. I’m just finishing my coffee when I notice it’s 8:15. Oh fuck. I got here early and somehow I’ve missed the first bell and am going to be late for zero period. That’s all I need. Only two months into the school year and I’m already teetering on being put on probation for my tardiness and bad attitude.
Jeez. That will look great on my college applications. And I definitely don’t want a lecture from my advocacy teacher again, though why it should matter being late to show up for that circle-jerk is anyone’s guess.
It’s just a bunch of bullshit about planning your academic future, as if nailing that one will make everything perfect for the rest of your life. And really, do they actually expect us to make good, life-altering decisions in a full classroom in thirty minutes a day with the help of some overeducated, underpaid, middle-aged woman who thinks education is the solution to every problem in the world?
My dad is Alan Manzone. Try fixing that one by getting a college degree, Mrs. Advocacy Teacher. It’s not the idea of going to college I have a problem with. It’s the simplicity of thought that seems inescapable here.