Bad Son Rising (3 page)

“But what about your happiness, Zac? Talk to me. Why are you the way you are? I used to think you were just a player. The ultimate gorgeous guy player. But I don’t think that anymore.” She tried to read the shadows fleeting across his sky blue eyes, but they breezed by too fast.

“Maybe I am just a player.” He sat back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. Methodically, he pulled apart the chouquette, popping small pieces of the flaky pastry into his mouth. Finally, “I’ve never had a typical sex life.” It was a statement that hung in the night, suspended in the humidity rising from the Seine River. The silence afterwards was more telling than the seven words that preceded it.

Liz remained quiet, waiting for Zac to continue. Moving in his chair, in an attempt to get comfortable, or to shake off the discomfort as he formulated the follow-up to his opening statement.

“I was thirteen the first time I had sex.”

“Wow, that’s pretty young,” Liz met his eyes. Boarding school kids had ample opportunity to explore early, but sex at thirteen was still young.

Zac’s nod was almost imperceptible. “I came home from tennis camp one afternoon and headed straight into the kitchen looking to ransack the refrigerator. I heard noise out on the back deck and went outside. My mom had a few friends over, three ladies I had never met. They were drinking wine and playing cards and laughing about something. I was introduced to the women and went back into the house to go shower. As I was leaving, I heard them saying to my mom how cute I was and that I looked like a little clone of my dad,” he took a sip of his latte. “I went upstairs to my bathroom and peeled off my clothes. I was totally sweaty and gross from playing tennis on outdoor courts all day. Just as I was about to step into the shower, I heard the doorknob turn. I remember being surprised because my bathroom was upstairs. The door opened and one of the women I had just met stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. I froze. The towels were on the other side of the bathroom and I was just standing there naked. I remember feeling my face get all hot and she told me not to be embarrassed, that I was bigger than many men she had been with. It took me a minute to realize she was talking about the size of my dick,” he laughed, shaking his head. “She came up close to me and I started to get hard. She took my face in both of her hands and began to kiss me. I got so turned on by what her tongue was doing in my mouth and I could feel my cock start to ache. She started stroking me and told me to try not to come. I thought I was going to explode at the first stroke. And then she bent over the bathroom counter and lifted her skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and her pussy was shaved clean. She stuck her ass out and spread her legs. She told me to come close and she reached behind and guided me into her pussy. It was so warm and wet. She told me to press as deeply into her as I could and stay still. I did what she told me to, and she started squeezing me with her pussy muscles. I came right away. She asked me if I was interested in fucking her again. I couldn’t even speak. I just nodded. She told me next time to masturbate first so that I could last longer when she came to me. The following week, my mother had the ladies over for cards and I ran upstairs and rubbed one out quickly before she came up. She came into the bathroom and bent over the counter, flipping her skirt up. She didn’t say a word, just stuck her ass out and spread her legs. I rammed my cock into her and fucked her as hard as I could. After my shower, I went downstairs and looked out the glass doors. From the angle I was at, I could see up her skirt. When she saw me through the window, she spread her legs. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. An hour later she came back upstairs and we did it again.”

“You were having unprotected sex with your mother’s friend?”

He nodded, “And I was thirteen, so the consequences never even crossed my mind. I’m sure she was on the pill, but holy crap.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, it went on for a while. It even happened at a party my parents threw, with her husband there. I was so jealous when she went back downstairs and was hanging all over her husband. I was thirteen, I had no idea how to make sense of what I was feeling or what it even was that I was doing with her. It felt good and I craved it and I wanted to fuck her all the time.”

“So, what happened?” Liz’s tone was a cross between, don’t tell me anymore and tell me everything.

“A few weeks later I saw her coming out of the bathroom at the tennis club with one of the pros and I knew she had fucked him. I was pissed and the next week I didn’t come home in the afternoon when I knew she was at the house,” he laughed. “I was going to show her I was not going to be there whenever she wanted me. The week after that, I got the nerve up to go back home on the day I knew she would be there and when I got there, I totally ignored her and spent time talking to another friend of my mom’s, LuAnn, who had just started to play tennis. I told her I’d be happy to hit balls with her anytime. Maddie, the woman I was fucking, was in a snit. She came up to my room and I had locked the door. The next week I hit balls with LuAnn and spent the next two years fucking her until I went to Exeter.”

“You were a victim of sexual abuse, Zac.”

“I never saw it that way, it was just the norm for me. So sex was about getting used for me. When I was seventeen, I didn’t go to Exeter for a semester, I was home going to public school in Newport Beach. My mom’s friends were all over me like flies on shit. I was sleeping with three of them. After I went back to Exeter, my dad saw one of them talking to me when I was home on spring break and figured it out.”

“What happened?” Liz’s blue were wide, alarms blaring.

Zac laughed. “You know my dad, he can be pretty intense. He went apeshit all over this woman and threatened to expose her and the others as pedophiles, totally ruin them in Orange County. He was actually pretty awesome and it wasn’t until he and his wife, Mia, and my grandparents flipped out about it that it really occurred to me how fucked up my sexual life had been and how fucked up I am because of it. I don’t know right from wrong sexually, Liz. I have no compass.”

“What about girls our age? Did you ever have a girlfriend?” Liz’s brows were knit in a hard line as she stared at her handsome friend. This was a guy who could have any girl he desired. There wasn’t a co-ed on their college campus who didn’t want to be his girlfriend.

Shaking his head, no. “They wanted to show me off. It was never about me. It was just about them being cooler or more popular because they were with me. They used me. I used them.” Zac shrugged, taking another sip of his latte.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Again, Zac shook his head, no.

“Do you want to be?” Liz was relentless in trying to understand her friend’s dysfunction.

Zac smiled. “If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I would have said no.”

“And now?” There was a sparkle in Liz’s pixie face. Maybe her friend could be fixed.

“Maybe.”

“What changed it?”

“I think seeing my dad and Mia together and the way they are with their kids. When he was married to my mom, they didn’t have that kind of relationship. They co-existed and I guess, to some degree, we all co-existed as a family. But when you are with my dad and Mia, there’s this magic around and I think it’s because they love each other and the kids so much. They are a family,” he paused and corrected himself, “we are a family. And my little brother and sister, Nathaniel and Portia, are so stinking cute.”

“You want what they have?”

This time Zac shook his head, yes. “Maybe. I want to be a part of something. I didn’t know it existed, Liz, but it does. When we’re together, I’m a part of something and Nathaniel and Portia just love me unconditionally. I can do no wrong with them. And I love them, in a way that was foreign to me when they first came into my life. I would fuck up someone who tried to hurt them.”

“You didn’t have that growing up?”

“No. I’m not saying my parents were bad parents, because they weren’t. We were just more fragmented. Like little islands. I mean I know they loved me and I’ve got a good relationship with my older sister, Holly. But there just wasn’t the right glue holding us together, if that makes sense.” The ancient pain of loneliness was skirting the edge of his eyes.

“Was it hard seeing your father have it with another woman and another family?”

“Understatement. I hated Mia when I met her. And I hated my dad, too. They had this thing that he never gave us when I was growing up and I really hated them for having it. I wanted to destroy them, Liz. I wanted to make him choose. But it turned out I was the only one on the outside. And I’d put myself there. Somehow, they forgave me for being the ultimate douche and they made me a part of the family, they included me. They let me in,” Zac struggled to express himself.

“Families really fuck us up,” Liz observed. “But you’re right, from the time I’ve spent with them out at the beach house on Fire Island, your dad and Mia make it seem like maybe it’s not all one big fairytale, that the whole love thing can be real. And you and Holly fit right in. It never felt like you were the ‘other’ family.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Liz processing Zac’s secrets. Shaking her head, “Here’s what I don’t understand, Zac, how did your parents not know you were having sex with your mom’s friends?”

“I am the master of duplicity, Lizard.” Zac laughed at his own cunning. “I still am. You know me. I can con anyone out of anything.”

They fell silent for a few minutes before Liz continued, “You know you need to try a real relationship, Zac, not just this sex using shit.” When he remained silent, she went on. “You don’t want to get hurt, do you?”

“Maybe,” he shook his head, “Or maybe I don’t want to really know that I’m not capable of loving someone.”

Throwing a napkin at him, Liz laughed. “Get over that, dude. You’re really good at loving. I know how much you love me. You just admitted how much you love Nathaniel and Portia. You just need to be open to it.”

“Yeah, well maybe they won’t love me.”

“Impossible.” An overwhelming shroud of sadness wove itself around Liz.
How could he not feel worthy of being loved?
she wondered. From the look on Zac’s face, there appeared to be more. “Was there someone who didn’t love you back?”

Smiling, he shook his head, “No, it’s not like that. It was never love.”

“So, there was someone special?” Come on, Zac, she silently willed. Tell me, tell me who she is. We’ll go find her.

“Not really. Just someone who I wanted to get to know. We were only together for a weekend. I mean we weren’t together, together. We were just in the same place.”

“Go on.”

“Nothing to tell. She wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

“Was she gay?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“And she wouldn’t give you the time of day? That’s hard to imagine. Where did you meet?”

“My dad and Mia’s wedding.”

Liz remained silent and sipped her latte in the hopes that Zac would fill the silence.

“I remember seeing her across the deck at the rehearsal dinner and I thought, she must be from Mia’s side, because I don’t know who she is. Her hair was like a silk curtain blowing in the breeze when she moved and I just wanted to touch it. She wasn’t wearing much make-up and she’s just one of those girls that doesn’t put a lot of importance on what she looks like and I’m just generally not used to that. You know the bitches we’re around in school - everything is about appearance. My sister, Holly, is like this girl. So pretty and doesn’t care about it or use it, you know.” Stopping, he smiled at some memory that was fleeting across his mind’s eye and picked up his latte.

“Did you talk to her?”

“Oh yeah,” laughing, “or at least I tried. She didn’t give a shit about anything I had to say.”

“Wow, a chick not tripping over herself to get your attention.”

“Fucking understatement. Turns out she’d been in Africa with my dad and Mia and actually knew my little sister, Portia, before I did. Before they adopted her. Po saw her and went flying into her lap. She was talking to Mia that night about wanting to leave school and go back to Africa. Felt she could do more good there.”

“I would never have pegged an earthy do-gooder as your type,” Liz was shaking her head.

Nodding with laughter, “You’re not the only one. I mean, this girl is so serious and intense. She didn’t smile the whole night. I remember I hung onto her every word and all I could think about was that I just wanted to make her smile.”

“You weren’t thinking about banging her?”

Laughing, “Fuck yeah, I was. But it was more about making her happy and I never think about that with chicks. You know me, dude, I could give a shit if they’re happy or not. But this girl, I just sat there thinking, ‘I want to make you happy. I want to make you smile,’ and, of course, I wanted to know what that gorgeous hair would feel like on my chest when she was riding my dick.”

“Good. I knew you were in there somewhere. This so doesn’t sound like you.”

“I know, right. The one girl I really want to get to know, really know, and I could have been the fucking Invisible Man as far as she was concerned.”

“So nothing happened?” Liz was leaning close to Zac to hear the rest of this unlikely tale.

Zac shrugged his shoulders, “I danced with her at the wedding.”

“Slow dance?” Liz’s eyebrows went up.

Smiling, he nodded, “Yeah, slow dance.”

“What’d you do, scare her off with some wood?”

Zac’s sip of latte came out his nose as he laughed, “Bitch, don’t do that to me when I’m drinking something hot,” and they laughed together as he mopped up the liquid off his top lip. “No. No wood. I waited until I got back to my room to rub one out that night.”

“Ewww.” Liz’s top lip curled up in mock disgust. “So, you danced with her and what happened? Didn’t you pour on the famous Moore charm?”

“I dunno. At the end of the dance, she just pulled away and hightailed it out of there. She didn’t look at me the rest of the night. I tried getting her attention, but she wouldn’t even look at me.” Giving Liz a perplexed look, “What are you smiling at?”