Bounce (27 page)

“And how
was
San Francisco?” Beth adds. “You get whisked away for some super dream date, and you hardly talk about it? That's not the Sky we know.”

A server walks by with a giant charcuterie board for a table near us, and my stomach immediately starts growling again, like this constant annoying serenade. Tonight, however, I'm opting for liquid calories.

“First, I didn't see my dad in San Francisco. I chickened out.”

“How come, you think?” asks Mia.

I shrug. “Bad timing.”

“Meaning, you didn't want to throw a fit in front of Brooks,” says Beth.

“I don't think it's throwing a fit to be pissed off at my dad for coming to my goddamn town without saying a word. Or for leaving me to pick up the pieces with my mother like I'm in charge of their lives. Jesus, Beth.”

“Whoa,” says Beth. “I didn't mean it that way.”

“Sorry.”

I don't look at her, but I can feel her exchanging looks with Mia, like I'm not sitting at the table with them. A pizza goes by, and I feel my soul leave my body to float along behind it on a vapor trail of warm, oregano-scented goodness. Then I add pizza to the long list of foods I'm going to totally binge out on when this film wraps.

“Let's order something,” Mia says.

“I'm not hungry,” I say, though it doesn't sound even slightly convincing.

“Well, I am.” She flags down a server, and we order some food. “Really, though, Sky. How
was
San Francisco? Other than the thing with your dad? How's Brooks?”

“Well, it's not like you don't know him.” I don't know what's wrong with me. I sound like an asshole, and to my two best friends. “I mean, it was great. Or would have been great. He's pretty . . . ​great.”

Mia laughs and tucks her arm through mine, leaning against my shoulder and looking up at me with her lively green eyes, her face inches from mine. She flutters her eyelashes. “So, was it
great
?”

I laugh and feel myself unknot a bit. She's such a goof. I love her. I love both these girls, and it's not their fault my dad's the way he is. Or that I feel stuck between two guys that I wish I could combine into one perfect person. Even though I'm not a perfect person myself. “Yeah. No. He's awesome. Really. He's like . . . ​an actual man, you know?”

“As compared to what?” asks Beth. “A unicorn?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, as compared to a unicorn.”

“Okay,” says Mia. “So far, we've got that he's a man and not a unicorn. What else?”

“I don't know. He's just, he's got this great feeling of, I guess maybe I'd call it purposefulness. Like he knows what he wants, and then he goes and gets it. He's ambitious and smart.”

“And hella sexy,” adds Beth.

I nod. “And hella sexy for sure.”

Mia moves away so she can fix me with one of her I'm-digging-through-the-contents-of-your-soul-now looks. “And the chemistry's good?”

“Really good.” My mind brings me back to the hotel after we left the club, to Brooks holding my face in his hands, kissing me, sweet and warm, like settling into a bath on a chilly night. Not pushing but direct. Simple. He'd pressed his lean graceful body against mine, urgent but not desperate, until I mustered the will to usher him back to his room.

“So what
is
the plan?” Beth asks.

But at that moment, the lounge lights dim, and my dad walks onstage and gets behind the elaborate drum kit.

How does he have money for what's now—I count—a sixteen frickin' piece drum set but can't pay the damn bills?

My pulse spikes. I can't see him well in the dim light, behind all the equipment, but from here he looks younger. His hair's doing something different. It's longer maybe. And he looks leaner and a little wolfish.

Usually, he gets pasty and more and more bloated on the road—all the beer and fried foods—but now he looks like he's running marathons. For some reason that pisses me off, too. That he's not just on the road now but healthy, thriving, while my mom worries herself sick in their crappy little farmhouse in the middle of a bunch of land she doesn't know how to manage.

Maybe slinging a chair's not such a bad idea after all.

The rest of the band comes on, mostly the guys I remember, including Frank, their smarmy lead singer who used to hit on me when I was like fifteen years old.

Our server brings the food, and I order another round of drinks for the table, but mostly for me, as the Forevers launch into their first number. They're tighter than they used to be. Or more sober, I think. All of these guys look leaner, a little more upright and well-scrubbed.

I remember going shopping with my dad before he left on a tour when I was sixteen or seventeen. He stood in front of a three-way mirror, trying on leather jackets, and said, “You don't have to fall apart or fade away, kid. You can just get better.”

That's what they've done. They're better. They look better, and they sound even better, though they were always good. My dad even sings a couple of songs from back behind the drum, something he never used to do. His voice is a little thin but true. Clean. It's all so clean that I get angrier as they charge through one song and the next—covering a ton of classic rock, a few modern hits, and a couple of originals.

My dad's finally gotten his shit together—but not for his family. Just for his music.

They finish, and I'm up and out of my seat, practically crawling over Beth, before they've even left the stage. I head down a dark side hallway, past the bathrooms, to a holding area in the back crammed with stage equipment. So many of these clubs are alike. These back rooms stacked with bottled water, club gear, plastic-wrapped pallets of bar mix.

A door opens, and I'm face-to-face with my father.

He gives me a curious, interested look and then his expression reforms to one of mild panic. He didn't know me, I realize. For a couple of seconds, my own father didn't recognize me.

“Holy shit, kid, you're a surprise!” He draws me in for a big hug while the other guys pour into the room around him. I feel myself stiffen in his arms.

“Frank, guys, look who's here,” he says. “Skyler.”

“Jesus, you're a knockout,” says Frank, giving me a once-over that makes me feel like I've got ants crawling over me. “Finally legal, too, huh?”

“Cut the shit, Frank,” says my dad. “He's just kidding,” he tells me.

Right.

“You do look great, though, sweetheart,” says Ted, their bass player. He gives me a kiss, leaning down like a giraffe looking for low-hanging leaves. He's about seven feet tall and stick-skinny. It's possible he's my godfather, though I wouldn't trust any of these guys to handle my moral education. “I like the pink hair.”

“Yeah, it's real cute,” says my dad. He's got this trapped thing going on, like he'd pay these guys a hundred bucks each to stay in the room with me. But after I say hi and make small talk with the others, including a few new players, they leave us alone.

The room goes quiet, feels suddenly hollow like someone's clamped a lid over us.

My dad cracks open the other door, which leads out into an alleyway. A cold draft swoops into the space, stirring a stack of newspapers and knocking down a broom that stood against some metal shelves.

“It's good to see you,” he tells me.

He takes out a pack of cigarettes, packs them against the heel of his hand, and looks out into the night. It's all very Rock Star 101.

I don't know where to start. “It's good to see you, too.”

It sounds weak because it is. Still, a part of me, maybe the molecular part, the part that comes from him and is just, simply, his family, brightens around him, makes me feel this rush of warmth and good memories. Like some kind of protective instinct made to anaesthetize all the other crap.

More silence. Awkward and brittle. Then I just come out with it. “How come you didn't tell me you were coming to LA? I thought you were off to Europe?”

He lights his cigarette, and the smell wraps around me. “It was kind of a last-minute thing,” he says. “I mean, we just got booked here.”

I feel a weird sting in my chest, like someone's snapped a rubber band beneath my ribs. He's lying. Why would he lie to me?

Pulling my purse around in front of me, I dig through it to the postcard with their schedule. The type looks filmy, and I realize it's because I'm tearing up. Damn it, that's the last thing I want to do.

“I guess last minute means you've known for—” I check the earliest dates on the card. “Three weeks. At least. Want to try again?”

“Skyler . . .”

“Don't
Skyler
me. Mom's losing it back home. Scotty is barely keeping it together with three kids to handle on his own. And you're just out here, floating around. Doing whatever the hell you want. As always.”

“That's not fair. It's for your mom, too. For the farm.”

“Really? For the farm? You left mom with nothing. They cut off the lights.”

“I didn't know—”

“And I had to pay three months' back mortgage for you. For the farm you're supposedly supporting.”

“You? How could you afford that?”

He doesn't even know about the film. Mom didn't tell him. It boggles my mind how they can be so separate but still keep coming back together, picking up like everything's fine. I don't understand either of them. I just know I want
my
life to be different.

“It doesn't matter how. It just matters that I did it. That somehow, someone always steps up for you and makes it okay. Uncle Dave or Grandma K. Someone's always filling in the missing pieces for you.”

“This is why I didn't tell you I was coming,” he says. “I knew this is exactly how it would go. That you'd give me a hard time over some damn thing.”

That feels so unjust I don't know what to do with it. “So, you'd rather just not see me at all? Your daughter? Because I might give you a hard time?”

“Not
might
, Skyler. You and your mom. Your brother. You're all riding me all the time. Giving me shit if I so much as breathe the wrong way.”

“You make it sound like you're the victim. Like we're all just waiting to jump on you over any imagined issue.”

He shrugs, and for a second, I can't find words, I'm so angry.

“I'm not
imagining
that Mom's miserable and can't keep the lights turned on,” I say, finally. “Don't make it sound like we're all just being unreasonable.”

“Well, don't make it sound like I don't do anything,” my dad says. “I'm working hard out here. My last tour bought us a brand-new roof. You know that?”

“
After
you got home. After you walked in the door with a wad of cash. After Mom and I spent two months on
food stamps,
not even knowing for sure if you'd come home or not.” I'd worked so many after-school jobs I'd lost count of them all.

“What are you talking about? I always come home.”

“Eventually.”

“When the tour ends.”

“If you don't add a month or two. Or a
European
leg. Or decide to stay out and play the goddamn county fair circuit. Or get on a cruise ship for three weeks.”

“That was
one time
.”

“When I was
graduating
. When you
promised
you'd be there.”

“I couldn't pass up the opportunity. And it's not just up to me. I have a band.”

“You have a family, too.”

“Stop talking to me like I'm a kid,” he says. He flicks his cigarette out into the night and tugs the door shut behind him. “This is what I am, Skyler. I'm sorry you've got a problem with it. But this is who I am and what I do.”

A million words crowd my mouth, all of them wanting to come out at once. I don't know what I expected. Pretty much this, I guess.

Suddenly, I feel like my bones are too tired to support my body. I just want to go home, climb into bed, and sleep for a decade.

“Is Evan still your manager?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?”

“Give me his number.”

“Why?”

“Because I want him to send money home to Mom.”

“I'll take care of it.”

“Give me his number, Dad,” I say and it comes out choked but dead serious.

Reluctantly, he gives me the number. “Let me talk to him first. I don't need him to think my kid's running my life.”

As if.

I enter the number into my phone and then drop my new cell back into my purse. “Thanks,” I say.

He shrugs. “Now you're here, you want to go get some food? I'm starving.” Like we're buddies now.

“Sorry,” I tell him. “I ate already. And I'm with my friends. I should get back to them.”

Nodding, he says, “Well, how about tomorrow afternoon? I've got some time. You could come by. Have some three-star hotel food with me.”

He's trying to charm me, but I feel beyond the reaches of charm. His, anyway.

“I have to get ready for a trip,” I tell him. In another life, I'd rush to tell him about the movie, about leaving for the islands, where I'll spend the next couple of weeks. In another life, I'd probably say and do a lot of things.

But in this one, I just go and give him a kiss on the cheek, because I don't want it all to be bad. He is who he is. And whether he can't or won't help it, he's the father I've got.

Back in the lounge, I collect the girls, who know enough to save their questions. I feel their curiosity gathering like a storm, but I need to process. To find a safe place to come apart.

That place is down at the beach, where we talk through it all and where I finally really cry, with Mia rubbing my back and Beth's sweet, steady voice soothing me. Not for the first time, I think about the difference between the family you get and the family you choose. Sometimes, like for Mia and Ethan, it's the best of all worlds. You're born into something wonderful. And sometimes, like for Beth and me, maybe Grey—I can't tell—it's the chosen family, like Grey's band, that keeps you going.