The Rock Star's Daughter (11 page)

One of the roadies brought us cold sodas, and
Jake and I sat in silence while we drank them. I knew that Jake had
seen what I had seen and I was relieved that he didn't say anything
about it. Sigma wrapped their set and strode off stage, not even
noticing us in the thick sea of roadies and groupies backstage.
Local advertisements blared over the loud speaker while roadies set
up Pound's equipment.

After twenty minutes of us sitting still,
Pound emerged from their dressing room and crossed the backstage
area. I heard the signature puff of smoke on stage that announced
their arrival, and George began playing a riff from the title track
of No Rest for the Wicked. The band members positioned themselves
on platforms that would be raised on to the stage so that they
could appear to emerge magically from the dry ice smoke. The crowd
was going wild.

And then I heard my father break into the
vocals, and the show was on.

In the split second I had seen him walking
across the backstage area to the stairs that would lead him to his
platform, he did not look the least bit like a man whose child was
in the hospital. He was completely focused on the task at hand, on
his screaming fans.

"Let's go," I told Jake.

He looked surprised.

"You don't want to stay til the end of the
show?"

"What would be the point in that?" I
asked.

When Jake and I were halfway to the hospital,
I asked, "Is it OK that you're missing work?"

"Yeah, it's fine," he said. "I can miss a
night."

Somehow the paparazzi, what few of them there
were in Huntsville, Alabama, had already caught wind of Kelsey
being sick. They clustered around the entrance to the hospital,
sipping coffees and smoking cigarettes, clueless as to my identity
as we entered.

Kelsey was in intensive care. We were led by
a nurse in scrubs to sit in a visitors' lounge while doctors were
trying to reduce her fever. The lounge was empty; no one from the
tour was there waiting.

I sat down next to Jake on a coffee-stained
couch and noticed for the first time all day that I was pretty
beat. As tired as I was, taking a nap was out of the question. I
couldn't help but be terrified. Why were so many bad things
happening to me in such a short amount of time?

"Are you all right?" Jake asked.

I was hunched over with my head in my hands,
trying not to cry. The comfort of my own home and own bed back in
Los Angeles was so far in the distant past that I felt overwhelmed.
I knew that if I answered him a sob would leap out of my mouth, so
instead I just shook my head.

Jake inched closer to me and put an arm
around my shoulder. That small gesture was all it took to yank a
few tears out of my eyes. I buried my head against his chest and
sobbed silently, hoping he wasn't noticing that I was crying. For
the first time since I had boarded Pound's private jet I was
legitimately homesick. The sterile smell of the waiting room, the
bright lights of the urgent care ward… it was all too familiar.

An hour after we arrived, almost all of which
Jake and I passed in silence, Jill, Tanya, and Kelsey's nanny
emerged from the off-limits area. They all looked exhausted, and
Jill's eyes were swollen from crying.

Jill swooped down on me with a crushing hug,
practically tearing me out of Jake's embrace. "Oh my god, Taylor,
I'm so glad you're here," she said, and then wiped tears from her
eyes.

"I'm sorry," I began, getting choked up. I
felt personally responsible that my father wasn't there to support
her. I was a little surprised that she was glad to see me at all.
"I tried to get my dad to come but we were too late."

"It's OK," Jill assured me. "Moose just
called. The show is on intermission and he'll be on his way in an
hour."

"How is Kelsey?"

My sister's fever had dropped down to 103 and
her doctors were confident that she would remain stable through the
night. Tanya drifted down to the cafeteria to fetch tea for Jill,
and Cleo the nanny began giving Jill a vigorous backrub.

Dad, Wade, and Keith burst through the doors
to the lounge nearly two hours later. Dad had tears in his eyes and
a look of concern on his face. Jill leapt into his arms and began
weeping and he rocked her back and forth.

"How's my girl?" he asked, and Jill relayed
to him Kelsey's status.

I watched, basically unacknowledged, both in
awe and disgust. This was the same guy who not even three hours
earlier was heavily flirting with a desperate middle-aged slut
backstage, and performed a full concert with carefree energy. It
was becoming increasingly evident that my dad was a skilled actor,
a chameleon, capable of switching his emotions on and off,
performing to meet the needs of his audience at a moment's
notice.

And then it hit me why this aspect of his
personality offended me so much: in this way he was exactly like my
mother.

My mom could be depressed for days, desperate
for her royalty check to come in the mail, grumpy and snapping at
me for the slightest thing, and then if a fabulous friend were to
drop by for a visit, she'd whip out her million-dollar smile and
suddenly be on top of the world.

Or she'd have a new boyfriend in her life and
be giggly and girlish for days on end, acting dopey and whimsical,
but if her business manager would call regarding a voice-over
audition, the childish act would vanish in a snap and she would
suddenly become a shrewd businesswoman.

While this discovery about my dad's
personality was really disappointing, it also gave me leverage. Now
I knew that the caring super-parent he pretended to be in my
presence was also an act, one of many. For whatever it was worth, I
was onto him.

Finally my dad took notice of me and Jake
sitting on the couch, and he nodded at Jake.

"Can you get Taylor back to the hotel? It's
getting late," he said.

"Sure, sir," Jake agreed.

"I'd like to stay," I objected. I hadn't even
gotten to see Kelsey yet. This was a family-defining moment; if
this whole situation was going to "work," as Jill had put it, then
I wanted to be included in the good parts and the bad parts. I felt
like I was being kicked out.

"Taylor, honey, it's been a hard day. You
need your rest. I can take it from here," Dad assured me.

His words were insulting. I could see what he
was doing – combining flattery and false concern – in an effort to
just get rid of me. Maybe he knew what Jake and I had seen back at
the concert arena and wanted me out of sight to prevent this
dramatic night from getting worse. I noticed that he was freshly
showered, his hair still damp, smelling strongly of soap and
aftershave. The fact that he had taken the time to groom himself
before driving over to the hospital to visit Kelsey infuriated me
even more.

Jake and I walked across the parking lot
quietly. It was nearing midnight and the only activity for miles
seemed to be nurses taking smoke breaks just outside the emergency
room entrance.

"Crazy night," Jake said, risking an attempt
at starting a conversation as we neared his car.

"Can we just sit here for a while?" I asked.
"I'm not ready to just go back to the hotel yet."

"Sure," he agreed.

"Really? Do you need to call your mom or
anything?" I asked, aware for the first time all evening that she
probably had no idea where he was.

"No, I'm sure she doesn't care where I am,"
he said dryly.

I hopped up and sat down on the hood of the
Saturn, and Jake sat down next to me. The bright lights of the
hospital seemed a million miles away behind our backs, and the
sound of crickets chirping seemed to swell as Jake and I fell into
a loaded silence. The sky was cloudless and speckled with steadfast
stars.

"Is your mom different when you're back in
Michigan?" I asked finally.

"Different in that she holds down a job and
gets up every morning, yes. But with me, no. When I was a little
kid I guess it was different, but for as long as I can remember
now, it's been just as much of me taking care of her as it's been
her taking care of me."

Those words struck me as very familiar.

"Yeah, I kind of understand what that's
like," I said.

Jake leaned back, propping himself up on one
elbow. "Yeah, my friends are all jealous, because I can DJ all
night and not get in trouble as long as I get myself to school in
the morning. My mom is pretty chill with that. But sometimes it
would be nice to have a mom who makes like, a real dinner. You
know? Or insists on having a real Christmas tree, or wears
sweatpants to the grocery store instead of… a zebra print bikini
top."

We both laughed. My mom was not guilty of
wearing animal print attire to go food shopping, but was definitely
guilty of flirting shamelessly with check-out boys, the fathers of
my friends, my male teachers. All of which had been mortifying.

"Everyone else's mom and dad are laying the
pressure on real thick about college these days," Jake continued
quietly. "Not my mom. On one hand I know she doesn't care what I do
with my life as long as I'm happy. But, on the other hand, she
just… doesn't care at all. That kind of sucks. It makes me feel
like no matter what I do, I'm on my own."

We were sitting so still that fireflies began
to swarm around us and punctuate the night sky with bursts of
light. For a moment it felt like Jake and I were the only two
people on earth, staring ahead at an empty highway. It felt to me
like I had known him my whole life instead of just a few short
weeks, and that at that point in time he was the only person in the
world who really knew me. The real me.

"I have to ask you something, and don't think
I'm a freak," I finally said.

Jake smiled. "Um, OK."

"Is there any chance you might be my
half-brother?" I asked.

Jake smiled so hard it looked like his face
might explode. "Uh, no chance," he assured me. "I know who my dad
is and he's not Chase."

We sat for another brief moment in silence,
during which I felt like a complete idiot, and then he added, "Why
would it be a problem for you if I were?"

"Because," I started to say then you couldn't
be my boyfriend, but then I remembered that Jake had never really
given me any indication that he wanted to be my boyfriend.

"That would just be… weird," I fumbled.

Jake looked anxious, and shrugged. "Maybe you
thought if I were your brother then this might not be a good
idea."

And then he leaned over, turned my face
toward his and kissed me. He kissed me in the way that Kevin the
mystery St. John's student had not, in a way that was both gentle
and ravenous. I could taste the orange Sunkist that he had drank
back at the amphitheater on him, and something else, intangible,
something potent and itchy and out of control. I grabbed him by the
front of his t-shirt to pull him closer and kissed back.

The rest of the world disappeared during
those moments. I felt like if I opened my eyes the hospital parking
lot would be gone and it would just be Jake and me, the only two
people left in the world. There was something completely consuming
and overwhelming about kissing him like that. Something that made
me feel like I could walk away from everything in my life and never
look back as long as I had Jake in my future.

Suddenly Jake leaned back, leaving me
gasping.

"We should get back to the hotel," he said,
hopping off the hood of the car.

"Um… OK," I agreed reluctantly, not knowing
exactly what had caused him to shut down so instantaneously. I
would have been willing to make out on the hood of his car all
night. Maybe even longer, it felt so good to be with someone who
understood me and actually wanted me to be around.

We drove the lengthy forty-five minute
expanse of highway back to the hotel mostly in silence, except for
the part when we both realized we were hopelessly lost and Jake
stopped at a gas station to ask for directions.

As we stepped into the lobby, I wasn't sure
what to say. All of our encounters up until that point had occurred
pretty much by chance. I didn't even have his phone number. But it
occurred to me as we were about to possibly say goodnight that I
was going to be desperate to see him again.

"Well, thanks for… everything," I said. I
wanted to tell him that I had a great time, but I had only had a
great time for the fifteen minutes that we were fooling around on
the hood of the car. The rest of the night had monumentally sucked
and I was dreading having to face my father and Jill in the
morning.

"No problem," Jake said.

"Do you want to come upstairs?" I asked on a
whim. It was one-thirty in the morning but my sleepiness earlier in
the evening had disappeared.

Jake mumbled, "I'll walk you up to your
room."

This struck me as kind of odd, as I was
wondering what part of the hotel he and his mom were staying in. In
the elevator ride on the way up to our suite, our fingers brushed
and he took my hand automatically and squeezed it. My heart
swelled. I wanted nothing other than for him to kiss me again like
he had in the parking lot but I was too shy to initiate anything,
especially knowing that there was a security camera in the
elevator.

I used my key card to open the front door to
our suite, and then nervously said, "You can come in, if you want.
We could order room service."

He anxiously stepped inside the living room
area of the suite, and looked around nervously. "Nah, I probably
shouldn't be here. I don't want your dad to think I'm a
troublemaker."

I bit my lip. I really did not want this
night to end on an awkward note.

"I don't think my dad thinks you're a
troublemaker. But even if he did, I don't care what he thinks about
you," I assured him, and added, "I really like you, Jake."