The Rock Star's Daughter (14 page)

Bijoux, however, hammed it up. And I
interpreted her order for me to not be a loser to mean that as the
daughter of Chase Atwood, I had a reputation to live up to.

We were out on the water for a few hours,
long enough for all three of us to start getting sunburns despite
the sunscreen we had applied back at the hotel. Bijoux and Betsey
took turns on the water skis, and I adamantly refused to try. I
have always been somewhat of a klutz when trying new physical
activities for the first time (and sometimes the second, third,
etc.). There was no way I wanted to make a fool out of myself in
front of a bunch of guys older than me.

"Taylor, seriously," Bijoux rolled her eyes.
She took off her soaking wet life vest and handed it to me. "You
only live once."

"Come on, Taylor. I'll go with you," Dan
offered. "No one is a worse water skier than me."

And just like that, I water skied for the
first time. Water sprayed me in the face as soon as the boat
lurched into full speed, and I screamed. When I screamed, my mouth
filled with water, and I almost let go of the bar that I had been
told to hold onto for dear life. By the time I finally got the hang
of balancing myself on my skis, I looked over and saw Dan
struggling to level himself and couldn't help but laugh.

I was having fun, in spite of myself.

By the time I climbed back on board the boat,
I was soaking wet, and exhilarated. And Bijoux and Betsey were
absolutely, completely wasted. They both had consumed two more
bottles from the cooler while I had been on the water, and by late
afternoon they were red-faced, giggling and acting like idiots.

"Come on, don't goof around like that,"
Jarred yelled at them on their last turn riding the water skis.

Betsey was trying to do tricks on her skis,
and Jarred slowed the boat down and made the sisters climb back in.
He was drinking too, even though he was driving the boat, and I
couldn't help but look around to see if there were any Coast Guard
boats enforcing the law.

"So Chase Atwood is really your dad?" Brian
#2 asked me. He had sat down next to me after I had taken my turn
on the skis, and since then had barely budged.

"Yes," I said.

He began telling me about how he was studying
engineering at UVA and grew up in Maryland. He was a nice guy, but
I was disinterested, and was getting genuinely thirsty. I got up to
help myself to one of the cold beers that had appeared in the
cooler, and when I bent over to pull one out of the ice, I felt
Brian's hand on my butt.

"Let me help you with that," he offered.

"Please, don't," I said nervously, not really
wanting anyone on that boat to touch me, anywhere.

"Sorry, sorry," Brian apologized, and when we
sat back down he kept a safe ten inches away from me.

Once back on the boat, Bijoux noticed her
sunburn for the first time and decided to take off her bikini
top.

The guys on the boat could not believe their
dumb luck – first to have rock stars' daughters approach them, and
then to have Bijoux start stripping! Mike put his camera into
overdrive once Bijoux's top came off, and she was happy to pose for
him. The only people disturbed to see Bijoux's chest were me and
Jarred, who was concerned that other people out on the water in
their boats could see that she was half-naked.

"Come on, cover it up," Jarred said, growing
decreasingly amused with the Norfleet girls' drunken antics. "This
ain't St. Tropez and I don't need a ticket."

The compromise reached by Bijoux and Jarred
was that Bijoux would sit on the boat's floor, so that her bare
bosoms couldn't be seen by anyone else out sailing. But the
compromise didn't make me feel any more comfortable being out on a
boat with a bunch of drunk guys who were getting hornier and
grabbier by the second. When Betsey pulled off her own top, Jarred
finally had enough.

"How old are you girls, anyway?"

"Eighteen," Bijoux slurred back, clearly
very, very drunk.

"Not you. Her," Jarred said, nodding his head
at Betsey, who had thrown her bikini top at Dan.

"Sixteen," Betsey lied.

With that, Jarred turned the boat around and
thankfully we headed back to shore. During the entire twenty minute
ride back to the dock, Dan and Mike kept asking me when I was going
to take my top off, and I sat motionless and stone-faced until I
decided to just put my t-shirt back on. I was no longer concerned
with living up to my dad's party animal reputation. I was sunburned
and starting to get angry with myself for ever getting on that
stupid boat in the first place. Those guys could have done anything
to us out on the water and we would have had no way of protecting
ourselves. Then what would I have told Jake? My disposition was
souring quickly when I thought about how much I would have
preferred to have spent the afternoon with him.

"Knock it off and leave her alone," Brian #2
finally told his friends.

When we got back to the boardwalk, Mike
invited us back to their motel with them. Bijoux, with her top
restored to its proper position over her chest, seemed vaguely
interested, but announced that she needed to use a bathroom first.
She led Betsey and me to a bustling bar and grill and strode right
past the hostess to the ladies' room with us following.

It was almost five o'clock. We were supposed
to be back at the hotel by six if we were going to go with the band
to the Pound show. At that point in the summer I barely cared to
see Pound perform yet again, but I
did
want to see the
fireworks.

"It's getting late, Bijoux," I said in the
ladies room while Bijoux and Betsey disappeared into separate
stalls. "We should get back to the hotel."

"Those guys are kind of cute," Bijoux said,
her voice muffled from behind the stall door. "I mean, for cheesy
college boys. It could be kind of fun to hang out with them."

I groaned. I had no way of knowing how I
would get back to the band's hotel if Bijoux and Betsey were going
to insist on going to some seedy motel with a bunch of sweaty
guys.

But, luckily – or unluckily – by the time I
used the bathroom myself and washed my hands, Bijoux and Betsey had
made new male friends at the bar. The boys from the boat, who were
waiting for us outside the restaurant, could see Bijoux wrap her
arms around a muscular blond guy who had just ordered her a mojito.
They threw up their arms in disgust and I saw them storm off,
rejected.

I was so thankful to be off that boat and
back on land that I let my guard down. The three guys in the bar
with whom Bijoux and Betsey had struck up a conversation were
insistent upon plying us with expensive cocktails. We were all
seated at a table and the blond guy, Doug, ordered up a round of
Brazilian cocktails loaded down with rum and mint for all of
us.

By the time the waitress brought the drinks
over, it was already six and I knew I was going to have some
answering to do when we got back to the hotel. I hadn't brought my
cell phone with me out of fear of losing it at the beach, which in
retrospect was pretty dumb.

"Another round?" Doug asked us when our
cocktail glasses were empty.

I shook my head. I had definitely had enough
to drink that night and Betsey stuck her tongue out at me.

"Taylor's a party pooper," she accused
me.

I could have easily retorted, "Betsey's only
fourteen," but didn't.

"Someone's going to have to drive us back to
the hotel," I said on impulse, and as soon as the words were out of
my mouth, I realized I had just sealed my fate.

"I'm glad you're up for it, because I'm in no
shape!" Bijoux laughed, handing me the car keys from her purse.

I clutched the keys in my palm so tightly for
the rest of the night, I was sure I was drawing blood. The bar
began playing music louder after nightfall and everyone got up to
dance, but I stayed glued to my seat, terrified of having to get
behind the wheel of that amazing Mercedes.

By ten o'clock, Betsey had gone into the
ladies' room to vomit at least once. The waitress gave us a look of
concern when Doug and his friends ordered a fifth round of
drinks.

"I'm going to need to see some ID for these
girls," the waitress insisted.

I wondered why she had waited five rounds to
ask.

"I didn't bring any out with me," Bijoux
lied.

"I'm sorry, then, I'm going to have to ask
you to leave," the waitress informed us, handing Doug the bill.

"Come on, lady, be a bitch why don't you?"
Doug yelled as the waitress walked away.

"Oh, crap. She's getting the manager," Betsey
observed.

Once outside, it took a good ten minutes of
begging to get Bijoux to stop making out with Doug. I was
officially freaked out. I knew that this time, no matter what, my
dad was going to yell at me when we got back to the hotel. It was
almost eleven; we had missed the concert, the fireworks, and I was
honestly too scared to even call the hotel and tell him where we
were and that we needed a ride home.

So scared, in fact, that when we reached the
Mercedes and got in, I sat down in the front seat and tried to
orient myself behind the wheel.

I was extraordinarily lucky that night for
two reasons. One, because Todd had given me an impromptu "watch and
learn" driving lesson in his new car earlier that summer. It had
hardly been a true driving lesson, as I had been seated in the
passenger seat at the time, but at least I could kind of figure out
what I was doing well enough to get the engine of the Mercedes
started and get us backed out of our parking space. It was also
incredibly fortunate for me that the drive back to our hotel was
not a difficult one: it was literally a twenty-minute straight shot
up the highway that ran alongside the beach.

Out on the road I gripped the wheel as if my
life depended on holding it as tightly as possible, and focused
intently on the road ahead of me. I needed Bijoux's drunken help to
turn the headlights on. She then proceeded to turn on the radio and
jam through several different stations at top volume.

"Bijoux! I'm seriously going to kill you!" I
yelled.

"Nice driving," Betsey encouraged me from the
back seat, trying to be supportive. "You're doing a good job.
You're a natural!"

I
was
doing a good job. I managed to
get us back to the hotel parking lot in one piece, parked the car
and marveled at not having had a heart attack during the experience
once the engine was off. I was still shaking from nerves. I
promised myself that I would never get into a driver's seat again
until I had an actual driving teacher in the car with me.

Then the real trouble began.

Once we set foot inside the hotel's front
doors, we ran into none other than Brice Norris.

"Well, look at you, Miss Taylor!" he greeted
me. "Looks like you got a little sun today."

"She got a little drunk, too," Bijoux purred,
putting an arm around my shoulders. Which was actually untrue. I
had been completely sober when I had gotten into the driver's
seat.

"Nice to see you again, Bijoux," Brice said
with a smile, pecking her on the cheek. "I was on my way to the
lounge to meet my boys for a few cocktails. Would you girls care to
join me?"

Before I had a chance to say no, Brice took
me gently by the hand. Bijoux raised an eyebrow at me as if to
suggest that maybe Brice was into me. The rest of Sigma was already
seated at the busy hotel lounge, raising beers in a toast. Brice
ordered us gin and tonics at Bijoux's suggestion, and I temporarily
forgot that twenty stories above us in the hotel suites, my father
and his wife were probably taking delight in devising the ways in
which they would punish me for disappearing all evening with the
Norfleet sisters.

Maybe, I reasoned, just maybe, I wouldn't be
in any trouble at all. It was true that Jill had encouraged me to
spend the day with the sisters. So it could be reasoned that my
consumption of cocktails at that late hour was actually Jill's
fault.

Brice took me with him back up to the bar to
order a second round for the group. He had his hand on the small of
my back and was standing very close to me. His cologne smelled like
a musky, exotic sandalwood, and he had a thick layer of stubble on
his otherwise boyish face. He was either still wearing his stage
makeup, or had fallen into a habit of wearing eyeliner
offstage.

"Are you still having a good summer?" he
asked, breathing a little heavily in my ear. His breath stank a
little like stale alcohol.

When I turned to respond to him, I noticed
that most of the guests in the lounge were pretty well-dressed, and
that the Norfleets and I stuck out rather noticeably in our sloppy
flip flops and bikini bottoms. "Yes," I said, feeling dizzy for the
first time all day from too much sun and not enough water.

"I have a special feeling about you, Taylor,"
Brice whispered, and suddenly his lips were on my neck.

It felt good, but not in the way that it had
felt when it had been Jake kissing me like that. I pushed Brice
away as the bartender brought us our cocktails, and suddenly
everything turned horribly wrong.

"Taylor," I heard my name spoken in a stern
voice and turned to see my dad standing behind me and Brice.

Brice's hands were off me in a nanosecond and
it wasn't until he removed them that I realized they had been
firmly planted on my hips.

"Sorry, Chase," Brice muttered, moving away
from the bar quickly, abandoning his drinks. "Sorry, man."

I cowered. My dad looked so angry it seemed
possible that he might explode into gory pieces right there in the
hotel bar.

"I'd like you to get your behind upstairs
this instant," my father growled lowly so as not to create a scene.
I could see Bijoux and Betsey across the lounge giggling into their
hands and squirming because they had noticed my dad's arrival to
discipline me.