The Rock Star's Daughter (23 page)

His shiny dark blond hair was glowing by the
light on the DJ booth table. He was wearing a dark pink t-shirt
that night which was frayed at the edges of its sleeves, showing
off his taut biceps, biceps that were no doubt a little more
defined than they had been two months earlier from lugging boxes of
t-shirts across concert venue parking lots all summer. His tan was
even noticeable in the low light. He looked up just once, briefly,
out at the crowd, and even that quick flash of his brown-black eyes
nearly gave me a chill.

Then I happened to noticed that there were
several people in the cage with him. Two other guys, possibly more,
and at least two girls. At once I felt miserably in love with him,
wanting to be up in that cage with him, and just plain miserable.
Why had he told me to go explore when other people were up in the
cage during his set? Was I just not cool enough to be seen in his
company in this setting? I didn't know what I had expected to come
of this special night with Jake when I had been back at the hotel
earlier in the afternoon, but this sickening mixture of longing and
anxiety was a brand new sensation for me. I had never thought that
being so in love with a boy would also be so complicated.

Susan informed me that the drink I had been
handed was a gin and tonic, and I held it until I was able to place
it among other abandoned plastic cups on top of an enormous
speaker. One horrendous hangover for the summer had been enough for
me; I just hoped that Glorius and Susan assumed I was a fast
drinker instead of a baby. We hit dance floor and all heads turned;
after all, we were in Detroit and Susan had been on the cover of
major magazines.

At two in the morning we returned to the cage
so that Glorius could take over the sound system. The small cluster
of people I had noticed lurking up there earlier had disappeared,
and Jake greeted me by throwing his arms around my neck and kissing
me gently on the forehead.

"Are you having fun?" he asked.

"Yes," I lied.

"Great. I have to run downstairs but I'll be
right back," Jake told me.

I sat down on the vinyl couch feeling, for
the first time all night, really tired. At first I thought when he
said he would be right back that he meant in a matter of minutes.
Then ten minutes passed. Then twenty. I anxiously checked the time
on my cell phone, feeling increasingly ashamed and childish in the
presence of Glorius and Susan that Jake had basically abandoned me.
Adding to my anxiety were the six voicemails that had been left on
my phone, presumably by either my enraged father or Jill. I didn't
bother dialing in to listen to them.

Forty minutes passed. I was officially angry
and mortified.

I left the cage to revisit the bathroom, and
this time the line was even longer than the first time. My mind was
darting back and forth between wanting to calm down and wanting to
just step outside and call a cab to go back to the hotel. It was
likely that I would have been crying if I hadn't been so tired or
needed to go to the bathroom so urgently. I really wasn't sure
which I wanted more: Jake to magically reappear and make everything
OK again, or to just leave and try to banish thoughts of him from
my mind forever.

But leave and go where? I couldn't face my
dad and Jill at that hour. And if I just left the club on my own,
Jake might think I was being babyish and petty, or worse, might not
even care that I had gone. The fear that if I left I would never
see him again kept me in the bathroom line, inching forward every
few minutes.

By the time I stepped out of the ladies'
room, it was nearly three in the morning. I navigated my way
through the crowd rather than returning to the staircase that led
to the cage, and suddenly, to my horror, saw Jake standing near the
bar with the redheaded girl who had been behind me in line on my
first visit to the bathroom. He had one hand placed on the small of
her back, and was leaning in to listen intently to what she was
telling him. There was nothing solidly incriminating about what I
was seeing, but their pose was intimate enough to suggest, along
with what I had overheard the girl saying in line, that I had cause
to worry.

And then, just when I was about to summon the
courage to walk over and interrupt whatever was going on, my feet
froze. Jake turned his head to lightly kiss the redhead on the
lips.

I turned sharply, having seen enough.
Frantically, blindly, I pushed my way toward the club's main exit,
and then remembered I had left my purse and cell phone up in the
cage. Hoping to make it back up to the cage to retrieve my
belongings and get out of there before having to face Jake, I
rushed as fast as the thick crowd would permit. Once reaching the
top of the stairs and the locked gate of the cage, I was dismayed
that Susan was no longer there. Glorius was the only occupant of
the cage, and she was thoroughly engrossed in her music, her back
turned toward me. I eyed my bag on the vinyl couch wistfully, a
little enraged that I was going to have to stand outside the cage
like a fool until someone who knew the lock code appeared and could
grant me access. In a matter of a few short hours this had gone
from the best night of my life to one of the worst.

After a few minutes, Susan stumbled up the
stairs, her face and hair damp with perspiration. It took her three
attempts to type the numeric code into the lockbox properly to open
the door.

"Where are you going?" Susan asked, slurring,
when I hastily grabbed my bag and stepped back out of the cage.

I wasn't even going to acknowledge her on my
way out except that Jake appeared in the doorway, blocking my
path.

"What's up?" he asked, sounding concerned. He
saw my bag over my shoulder and presumably also the frown on my
face and tears in the corners of my eyes.

"I'm taking off," I told him. "This is not my
scene."

I attempted to step past him, all the while
both loving him and hating him so much. I couldn't wait to be out
of his sight so that I could break into a full crying fit.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah," he said, trying to
calm me down. "Why are you leaving? I thought this was it. You and
me. What about Japan?"

Susan had taken a seat on the couch and was
watching us intently, as if our squabble was high quality
entertainment. She sucked on a lollipop with all her might.

"Jake, come on," I pleaded with him. "You've
barely spent even five minutes with me since we got there. Plus I
am getting the feeling that you've already nailed every girl
here."

"What are you talking about? I barely know
anyone here. Can we," he gasped, looking at me in disbelief, "can
we just get out of here and go talk somewhere?"

My gut told me to tell him no, and to go out
to the parking lot and call Jill. But I didn't want things to end
like this. I was hoping Jake held magic words inside of him that
would reset this night and make everything all right again.

He enlisted the assistance of one of the
bouncers to carry one of his two crates of CD's out to the car. I
sat in the front seat of the car in silence, staring through the
windshield at the club as Jake and the bouncer loaded up the trunk,
both relieved to finally be out of there and disgusted with myself
for getting angry and insisting that we leave. Was I overreacting?
I didn't think that I was. I knew for certain that if my future
with Jake meant following him around in Japan and being ignored
night after night, I would tire of it quickly.

Jake's home was in the middle of a block
speckled with cars parked in front lawns, shoes dangling from tree
branches, and windows patched over with boards and duct tape. It
was a small one-story house with a swing on its porch, although the
porch was missing a few floorboards and ivy looked like it might
swallow the entire house up within a few years. A green garden hose
straddled the front yard, and a large ceramic frog flanked the
stairs leading up to the front porch. Jake parked the car in the
driveway and we sat for a moment. The lights in the house were
off.

"I'm sorry you have to see this," he said
finally. "This is where we live."

I didn't have a response. I didn't want to
say that I was sorry, because I wasn't; there wasn't really
anything wrong with Jake's house. I might have felt the same way he
did if I had brought him home with me to North Laurel Avenue and my
mother had been in the middle of one of her parties. It was likely
that I felt the same shame about never having even been invited to
visit my father's house as Jake felt about the state of his
mother's house.

"Do you want to come inside?" Jake asked
finally.

It felt to me like agreeing to enter the
house was a commitment to something far greater. I knew once I
passed through the front door, the odds of me going too far with
Jake were increased infinitely. My fingers were icy cold. As
terrified as I was, and as dismayed at how he had treated me all
night, I still hadn't given up on him yet. And he knew this, too,
or he would have driven me back to my father's hotel rather to his
house.

CHAPTER
14

"Is your mom home?" I asked.

"Probably not," Jake admitted.

The floorboards creaked as we entered through
the front door. The living room was small and surprisingly orderly,
and not unlike the living room I shared with my mom in West
Hollywood in that a flowered sheet set had been spread out over the
sofa. Someone, Karina, presumably, was in the habit of falling
asleep watching late night television. The small house smelled a
little bit like hot dogs had been boiled a few hours earlier for
dinner.

"This is it," Jake shrugged, turning on a
lamp. "Our house."

A small collection of Jake's framed school
portraits were hung on the wall over the television. There was Jake
with a regrettable bowl haircut, missing his two front teeth around
age nine. Jake in his eighth grade graduation photo with short
hair, a few zits and braces. And in a much smaller, older photo,
there was a young, tan Karina posing in a cocktail dress next to a
guy with a mullet who looked vaguely familiar. I took a closer look
and recognized him as Tommy Castro. But there was something about
his goofy grin, his coffee brown eyes, that I knew I had seen
somewhere else.

"Jake… was your mom…" I drifted off, not
knowing how to ask the question that had lodged in my brain.

"My dad," Jake confirmed my suspicions,
nodding at the photo on the wall. "I only met him once, when I was
a little kid. I have my mom's last name, Kaufman."

"And so your mom… and my dad?" I asked,
wondering for a split second if what I knew to be true perhaps
might have been a presumption on my part.

Jake sat down on the couch and shrugged
"Look, my dad was already a mess when I was born. Your dad has
always made sure that my mom and me had enough to live on. Even
after my dad went off to rehab for the third time and my mom never
heard from him again."

I sat down next to Jake and dared to touch
his arm.

"I mean, I don't even know where he is these
days. Whatever your dad has going on with my mom, I don't question
it. It's none of my business. My life is basically a huge mess
because of your dad's band, but then I guess I wouldn't be here
without it, so…"

He trailed off.

I could hear my cell phone ringing in my bag,
and ignored it.

"Are you gonna answer that?" Jake teased.

"You know I'm not."

Jake looked directly into my eyes, deeply,
searching. "They're probably really worried."

I couldn't have possibly felt further away
from my father and Jill and the tour bus and fancy hotels than I
did on that moment, sitting on Jake's couch. I was glad that I had
followed Jake inside. This closeness, this alone time with him, had
been what I had wanted so badly since I had met him. But it was a
fleeting relief. As much as I had been longing to spend time with
him alone, I had to admit to myself that now that we were alone, I
was terrified of what came next.

"Should I call them and tell them I'm
dropping out of high school and going to Tokyo with you?" I teased.
"Surely that'll put them at ease."

"Yeah, you're right," he said.

Suddenly this whole plan of going to Japan
seemed pretty shaky. Jake had said he was leaving next week. Where
would we hide out until the next week? Probably within a matter of
hours my father was going to have the entire Detroit police
department surrounding Jake's house. And if by some miracle I
eluded the law until our flight, I would definitely be stopped at
the airport. I didn't even have a passport. How was I going to go
to Japan?

"Listen, about the club," Jake began, "I know
that girl with the red hair from last summer when I started
spinning there. We went out a couple times, but that's it. Whatever
I had with her, it's over, and she just keeps showing up whenever I
book a gig."

I twiddled my thumbs, wanting to believe him,
but knowing in my gut that he wasn't telling the truth. "So you
thought kissing her was the best way to get rid of her?"

Jake rolled his eyes and put an arm around my
shoulders to pull me closer. "Taylor, come on. You know how much I
like you."

He tilted my face up toward his and began
kissing me. I was completely conflicted. For a few seconds, I
wanted him to carry me off to his bedroom, and then for a few more,
I knew that nothing but heartache was going to come of this for me.
The trip to Tokyo was a joke. Who was going to book a flight for
me? I didn't even have a credit card. I had a strong suspicion that
I had only been Jake's summer fling because I had been the only
girl around during his summer job from city to city. There would
always be a lot of other girls around Jake, and he would always
have difficulty pushing them away.