“Everyone help yourselves to the antipasto,” Alfonzo says, gesturing to the appetizer as we all sit around their long dining room table. “Gio, take the Pinot and serve it to our guests.” Alfonzo disappears into the kitchen with Stephan so they can bring out the rest of the food.
“Okay,” Gio says in his deep, cute voice. I’m a little disappointed that he has no Italian accent, but he’ll do. He grudgingly moves around the table and pours the wine, and when he reaches me, he pauses again to stare at me. I reach for my glass and hold it out to him, trying to make it easier on him, but he gets distracted by me again while he’s pouring and accidentally spills some of it on my fingers.
“Sorry,” he says, reaching for a napkin, but I set my glass down and get it myself.
“It’s alright, really,” I say, giving him a reassuring smile. Funny, I thought I would be the nervous one tonight…
The dinner conversation is light-hearted among the adults, but Gio stays dead silent as he plays with the food on his plate, which forces me to only talk to Ana. “What is that creeper’s deal?” Ana whispers to me, looking at him with disdain.
“I’m not really sure,” I say. “I guess I really look like whoever it was he used to know, and he’s in shock about it.”
“Yeah, but… I mean, he’s being so rude to you.”
“Ana,” I say through my teeth, “it’s the first time any guy has ever stared at me. Just go with it.” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head at me, as if to say, “You’re hopeless.”
When dinner is done, Stephan stands from the table and motions to Ana, who gladly follows him out of the room. I shoot her an encouraging smile as she leaves. Dad, Cass, and Alfonzo go out to the living room, which leaves me alone with Gio.
“Wanna go out back?” he asks me, and I nod and follow him. He takes me through the house to their back patio, which is made of stone and is level with their pool and entertaining area. We sit down at a table awkwardly, glancing up at each other off and on. After about a minute, he reaches down for his phone, and I roll my eyes. Well, there goes my chance to talk to Gio Abate…
“So you’re really the Basket Baby, huh?” he asks me, not looking up from his phone.
“Yeah,” I say, relieved that he hasn’t completely tuned me out.
“I’m an actor,” he says, stating a completely unrelated fact as if it’s related. I guess he’s trying to tell me why he’s also famous.
“Oh, really?” I ask, trying to place where I’ve seen him before. He does look a little familiar. “What movies are you in?”
“Not movies, a TV show,” he says, and he lifts his face up for a minute to give me a chance to get a good look at him.
Now that I know that, I finally recognize him. “Oh, my God… you’re Tony!” Tony was the funny Italian boy on the extremely popular tween/teen show, Jackson and Julia. I was never a big fan of the show, but I watched it a little bit in the beginning and always thought he was cute. I never dreamed I would actually meet the actor in person, though.
“Now she gets it,” Gio says, grinning.
“Well, you used to look a lot different,” I tell him, remembering young Tony as being a little bit tubby. It makes me feel good to know that Gio wasn’t always a hot piece of ass, either.
“Gee, thanks for reminding me,” he says sarcastically, glancing back down at his phone. “Well, Jackson and Julia got cancelled about a year ago, so currently I’m out of a job. Not a big deal, Dad says it would be best for me to wait to get back into acting until I’m done with private high school, anyway.” I’m amazed at his ability to say that many words while he’s typing different ones into his phone.
“So you go to high school?” I ask him. “I always thought celeb kids had private tutors.”
“There are a few of us around here that go to Wilcox High,” he tells me. “It’s an exclusive private school in West Beverly Hills. Extremely expensive and snotty. We have to wear uniforms and if you get an 87 on a test, it’s a C.”
My head tips to the side and I scrunch my eyebrows. “Really?”
He looks back up at me and nods. “Yeah, they’ve got really strict grading standards. I barely passed junior year.” Mental note: he’s a year older than me.
“Huh,” I say. “Well, I guess I’m lucky I’m homeschooled, then.”
Gio chuckles, a little bit derisively. “Your dad homeschools you?”
“Well, my Nana does,” I explain. “She was a teacher for thirty years before she quit to help Dad raise me.”
“Ah,” Gio says, looking back down at his phone. “I see.”
Finally, I get fed up with his phone obsession and general aloofness. “Hey, by the way, are you always this rude to your guests?”
He looks up in shock, and then he lays the phone down on the table and scoffs. “I’m making conversation with you. Is that not polite enough for you?”
Against my better judgment, I lay into him. “Well, let’s see… you stared at me all night long, you didn’t even tell me who I look like that made you act this way, you spilled Pinot Grigio on me because you were staring at me, and now you have the audacity to text someone else while you’re talking to me, your guest. Yeah, I’d say you’re just a little bit rude.”
There’s a spark in his eye as he half-grins and leans back casually in his chair. “Hot, nerdy, and feisty. I like you, Madison Daley.”
Holy… That is not what I was expecting him to say. “Um… thank you,” I say, blushing hard.
“Hey, do you wanna see my room?” he asks. I’m not sure how I should respond to that question… I figure he probably won’t try to make a move on me with all our parents in the house, though, so it’s probably safe. I nod, and he takes me inside the house and upstairs to his bedroom.
Gio also has his own king-sized bed and a gigantic curved TV on the wall opposite the bed. If the size of his closet doors are any indication, he has a lot of designer clothing. There are a ton of posters from action movies on his walls, not surprisingly, and there are some bookshelves in between them filled with Blu-Rays, video games, and books of every sort. Gio is obviously completely entertainment-obsessed.
“Nice room,” I say, going over to one of the bookshelves to look at his games. “What’s your favorite console game?”
“Battlefield. You play?” He looks pleasantly surprised.
“Yeah, my dad and I play Battlefield together all the time, actually,” I tell him. “I’m pretty good at it.”
Gio smirks. “Bet you’re not as good as me.”
“Is that a challenge?” I ask, returning the smirk.
“You bet your sweet ass,” he says, glancing down at aforesaid ass with a wink.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“How do you keep beating me??” Gio exclaims, staring at the screen in dismay. We took turns playing matches in Battlefield, and both times I got twice as many kills as him.
“I was trained by the best,” I tell him, giggling over his mind-blown reaction. “You should see my dad play. He’s always one of the best in the nation.”
“’Kay, well, can I have my balls back now?” he asks, somewhat disgruntled as I hand him the controller.
“Sorry,” I say, giggling still, and Alfonzo walks into the room unannounced.
“What have you two been doing up here for two hours?” he asks Gio directly, with a suspicious look in his eye.
“Just playing Battlefield, Papa,” Gio says.
“Well, Mike, Cass, and Ana are ready to go home,” Alfonzo tells me. “They were wondering where you were.”
“Okay, I’m coming,” I say. Alfonzo leaves, and I start to walk toward the door, but Gio stops me with a hand on my arm. I’ve never really been touched by a guy before, so it gets my heart pounding.
“Hey, um… I’m sorry for being so rude today. I had a great time, besides the emasculation.” He gives me a dimpled grin, and I return it.
“Yeah, me too,” I say. “Thanks for playing with me.”
“By the
way, are you doing anything Saturday?”
“Um…” I swallow. “Depends.” Promises, promises…
“Well, I’m having a party over here, and I have some lesbian friends that your friend Ana might want to meet.” I guess word reached him that Ana’s a lesbian. No wonder he didn’t hit on her tonight. “If you want to come over, the party’s at eight, and it’s casual.”
“Okay, we’ll be there,” I tell him. “Can I get your number? I mean, in case I need to ask you any questions about the party.”
“Good cover,” he says teasingly, smiling. “And yeah, you could have had it, anyway.” I smile shyly and reach into my back pocket and give him my phone, and he plugs his number in. Then he goes to the Notes app. “Here's my tag, too. Hit me up and we’ll play together sometime this week.”
“Will do,” I say. He walks me down to the front door where the others are waiting on me. We say our goodbyes, and I notice Gio smiling a little to himself as he closes the door behind us.
Something tells me that “no studly boys” thing is not going to work out.
Chapter 4
June 3, 2015 1:15 AM
What a night. I tried going to sleep about an hour ago, but it’s no use. I keep replaying the dinner at the Abate-Lowes’ house over and over in my mind, and what happened before and after it.
Come to think of it… What exactly did happen?
Their reaction to my looks still has me puzzled. Who the hell do I look like here in Beverly Hills? They didn’t seem entirely thrilled about the “resemblance” either. It has to be someone near my age, so it can’t be my mother they’re talking about.
My mother… Speaking of her, ever since I watched that video where I found out how my mother left me, I’ve been wondering about her off and on. Dad has never told me anything about who she is. When I asked as a little girl, he said the same thing he said when I asked him what was so bad about Los Angeles:
“You’re not ready for that info yet, sweetie.”
He said it like he already knows who she is and isn’t telling me. It scares the living piss out of me… What if she’s a convict, or a terrorist, or a mass murderer, or… I mean, the list of possibilities just keeps stampeding through my head day and night. I normally try to tune it out, but right now it’s eating away at me. Who is my mother? And do I really have an exact doppelgänger here in Beverly Hills? Maybe the two are related and maybe not, but I think it’s time for me to do some digging. As terrifying as it is, I have a new side mission to work on.
I’m calling it Mission AYMM, or Are You My Mother?, like the Dr. Seuss book I used to read as a kid and relate to a little too much.
By the way, two more weeks until we go on Johnny McIntyre. Mission W3 Reunion is a GO. Fingers crossed!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Google search:
identity of Basket Baby mother
It’s 2 AM now, and I finally had the courage to type those five little words. I cringe and hit “search.” The internet is lightning fast in this house, so in no time at all I have results from gossip websites:
“Who is M.A.D.’s baby mama?”
“Is this the Basket Baby’s mother?”
“Everyone, stop looking for the Basket Baby’s mother…”
It’s a little degrading that they don’t bother to use my real name, but I guess that’s what kept me from being discovered years ago. After a while of searching, I come to the conclusion that, truly, no one knows who my mother is at all. The gossip magazines speculated about random celebrities who look absolutely nothing like me, but no one ever came forward and said they were my mother. Even Cass was listed as a possibility, which is ridiculous, because there is no way Dad would not know about her being pregnant. These people are nuts… I’m about to give up the search when a crazy idea comes into my head.
Google search:
Basket Baby Jacie Redinger
Just for the hell of it, I click “search,” smiling a little to myself, like, “Yeah, right.” A bunch of images of the beautiful, elegant, dark-haired-blue-eyed actress come up at the top, but there are no articles listed that attempted to link me with her back in 1998. Not surprising… Jacie was barely even famous at that point in time.
Looking at her pictures, though, I study her closely to see if we share any features. I know it’s a crazy theory, but it’s not completely far-fetched to think she could be my mother. I take a small mirror from my nightstand and hold it up to myself with my glasses off, comparing our eyes, noses, and other facial traits. We’re not exact doppelgängers, but our eyes are very similar in color and the face shape is the same. She even has moderately big lips, just like me.
Jacie is a contender… but my search isn’t over yet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next afternoon, Cass, Ana, and I are in the pool in our bikinis (which I still feel very awkward in), lounging in the shallow end of the pool lazily.
“Hey, Cass?”
“Yeah?” Her eyes are closed under her big blue sunglasses as she relaxes on a body float.
“Did Dad hook up with any celebs around the time I was conceived?”
Her head pops up and she raises her glasses onto the top of her head. “Mads, what kind of question is that?” she asks, horrified.
“I’m just curious,” I say, shrugging. “He never told me who my mother is.”
“Oh…” She clears her throat. “Well, honey, I think that’s something you should discuss with him, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid to ask him,” I tell her honestly. “He might freak out and think I need to go back home because I’m getting too curious.”
“Well, I really don’t think I should be the one to tell you,” she says. “Mike would kill me.” So Cass knows, too… She basically just confirmed that.
Sighing, I nod and pull up on a nearby body float. She’s right… Dad would not take kindly to anyone stealing his thunder on the whole mother topic. “So Ana,” I say, changing the subject, “how did your conversation go last night?”
Her face lights up. “Oh my God… Steph is the best,” Ana gushes. “He told me his whole life story. He grew up in the South too, and his entire family rejected him for being gay, but he moved to Los Angeles when he was eighteen and he says it was the best choice he ever made. Alfonzo’s family is very accepting of him, and he calls them his ‘new family.’ It kind of reminded me of how I feel about you guys.” Ana looks at Cass and me affectionately, and I reach for her hand. “Anyway, he told me that I need to be open and honest about who I am when I go home. Rejection hurts, but suppressing yourself can give you major problems down the road.”
“It’s true,” Cass says. “I mean, I can’t relate from the sexuality angle, being straight as an arrow, but…”
“Well, thank you for getting him to talk to me, Cass,” Ana says, smiling. “It really, really helped. And he told me that he wants me as a teen model for his new line.”
“Wait, what?! Why didn’t you lead with that?!” I shriek, starting to get excited.
Ana sighs sadly. “Because I have to have parental permission to do it, and Mom and Dad are never going to agree to this in a million years.”
My train of celebration slams to a screeching halt. She’s right… Her parents don’t even let her wear shorts in the summer back at home. No way are they going to let their daughter become a model. “Damn… that sucks.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
I suddenly notice two figures approaching us from the direction of the Abate-Lowe mansion, and I smile when they get closer and I recognize one of them. It’s Gio and an attractive male friend, and both of them are dressed for the pool.
Gio approaches Cass first. “Hey, ladies!” he says, looking across at the rest of us and letting his eyes lock onto me. “Mind if we join you?” Godddddd he looks so sexy without a shirt… I can see every perfect ripple of his muscle fibers.
“Sure, dive in,” Cass says pleasantly, and Gio and his friend hurry over to
the diving board to comply.
With perfect swimming form, both of the guys approach me, completely bypassing Cass and Ana. I’m really starting to love being the only straight female teenager around here. “Madison,” Gio says when he reaches my float, “This is Dart Jacobs, my best friend. Dart, this is M.A.D.’s daughter, Madison Daley.”
I narrowly avoid making a comment about his odd name, and instead reach out and shake his hand. “Good to meet you,” I say, smiling.
Dart, a tall, sandy-haired boy with lively hazel eyes, smiles back at me warmly and gives me a firm, pleasant handshake. “Good to meet you! I am a huge M.A.D. fan. He’s one of my inspirations. I play W3 music constantly.” His voice is pretty deep for a teenager, and very musical.
“Dart plays a mean electric guitar,” Gio brags.
“Well, that’s something we have in common,” I tell them.
“You play guitar, too?” Dart asks, looking impressed.
“Yeah, mostly Avenged Sevenfold. I’m a little obsessed.”
“Great choice!” Dart says. “I love me some Avenged. What other bands do you like?”
“Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, Green Day—“
“So anything with a great guitar part?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
“We’re going to have to jam together sometime,” Dart says. “Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin is one of my favorite songs to sing.”
“Rock on!” I say, giving him a fist bump and feeling happy to finally meet someone who gets me. Most of the people I know back in KY only like pop, country, and religious music.
“Do I need to give you two a moment alone?” Gio jokes.
“Nah, it’s cool,” Dart says, backing away from me. “I’ll let you guys chat while I hang out with Cass. Good to meet you, Madison.”
“Call me Mads,” I say, waving after him. “That goes for you, too,” I say to Gio, who now has his arms resting on my float down near my waist with his body extended in the water behind him. His closeness combined with his near-nakedness is making me crazy at the moment, but I manage to disguise it pretty well.
Diary of a Rocker's Kid (D.O.R.K. Book 1) Page 5
