Family Album

by Danielle Steel

  His eyes lit up with quiet excitement as he glanced up at Lionel. “Boy, I'd love to find a place like that. I'll ask them tomorrow, first thing.”

  Lionel smiled. “No rush. I'll just tell the others I know someone who's interested. I don't think anyone is worried about it yet.”

  “How much is it? My Dad'U want to know.” John's parents were comfortable, but careful. He was the oldest child of five, and they were going to have four in college in the next four years, not unlike the Thayers, although Lionel's Dad worried less than John's. But Ward had two or three successful films under his belt every year, and John's did not. He was a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, and his Mom did a little decorating for her friends when she had time. She looked great though. She had had her eyes done the year before, her nose bobbed several years before that, and that summer she was going to have implants done in her breasts. Besides, she looked great in a bathing suit. And his sisters were pretty nice-looking too, he always thought. Greg had gone out with two of them, and one of them had had an eye on Lionel for years. But he had never seemed interested, and John had never wondered why.

  “Divided by five, the rent only comes to sixty-six dollars a month, John. It's a five-bedroom house in Westwood, and the landlady is pretty good about staying off our backs. There's no pool, and there's only room for two cars in the garage. You'd have a good-sized bedroom, looking out on the front, and you share a bath with two other guys. The room comes with a bed and a desk. You'd have to supply the rest yourself, unless Thompson wants to sell his junk. He's going East to Yale for the next two years.”

  “Wow!” John's eyes were all alight with excitement. “Wait till I tell my Dad!”

  Lionel smiled. “Want to come by tomorrow and have a look at it? There are only going to be two of us there this summer, which will make the rent pretty steep. But it's too much trouble to move back in here,” he shrugged and looked vague, “and I don't know … it's easier, once you move out, I think it would be hard to come home again.” Especially in his case, there would be so many questions asked that he didn't have to contend with now. And he liked the freedom he had. And with only one other boy there that summer, it would almost be like his own place. He was looking forward to it.

  “Yeah, I know … can I come and see it tomorrow?” It was Saturday and Lionel didn't have any plans. All he was going to do was sleep late and do some laundry. And he had been invited to a party that night, but he was free all day.

  “Sure.”

  “Nine o'clock?”

  John looked like a five-year-old kid waiting for Santa Claus to come, and Lionel laughed. “How about noon?”

  “Great.” They abandoned the swing then, and Lionel gave John a ride home. And after he dropped him off at the miniature French mansion where he lived in Bel-Air, with the regulation Cadillac and Mercedes parked outside in plain view, he drove slowly home, thinking about John. He felt something he couldn't deny, but he didn't know if it was appropriate in this case. He suspected not, and he had no intention of taking advantage of him. The offer of the room in his house was sincere. He wasn't setting John up, but he had to admit, having him so close could be difficult, or … and as his thoughts whirled around as he pulled up in front of the house he shared with the four other boys, he suddenly wondered if Paul had felt that way about him. There was an odd kind of responsibility to reaching out to someone like John … especially if it was the first time … and Lionel suspected it would be…. He almost shook himself then. What was he thinking of? What if John didn't feel that way at all? He'd be crazy to make a pass at him. He reminded himself of that several times as he brushed his teeth and went to bed. He was crazy to even consider it, he told himself as he lay in the dark, trying not to think of him. But John's innocent young face kept coming to mind again and again … the powerful legs … broad shoulders … narrow hips … he could feel himself becoming aroused, just thinking of him…. “No!” He said it aloud in the dark, and turned over, instinctively stroking himself, as he tried to force John out of his mind, but it was impossible, and his whole body shuddered with desire, as he thought of John diving into the pool earlier that night … and all that night, as he slept, Lionel dreamt of him … running on a beach … swimming in a deep tropical sea … kissing him … lying at his side…. He awoke with a dull ache that refused to go away, and he took his bike out and went for a long ride before anyone else got up, anxiously waiting for noon, and promising himself that he was going to tell John the room had been rented to someone else. That was the only way out. He could have called, but he didn't want to. He would tell him when he came to the house at noon … he would … that was the best way … tell him to his face … that was the only way.

  CHAPTER 19

  When Greg woke up the morning after his graduation bash, he had the worst hangover of his life, and he had already had quite a few. His head throbbed, his stomach was upset. He had woken up twice during the night and thrown up, once on his bathroom floor, and he thought he would die when he tried to stand up at eleven o'clock the next day. But his father saw him staggering downstairs, and handed him a cup of black coffee, a piece of toast, and a glass of tomato juice with a raw egg in it. Just looking at it all made him feel sick again, but his father insisted that he force it down.

  “Make an effort, son. It'll do you good.” He seemed to speak from experience, and Greg trusted him, so he did his best, and was amazed when he felt a little better afterwards. Ward handed him two aspirins for his head and he gulped them down, and he felt almost human by noon, as he stretched out in the sun at the pool. He glanced over at Val, her lush figure poured into a bikini Faye didn't like her to wear when there was anyone else around, but with family it was all right. It was barely more than a piece of string, but Greg had to admit it looked great on her.

  “Great party, wasn't it, Sis?”

  “Yeah.” She opened an eye and looked at him. “You sure got drunk enough.”

  He looked unconcerned. “Were Mom and Dad mad?”

  “I think Mom would have been, but Dad kept telling her it was your graduation night.” She grinned. She had had quite a few beers too, and the music had been good. They had all danced a lot, before passing out.

  “Just wait till it's your turn. You'll probably go nuts.”

  “It's my turn next.” Except that she would have to share it with Van. That was the one thing she hated about being twins, you always had to share everything with someone else. And Faye had never understood that she wanted to be separate, to do things by herself, to have her own friends. She always treated them as though they were one, and Valerie had spent her whole life fighting that, making a point of how different they were, at all costs. And still nobody understood. It ruined everything. But not for much longer. Only two more years at home, and then she was moving out. Vanessa said she was going to college in the East, but she knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to take classes at acting school. Not UCLA drama school, the real thing, the kind working actors went to between jobs, and she was going to start looking for work. She'd get her own apartment. She wasn't going to waste her time going to college. Who needed that? She was going to be an actress, and a bigger one than her mother had ever been. She had set that goal for herself years before, and she had never swerved from that desire.

  “What are you looking so uptight about?” Greg had been watching her as she thought, and she was wearing an ominous frown. She usually looked like that when she was plotting against some poor slob she had the hots for. But she only shook the long red hair back now, and shrugged. She hadn't told anyone what she was going to do. They would just give her a hard time. Greg would try and talk her into being a physical therapist, or an acrobat, or getting a dumb athletic scholarship somewhere, Vanessa would try and talk her into going to school in the East with her, Lionel would have some other dumb idea, like going to UCLA because he did. Mom would make speeches about education, Dad would tell her how bad makeup was for her skin, and Anne would look at her as
though she were a freak. She knew all of them too well after sixteen years of living with them.

  “I was just thinking about last night.” She lied and he lay back in the hot sun again.

  “Yeah … it was the best.” It occurred to him then to ask what had happened to his date.

  “Dad took her home. She almost threw up in his car.” Val grinned and he laughed.

  “Christ, he didn't say a word.”

  “Lucky it wasn't one of us, he'd have had a fit.” They both laughed and Anne wandered by on her way to the swing with a book.

  Where you going, squirt?” Greg squinted at her in the sun, noticing what a trim figure she was getting in a bathing suit. Her waist seemed to be shrinking by the hour and he could have gotten both hands around it, and her breasts were almost as big as Val's. Their little sister was getting all grown up, but she wasn't the kind of kid you could say something about it to. She was the most restrained of all of them, and she never gave him the impression that she liked any of them much, except Lionel of course. It seemed to Greg that they had barely heard her speak since their older brother moved out. “Where you going, kid?” He repeated the question as she walked past them expressionlessly. She never had anything much to say to Greg. She had never liked sports and she always thought his girlfriends were dumb. And she had her worst fights with Val, who glared at her ominously now. She thought Anne's bathing suit looked suspiciously like one of her own, but she wasn't quite sure, and Anne could feel her eyes examining her.

  “Nowhere.” She walked past them without saying another word, holding tight to her book, as Greg whispered to Val once she was past:

  “She's a weird kid, isn't she, Val?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Val wasn't interested. She had just figured out that the bathing suit wasn't hers. Hers didn't have a yellow stripe down the sides.

  “Growing up a lot though. Did you see those tits?” He laughed. “They're almost as big as yours.”

  “Yeah? So what?” Val sucked in her already flat stomach as she stood up and pushed out her breasts. “She's got short legs anyway.” And she didn't look like any of them. Her looks had never been as striking as the other four. But Val looked at her own legs now, trying to decide if she had taken enough sun for one day. If she took too much, she'd burn, although she had more tolerance than most redheads. She noticed that Greg was already starting to fry. “You better watch out. You're turning red.”

  “I'll go inside in a little while. John said he'd come by, and I want to go downtown to get extra floor mats for my car.”

  “What about Joan?” She had been the little blonde her father had had to escort home the night before. She had the biggest boobs Val thought she'd ever seen. They were almost gross, and everyone in school said she was an easy lay. And that seemed to suit Greg perfectly.

  “I'm seeing her tonight.” He had been sleeping with her for the last two months, ever since they'd heard about his football scholarship to the University of Alabama.

  “Are you doubling with John?” She knew he had no special girlfriend, and she was always hoping to be asked to be his date, but Greg had never suggested it, and neither had John.

  “No. He said he had other plans.” He glanced at Val. “Why? You got the hots for him, little Sis?” He was the worst tease of all, and in years past they had had some almost lethal fights. He loved to bait her, and she always went for it, as she was about to now.

  “Hell, no. I just wondered. I've got a date.” She lied again.

  “With who?” He knew her better than that.

  “None of your business.”

  “That's what I thought.” He lay back with a grin and she wanted to strangle him, as Anne watched them silently from her distant hiding place in the old swing. “You don't have a date with anyone, smartass.”

  “The hell I don't. I have a date with Jack Barnes.”

  “Bullshit. He's going steady with Linda Hall.”

  “Well,” her face was bright red and not from the sun, and from the distance, Anne could tell she had just told a lie … she knew them all so well, better than they knew her, “maybe he's cheating on her.”

  Greg sat up and stared at his sister carefully. “Not unless you're putting out the way she is, Sis. Which brings up a question I've been meaning to ask … are you?”

  Val's face looked like it was on fire. “Screw you.” She wheeled on her heel and flounced into the house, and he laughed again as he lay down in the sun. She was a hot number, his little Sis, he had heard it from a couple of his friends whose younger brothers had gone out with her. But supposedly she would do anything except the real thing. He knew she was still a virgin, at least he thought she was, and he also knew she had lied about Jack Barnes. He suspected too that she had always had the hots for John Wells, but John had never seemed interested in her, and he was just as glad. That was a little close to home for his taste, and she wasn't John's type. He went for quieter, less showy girls. He was still pretty shy, and Greg was almost sure he hadn't done it yet either. Poor kid. He'd better hurry up. He was probably the last guy in their class who hadn't gotten into someone's pants yet, at least that was what they said. And it was getting embarrassing for Greg to have a friend like that. Hell, people would start to think John was queer, and worse yet, if they hung out together, they would say it about him. But he smiled to himself then. With what he'd been up to with Joan, there was no chance of that.

  “Boy, this is a nice place.” John was looking around the house in Westwood rapturously, as though it were Versailles, or a Hollywood set, instead of a shabby student house across from UCLA. “My Dad thought the rent was cheap. And Mom was a little nervous about my not living in the dorm, but Dad said that as long as you were here, you could keep an eye on me.” He blushed, feeling stupid for what he had just said. “I mean …”

  “That's okay.” Lionel was fighting to repress his dreams of the night before, and he had the oddest feeling of reliving a movie he had seen once before, only this time he was cast as Paul. It was like a variation of déjà vu, and he couldn't seem to escape his thoughts as he showed John around. Lionel's own room would be across the hall from John's, but he was sure that if he was willing to give up the only room in the house with its own shower, he could have the room adjoining John's. The other guys would have killed to have his room, and he would have been willing to give it up if … he pushed the thought out of his head, and forced himself to concentrate on John, and the tour of the house he was giving him. “There's a washing machine in the garage. No one uses it for weeks, and then everyone wants to use it all in one night.” Lionel smiled.

  “My mom said I could bring my laundry home.” Lionel couldn't help thinking how unlike Greg he was, it was most odd that they were friends, except that they had gone to school together for thirteen years, and he suspected that it was habit more than anything else, and had he thought about it, John would have admitted he was right. He and Greg hadn't had much in common for the last couple of years, especially in the last few months. They seemed to disagree about everything, from the football scholarship to the class whore Greg was sleeping with. John couldn't stand being around her, and as a result he had been seeing less and less of Greg. He had been spending more time alone, and it was almost a relief to be talking to Lionel, someone sensible, who even went to the same school he'd be going to. “I really love this place, Li. It's great.” It could have been a barn and he would have fallen in love with it. It was all so grown up, so collegiate, and so cool, and it was comforting knowing Lionel would be there. He felt shy about starting out in a new school, and he had hated the idea of the dorm, after living at home with four sisters for eighteen years. It was all going to be so foreign to him, but not now, not with Lionel, not here.

  “Would you want to stay here this summer, John? Or move in in the fall before school starts?” Lionel could feel his heart pound and he hated himself. What difference did it make when the kid moved in? Leave him alone, he wanted to shriek, and he was suddenly sorry he
had suggested it at all. It was just going to make things difficult for him. It had been a stupid idea, but he couldn't back out now, and he had told two of the boys that morning before John arrived, and they were pleased he had found someone. It saved them the trouble of placing an ad, or calling friends.

  “Could I move in next week?”

  Lionel was momentarily shocked. “So soon?”

  “Oh no …” John blushed nervously “… not if that's inconvenient for you. I just thought that since Tuesday is the first, it would be easier from the standpoint of the rent … and I have a summer job at Robinson's. I could live here while I work.” It was a department store, and Lionel was faintly reminded of his job the year before at Van Cleef & Arpels. He had enjoyed that and was sorry he couldn't do it again, but he wanted to work in film this year. It made more sense for him, and if he was lucky he would get credit from UCLA for the work, if the project turned out well.