Her voice was shaking with fear. It rattled me a little to see such a control freak so frightened.
I was stupefied: first at not having been in trouble at all but also that somehow Kelsey's sniffling had turned into a major medical emergency in a matter of hours. How was I supposed to get to the Von Braun Center Arena on my own? I knew from my street map that the arena was on the other side of town. I was only fifteen and went to boarding school; I had never been behind the wheel of a car.
The paramedics and Jill took the service elevator out the back of the hospital, and I found myself rushing down to the front lobby.
"I need a car to drive me to the Von Braun Center," I told the concierge, the same sexy blond with whom Brice had been flirting earlier that day. She looked at me as if she was long overdue for a cigarette break and that finding a car for me was just about the last thing on earth she felt like doing.
"What kind of a car? A cab?"
"A cab, sure, that's fine."
She semi-rolled her eyes and picked up her phone.
"Taylor," I heard my named called from across the lobby and saw… of all people, Jake.
Then it all spilled out of me… Kelsey being sick, at the hospital, needing to get to the arena before Sigma's set ended and my dad got on stage, and before I knew it or bothered telling the concierge that the cab would no longer be necessary, we were making a mad dash across the sizzling hot parking lot for Jake's Saturn.
"Do you have your license?" I asked as we roared out of the parking lot.
"Yeah, I turned sixteen in May," Jake assured me.
All too aware that I was in the very same gold Saturn that I had been wondering about, I stole a peek over my shoulder and noticed that an open suitcase was in the jumbled back seat. Karina's many pairs of espadrilles and high heels were littering the back area of the car, along with open Dorito bags and a half-empty 2-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi.
"Where are we going?" Jake asked, and my attention snapped back to our mission. He was at a stoplight at the edge of the hotel's property, waiting for me to tell him which way to turn.
I remembered that I had a street map in my back pocket, and whipped it out. "Right," I commanded.
At the Von Braun Center Arena, I saw firsthand the madness that ensues in the parking lot of a Pound concert. Had it not been for the urgency of my mission that night, I would have found it intoxicating. Parked cars blared music, women danced on the hoods of cars, even little kids wore Pound t-shirts. Big guys with huge bellies drank enormous cans of Budweiser and sat on plastic lawn chairs that apparently they had brought for the purpose of tailgating all evening.
The parking attendant charged us ten bucks just to park, and I forked over a ten dollar bill, the last of the money I had earned during the early weeks of that summer at Robek's. Jake and I had to park near the back of the lot and jog toward the arena, where we informed the ticket takers that I was Chase Atwood's daughter and urgently needed to reach him.
They looked at me like I was nuts.
The Sigma set had already started, and music was roaring out of the arena. It occurred to me to use my brain and call Moose.
"Moose! Are you with my dad?" I asked.
"I'm backstage," he told me. "The band is getting dressed. Where are you?"
"I'm here," I told him, giving the dopey ticket taker the evil eye. "Kelsey's really sick and Jill had to take her to the hospital."
I told Moose which ticket gate we were at, and he was there in minutes to let us in.
"It's all right, they're with the band," he told the ticket takers.
I was grateful for a second that he allowed Jake in with me and didn't ask questions.
Moose led us backstage, where the Sigma groupies were swaying to the music, and down a hall to where the dressing rooms were located. The hall was crowded with roadies and guys talking on walkie-talkies. We paused at a door that had a peeling gold star decal on it, and Moose held up his hand to tell us to stay put.
"You two stay here," he commanded, and carefully opened the door to Pound's dressing room.
And what I saw in that brief moment was enough to make me wish I had never walked down the hall with Moose. The room was crowded. I could see my dad in his leather pants sitting on a vanity table, drinking a glass of white wine. He was deep in conversation with a Pounder wearing an ugly denim halter. Wade had his arm around some slutty-looking girl who appeared to be around my age.
Moose closed the door behind him as he entered, but even that two-second glimpse made me furious. Was this how my dad acted behind closed doors when Jill wasn't around? Was he drinking wine and flirting with women every second he could?
A moment later, Moose returned and led us back to the backstage area, where he directed us to sit down on folding chairs. "Your dad's set starts in ten minutes. It's too late for him to leave. He's calling Jill and will head to the hospital the minute the show ends."
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 more 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."
The Rock Star's Daughter (The Treadwell Academy Novels) Page 8
