by J. Bengtsson
“Yes, Quinn. Go ahead.”
“Does your fun involve hiking, biking, or ants crawling up my pants?”
“Dude, if an ant can get up those pants, it deserves to build a hill.”
She made a good point. And getting out of these pants was of highest priority, but Jess was avoiding my question, and I was pretty sure I knew why. “We’re hiking, aren’t we?”
“I take it you don’t like the great outdoors?”
Oh yeah, we were definitely scaling a mountain.
“No, I like the outdoors just fine—I just don’t like dusty trails and tiny hunters and gatherers making pup tents out of my skin.”
“Hmm.” Jess tapped a finger to her tinted lips. “I wish you had clarified your hiking, biking, and ant nesting guidelines before telling me to, and I quote, ‘Take me someplace fun.’”
“Okay but, in my defense, you didn’t strike me as an outdoorsy type either, so I figured I’d be safe.”
“What makes you think I don’t like nature?”
“I mean…” My eyes traveled ever so slowly over Jess’s fashion-friendly body until they landed on the wedge heels strapped to her feet. “You.”
Jess. How to explain my getaway girl? She was exactly what I’d needed today—and the very last thing I’d expected. When Jess had first rolled down her window for me on the boulevard, only a few steps away from my brother’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, I’d been surprised to find a female behind the wheel, considering ninety-five percent of the time my RYde drivers had facial hair and day-old body odor. Nabbing an honest-to-god five-percenter—and a smokin’ one at that—was like winning the ride-share lottery.
My first instinct had been to miscast her. Maybe it was because I’d met her under the glittering lights of show business, but I’d just assumed her true passion was in the entertainment industry. Most of us wannabe stars, myself included, had side gigs as waiters or ride-share drivers or pizza delivery boys. And Jess looked the part of aspiring actress, with her long raven hair dipped in gloss. Pair that with her tanned skin, black t-shirt, and jeans ripped in all the right places and Jess was the poster girl for LA cool. Everything about her was put together, from her airbrushed face, her full, lush lips, and her fluttery lashes. Even the gathering of beach-chic knotted cloth and silver charm bracelets climbing halfway up her forearm screamed showbiz.
Really, Jess could have been any up-and-coming starlet desperately pursuing her dreams or any of the talented Next in Line singers who’d been holed up in the hotel with me over the past month. But to my surprise, she seemed to be actively shunning celebrity, and that made her a rare breed… in my world, at least.
“Nice. So now you’re stereotyping me?” she asked, her perfectly arched eyebrows side characters in her angry bird act.
I met her disapproving query and raised her one. “You called me Prince Gaston, Jess.”
She bit down on her lip, grinning. “Oh, right.”
I rested my case.
“Okay, listen. I’m going to be completely honest with you. There might be a tiny bit of physical exertion involved in my fun,” she said, measuring the amount between two narrowly spaced fingers. “But don’t you worry, I have my tennis shoes in the trunk.”
“Oh, well, I’m relieved that you’re covered,” I replied. “Now, if your finger measurements are to be believed, I won’t even be breaking a sweat.”
“That’s correct,” she replied, holding my gaze the entire time she lied right to my stinkin’ face.
Damn, I liked this girl.
“You’re a horrible liar,” I replied, laughing.
“I beg to differ. I lie all day long and no one has ever had a problem with it before you.”
I didn’t even know where to begin with that. So many questions. “What do you lie about?”
“You know, a little of everything.”
The way she said it, so matter of factly, made me laugh. Jess was definitely not the stereotypical Quinn girl. She wasn’t a stereotypical any girl. I had to assume that if she took one of those DNA tests, the results would come back with a percentage of Bond in her.
“You lie to your ride-share passengers?”
“Sometimes, but this is just a side gig. I mostly lie on my real job.”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or shake her. “What the hell do you do that has you lying all day long?”
“My duties consist mainly of being the head angel.”
“The what?”
“Inside joke.” She chuckled. “Never mind. I suppose you could say I’m in customer service.”
Was Jess purposefully being vague or did she normally talk in tongues?
“Wait, so… are you lying to me right now?”
She held up her two fingers and again measured a small distance between them. “Only this much.”
“Oh, my god.” I laughed. “I got in the car with Milli Vanilli.”
Jess shrugged. “I’m not holding you hostage, Quinn. You’re free to go at any time.”
Uh-huh, like that was going to happen. If her streak of evil wasn’t enough to keep me strapped in beside her, the matter of having nowhere else to go sealed the deal. Besides, I was perfectly happy in her cramped car. It provided me both immeasurable entertainment and a place to lick my festering wounds.
“Nah. I like it here,” I said, hooking my fingers behind my head. “I might never leave.”
She smiled. “Is that right?”
I nodded, adding, “Luckily for you, I literally have nothing better to do.”
“Ah.” She sighed, stars twinkling in her liquid brown eyes. “I love being a backup plan.”
“Most girls do,” I agreed.
She laughed, alternating her focus between me and the road. “You’re a quirky guy, Quinn. Definitely not what I would’ve suspected, looking at you.”
I met her curious grin. “I get that a lot.”
Actually, I didn’t. If ever one had been typecast into the Sodapop Curtis role, it was me. Not only had I been strategically placed in a supporting cast part, but genetically, I’d been gifted with certain lady-pleasing attributes, which made it easy for people to dismiss me as someone who sailed through life on a perpetual high. But that had never been me. Don’t get me wrong—I was always up for a good laugh, but when the day came to a close, I tended to retreat into my own head, where even good genes couldn’t save me.
Thankfully, Jess would never see that side of me. No one would. As the old saying went, what happened in my head, stayed in my head. There was no big mystery how I’d become such a mind freak. By all accounts, I’d been a normal little human all the way up until the year Jake disappeared. That was the year my mother locked herself in her room with sleeping pills. The year my father wore the soles out of his shoes searching for a ghost.
And the year I realized I just didn’t matter.
People sometimes asked if I was screwed up because of what had happened, and I never knew how to answer that. Life after the kidnapping was all I’d ever known. And although I’d deny it in public all day long, privately I might even admit to being jealous of my older siblings who got live a normal life before Disappearance Day—or D-Day, as I liked to call it in my head. They rode their bikes to the park alone, hung out with friends unsupervised, and lived their early years without fear and without Mom standing off to the side serving as their wingman.
Not to downplay what my older siblings went through after D-Day, because no one would deny they went through hell. But at least they knew what life was like before the grim reaper came-a-knockin’. Grace and me, we grew up thinking the Prince of Darkness was a long-lost relative—one who’d drastically overstayed his welcome.
My siblings and me all adapted to our new normal in our own unique ways. Jake screamed. Keith lost himself in drugs. Kyle got friendly with knives. Grace morphed into Pollyanna. And Emma folded in on herself. My method of coping had always been to silently seethe. There was nothing pinpoint specific about my anger; it was j
ust an overall feeling of being slighted and overlooked my whole life. Then add to that a past that needed to stay in the past but didn’t always oblige—like today. Come on, people. I shoved those memories far down into my consciousness for a reason. If they’d just stop digging shit up, maybe I’d be a more pleasant person.
The thing I’d learned about suppressing memories was they had a tendency to resurface at the most inopportune moments. Like the time at band camp when one of the counselors growled like a monster outside our cabin before busting through the door laughing. Everyone else thought it was hysterical. I did not. And while the normal kids went on with their day, I crawled under the cabin and refused to come out until my parents arrived many hours later to bring me home.
And let’s not forget about the time some kid in the McDonald’s ball pit called my Obi Wan Kenobi socks dumb, triggering the dormant anger in me to break free of its constraints. Let’s just say that eight-year-old fashionista would forever think twice before disrespecting the legendary Jedi Master again.
I wasn’t normally a violent, unstable guy. In fact, I’d say I was your average everyday Joe ninety-eight percent of the time. It was that other two percent of trip-wire moments that made others take a step back. Maybe if I’d been more like Jake as a kid, storming around like a fucking lunatic one hundred percent of the time, I would’ve gotten it all out of my system before I grew up and that behavior wasn’t as cute anymore.
“Are you carsick?” Jess asked, mistaking my trot through McKallister hell as a gastrointestinal issue. I wasn’t sure what would make me less attractive to a female: reliving crippling childhood memories or having a stomach so delicate it couldn’t withstand a ten-degree angle.
“Something like that,” I mumbled.
“Sorry, we’re almost there.”
“Where is there?”
“You wanna guess?”
No, I really didn’t want to guess, but by the peppy expression on her face, she was expecting me to.
“Uh… we’re headed toward Anaheim, so…”
“No,” she stopped me mid-sentence. “Not Disneyland. You already said amusement parks were entirely too much fun for you.”
“So that knocks out my second guess, Knotts Berry Farm. All right,” I said, squaring off. This girl came to play? “How about boating?”
“Is there a lake nearby?”
“We have a whole fucking ocean over there,” I said pointing in the direction I thought might host the mighty Pacific.
“No, we’re not boating, but you’re getting warmer.”
I was tired of the game now. Patience had never been one of my virtues. “I don’t know, Jess. Hell?”
“Not that warm,” she said with a smirk. Jess’s sparkle caught me totally offguard. She was beautiful in that way people who truly knew themselves were. There was a depth to her that intrigued me. She was confident and guarded, but also relaxed and upbeat. It was an interesting mix of personality traits, yet somehow they all worked together to create Jess, the world’s most perfect getaway girl.
“You win,” I said, conceding defeat. “I’ve exhausted my knowledge of the area.”
“Norwalk,” she blurted out, naming some random-ass city I’d only ever heard of but would be hard-pressed to point out on a county map.
“Well, of course.” I palmed my forehead. “Norwalk! Why didn’t I think of Norwalk? What’s in Norwalk?”
“Only the best miniature golf place ever. You get golf and go-carts and bumper boats. Dude, it’s going to be so much fun…” Jess stopped and raised a finger. “But not too much fun. Just what you asked for.”
I nodded, impressed. She’d actually listened to me. Not many people did.
“Well done,” I acknowledged. “Just confused about how I was getting warmer when I said boating.”
“Bumper boats.”
“Ah, right. I had no idea Norwalk was such a thrilling place.”
“Watch it.” She chuckled. “I grew up there.”
“Fun,” I mumbled, looking out the window.
“I’m sure it’s not as fun as whatever high-income enclave you come from, but it has its charms.”
“How do you know where I come from?”
“I don’t. You just scream trust fund.”
I glanced over and caught her eye. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Whoa, geez, relax. I was kidding. I assumed you came from a family of prominence because Alan Forrester said as much.”
“So naturally I’m dripping in wealth?”
She held my eye, not backing down. “Aren’t you?”
I hesitated. How to answer that? The wealth in our family was tied to one person—Jake—and he had a lot of it. Jake was our pot of gold. And, yes, I’d grown up in one of the richest areas of Los Angeles, but my parents were working class people and I’d been raised with that mentality. Jake’s generosity had given us all an easier life, but I’d never considered his money mine… and it bothered me when other people made assumptions that I did.
“I’m not rich, if that’s what you’re asking. Up until I got the spot on Next in Line, I was waiting tables and playing a zombie for Horror Nights at Universal Studios.”
“A zombie?”
“Yeah, you know—shuffling around, eating brains, terrorizing the most freaked-out person in every group?”
“How do you know which one is the most freaked out?”
“Easy. It’s the person in the middle. They wedge themselves in, thinking they’re safe. Their whole mentality is to let the end pieces die first. Selfish. So those are the ones I target.”
She laughed. “You’re a very interesting person, Quinn. I’ve never met a real-life zombie rock star before.”
Still trying to shake off the trust fund comment, I grumbled, “Well, now you have.”
“Are you mad?”
“Nope.”
She eyed me.
“What?”
“You seem mad.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m just anxious to get to Norwalk and all that fun.”
“Oh, okay.” She side-eyed me. “Well, you’ve got the right guide. I know every inch of the area. You know, back in the day, I was known as something of a rebel. Me and my friends, we roamed these parts like a pack of coyotes.”
Jess’s mention of her feral past was all it took to erase my sour mood.
“That’s all you did?” I asked suggestively. “Roam?”
“Hmm…” Jess smiled; her fingers danced atop the steering wheel. “Well, we might have dabbled in a bit more than that.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me.”
“I would, but… well… there were some narcotics involved… and copious amounts of a hard liquor… so I can’t really remember most of it.”
I pivoted in my seat, studying her. Narcotics even? Interesting. She glanced over, and to my surprise, there wasn’t an ounce of regret. No excuses. When Keith had been in the thick of addiction, he’d been a bundle of lies and justifications. But Jess, she owned every last bit of it… and with a side of sass to wash it all down.
“Although,” she said, her eyes up as if searching her brain for clues, “I do remember the sketch monsters. Those were an unruly bunch of freaks.”
“What are sketch monsters?”
“Sketch monsters?” she asked, as if I should already be informed. “You know, the scary little hand-drawn hellions that terrorize the mind when inebriation sets in?”
I shook my head.
“Huh, I thought they were common knowledge. Do you think maybe I made them up myself?”
Given her wild upbringing, I wouldn’t put it past her. Jess was funny… so self-assured.
“Maybe.”
“Anyway.” She waved off the confusion. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Can’t say I do.”
She raised a brow.
“What?” I shrugged. “I’ve never been much of a partier.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said with a mischievous
grin. “A musician without a drug past is like a nun without a Bible.”
I held a finger up. “Not if you were a pretentious teenage musician like I was.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Had the whole stick up my ass and everything. Fancied myself a prodigy back then. It was all about practicing and writing and perfecting. I was going to be somebody someday, you know? Anyway, as you can see, I didn’t have time for fun… or for those freaky sketch monsters of yours. In hindsight, I probably should’ve lit it up.”
Jess studied me more closely, and I mentally scanned back over our conversation for anything even remotely incriminating.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said.
“For what?”
“For misjudging you. For insinuating you were a spoiled brat. You’re a solid guy, Quinn. And can I just say your dedication to your passion is admirable? I suppose I just assumed all musicians were tortured little creatures—but look at you, Mr. Well-Adjusted.”
I held onto the bitter laugh threatening to blow my cover. If ever there was an adjective that least described me, it would be well adjusted.
Maybe in another life, but not in this one.
Never in this one.
6
Jess: Special Kind of Destruction
Flashes of skin could be seen through the windows of my car as Quinn changed from his performance attire into something that would be more comfortable for the both of us. Those vinyl pants left nothing to the imagination. And trust me, I’d been imagining.
But his modesty wasn’t the only reason I was happy he was making the change. Despite preferring a more contemporary wardrobe for myself, I was a purist when it came to men’s clothing. Just the basics, please. I’d take a pair of nice-fitting jeans any day over fancy duds. Maybe I just hadn’t had enough swanky in my life to appreciate it when it slapped me in the face.
Tilting my sunglasses up, I made more of an effort to see inside the fogged windows and was glad I did because I was definitely catching some of Quinn’s strapping chest behind the condensation. He’d insisted on changing in the car, so I’d parked in the back of the lot to give him some privacy. Not that I was affording him any. I shouldn’t have been staring—I knew that—but it was near impossible to look away.
