I try to walk past her, but she reaches out and grabs my arm.
“Jessica, wait,” she whispers, dropping the grip on my elbow when I look pointedly at her hand and then back up to her eyes. “I’m trying. I know I’m…” She suddenly stops to nervously lick at purple-stained lips and clear her throat before trying again.
“I’m trying to do better—to be better.” Eyes the lonely gray of the desert sky before a flash flood search mine, and how can I leave my mother out here by herself? I’m not staying in this house but I’m also not writing her off. “I’ve already lost Jake and your fa—Conrad. I can’t—I can’t lose you too.”
“You haven’t. I’m right here, but I can’t live in here with all of this.” I turn my head around the room but we both understand that by ‘all of this’ I mean the bigger picture. The issues with Jake and my dad. Her hatred for Sin. All of it’s too much. I feel like I’m being pulled in four different directions with my mother asking me to hate my brother and my father. My brother asking me to hate my mother. My father close-mouthed and unwilling to state an opinion, and my heart just wanting my family to be normal and together.
“It’s not like I’m moving across the country. I’ll be on the other side of the valley. We can meet up for lunch or get a pedicure or something.” She pulls me into a hug before pulling back, sad eyes moving over my features before she nods her head.
“Let’s make it a weekly thing. A mother-daughter date. It’ll be fun.” When I give her raised eyebrows and lips pursed in disbelief, she chuckles, dabbing at the corners of her eyes.
“Since when do you do fun?”
The brief levity that had entered the room immediately dissipates and I’m sorry for the words that just came out of my mouth.
“I can be fun,” my mother says defensively.
“Sure you can, Momma.”
“Just watch, baby girl. I’ll show you all the fun.”
“Is that right?” I laugh and it feels good. For the first time in a long time, at least with my mother, my voice holds no traces of family drama or cynicism. It’s whole, full-bodied, and actually…joyful.
“It is,” she insists. Her voice mirroring the happiness in mine. The cultured southern drawl she normally does a good job of hiding is a little more noticeable.
My laughter dies on a breath, and I give my mom another squeeze. “It’ll all work out. I know it will,” I say. The words are a little muffled by my face buried in her shoulder, but I know she hears me when her breath catches.
“And in the meantime,” she says, looking wistfully around the room, “I guess I sit in this house and wait.”
“No, ma’am.” I take a step back, tucking the loose strands of hair behind my ear. “You reach out to Jake and Sin, and you apologize. Call Daddy. He’ll answer. Tell him that you messed up and ask him to come back home.”
“Is that all?” A sad smile moves across her features at the mention of my dad.
“I think I messed that up in a way that can never be fixed. But those are not the conversations that mothers have with their daughters. Who your father is to me as a husband, as a lover and partner, is very different than the man and father he is to you and your brother.”
“Are you sure, Mom?” I ask. My voice higher, a childish tinge of uncertainty clearly audible underneath the anxiety and worry that live on the surface of my heart knowing that my family is unraveling, one complicated horrible string at a time. Even knowing the difficulties that we all face, this is the first time since the whole situation started that a very cold and uncomfortable reality has presented itself. My family may never be the same.
“No one knows what the future holds but let me put it in Vegas terms: I wouldn’t bet on it.” She gives me what I think is supposed to be a self-deprecating smile, but she can’t quite pull it off. It’s more a baring of her teeth. I’m not sure whether she’ll growl in frustration or yowl from the pain of it all.
“Oh.” The skin between my eyebrows folds, creasing into familiar lines that as I get older will become the topography of every worry and every concern that I’ve ever held. I hate that I don’t have anything more articulate to say, that I can’t really offer her comfort, but this isn’t for me to fix. She’s going to have to eat crow and do it herself. Sadly, I don’t know if her pride will allow her to do it or if she’ll even try.
“Since you’re bound and determined to leave me and move into your own place, let’s get you ready.” She lifts her chin a little higher, takes a deep inhale, and that composure I’ve always seen falls back into place like armor.
The change in topic is almost jarring but a welcome relief after the last couple of intense minutes of conversation.
“I pretty much have everything I need.”
“Then let’s have a quick bite to eat and if you have time, I would love to see your apartment.” Her nostrils flare with disdain at the word apartment.
“It’s not that bad,” I say to her back as she turns, and I follow her out of the room.
“Says the girl who stayed in a cabin at Girl Scouts camp because the tents had dirt.”
“That’s totally different, Mom. Dirt and bugs go hand in hand. Neither of those scenarios is my idea of a good time. My apartment has neither.”
“That sounds optimistic.” The sarcasm dripping from those words says ‘you’ll be home in less than a week.’
“I know, right?”
My apartment may not be in the guard gated community that I grew up in, but I’m so ready to get out there and do it on my own.
You never know, I just might like it.
Part 2
Hot like fire
Chapter 6
Daniel
Las Vegas
One year later
“You okay?" I hook an arm around Adam’s neck, pulling him in as we take in the view of the valley from his backyard.
He turns sad blue eyes to me and attempts a smile he doesn’t quite pull off.
“Yeah…I’m good. Why?”
I study him quietly, not quite sure if I should start with the obvious, like the hermit crab existence he’s been rocking since our tour ended or the fact that since his mother’s death, he’s been a shell—no, less than a shell—of his former self.
No one would argue the fact that Adam is happy-go-lucky; he’s not. He’s broody on the best of days and falls securely into the tortured artist column.
Adam is on the road to attaining mythical rock star status. I give him ten, maybe twenty, years before he’s grouped with the likes of Hendrix and Van Halen. He’s that good. Adam has this unattainable talent and untouchable persona that draws people in.
To me, he’s always been my friend. My brother from another mother, and I don’t recognize him right now.
Not the darkness or the melancholy.
Not the need to isolate himself from everyone and everything.
The shooting shook us all, but it seemed to break something in Adam. The tiny fissures and cracks that he’s patched up with grit and sealed with determination are visible under his glossy facade. He can’t hide under the heaviness of his guilt and grief.
It’s hard to tell if he’s still reeling from the loss of his mother or buckling under the weight of self-imposed responsibility. He blames himself for Sin, and her bodyguard Seth, getting hurt.
Which no one, including the all-knowing Adam Beckham, could have prevented. Now that I really think on it, he’s been spiraling deeper and lower since the other two left the hospital.
“You for real right now?” I jostle him and go in for a noogie but he skirts away, ducking from under my arm. Adam stands, smoothing the wrinkles from the words Real Rappers Don’t Mumble on the front of his T-shirt.
“You know me…” he says, backing up a couple of steps, and for a second I catch a glimpse of the cocksure persona I’ve come to expect. But i
t disappears just as quickly, replaced with emotion I can’t pinpoint.
Yeah, I do. That’s how I know you’re not good. Talk to me, bro.
The thought never forms into words. He’s already across the yard.
It doesn’t take long for the backyard to fill with the tour crew, the rest of our bandmates, significant others, and a couple of stragglers.
These end-of-tour parties have become a tradition. One that signals the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one.
End of tour means we’ll be gearing up to get back in the studio soon, the next album on the horizon.
“Why are you over here by yourself, with your mouth run out on a rail like someone died?” Miles asks, flopping down on the chaise lounge next to me.
“How do you know nobody died?” I deadpan with faux gravity. I can’t keep a straight face when very real concern creeps into his dark brown eyes.
He snatches the small pillow from under his head and chucks it at me, laughing. “Asshole. I was actually worried for a second.”
“Why? Like you wouldn’t be one of the first to know if anything serious happened.” I grab the pillow from where it landed near my foot and toss it back. Miles tucks the blue square under his neck, rolling his head back to look at the sky.
“And to think I came over here to check on you and share the bounty that I harvested after three years of cultivation.” He lifts a hinged apothecary jar filled with rich green nuggets. As he turns the jar every so often, I see specs of orange and yellow.
“Lono?” I ask.
He nods in confirmation, a big smile splitting his face. We learned of Lono four years ago, in the wilds of Oahu, long before Miles was married —as a matter of fact, he was still trying to nail Kisha down for another date. I on the other hand was living my best life, bachelor style.
You know what I mean, waking up to one lovely lady and going to bed with an even more beautiful bombshell.
On the night in question, my female companion of the moment, a petite native Hawaiian woman whose name I can’t remember for the life of me, but whose vibe I can still feel, persuaded us to take a late-night hike.
She promised the experience of a lifetime, and I dragged my brother from another mother with me to experience it too.
We got to the base of the Haʻikū Stairs around two in the morning.
No, Haʻikū doesn’t refer to the short Japanese poem. It’s a Hawaiian flower that grows in the surrounding valley. The stairs were constructed during World War II to set up and maintain a navy antenna, but I digress.
The moon was full, lighting the jagged path that took us higher and higher up the mountain. It was illegal and exciting. We met likeminded delinquents. Some from different countries, others were different ethnicities. There were a shit-ton of locals and even more tourists. It was a quiet comradery.
Each person present, climbing a literal mountain, was in their own head; I know I was. But having other people there, knowing they were going through something similar, made my foray into the mental faculties easier. I wasn’t alone.
By the time we reached the summit I was tired from exertion, chilled from the altitude and moisture clinging to my skin from humidity, but for the first time in maybe ever, my parents’ criticism wasn’t playing on a loop at the back of my mind. I didn’t crave my next concert or the screams of the crowd from said concert to mute the mounting worry and the disappointment I’d been experiencing with increasing frequency.
Watching the sun rise from almost twenty-five hundred feet up was most definitely an experience of a lifetime. Meeting a relocated shaman who moved to Hawaii from God knows where, and purportedly cultivated a particularly potent strain of cannabis, made it even better.
Miles is that dude. The one whom strangers confide in, the one people feel safe with, the one to whom random medicine men give clippings of one of the world’s most coveted weed varieties. And because he seriously is that dude, he nurtured that seedling—which we dubbed Lono, in honor of the Hawaiian god of music, love, and agriculture—until it was fully grown and ripe for smoking.
“Has our little guy grown into a man?” I lean forward, taking the jar, holding it up to the sun as I squint and turn the container to get a better look at the contents.
“He has.” Miles chuckles, taking a clear plastic grinder out of his pocket.
“So, why are we still talking again?”
Chapter 7
Jessica
I raise my hand to knock on the door, but it’s jerked open before I make contact. Adam Beckham steps out, phone raised to his ear, dejection hunching his wide shoulders.
He almost knocks me over in his haste, but at the last second he blinks startled eyes at me, and an arm wraps around my waist to prevent me from toppling over.
“Sorry,” we say at the same time, winded laughs colliding.
“I didn’t know anyone was coming in,” he mumbles, distracted. His eyes move to the phone in his other hand. Abruptly, he sets me to rights, pulling the thick textured canvas straps of my tote bag securely over my shoulder.
“I just got here. I hope it’s not a problem. Jake invited me.” The words come out in a garbled rush because I have no chill, like, none.
I’m standing in front of Adam freaking Beckham and, yeah, I’ve seen him up close and in person a couple of times, but I’m still a little starstruck.
He might possibly be the most perfect human that I’ve seen in person, and it isn’t just because he’s handsome and smells like he just walked off the set of a luxury cologne commercial. It’s the fact that he’s down to earth and surprisingly nice.
Which in my experience is rare when it comes to people with money, or fame, or any combination of those two things.
I know money. I was born into it.
My father took charge of our family’s luxury resorts right before I was born and has played a pivotal role in the expansion of the Strip. I went to the best schools, partied with kids where money played second fiddle to selfish impulse, and in my circles a few people with power and influence literally shape the city’s landscape.
Where there’s money, there are influencers.
Actors, musicians, and artists all want to be seen at the hottest clubs or want access to exclusive restaurants and rooms.
People like me—well, not exactly like me but close enough—serve simultaneously as gatekeepers and conduits. So, my less-than-suave response has nothing to do with his money and everything to do with his spectacular star power.
It’s still a little surreal that I have an invitation to his house. When Jake and Sin broke up, I was still in high school. I never really got to hang out with the band. Between my overprotective big brother and strict mother, I only recently started to have limited leeway. When I was sixteen, I guarantee my mother, who despises everything Sin City, wouldn’t have signed off on me attending concerts in sketchy downtown bars, or spending time with people ten years my senior. The only reason Sin and I connected in any significant way was because to my mother, family is everything, and I was the only means of keeping track of Jake.
My introduction to Adam Beckham wasn’t personal. It mirrored that of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other teenage girls and boys. I saw him on the cover of magazines, MTV, and anywhere else beautiful people with pretty bodies and mad guitar skill are featured.
It was the ten-thousand-foot view, carefully constructed by PR and fantasy, and even in person it was still this kind of distant, hands-off, cool reception.
“Nah, you’re cool. Your brother isn’t exactly the type to ask. I got used to his shit a long time ago.” The corner of his mouth pulls up in a perfect smirk, but it falls when he looks at the screen of the phone that indicates he’s still calling Seth.
Seth Cody is, or maybe I should say was, Sin’s bodyguard. Please, Jesus, don’t let some new situation start with Sin. It’s be
en over a year since the shooting and Jake still hasn’t fully relaxed. I’m not sure if he ever will.
“I gotta take this.” Adam tilts his head toward the cell. “Head in, make yourself at home.”
He moves around me to the front of the house. My presence is all but forgotten as he turns the corner to begin pacing in front of the garage door.
Suddenly he stops, body motionless, face suspended somewhere between hope and anxiety, phone raised to his ear. A couple of seconds pass and the hope dissolves into something so raw, so vulnerable, that I can’t watch.
“Hey. It’s me. Adam. I’m…” His voice is stilted with emotion as he starts to pace again. The incessant movement an obviously calming action. “Everyone is over at the house right now and you should be here…” He lets out a sigh. “With me. You should be here with me. Just… Call me, okay.” There’s a long pause and then a whispered, “Please. We need to talk. Should have already talked. It’s been a year and I… I just want to…” Adam turns his face up to the sky, studying the clouds overhead. “Just call me…”
I don’t hear the rest of the terribly intimate conversation as I walk through the open door.
I should’ve walked away as soon as he started speaking. Given him the privacy that one not only expects but should have in their own home, but my feet stay glued to the spot because I’m admittedly curious and possibly a tad bit nosey.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious to know why Adam Beckham is talking—no, begging—a former employee to call him like a scorned lover.
I close the door with a soft thud and lean back as I fish the cell out of my bag. People mill lazily between the kitchen and the overlarge sofa in the den, but Jake and Sin are nowhere to be seen. I type out a quick text.
Jessica: Where R U?
Gray bubbles pop up immediately on my phone, indicating he’s typing a message.
BigBro: Outside at the pool. I told you to text me when you got here.
Jessica: Wait for it…
Exquisitely Yours: A Sin City Tale Page 4