Confessions of a Bad Boy(39)

I can sense Jessie’s awkwardness, her conflicting emotions fixing her in place, unsure of what to say, however much she’d like to console me.

“Anyway,” I go on, putting a little freshness into my voice and opening the door, “I guess I’ll see you soon.”

I step out of her apartment.

“Wait,” Jessie says, striding quickly up to me. I turn around in the hallway to face her. She looks at her feet for a second, curling her tongue around her lip like she’s stoking up courage. “Why don’t I come with you?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, wondering if I heard right.

“I could come with you, to the birthday party.”

I let out a quick laugh.

“Why would you do that? I always go alone. Every year.”

“Right. And you always come back and talk about how amazingly horrible it was.”

“That’s the tradition.”

“Well, what if you had some moral support? What if I came with you, helped deflect some of that horrible-ness? It’s not like I haven’t seen your family at its worst. No offense.”

I cross my arms and shake my head. “No way. You’ve already bailed me out of one gathering of old folks, I can’t ask you to bail me out of this ten times more insane version.”

Jessie smiles softly.

“Maybe it’s turning into a habit.”

“Jessie, come on. You don’t want to do this. I wouldn’t wish my dad’s parties on anyone.”

“Will it be embarrassing?”

“Definitely.”

“Funny?”

“If you like black humor.”

“Then I’m there. It’ll be quite entertaining to see your family go all bacchanalian.”

I smile at Jessie while I roll the idea over in my head.

“I don’t know. You already came to the retreat with me – as far as I’m concerned, we’re even now. I couldn’t ask you to suffer through this party as well. I’d feel so guilty.”

“The retreat was fine. Hell, I ended up meeting one of my heroines, making some amazing contacts, and I got the weekend off work. I should be thanking you for that.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. Look, you hate those birthday parties, don’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“And part of it is because you’re on your own there, right?”

“Kind of.”

“So having someone there who has your back, someone who you can talk to like a normal human being, should make it easier. Plus I can always get ‘sick’ and need you to drive me home in a hurry.”

I look around as if wondering where on earth all this blindsiding is coming from, then turn my eyes back to Jessie and shrug.

“I guess that could work.”

“Okay then!” Jessie says, as if the decision has been made. “Let me know when you’re going to pick me up.”

I watch Jessie’s smile broaden and start laughing a little.

“When did you get kinda awesome?” I ask, flippantly.

“I’ve always been awesome, Nate. It just took you a while to notice.”





12





Nate




When people ask me about my past, my childhood, my upbringing, I smile and tell them it was alright. I tell them my father was a producer, my mother was an actress, and I grew up in a really big mansion. That’s when they usually smile in admiration and tell me it sounds great, that I’m really lucky, and I bow my head humbly say I really do know I’m lucky, I really do.

How could I tell them the truth? How would they even understand?

My father was a producer, that much is true, but he was also the sleaziest guy nobody in Hollywood knew. He made low-grade action films, straight-to-video thrillers, budget clones of whatever was big at the time. Every person on set from the director down to the runner was a friend of a friend, a connection only there because they knew someone – or something. Some of the movies ended up being cult hits, ‘so bad they were good’ – most of them were just bad, though.

It’s no lie that my mother was an actress, either, though only for a couple of movies, until she met my father. Only until she got married, had me, then divorced him a few years later, taking half of what he had. After that she was basically done playing house, and decided to leave me with him for the majority of every year while she’d travel the world, spending what she’d won in the divorce settlement across Europe and the Caribbean islands.

As for the mansion, that might have been the worst part. It’s big and beautiful from the outside, the brick and mortar version of the American dream. From the road it looks like the kind of place a wholesome family might exist; all natural smiles and mealtimes together, ‘how was your day’ and ‘eat up your greens.’ It’s only when you make it through the big gates and start getting up the driveway that you start to see it isn’t. When you get close enough to see the trashed grounds, bimbos and bros lying around stoned and unconscious from the night before. Empty wine bottles floating in the pool and items of clothing hanging off the bushes. The only movement being the maids and cleaners tasked with removing any trace of the fallout from the night before.