Bounce (20 page)

  
Chapter 23
  

Grey

S
omething happened between you and Skyler, Greyson. Don't deny it,” Garrett says on Saturday night. The shoot's wrapped for the day. Usually we head out pretty fast, but tonight we're lingering around the table in his trailer. We have a whole day off tomorrow so the soundstages can be reset with new interiors. Garrett doesn't have dinner plans until nine. I'm going to drop him off, then meet the band at the garage.

“We're roommates,” I say, pushing around a vitamin bottle.

“I know this already. And?”

“What is this?” I hold up the bottle.

“Something Kaitlin gave me for weight control. And don't change the subject.”

The dude's persuasive as shit. He doesn't miss a damn thing when it comes to people. Must be what makes him so good on-screen. He probably sees emotional fluctuations in color auras. Everything else, like money, traffic laws, politics, math, telling time, he's pretty useless.

“Fine, I'll tell you. The girl . . . ​she's amazing, right? A million kinds of hot. Smart. Nice. Funny. I mean . . . ​I was really thinking she might be something special. But I've been paying attention around the apartment and she only flosses every
other
day. Can you believe that shit? Total deal-breaker.”

Garrett crosses his arms, and nods. “Ah, yes. Poor dental hygiene. I've had relationships end for the same reason. And here I was thinking this had something to do with Brooks Wright. My second theory is that your brooding silence these past days has something to do with the Blackwood Family Drama.”

So he's noticed that, too. I've managed to go almost three days without talking to Adam, Skyler, or Mom. I've seen all three of them. But I have this new trick now. I got a headset from Mia, so I can just pretend I've been summoned on some urgent errand when I see them, which actually happens a lot anyway.

I shrug. “You're way off-base.”

“Obviously.”

There's a knock on the door. I stand to open it, but Adam lets himself in, hopping up the two steps. “You're still here,” he says to Garrett. He glances at me. What I notice is his button-down shirt, which is a light blue/purple color. I don't recognize it. Why am I hung up on a goddamn shirt? But then I get a mental image of him, Ali, and Mom walking into his apartment with shopping bags and realize . . . ​I feel out of the loop. His life is going on. He's doing things without me. All of them are. I mean, it was my choice to leave . . . ​but it still sucks.

“We've got a little surprise for you,” Adam continues, to Garrett. “Can you come down to my office?”

“Of course!” Garrett beams.

Of course he makes me go with him. When we get there, a small crowd is gathered around Adam's laptop. They're excited about what's on the screen, but my eyes go right to Brooks's hand. It's resting on Skyler's lower back. She's still in Emma Beautiful Emma wardrobe, and for some reason that pisses me off. Like . . . ​let the girl punch the hell out. I don't know what my problem is with clothes today.

Then I see my mom, who's toward the back, laughing at something Mia said. Everyone on the set loves her. She was an actress for a while, before she had Adam. Every day someone new comes up to me in the production and says how lucky Adam and I are to have her as a mom. Yesterday it was the director of photography.

When Mom sees me, the laugh dies in her throat, and her smile fades away.

Great. Hell of a reaction.

I do a one-eighty, but Garrett's hand clamps on to my wrist. He wedges his way into the mix, taking me with him. I end up bumping into Skyler a little hard, because I'm twice the size of the path Garrett is forging. Skyler edges aside and doesn't say anything. Maybe because I didn't say anything. We're both ignoring each other. Obviously. Brooks's arm settles on her shoulder, and it's a possessive gesture. I make myself look at the computer screen before I punch him.

Everyone's excited about some early media coverage on the film—but Brooks's hand on Skyler is all I see. Garrett reads the photo caption in a comical voice, making everyone laugh. Skyler laughs, too, and I don't understand how it's so easy for her to be near me. Every second is torture for me. So much worse now that I see her around the apartment. I can't close my eyes without seeing her face, or hearing her voice. I thought it would get easier if I ignored her for a few days around the studio, but it isn't, and I can't take it anymore. I shove my way out of the huddle and head out to the hallway.

“Grey,” Mom says behind me.

I wheel toward her.
“What?”

She startles at my tone of voice, her eyes flying wide open. I remember that shocked look. I saw it at our home in Newport last August, before I left. I probably saw it a thousand times before that. How many times did I get in trouble, or say something rude, and get that look from her?

“I don't want to do this anymore,” she declares. “Why are you pushing me away?”

“Because I'm hard to love. Remember?”

Now the shock turns to hurt. “That's not what I said. I said
you
make it hard to love you.”

“It's the same thing.”

“No, it's not. You are easy to love. It's impossible
not
to love you, Grey. What I meant when I said that is that sometimes you act like you don't need to be loved. I shouldn't have even said that, but you were so angry, and I was upset, and . . . ​I'm human, Grey. I made a mistake. With you . . . ​I feel so often like I'm doing the wrong thing for you. I feel like I never get through—”

“You can stop talking. That's the right thing.” The door swings open, and Adam steps out but I keep going. I keep going because our fight is starting to come back to me, and it's making me want to bash my head against the wall. “And stop trying to
get through
. You did your job. You fed me. You raised me. I'm nineteen now. You don't have to pretend anymore.”

“Come on, Grey,” Adam says. “That's bullshit, and you know it.”

“Please, Grey. Just tell me.” Madeleine takes a step closer. “What happened that day?”

The hallway feels like it's elongating behind her. I can't believe this is happening right now. Here, in the hallway outside Adam's office. “Nothing happened. I went to see Lois. I went to her apartment and saw her. That's it.”

Adam's eyes lock on to me. “You went to see
Lois
?”

He says my birth mother's name like it's the name of an airborne pathogen. Anthrax. SARS. Lois. “Yes, Adam. I went to see my real mom because I was tired of my fake mom's shit. Is that a fucking crime?”

Adam's too stunned to respond, but Madeleine isn't. “I just wanted you to apply yourself a little more, Grey. You're so smart. You could make something of yourself, but you don't
care
. You act like . . . ​like . . .”

“Like a white trash piece of shit? Say it, Madeleine. You know you want to say it.”

“I was
not
going to say that.”

“I'm never going to be your perfect son. I'm not him. Stop trying to make me him.”

“Grey—” Adam says. “Grey, wait—”

But images from that day in August are coming up, and I need space. Fresh air. Freedom. So I'm gone.

My cell phone buzzes when I reach the Mercedes outside. Adam. I stand there, staring at my phone, trying to make sense of what I just said, what just happened outside his office.

Am I
jealous
of him? I never thought I was. I don't want to be. I love my brother, even though I hate him right now.

I don't envy what he's accomplished. I'm proud of him. And I don't want the business and the studio and the car. What I want is his ease with people. I want his fearless goddamn heart. His first wife, Chloe, died, but he's found someone again. He has Ali now. He's put the past behind him. How the fuck did he do that?

I know I push people away before they can ditch me first. I know that's what I do. But knowing doesn't change anything. I'm still the five-year-old kid who was given up by his mom.

Anthrax . . . ​SARS . . .

Lois.

Titus calls when I'm almost home. “Game time, Grey. Rez got a call. We're filling in at the Amber tonight. Their headliner backed out an hour ago. Drummer broke his hand last night punching a wall. Can you be here in twenty?”

Adrenaline roars through me. I gun the Mercedes and get there in ten.

The Amber is a small club, the kind of club that's
the
place to be for about six months before it's busted for something and shut down. Tonight, it's packed to the rafters.

The opening act is already on and they're loud, so no one answers the stage door, even after I pound on it for a solid minute. I have to go around front and tell the bouncer who I am. As I weave through the crowd toward backstage, a few girls check me out—one even trails me for a little while. I must be in a really shitty mood because I keep going and don't give it a second thought.

I find the band backstage. Everyone's pumped, and not just because we're about to gig. Rez has an update from Vogelson. He's gotten us into a band showcase called the Ring of Fire, which is a big deal, a huge event in a few weeks that's by invitation only. We've been invited. Vogelson's hooked us up. He'll be there to watch us play. With our kind of music, whether we can fire up a crowd and perform is the difference-maker. We need to be able to blow up stadiums with our sound—and we can. We will. So it's official. We've got our big audition lined up.

Emilio and Shane are so amped, they can't stop tackling each other. Titus and Rez look more dazed, both of them wearing shit-eating grins. But the news gives me mood whiplash. And I can't quite pull myself out of rage-mode, so I go from being two hundred pounds of anger to two hundred pounds of focused, ass-kicking, let's-kill-this-gig front man.

I sing the
hell
out of our set. Completely slay it. My voice already bends toward anger and pain, and tonight they're all over our songs. I have an endless supply of both, and I let them out, all the grit, and grasp, and grunt, and growl. I am myself as I sing. Wounded and angry. And I feel the entire club tune in to that, and to us. Our music casts a spell.

But between songs, when I'm talking and introducing what's next, or the rest of the guys in the band, the audience laughs and shouts back at us, easy and comfortable. After hearing me sing, I think they're surprised I'm just a dumb kid, jamming with his buddies when I start talking. Or maybe they just laugh and yell because I'm funny.

We play “Runner” and Sky's song even though they're both new, but I feel them more than our other songs. It's during that one—“Surprised by the Sky”—that I become aware of what I'm doing instead of just doing it, and I realize I'm holding back. I'm doing the same thing to the audience that I do to everyone. I'm singing, I'm rockin' it, but I can't quite give them
all
of me. I can't take that last step and bare my soul. I feel it, just beyond my reach. As the song progresses, I stretch toward it, that eclipsing, all-consuming place where I hide nothing. I push for it, and push—but it only moves farther off. The way to that next level isn't by effort. I don't know
how
to reach it, and the set's over.

When I come fully out of the performing trance and step off-stage, my shirt's off. I'm dripping. I feel human again, whole again, my demons exorcised, and the roar of the crowd is ear-shattering. We don't have an encore song. We've played all our original music.

“We have to do another song,” Rez says. “They're losing their minds!”

Nora and Beth, who's been hanging out a lot with Titus, come up. They've sold out completely of our CDs, and every one of our promo cards is gone.