Dear Rockstar (13 page)

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. She’s not you. I don’t want anybody else.”

“Why do you want to talk about this?”

“I guess I want to know,” he said softly. “Tell me why he’s so important to you. Make me understand it.”

Dale was quiet, waiting for me, and I groped for words, the right words, that would put my feelings for Tyler Vincent outside myself. There weren’t any, I found. They hadn’t been invented yet. I tried anyway.

“Tyler Vincent puts himself into the stuff he does,” I said, closing my eyes, trying to put it into words. “And I can
feel
him. Sure, I like his music, and that’s how it started. He carried me away, and I enjoy that... but it’s more. It’s
his
voice I hear in his lyrics, his music, even in his movies… and it appeals to a deep part of me... the creative, feeling part of me.”

I chewed thoughtfully on my lip.

“I can understand that,” Dale murmured, encouraging me to go on.

It was the next part that was going to be hard to swallow. Even as I thought about it, I was discovering things about my feelings I’d hidden from myself.

“He’s somehow become... everything to me. I’m sure some shrink would say it ties into my dad. I hate my stepfather, and there’s Tyler Vincent, someone I admire and respect, everything my stepfather isn’t and never will be. He’s such a great person, with a great mind, and a wife and three kids he loves more than life itself...”

“How can you know that?” Dale interrupted.

“I know,” I assured him. “I just know. And the worse my life got, the worse my stepfather got, the more I needed...”

I shrugged, my words trailing off. There wasn’t any more I could say.

“You know... what if he’s not as great as you’ve made him out to be in your head?” Dale asked. “I mean, it’s like you’ve created him in your mind. You took a puzzle and you filled in the missing pieces with your imagination, and maybe... maybe they’re the wrong pieces. You see what I mean?”

“Maybe.”

The door opened and John poked his head in.” I’m off to the staff party. You two ready for trick-or-treaters?”

“Sure.” I stood up, holding my hand out for Dale, and he took it, climbing off the bed and following me into the living room. John had set up a bowl of Tootsie Rolls for the trick-or-treaters.

“If you run out of candy, I left two rolls of pennies on the kitchen table.” John shrugged on a jacket, tipping his Crocodile Dundee hat in my direction. “G’Day, lil Sheila.”

I laughed. “Call us if you have too much to drink. We’ll come get you.”

“Not me.” John shook his head, opening the door, frightening two trick-or-treaters who were just about to knock.

I put two Tootsie Rolls into a Smurf’s pillow case, and two more into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s bag, closing the door as John made his way down the stairs.

“Smurfs?” Dale shook his head. “Whatever happened to Bugs Bunny? Daffy Duck?”

“Normal cartoons!” I agreed. “I turned on the TV a couple Saturdays ago, and I swear, I didn’t recognize one cartoon. I felt so old.”

“I know what you mean.” He sat on the sofa with the Tupperware bowl full of candy. “Saturdays were the best. When I was little my mom would...”

He stopped, stirring around the bowl and picking out a Tootsie Roll. I waited for him to continue but he didn’t. He never talked about his family, especially his mom. I knew his parents were divorced, but now I wondered if maybe she was dead?

I sat down on the couch beside him, reaching in and plucking out a Tootsie Roll, trying to make the question sound casual. “Dale... where’s your mom?”

I felt him stiffen beside me. He shoved the candy into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, a good excuse for his hesitation.

“In Maine,” he said finally. “They split up. End of story.”

“It must have been hard,” I said. I’d never had to go through that. My father died in a car accident before I ever knew him, and my mother had married the stepbeast by the time I entered second grade.

He set the candy bowl between us, his laugh hard, bitter. “Not really. I hate my mother.”

“Why?” I watched him folding his Tootsie Roll wrapper into some shape on his thigh.

“Because... because she cheated on my father. Because she did it for years and never told him. Because—” He stopped and looked at me. “Because the jerk she was cheating with is still with his wife and kids and they have no idea it ever happened.”

“God,” I whispered. “How did you find out?”

“You really want to know?”

I nodded. He’d finished folding his wrapper into a miniature paper airplane and now he threw it with a vengeance. It sailed over the coffee table. “I walked in on them. This guy—he was my dad’s best friend—he invited us to go swimming in his pool. My dad had work to do—term papers to grade, I think—so just Mom and I went.” He unwrapped another Tootsie Roll and he spoke his next words around it.

“So we were playing around, and I got stung by a bee. Hurt like hell but I pulled the stinger out and went to get my mom.” He began to fold another wrapper.

“Then what?” I prodded.

Dale tossed his second little airplane. It nose-dived into the carpet.

“Well, I couldn’t find her for a while. I stumbled around—the house was huge—and happened to open a door I thought was a bathroom. Turned out it was a bedroom.”

I gasped. “You found them... actually... you know...?”

“Uh, yeah. There was no doubt about what they were doing.”

“Oh my God.” I threw my own little wrapper airplane. It hit the edge of the coffee table. “What did you do?”

“They were too busy to even notice I was there. I had to yell ‘Mom!’ three times and even then she just told me to get hell out. So I waited for her outside the door.”

“And?”

“They finished what they were doing.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Are you… sure?”

He glanced sideways at me and I shrank back.

“Very sure.” His eyes were dark with anger. “So then, my mother came out in her dress and high heels and walked past me like I wasn’t even there.”

“No way,” I exclaimed. “Did you tell your dad?”

“No.” He shook his head, lips pursed. “I didn’t know what to do. I talked to her and she told me to shut my mouth. Said it was none of my business what she did and I was old enough to understand.” He laughed bitterly. “Old enough to understand…”

He stopped talking as more kids came to the door. I opened it, handing them Tootsie Rolls silently. Dale continued eating them and making tiny airplanes.

I sat back on the sofa .“So when did your dad find out?”

“He didn’t.”

I gaped at him.

“She left him. She got the idea in her head this jerk was going to ditch his wife for her and she left us. Told my father some story about how she was unhappy. She probably was. Anyway, she never told him.”

“He still doesn’t know?”

“No and please don’t say anything. It would kill him.”

“How many people have you told?” I asked him softly. He threw his airplane and it joined mine, littering the carpet.

“Counting you?”

I nodded.

“One.”

I moved the bowl from between us and slid over until my hip touched his. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

“You should have to get a license to have a kid,” Dale said bitterly. “Some people were never meant to have any.”

“I’m glad they had you,” I said softly. “I’d be lost without you.”

He turned to me, his heart in his eyes. “I love you, Sara.”

I closed mine, feeling tears behind them. It was the first time he’d said it. The first time either of us had spoken anything like it out loud.

He tilted my chin up and I knew he was waiting for an answer, but I couldn’t. It filled every fiber of my being, my love for him. It was so big it eclipsed everything, even the one thing in my life I counted as the most important. I wanted to tell him, but the words seemed too small to really express how I felt.

Instead, I touched my lips to his. His mouth was soft and he tasted sweet—like Tootsie Rolls. He ran a hand down my hair to the small of my back, pressing me as close as he could. His mouth slanted across mine with more feeling than I’d ever experienced, and I let him kiss me, hard and long, my body thrumming and alive and full of him, oblivious to everything else.

“Oh, Sara.” His lips trembled against my neck. “Don’t do this to me. I can’t stand it. I can’t… I can’t…”

He kissed me again before I could ask or even catch my breath, but as suddenly as it had started, it ended and he disentangled himself from me.

“I’ve got to practice.”

He went to his room, shutting the door behind him, leaving me alone with a bowl full of Tootsie Rolls, wondering what in the hell had just happened.

     
CHAPTER THIRTEEN     

“Can’t sleep?” Aimee whispered in the dark. She was in her twin bed and I was on the floor in a sleeping bag, our usual arrangement when I slept over.

“No.” I was watching shadows on the ceiling, tree branches moving in the moonlight.

It was the night before a Tyler Vincent concert. Of course I couldn’t sleep. It was like the night before Christmas, only better, especially since Dale had procured front row seats.

But I wasn’t thinking about Tyler Vincent.

“Want me to tell you a story?”

I smiled at Aimee’s suggestion, also a time-honored tradition, although maybe we were a getting a little too old for it. It was like watching cartoons on Saturday morning—you could see yourself doing it and knew it was silly and immature, but there was something familiar and undeniably comforting about it anyway.

Aimee was a writer. She’d been the editor of our high school paper until part way through our senior year, when she’d ended up in treatment for her anorexia. Her imagination knew no bounds, and she loved to tell stories. It had started one night during a sleepover like this. We’d stayed up watching MTV until two in the morning, waiting for Tyler Vincent videos, drinking Tab and eating Funyuns. Neither of us could sleep, too excited for the concert the next day.

That’s when Aimee had first asked, “Want me to tell you a story?”

And she had, a story about meeting Tyler Vincent, but not just meeting him. We rescued him from some dangerous situation, for which he was immensely grateful, and of course rewarded us immediately with lifetime access to all his shows. As we grew older, the stories got better—far more involved, sometimes bordering on dirty, depending on her mood and our level of tiredness, which inevitably broke down our inhibitions—but whatever happened, Aimee was always nice enough to let me have Tyler in the end for a happy ever after.

“No, not tonight.” I rolled over in my sleeping bag toward her bed with a sigh.

“Whatcha thinking about?”

Things I shouldn’t have been thinking about.

Tomorrow was the Tyler Vincent concert and we had front row seats and the only thing I could think about was Dale.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” I heard her smile. “Did I tell you Matt asked me to his brother’s wedding?”

Only a few hundred times.

“I know. I helped you pick out the dress remember?”

We’d spent less and less time together this year, often only seeing each other at the lunch table and talking on the phone a few times a week. Aimee was busy with her first real boyfriend—ever—and I was busy with Dale. And Tyler.

“Can you believe we’re old enough to get married?”

I froze in the dark. “Did Matt… propose?”

It was quiet and then she burst out laughing. “No! Oh my God, no. Can you imagine?”

I had been, for a moment. Matt was older than us—twenty-two, almost twenty-three. His brother, the one getting married, was twenty-six. It was possible. And the way they’d been together, constantly together it seemed, it wouldn’t really surprise me.

“Although…” Her voice lowered. “We did get… physical.”

My jaw dropped and I think my heart stopped too. I sat bolt upright on her floor. I could only see her outline in the darkness.

“Are you kidding me? You and Matt? When? Where? How?”

She laughed at my reaction. “You didn’t ask me why.”

“Well that one’s obvious.” I grinned.

“Here at my house. In my bed. Just after Thanksgiving, when my mom was still out of town.”

I’d wanted to spend Thanksgiving with John and Dale, but we’d spent it with my stepfather’s family in upstate New York, his pothead mother and her crackhead husband and a myriad of siblings I could still never get straight because we only saw them on holidays, but my mother insisted I come anyway. “It’s the only family we have,” is what she always said, but as far as I was concerned, having no family would be better than having a family like his.

At least it sounded like Aimee had a far better holiday than I had!

I settled myself back in the sleeping back, stunned. “And?”

“And…” she hesitated and I waited, breath held. “It was sweet. He was very sweet and gentle. Kept asking me if I was okay. It hurt at first. He’s not… small.”

I flushed in the darkness. “Well the first time does hurt.”

Mine did, for sure. David hadn’t exactly been huge but it had hurt anyway. And he wasn’t exactly gentle. There hadn’t been much time for that, given the rushed circumstances.

“But the next time… it was… wow.”

“The next time?” I grinned. “When was that?”

“About twenty minutes after the first time.”

We both cracked up.

“So what about you and Dale?” Aimee was up on her elbow. “What’s it like? You haven’t told me
anything!”

There was a good reason for that. There wasn’t anything to tell.

I hesitated, not wanting to admit the truth. But I wasn’t about to make anything up either.

“We haven’t… yet.”

“What?” Now it was her turn to sound shocked. “You’re kidding me?”

“No.” I sighed, rolling onto my stomach and pressing my cheek to the pillow to try and cool it. I’d been momentarily distracted by Aimee’s news, but now I was thinking about Dale again and that inevitably made me hot. Hotter than hot. My face felt like it was burning up, and that was nothing compared to the rest of me.

“But… why not? It’s not like you’re still…” Aimee paused, and I filled in the blank in my head. No, I wasn’t a virgin. There was no real reason to wait. “Unless… oh my God! Is Dale… a virgin?”

“No.” I laughed. “Hardly.”

We’d had that discussion, he and I. I told him about David, and the one guy who had come after him, Brian, who hadn’t lasted long—a month or so—and we’d only had sex once. I didn’t worry about pregnancy anymore. I didn’t have to. I was on the pill now, thanks to Aimee’s mom. Linda Wells was a single mother and had insisted, when she took Aimee, who was having so much trouble regulating her periods—of course that had to do more with her fluctuating weight than anything hormonal—that I come too.

She’d pretended to be my mother and had signed all the paperwork and I’d gone and filled the prescription every month since. I was supposed to have some sort of regular exam to get more, but I never had. I didn’t know if it was some sort of mistake, but I didn’t question it. I filled the prescription, hid the pills in my room, and took them faithfully every day.

Of course, Dale had told me about the girls he’d been with—fewer than I’d expected, honestly, but far more than me. I had to ask him every detail about them, what they were like, how long they had dated, had they done it? How many times? I told him it wasn’t fair, he only had two guys to agonize over, but I had a whole harem to think about—eight girls in total—when it came to him. Of course, that’s when he reminded me of Tyler Vincent and I shut my mouth.

“So then… why?” Aimee asked again, sounding genuinely curious.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. I had my ideas, but I didn’t know, not for sure. “I think he’s afraid of things going too fast. He wants it to be different than it’s been… for him and for me… in the past. I think…”

I smiled into my pillow, remembering the way he’d looked at me when he’d told me he was renting a limo to take us to the concert and he had a “surprise” for me afterward.

“I think he’s a closet romantic. I think he wants it to be… perfect.”

Aimee snorted. “You could be waiting forever.”

“Feels like it sometimes.”

But I had a feeling my wait was almost over. 

“Left me standin’ on the porch too many times

Kept the boys in the band waitin’ at the bar

His voice inside yellin’ out my crimes

Ain’t comin’ to the door no more I’ll be waitin’ in my car

Are you daddy’s girl or are you gonna be mine?

Lemme know now girl cuz I just ain’t got the time…”

The screams were deafening. Bodies pressed all around us, and I had to hold onto Dale to keep from losing him. Aimee, next to me, screamed along with the rest of us girls in the first few rows who had squeezed up here.

“
Are you daddy’s girl or you gonna be mine...?”
Tyler Vincent sang right above us now. When I reached out and touched his boot, he winked at me. I thought I was going to keel over right there. Aimee grabbed my arm and squealed her approval. Matt, behind her, had his arms about her waist.

“Are you having a good time?” Dale practically had to yell to be heard.

I didn’t do anything but beam back at him, no words for how grateful I was to have the experience of a Tyler Vincent concert, front row center.  I looked at him, curious about the expression on his face. This was what he wanted to be—this was what he wanted to do. This was what he was clearly
born
to do. I could see it in the longing in his eyes.

Tyler Vincent was talking to the audience now, and things had quieted down so we could hear him.

“This is a little song I wrote about what it’s like to be a rock star.” He took a long swig of water. “Sometimes it’s like
Living Out Loud
and you guys make it all worth it, I got to tell ya.” The roar of the crowd really was deafening then. “There are good things about being me.”

“I want to have your baby!” a girl from behind us screamed clearly.

“Like that.” Tyler laughed and the band started to play behind him.

There was more laughter, more screaming.

“But sometimes…well, be careful what you wish for…”

I could have sworn he was looking right at Dale.

“Last time we met you said be careful what I ask for

Before you left you whispered that the door’s always open

Barely heard you with my handlers shovin’ groupies out the back door

If I’d known what I was tradin’ for the life of a rock star

Wanted more than these work jeans ripped and faded

Wanted more than four am gigs and six am time clocks

Now my guitar’s shiny new but I’m old and jaded

And I can’t get enough of what I never really wanted…”