Confessions of a Bad Boy (13 page)

W
hen 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.

I really do know I’m lucky.

My father was a narcissistic asshole, and the mansion was nothing but a monument to his ego. He ruled it like a tyrant, compelling people to party there every night as if he thought they were worshipping him somehow. The people who came were on the fringes of Hollywood themselves, not good enough to make it to the proper A-list events. They were desperate, sketchy, opportunistic. Hopeless men with personality deficiencies who came to be fawned over by young, wannabe actresses too talentless to even pretend to like them. The only thing left for all of them to do was to indulge all their inane desires. Drugs, drink, sex. Growing more pathetic as the parties continued while my father, the mansion, and his guests grew older.

My mom got a pass – not because I thought her disappearing act was right, but because I understood it. And she always remembered to call on Sundays and send a card for my birthday, which was more than I could say for my father and the parade of wives, girlfriends, and step-siblings who’d come and go every year as if our front entry was a revolving door.

So that’s how I spent my childhood, right in the middle of it all. A young kid witnessing adults act so stupidly and irresponsibly that even I could tell something was wrong. Raised by nannies that loved me much more than the pithy salaries my father doled out required. When I got home from my private school, I’d beg the help to let me assist with the chores, gardening, cleaning, whatever. And at night I’d lock my bedroom door and put on a pair of headphones, pretend I was somewhere else.

Really lucky.

I should have grown up a mess. A fuck-up. Seeing all of that before I was even old enough to understand, a permanent sense of unjust anger in my soul, I could have done a million shitty things and forgiven myself. I didn’t, and the only reason I didn’t were my neighbors, who moved into the old, fixer-upper ranch house next door when I was about eleven or twelve. The house was a hand-built bungalow that looked even more humble and smaller than it was for being next to my father’s French Normandy-style mansion. A tiny but meticulously-kept place that became a safe haven for me, that I’d sneak away to at every opportunity to experience a little love and comfort. A home I wished I could live in permanently every second of my childhood.

Kyle and Jessie’s place.

I’m thinking about all this as we drive to the party, but my weighty memories are interrupted by Jessie’s sudden gasp.

“Hey!” she screams from the passenger side. “Stop the car! Pull over.”

“What?”

“Our old house. Look,” Jessie says, nodding towards it and opening the car door, even before I’ve had time to come to a full stop.

“Jessie, wait, we’re already kinda late and I wanna get in and out fa—”

She slams the door shut and I take a deep breath. I’m already struggling to keep it all together, I don’t need Jessie piling on more stress before the birthday party.

I get out of the car and walk around it, stepping towards her with my arms open in a gesture that politely translates as ‘why the fuck are we stopping?’ Jessie’s too busy leaning in to inspect the signpost hammered into the front lawn to notice.

“Look at this, they’re selling my old house!”

“Oh. Yeah, that sign’s been there for months now.”

She stares at me like I just asked her to solve a math problem.

“What? Months?”

“Yeah.”

Jessie continues to stare at me. I shrug in reply. The truth is that I drive past this place all the time. The house definitely holds some memories, but it’s hard to be sentimental about something when you’ve worked so hard to bury your past.

“Well why is it still for sale? Doesn’t anybody want it?”

Jessie spins around to look at it, as if reminding herself. It’s still a nice place, with a welcoming front porch, but the blue paint is peeling, the windows are boarded up, and the white flower boxes at the windows are overgrown with dead plants. It was one of those homes built for families who eat around the dinner table together and spend most of their time out in the yard, tossing a football or planting things in the mulch. Now, amid this built-up neighborhood of cookie-cutter McMansions, it’s just an eyesore.

“Look at it, Jessie. The place is falling apart. If anything, someone’s going to buy the property and then tear the house down so they can build a new one.”

Once upon a time the house seemed like it would stand forever, as much of a guardian as Jessie’s parents, but to look at it now, it’s hard to believe this is the same place the three of us would go on scavenger hunts or hang out in the treehouse, or just hole up and play board games on rainy days, gazing out the window at passing cars as we waited to make our move.

“How can you say that?!” Jessie shouts indignantly. “This place was my
home!
I thought you loved it as much as I did!”

“I did. But it’s only me and you – and probably Kyle – who feel that way. About all it’s good enough to play home to now is memories. Even your parents moved out the second they could.”

I shrug and start walking back to the car as Jessie casts one last, longing look at the weather-beaten wood siding.

Once she joins me in the car, I start to feel the tightening in my chest again. I rev the engine and drive down the road, and a few blocks away I reach the driveway of my father’s house, and slowly guide the car between the tall iron gates. As if sensing my increasing anxiety Jessie asks, “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’d prefer this to be a funeral rather than a birthday party.”

“Nate! Don’t say things like that! That’s awful!”

The mansion creeps slowly into full view, already surrounded by various over-sized and overpriced cars, guests already shouting and talking loudly around it.

“Awful or not, it’s the truth.”

The foreground of the mansion is about as big as a parking lot – and just as full of vehicles. I ease my car into the nearest available space, a full forty yards from the front door. I kill the engine, grip the wheel tightly, and focus my vision on the horn, psyching myself up.

“So what’s the plan?” Jessie asks gently.

I nod a little at the question.

“We go in, and we look for either my father or my mother, whoever we find first,” I say, with the severity of someone planning a bank heist. “We don’t have to worry about my cousins or step-siblings – I’m sure they’ll notice me. I’ll have a conversation with both of them, which will probably end in an argument, and then we’ll get as far the fuck away from here as possible.” My mind whirls with ugly memories, old hurts – triggering what feels like PTSD. I don’t know whether to laugh at it all, start breaking shit, or just run.

“Okay…Nate, why are you breathing so heavily?”

“I’m not…what? I’m fine…”

“Seriously, are you alright?”

“Yeah.”

Jessie puts a hand on my shoulder and I jump a little.

“Shit, Nate. You don’t look alright. You’re about as tense as someone on trial.”

“My family is the worst kind of trial.”

“You’re going to be fine, alright? Come on.”

Jessie opens the car door and stops the second she notices I don’t do the same, shutting it again and turning to me. I look over at her, trying not to look so anxious, but the sympathetic expression she pulls tells me I’ve failed.

“Actually, you know what? You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can just leave if you want,” she says softly, pressing a hand gently on my forearm.

“That would make things even worse,” I mumble at the dashboard.

“Nate, look at me.”

Her cool fingers go to my chin and turn my face slowly towards hers. She’s close, leaning in, her eyes wide and round and hypnotic, somehow giving me something to focus on, to steady myself. She brushes her fingers across my jaw, and her soft touch seems to loosen the pressure inside of me a little. Her lips part slowly, and then she kisses me.

I keep my eyes closed for a few seconds after she pulls away, savoring the soft touch of her lips on mine. A touch that feels like her fingers on my soul, caressing it and protecting it from the darkness and bitterness that’s built up inside. When I open my eyes again she’s still there, still leaning towards me, and it’s like I’m in a different place – and I realize I am. I’m no longer on the grounds of my dad’s mansion. I’m
with her
.

She kisses me again, this time with more passion, her tongue fucking my throat, but this isn’t the guilty pleasure we embraced at the retreat anymore. This isn’t two people realizing how wrong something is and getting turned on by it, this is something that feels
right
. I press my seat back and Jessie straddles me swiftly, her hands fumbling at my fly as her tongue continues to press into me ravenously.

I let my hands explore her curves, pulling her toward me so the thrill of her soft body makes all the blood rush to my cock. She feels the hardness stirring against her and grasps it between her fingers, releasing it from my pants and pressing her pussy against it through her jeans. She grinds back and forth, panting softly in my ear, her breath warm against my neck.

Within minutes she’s got me worked up to the point where I feel like I’m about to explode. She knows by now that I love her tongue in my mouth, she knows by now just the way to work my cock, she knows by now I can’t resist her when she makes those eyes at me. She slides back until she’s perched on her knees beside me, and bends her face down over my cock, eyes fixed on mine, flashing a devilish smile before she takes me in her mouth.

Her tongue-fucking was passionate enough, but when she works that tongue against the end of my cock, it’s almost feverish. I slam my head back onto the seat like I just went from zero to sixty in less than a second, her ripe lips coaxing and controlling me with a skill and talent that seems almost unfair.

When I feel the start of a different kind of rush I raise my head and look at her, those hazel eyes burning through me like a poker, like they’re just begging me to get off. I come hard and fast inside her mouth, and then melt back into my seat as if I was dropped there from thirty thousand feet.

Jessie shuffles back onto the passenger side and I roll my head to the side to look at her.

“Feel better?” she smiles.

“Yeah,” I drawl in a voice dowsed in satisfaction. “But it’s getting kinda scary how good you are at that.”

“Just my luck to have a talent I can’t put on my resume.”

“Just put down that you’re full of ideas.”

She laughs softly. “Only when the job’s satisfying.”

We step out of the car and start walking up toward the mansion’s large doors.

When we get to the door, a tired-looking guy does his best to smile and then opens it for us. A wall of sound emerges the second he does, a million screeching voices, cackled laughter, obnoxious shouts. It sounds like hell itself. I feel it in my gut, and I’m drained before I even step across the threshold. That was another thing about my father’s parties: everyone wanted to be heard, and the result sounded like a thousand maniacs on a sinking boat.

I swap a quick glance with Jessie, her ever-calm face showing the first cracks of anxiety, and then I take her hand and we go inside.

The sound is one thing, the visual assault is a whole other level. Anywhere else and my extended family – along with the people who associate with them – would be the flashiest people in the room. Here, they meld into a giant mass of oversized jewelry, zebra prints, gravity-defying bouffants, and botox. It’s like a theme party for the worst fashion excesses of the twentieth century. In my simple, tailored suit and Jessie’s jeans and shirt we may as well be camouflaged.

“Sequins, sequins, everywhere,” Jessie mumbles in awe as I grip her hand tighter and pull her through the crowd, ducking and weaving like we’re making our way through a war zone.

“Nate? Nate! Is that you?” I hear a second before one of my step-brothers appears in front of me and puts a hand on my chest to stop me from leaving.

I shoot Jessie a look as if to say ‘first obstacle of the evening.’