Forcing Gravity (4 page)

“What are you eating?” she asked, her eyes narrowing when she noticed the plate in front of me.

“Cheese,” I said, popping another piece in
to
my mouth.

She made a face. “Well, don’t eat too much. You don’t want to grow out of the clothes I bought you before school even starts.”

Or, I could just quit eating like you, and be a rail.
Then
we could share your size zero clothes.
How about that?

“Sure, Mom.
I’ll be careful,” I said, pacifying her.

If I didn’t, sh
e’d surely be dragging me with her to Cardio Hip-Hop or Strip P
ilates or whatever new workout
craze she was trying that
week. I’d made that mistake once, and I wouldn’t do it again.
Besides, I burned more calories in an hour of surfing than she did in one of her classes.

“Come out into the living room. I need a drink before dinner, and your sister wants to say hello.”

“Okay,” I said, sliding off of my stool. Julio winked at me before turning back to the stove.

“Mom, this tastes funny,” my sister was saying, as I followed my mom into the living room.

My mom picked up the
glass of orange juice Skylar
had set down and sniffed it. “This has vodka in it, darling” she said. “This is Mommy’s drink.”

I sort of enjoyed that she spoke to my sister like she was five years old, but she let her dress like she was seventeen. It was a ridiculous contradiction. That day, my sister was sporting skinny jeans, four inch ankle boots and a slouchy t-shirt that showed off her mid-drift.
She and I would have to have a talk later about
age-
appropriate attire since my mom certainly wasn’t going to help her. I would not have my
baby sister dressing racier than me. Not happening.

I noticed Skylar
was also sporting a face full of make-up, more than I’d worn to my senior prom, and was manicured and pedicured and coiffed to the nines.
On a good day, I wore my
curly
hair down and added some mascara and lip gloss for good measure. We were worlds apart. I was also pretty sure she had a spray tan. Mine was all natural, good old, Florida sun. I’d probably regret it when I was older, but I loved being outside in the sunshine.

“Lo, Lo!”
Skylar called out excitedly, a huge smiled lighting up her face, as soon as she realized I was in the room.

She still
sometimes
called me by the name she used when she was a baby. She
’d
had trouble with
my
full
name, so I was Lo
Lo
for several years, and when she missed me, she reverted back to it.
Lifting her boots
from the edge of the coffee table
, she leap off the couch and threw herself into my arms.

“Hey Sky,” I said, hugging her back. In her heels she was almost as tall as me. “I missed you, kid.”

“I missed you,” she said into my shoulder.

My mother clapped her hand
s
together, startling us both and forcing us apart. I knew she was annoyed t
hat the attention wasn’t on her
and had to immediately bring the focus back where she wanted it. I gave Skylar a look that was just shy of an eye roll, and she grinned and rolled her eyes back at me since our mom couldn’t see her. It was our secret way of saying we’d have our own personal bitch session later once our mother was out of earshot.

She flopped back down on the couch, across from the couch where my mother was perched
daintily on the edge
, so
I took the chair between them.

“So, Logan, tell us wha
t you’ve been up to this summer. We’re dying to know,
” my mother
said, her attention suddenly rapt.

A glance at my sister let me know she
had tuned out and
was engaged in a rapid-fire text me
ssage conversation with someone, but to her credit, she knew what I’d been up to since we actually talked on the phone.

My mother followed my gaze.
“Skylar!”

My sister’s head snapped up.
“Yeah.”

“Participate please.
You haven’t seen
your sister in
over a year.”

“Yeah, but I just talked to her two days ago,” Skylar said, and the ‘duh’ on the end of her sentence was definitely implied. She glanced down at her phone and
fired off one last text before setting
it
down
on the coffee table next to her propped-up feet.

I appraised her, realizing how much she’d grown since I’d last seen her.
As far as
outward appearances went
, my s
ister and I couldn’t have looked
more different. Of course, we had different fathers, so that had something to do w
ith it. Her father was
Luiz
Oliveira
, a famed Hollywood producer that my mother had dated for
eight
years
after she divorced my
dad
.

Luiz
was from Brazil and had made his millions producing a slew of well-known action movies
and high-powered dramas
over the past fifteen years. My mom had met him
when she
was auditioning for his next big film, the year after his first movie broke blockbuster records the weekend it opened
.
He
’d
alread
y gaine
d
a good amount of clout in Hollywood, and she was itching to work for him.

Unfortunately for her,
Luiz
hadn’t selected her for the role, but they’d dated and even lived together for a while when I was younger.
Luiz
was always nice to me and bought me presents whenever I visited, and he helped me gain the sibling I’d always wanted.
And he treated me like his daughter,
which
always made me feel special, and not at all like I was invading their life when I visited.
Even though he was no longer dating my mother,
I always made a point to see him when I
was in L.A
.

Skylar definitely favored her father’s
Brazilian
genes with dark hair, hazel
eyes and olive skin that I’d kill for.
She also had a curvy little body that guys would go nuts over when she really filled out. I had almost no curves, and like my mother, had
light
hair and
light
skin that got decently tan in the summer, but not nearly as dark as my sister.
We did share the same nose and mouth, though, so if you looked closely, you could tell we were
related
.

“Well, I haven’t talked to her,” my mother whined, pouting just enough so we knew she wanted our sympathy. It was obviously all about her and how slighted she felt. Of course, she didn’t realize that if she really wanted to talk to me, she could have picked up the phone and called me!

I seriously wanted to bang my head ag
ainst the back of the stiff arm
chair I was sitting in. Or run next door to Ethan’s. His mother would have hugged me and made me a plate of nachos while she gabbed on a mile a minute about how good it was to see me a
nd how great I looked. So far from my mother
I’d gotten none of the warm feelings Carol
Lewis would have
projected
, and I knew I wouldn’t
.
My mother
just
wasn’t nurturing.

“Well,” I said, figuring I would talk since my mother was looking at me expectantly, “I’ve just been working
at the rec center, teach
ing
volleyball camps,
and surfing and hanging out with my friends this summer. My life hasn’t been super-exciting.”

It was true. It had been a slow summer.
I hadn’t even dated anyone since Spring Break.

“Until you were on the cover of
Celebrity Weekly
, that is,” my mother said, clapping her hands together
with glee
as her eyes lit up
,
and I finally realized what she was doing. She wanted the dirt on Garrett and me and our faux relationship.

“Oh, yeah, right. That,” I said, trying to play it off.
I did not want to get into that
with her.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Truthfully, I always thought you would get togeth
er with Ethan Lewis, but
Garrett Lewis
is famous
, so I guess that’s even better.”

I sighed. My mother was al
l about
status,
and prior to eighteen
months ago, she’d never
have
glanced twice at studious, serious Garrett, but now that he was an
uber
-celebrity, she was all about him.

“Ethan is way hotter,” my sister chimed in.

“He’s also too old for you,” my mother said,
showing that she did in fact understand what it meant to be a mother.

Skylar just pouted at this news, as if it came as a shock to her.
Like Ethan would even look twice at her
in that way
.
He thought of her as a little sister, but of course she was hitting puberty and noticing boys, and Ethan was quite noticeable, so I couldn’t exactly fault her. I’d had a crush on
Zac
Efron
when I was her age, and he was several years older than me.
I figured it was harmless.

“So what happened, baby?” my mother asked then, a
full
pout gracing her plump, injected lips. “I saw how he broke your heart. I always thought he was such a nice boy.”

She shook her head dejectedly, and I recognized the gesture as one I’d seen her do
before
when she had to act upset in a movie.

“Mom, we weren’t dating,” I said pointedly.

“Sure you weren’t, honey.”

I swear
,
my mother was the only Hollywood celebrity who actually believed the
stories the tabloids printed, e
ven though she herself had been a victim of an embellished
rumor a time or two. Of course, she just chalked those times up to publicity and waved the negativity away
, assuming the magazine had just made a mistake in what they printed
.
‘Any publicity is good publicity’ she’d said more than once, but I tended to disagree.

“No, really, we weren’t,” I insisted. “
We were just hanging out. He was in town shooting some scenes for a movie, and
we hadn’t seen each other in a while, so we spent some time together
.”

“Okay,” she said. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but just know that I’m here when you do.”

I fought the urge to
either laugh out loud
or
respond
with some snarky comment
, knowing it was just better to let it go
.
Instead I clenched my fists and smiled.

“Thanks Mom. I appreciate that.”

There was no way in hell I’d ever go to her with my boy problems
.
I’d go to Skylar first, and she’d never even been on a date with a boy
. That was how much I didn’t value my mother’s advice
.

“Okay then,” my mother
said, smiling widely. “Let’s go eat dinner.”

That was it? That was all I got? We hadn’t talked since she’d called me to congratulate me on graduating in the top ten percent of my class
, and all she wanted to know
about
my life was what had happened with
Garrett? That blew. I wanted to kick myself for even thinking for one second that she might be interested in one real facet of my life. I knew better than that.

I wondered how much longer I’d have to hang out before I could acceptably slip away to Ethan’s house.

-
3
-

I woke up early the next morning to go surfing and thought about inviting Ethan, but he’d said he’d be out late when we’d talked the night
before. He’d been headed to
the p
arty of someone he’d gone to high school with and had invited me, but this was after he’d told me all about Claire Sunderland and how he hoped to score with her that night. The last thing I wanted on my first night in
L.A.
was to go to
a party with Ethan and have him ditch me for
the girl he was crushing on. No thanks. I opted to stay in and told him we could hang out the next day.