Scared of Beautiful (9 page)

Jackson tenses beside me and I place my hand in his firmly. To the left of us, in the corner stands who I presume is a high-class hooker, trembling in her stilettos. As my father approaches, I notice that his eyes are glazed over.
He’s drunk, extremely drunk
. He stalks over and grabs my wrists my wrist.

“How many fucking times have I told you that disobeying me is not a good idea!” he yells. His breath reeks of whiskey and cigars.

Jackson steps between us. His jaw tenses noticeably and he clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides. “Let her go,” he says, low and threatening.

“And who the fuck are you? Trailer trash has no right to tell me what to do in my house, with my wife and daughter. Walk away, asshole before you find yourself locked up.” He tightens his grip, and I wince as he twists my wrist. There’s a moment of brief silence.

“She’s not your daughter.” My mother’s voice comes out soft and trembling from the other side of the hall.

My father twists my arm, causing a small whimper to escape my throat. Jackson’s right fist comes up and connects with his jaw with a sickening thump. My father staggers back. “You’ll regret that you little punk,” he says rubbing his jaw.

“Doubt it,” Jackson says as he grabs all of our bags and the three of us leave the apartment.

We situate my mother into the back seat of the SUV and haul the bags into the trunk. Jackson walks around to open my door and as I go to climb in, a familiarly irritating voice echoes in my ear. “Well, hello angel.”

And just when I thought the day was a fucked up as it could possibly get.
I hate the fact that I have to turn around. “Bryce.” I stare at the pompous idiot with complete indifference. His grey suit and Technicolor tie remind me of how tacky he truly is.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, practically inhaling me as I stand there looking for an escape.

It makes absolutely no difference that Morgan, my ex-friend and his replacement girlfriend is standing right next to him. Bryce’s hair is slicked back and greasy, but then, Bryce has always been completely greasy in general. How he was the “it” guy of the Manhattan social scene and why I bothered to get involved with him, I’ll never truly understand.

“I live here, Bryce,” I deadpan. “Morgan,” I say nodding a pretend smile in her direction.

“Honey, you look well! The casual look really suits you,” Morgan replies in a sickeningly sweet singsong voice. “Or do we have this fine young man to thank for your glow?” Morgan reaches for Jackson arm, and he not so subtly pulls it away, as if she’s got scabies.

“Jackson, meet Bryce and Morgan.” My reluctance to introduce them is glaringly obvious. Jackson clearly shares my sentiments, because he nods at the two, barely even looking in their direction.

“Look at you, all grown up,” Bryce continues. “Shame I didn’t think more carefully about my choices,” he finishes, licking his lips. Morgan looks like she’s about to stab something, and Jackson’s jaw tightens in annoyance.

“You ready to go?” he asks me, smiling.

“More than ever,” I reply, and we drive off, leaving Bryce and Morgan to have it out over his comments on the sidewalk. Truthfully, I would have loved to see Jackson dislocate Bryce’s jaw, but I notice as he drives that his knuckles are already swollen and bruising, and I care about him far too much to have him break a hand over that fool.

Megs is less than impressed when she sees Jackson’s hand and my mother’s head. After cleaning my mother up and applying some gauze, Megs gives her some tea and aspirin and tells her to lie down. She can barely look at me when she exits to the bedroom. Jackson and I are about to leave when Megs stops us. “Not so fast. You sit. I need to talk to you.” Megs sounds angry. She’s not a nice woman to piss off to, so I’m a little scared.

“I’ll wait outside,” Jackson offers.

“Stay,” I say, my eyes pleading with him not to leave. He’s been introduced to the very worst parts of my life, all at once. The fact that he’s still here at all says something.

“I assume by the look on your face, Maia, that your mother told you some kind of truth, which was it?” she asks.

What, the fact that my father is not my real father is only one of the lies?
I explain the events at the apartment to Megs, and she’s quiet as she listens. When the story ends, she looks up and grabs my hands.

“I’m sorry honey, sorry about all of that and all of it before. But I’m glad you know. Your real father was a waste of oxygen, true story. He was a fool, who ran around doing all kinds of wrong shit. Your mother worked as a secretary for your grandfather’s firm. The man who has been your father all these years took an interest in her on the first day she started there. He was doing an internship, learning the ropes. He treated her nice. She lived with us from the time she was fifteen, and she was determined not to stay here forever. Why she got the job in Manhattan to begin with.” Megs sips her tea and continues. “By the time she met him, she was already pregnant. She didn’t want to lie, wanted him to know the truth. I talked her out of it. Told her that it was too good a chance to pass up. He loved her. And he did, he wasn’t always an asshole. When he took over his father’s firm, the money and the power went to his head. By that time she was in too deep. You were five before he showed his true colors.”

Megs looks up at me with a stern expression. “But she stayed for you. Took every single damned beating for your sake. And you act like you couldn’t give a damn whether she lives or dies. I see her dialing your number over and over. I know you see those calls. Like it or not, that woman is your mother, so you better start acting right or so help me. You’ll have to answer to me. She needs you to get through this. You think it’s easy to leave over 20 years behind?”

Tears sting my eyes. I hate the fact that she’s right. I was behaving like the spoiled bitch I always refused to be. It was selfish of me to leave my mother behind, just because I needed to escape. Jackson puts his hand around my shoulder as if on cue. “I should talk to her,” I say, standing.

Megs puts a hand on my shoulder. “No, not now, she needs rest. I need to talk to her and you need to sleep on it. When she calls you tomorrow, answer your phone.”

I reach for my bag and open my wallet, handing Megs my spare bankcard. “Whatever you need, please,” I say handing it to her. She shakes her head and I look at her pleadingly. I lay the card onto the side table and scribble the access number on a piece of paper, before Jackson and I leave.

“Dinner?” I ask Jackson as we leave the Bronx.

“Sure,” he replies, “but can we stop for some Gatorade? Cold Gatorade, I need it for my hand.”

He winces, and I notice that the bruising on his knuckles is darkening. After the day we’ve had, I plan on buying him several beers. I think a drink may be a great idea. I don’t drink often, but given that Jackson deserves some kind of an explanation, a few drinks to loosen up before I have to start talking may not be a bad thing.

Jackson

Talk about a damn crazy day. I have to admit that I now understand why Maia keeps her past so closely locked away.
Those people are fucking bananas.
Although Maia is nothing like them, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s trying her damnedest not to be. My parents fought a little when I went off the rails a few years back, but nothing that involved violence like that. I hope to God that that’s not what Maia grew up with, or so help me I’ll find that asshole who I punched and likely finish the job.

Maia directs me through the city and out to Cedar Beach, to a quiet seafood place on the wharf. I try to put on a brave face against the pain, but my hand hurts like a motherfucker, and I’m quite sure that at the very least I fractured something. Maia keeps glancing over at me hesitantly, as if she’s waiting for me to ask her about what happened today. I gather that the worthless bastard was her kind-of father, and I presume that the greasy looking fool on the street was her ex and his new, um, pet. She’s not overly close to her mother, but has a lot of respect for her Aunt Megs, who, judging by her dark complexion, is not a real aunt.
That’s all I got
. For that whole eight hours. But I don’t think I’ll push it, she’ll talk when she wants to.

Being that I’m driving, I opt for a light beer, and Maia orders an expensive scotch and dry. I took her for a long stemmed wine glass kind of chick, but scotch? Kind of gangster, I have to say. I smile at how the little things she does impress me. We order a seafood platter and take in the candlelit ambience of the small restaurant. The muted candlelight hits her face just right, making her eyes glow almost iridescently. The best thing about Maia is that she has absolutely no idea how fucking hot she is, how as she looks up at me expectantly, half her face is hidden behind a curtain of long, dark hair. My mind trails off in various directions, imagining the obscene things we could do on this table, if we were alone. My jeans pull with the rising pressure the thought is causing me.
Thank fuck for long tablecloths
.

“Jackson,” Maia’s voice breaks through the imagery.

“What, um yeah?”

Her brow pulls together. “Sure you didn’t hit your head?” she teases.

“Nah, I’m good,” I say taking a swig of my beer. It’s suddenly fucking hot in here.

“So, I should probably give you a bit of background about today,” Maia says, very reluctantly.

“Maia, don’t feel like you have to, I don’t wanna hear anything you don’t wanna tell me,” I reassure her, because it seems fitting.

“No, I do want to tell you. I need to tell you,” she looks at me determinedly, as though she’s just decided to run a marathon. I reach across the table and cover her hands with mine. “So, the asshole you punched was my, well, apparently now not, my father. He’s a millionaire, a control freak, and a sadistic prick. He made my mother’s life hell. And practically ignored me, unless we were in the public eye. My mother decided to leave him, and I’d say given the hooker and the booze, he’s not taking it so well. Only he doesn’t give a flying fuck about her, just about losing control.” Maia takes a long swig of her whisky, polishing off the remnants in the glass, and signals the waiter for another.

“And the asshole you met on the street, that’s Bryce. Ex-boyfriend, one of Manhattan’s most eligible bachelors and an absolute pig!” Maia takes another swig of her whiskey and I reach for the glass.

“I’m not trying to be your parent here, but slow down princess. You need to eat before you go knocking back the hard stuff like that.”
Fuck me, I do sound like a responsible parent.

“The chick with him was Morgan, ex-best friend and yes, you guessed it, an absolute slut,” she continues. I’m extremely grateful when the seafood platter arrives at the table because I was seriously preparing mentally to carry Maia to the car and hold her head over a toilet bowl all night. “So,” she says between picking at the tower, “Morgan hooked up with Bryce two days after I dumped him, and she’s foul because of what he did.” Maia’s tipsy already.
Wow, she’s a really cheap drunk.
Not that I would take advantage of that, but still, wow! She’s holding up a tempura prawn as she asks, “Aren’t you going to ask why he’s a pig, what he did?”

I had assumed that his first impression said it all. He looked like one of those dudes that didn’t really need to do anything and would still be considered a major dick. The hurt in her eyes is genuine. I move the platter away and simply say, “No.” She looks up startled. “I mean, unless it has something to do with you, then I’m really not going to waste my time and yours talking about him,” I explain.

“It does,” she replies. “Can we go? I just want to walk for a while.”

I go to pull out my wallet to pay the bill, but Maia’s already handed the waitress a black American Express card. My male pride suffers a little at the gesture, but given the circumstances, and the fact that the action seemed so automatic for Maia, I let it pass. With the exception of a few lonely fishermen on the wharf and adjoining piers, Maia and I have the wharf to ourselves. We find a bench close to the edge of one of the piers and Maia curls up in my arms. She seems so fragile now, so in need of protection, but when she stood in front of her father, she held his stare. Didn’t lose it. I know he hurt her when he grabbed her arm, but she forced back the majority of her pain. My blood boils when I recall that, and truthfully, the only reason I didn’t smash his face into a million small pieces was because of her, because this was still Maia’s family after all. I make a silent promise to willfully destroy the next person who makes her feel that way.

The black ocean stretches out for miles ahead of us. “So, why do I hate Bryce, aside from the obvious?” I ask.

“You mean other than him being a fucking waste of oxygen,” she replies passionately. Maia is really fucking sexy when’s she’s mad. Long as she’s not mad at me.

She recounts the story of how their families orchestrated dinners and weekend getaways in the hopes that they’d hook up. ‘Good publicity’ she called it. They finally did. When she was sixteen, they dated for a year. Maia pauses before the rest and takes a long sigh. She tells me that his friends must have been pressuring him to ‘just fuck her already’ and clearly gave him some shit about it. Until one night, after a particularly trying evening with her father, he suggested they go out for a few drinks. One club turned into two, then three.
I have a feeling I know how this story ends.
A lot of chicks back home don’t remember losing their virginity. I’m about to reassure Maia that she doesn’t need to go on, but she does. She tells me that she wasn’t drinking much, two champagnes at most, but after the second one she didn’t feel right, so asked Bryce to take her home. Only he didn’t, and the next day she woke up in his bed. Remembering nothing. Bryce swore that she was too drunk to remember anything. That she wanted it. Morgan, her so-called best friend, corroborated Bryce’s story.