The Rock Star's Daughter (7 page)

"Taylor, if there's anything you need, you
just let Tanya know. If you need some workout gear, she can send a
production assistant out to a mall to pick something up for
you."

I must have looked surprised, because he
smiled, and added, "While we're on the road we have a team to take
care of necessities. It's their job to make sure we all have
everything we need. Just don't get too spoiled!"

Spoiled? How could I possibly have had an
entire team of workers dedicated to shop on my behalf and not get
spoiled?

Keith took up residence on the floral couch
in the living room of our suite, talking to local publicists and
reviewing the band's rider. The rider was the list of necessities
and niceties that the band requested in their dressing rooms during
the tour. I only caught a quick glance at it, but it listed cases
of ice cold Diet Pepsi, fresh fruit (melons balled, not cubed),
fresh greens but only dark lettuce and not romaine, no fewer than
three gallons of iced tea with lemon, a bowl of room-temperature
hummus with whole wheat crackers, fresh vegetables and cubed cheese
(Monterey jack, mild cheddar, pepper jack, and Swiss).

And those were only the mandatory items for
the dressing room; the entire touring staff was nearly ninety
people and the requirements for meals served at concert halls were
insane. Right down to ensuring that there would be no fewer than
twenty-seven vegetarian meals for every serving.

I announced to Jill that I was going down to
the lobby to explore. She seemed to have no problem with that but
warned me not to leave the hotel.

The hotel was ridiculously luxurious and it
was right on the beach. I sat down in a lounge overlooking the
expanse of white sand and breaking waves. A waiter asked me if I
would be having breakfast and told me I could bill it to my
room.

"Sure," I said. "We're in the Atlantic Royal
Suite."

The waiter then – I'm not kidding – bowed and
said, "I'll be right back with your menu, Miss Atwood."

I was so flattered that I didn't correct him
by informing him that my legal last name is not Atwood, it's
Beauforte.

I ordered myself a meal and was sipping a
freshly squeezed orange juice, watching the waves roll into shore,
and thought to myself, I could get used to this.

Just then, I noticed the same blond guy from
the parking lot sit down a few chairs over from me in the empty
lounge. He was reading a dog-eared copy of The Martian
Chronicles.

We made eye contact and he nodded.

"Good morning," he said.

"Hi," I responded. "Summer reading list?"

The Martian Chronicles had been on my summer
reading list the previous summer. I had found it kind of scary and
it freaked me out.

He looked at his book as if he had no idea
how it had come to be in his hands. "Uh, no," he said, as if
suddenly ashamed to be reading. "I go to public school. No summer
reading lists. I just really like science fiction."

There was an awkward gap of silence, during
which I was ashamed to have assumed that all high school students
are assigned summer reading for their AP English classes, and he
seemed ashamed that I assumed he was reading for something other
than enjoyment.

"Are you Taylor?" he finally asked.

He was much cuter up close. His nose was
peeling, and upon closer inspection it looked like he had suffered
a bad sunburn that was fading into a tan. He was wearing a
well-worn t-shirt that was loose on him over old jeans, and Vans
without socks. He hardly looked like the kind of guy who would be
curled up with a science fiction novel.

"I am. How did you know that?" I asked. It's
not like I was suddenly that famous, like random strangers on the
street knew who I was.

He shrugged. "I'm with the tour," he said. "I
sell t-shirts for Audiostorm Productions. I'm Jake."

I stood up, moved over two chairs, and sat
down in the chair next to his. "Taylor," I said, and then realized
duh, he already knew my name. Like I said, I had limited experience
talking to cute guys.

"Sorry to hear about your mom," he said.

His comment took me so off-guard that I
didn't know how to respond. It suddenly hit me all too fast that
just two weeks ago I was at home, in my own house, with Mom
drifting through the house in her flip flops, and now I was here –
in Florida of all places, at a beachside resort, and my mother's
ashes were at a mausoleum in Burbank. My eyes filled with tears
before I could get a grip on myself and stop.

"It's OK," I said, wiping a rogue tear off my
cheek with the napkin I had been using as a coaster for my orange
juice.

"It's not OK," he corrected me. "It must
suck."

He was looking at me so directly that I
wanted to shrivel up and disappear. Of course, he was right. I had
said it's OK out of a fast habit that had formed over the last
week. But still, who was he, a total stranger, to correct me?

"Uh, yeah. It sucks. She died and now I'm…" I
waved my arms around the lobby. "Here. I don't know what to make of
it all. Everything's going kind of fast."

The waiter returned with my hot plate of food
and instructed me to enjoy. I felt a little ashamed of what an
enormous pile I had ordered – eggs, toast, strips of bacon and
wedges of melon.

"Want some?" I offered Jake.

"Nah, the roadies have a buffet every
morning," he assured me, and then took a wedge of honeydew anyway.
"But I can't turn down honeydew."

I heard the familiar click of high heels on
the tile floor approaching down the grand hallway, and turned to
have my first experience with what I would learn to recognize as a
Pounder.

Pounders are groupies, essentially. Women who
follow Pound around on tour, typically getting drunk at the shows,
flirting with the band at parties, tailgating in parking lots,
often finding their way backstage, making a nuisance of themselves
with the wives. They're usually middle-aged, although some are
younger, and many have been Pounders since my dad's band first
became famous sixteen years ago.

I guess you could say my mom was the original
Pounder.

"Jake, I have been looking for you all over,"
the woman said impatiently once she reached us. She was tall,
nearly six feet in her white sling-back heels, and wore a gauzy
cover-up over a white bandeau bikini. Her hair was permed and
frosted, and she wore full makeup even though it was only nine in
the morning. I guessed her to be in her mid-forties, and maybe a
little too wobbly to be walking around in a bikini so proudly.

She was the kind of woman Allison might have
called a "hot mess," and with shame I realized that she reminded me
a little bit of my mother.

"This is Taylor," Jake told the Pounder in a
slow, patient voice to soothe her mood.

"Hi," I said shyly.

The woman's irritability immediately
vanished; she smiled warmly and extended a perfectly manicured
hand. "Why, Taylor, it's so nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too," I said, still unsure
of who she was.

"I was so terribly sorry to hear about your
mother's passing. You're a very lucky girl to have a dad like
Chase, though, honey. He's a lovely man."

I questioned Jake with my eyes about how this
woman might know my dad, but he looked away.

The woman returned her attention to Jake.
"I'm starving, honey. Come on up back to the room as soon as you
can."

She wiggled back down the hall, her heels
clicking, and Jake rolled his eyes apologetically. "My mom," he
explained.

In that instant I knew we'd be friends. I
knew exactly how he felt in that moment, having been there myself,
having a mom who was both fabulously cool for her age and at the
same time, a complete embarrassment. I knew what it was like to
have the mom that everyone thought they wanted, the hot mom, the
mom who lets you drink or smoke at home if you want to, the mom who
doesn't enforce curfews.

"I should go," he told me. "We usually don't
stay in the same hotel as the band, but there aren't many options
in Jacksonville. She likes when I bring her meals from the roadie
buffet."

I nodded, trying to understand exactly what
Jake was doing there. Did he really have a job with the tour? Was
his mom just a groupie? A room at that hotel must have cost
hundreds of dollars a night.

"Nice meeting you," I said, meaning it. "Are
you going to be with the tour all summer?"

Jake shrugged as if touring all summer was
not exactly his idea. "I guess."

He turned to leave, and then said, "Don't
worry. Chase is a cool guy."

I finished my breakfast in wonderment. How on
earth did this guy know my father better than I did? And what was
he implying that I had to worry about?

CHAPTER
5

On our first night in Jacksonville, Pound
performed a sold-out show. Of course, the opening band, Sigma, was
a little more my style, and I got butterflies in my stomach
thinking that there was a strong likelihood I would be exchanging
words with Brice Norris at some point that summer. Throughout the
show I was curious if I would get a chance to walk around by myself
and look for Jake, but the opportunity never presented itself.

My dad was really a marvel on stage.
Electrifying. For the first four songs I stood in the front row
with Jill and then she led me backstage. From there, looking out
across the dark crowd, I could see women tearing their shirts off
and screaming the lyrics to the songs until they were red in the
face.

When the band performed Lovergirl, one of
their famous love ballads, my dad invited one of the Pounders from
the first row on stage to slow dance with him. She was taller than
him by at least five inches in her high heels and was literally
crying with joy as they danced. I noticed that Jill was kind of
smiling during this song, but in a way that made it look like her
jaw was locked in position.

Later, when they played Always Yours, my dad
invited Jill out on stage and sang to her. She didn't necessarily
look any more comfortable during that. She was wearing a hot pink
terry cloth sundress and both she and my dad were so sweaty under
the hot stage lights in the humid Florida air that they
glistened.

When Jill stepped out on stage, Kelsey
immediately reached for my hand in her absence. It was sticky and
hot and I didn't really want to be holding it, but it would be kind
of cruel to drop a little kid's hand, so I held on.

After the show and back at the hotel, Jill
asked if I would mind watching Kelsey so that she and Dad could
have dinner alone.

"We haven't had much private time," she
claimed. "You don't have to get her ready for bed or anything, just
make sure she uses the potty an hour after she's done eating. We'll
be back in a few hours."

Sure, I agreed. How hard could it be,
watching a little kid? Well, for starters, she didn't want the soy
chicken fingers that Jill had sent up for her from room service.
She wanted to try my linguini alfredo, and I let her. Then she
liked it, so I gave her more. I left the room service trays in the
hallway for the hotel to clean, and set Kelsey down on the sofa in
front of the television.

"Ou est Maman? Ou est Papa?" she asked
repeatedly, practicing her toddler French lessons.

I did not dare reply with my inferior
two-years-of-private-school-French for fear of being upstaged by a
five-year-old. "They're having dinner at a fancy restaurant. Now
tire-toi."

I forgot Jill had told me to make Kelsey to
go to the bathroom, and I realized a few minutes too late that she
had simply wet herself on the leather couch. Kelsey learned a few
new English words as I cleaned up the puddle and changed her into
her pajamas. It had been nearly two hours since Dad and Jill had
left the hotel room but it was kind of nice having them gone.

"Who is your Dad?" Kelsey asked me after I
placed her in bed. We would be sharing the suite's second bedroom,
each having our own queen sized bed. This was a little annoying; my
dad had not mentioned that I'd be bunking with the little brat all
summer.

"My dad is your dad," I said, the words
sounding foreign to me. "We have the same dad."

"Then who is your mommy?" Kelsey asked after
a moment, trying to sort it all out in her head.

"My mom is in heaven," I told her.

Somehow the words got me choked up.

"What happened to her?" Kelsey asked.

"She had an accident and died," I told her,
not sure if it was really appropriate to be talking about death
with a five-year-old. "Remember? You came to the wake with us."

"Was she pretty like you?"

Maybe having a younger sister wasn't such a
bad thing. I sat in Kelsey's bed and cried until she was
snoring.

Hours later I was awakened out of a deep
sleep by a commotion. A cleaning crew was in the bedroom remaking
Kelsey's bed with fresh sheets, and Jill was overseeing them. I sat
straight up in bed, surprised that Jill would invite total
strangers into my bedroom while I slept.

"What's going on?" I asked, rubbing my
eyes.

"You let Kelsey eat alfredo sauce," Jill
snapped. "That's what. She's allergic to milk and threw up all over
the bed."

Oops. I remained perfectly motionless on my
side of the room, unsure if she expected me to get up and help
clean, or just stay out of the way. When the hotel maintenance
staff finally folded up the dirty sheets, smoothed a new set out on
the bed and said farewell to Jill in quiet voices, she lingered in
the doorway for a moment to address me.

"We have rules for reasons, Taylor," she
said, her voice sharply bitter. "If this is going to work out,
you're going to have to be more mindful."

I lie awake in the dark for hours after she
closed the door. Kelsey was spending the rest of the night on the
couch in the suite's living room. If it had been Jill's desire to
make me feel lousy, she had done a good job. It had hardly been my
intention to make Kelsey sick and I felt terrible; I knew she had a
lot of allergies and had just been careless.