He gives an exasperated exhale and rolls off me. “It’s five days into the trip,” he argues, “and you said we’d see how it went.”
“You haven’t been here,” I reply stiffly, climbing from the bed. “Three FaceTime calls aren’t what I meant when I said we’d spend time together and reassess.”
He climbs off the bed. “Fine,” he says a little sullenly. “Whatever. We’ll spend time together.”
He’s only been here a few minutes and I’m starting to wish he hadn’t come.
The entire family takes a pool day at last. Beth is so thrilled to see Six she can hardly remain in her seat. She keeps tearing up and saying I’m so happy you made it, as if this is the only vacation they’ve ever had together. But every time Josh looks at his brother I see signs of strain, and Sloane—watching it happen—is just as unhappy. I still don’t understand what Josh meant the other day about me being the glue, but it’s clear Six isn’t. If the Bailey family was spinning out a little, Six’s arrival has only increased the speed of it.
Once the excitement diminishes, Jim goes back to talking exclusively to Josh, and Beth’s conversation with Six takes on a frenzied quality, as if she’s trying to distract a toddler from crying for a lost toy and knows she can’t quite succeed.
Josh finally gets up and goes to the pool alone. I suspect it’s simply to get a break from his father. I’m still watching as he climbs the ladder to get back out, sun glinting off those nice broad shoulders, dripping over his perfectly flat stomach. His swim trunks are hanging low and I find myself riveted by that trail of hair below his belly button, by the pale skin beneath his tan line and the hint of a tattoo just to the left of his hip. I picture dragging the trunks slightly lower to get a better view and suddenly I have goosebumps in eighty-degree weather.
Lunch is ordered and just as we’re finishing up my mother calls. I’m not entirely surprised—this is the pattern, after all. I’ve upset Richard and he had to run and tell on me as fast as he could.
I walk over to lean against the railing by the sea wall, because I don’t need the Baileys overhearing that even the woman who brought me into the world thinks I’m a useless screw-up.
She bypasses the whole Hey, how’s it going? part of the conversation entirely. “Did you really call Sandra the c-word?” she demands.
“Cancer?” I ask, squeezing tightly to the rail as a family passes by. They don’t even look at me twice. I wonder how long my anonymity will last.
“You know which word I’m referring to.”
“Yes, we both know,” I answer dryly, “because only one c word fits.”
My mother gives a heavy sigh. That sigh of hers is so familiar to me that I hear it in my sleep. I heard it in my head when I regained consciousness in Amsterdam. When I die, I won’t hear anyone grieving, I’ll just hear my mother’s long-suffering sigh, as if my death is simply one more thing I’ve done wrong.
“Maybe your merry band of misfits throws that word around without a care, but normal people don’t. You lash out at people and just assume all will be forgiven, Drew, but it adds up. Eventually people are going to stop letting things go.”
I slump into the same chair I sat in this morning with Josh, watching the sun come up. “Yeah, I’ve noticed how you all let things go. Which is probably why Sandra asked me to stay sober for this one, as if I’ve shown up rolling at every other family event we’ve ever had. And I don’t assume all will be forgiven. I just don’t give a shit.”
It’s not the first time I’ve said something like this to her. There’s a part of me that wishes she’d just call the time of death on our entire relationship. Block my number, cut me off, stop trying. It seems easier. Less painful.
“I cannot talk to you when you’re like this. But let me just explain this one thing to you: you’re in a downward spiral. It’s obvious to everyone but you. And when your career ends, we’re all you’ll have to fall back on so you might want to be very careful about who you push away.”
I hang up the phone, my heart aching, my head full of all the same vengeful thoughts I’ve had for years: I’ll show them. This album will be so big they’ll eat every word they’ve ever said and they’ll never open their fucking mouths again.
Except…except…there is no album. I hate every demo the label has sent, and even if I liked them, they still wouldn’t be mine. They wouldn’t be my words, my heart. They wouldn’t even be my taste in music.
My stepfather, Steven, texts not even a full minute after the call with my mother has ended.
I spoke to your mother. She said you claimed you “don’t give a shit” about the family. I’m not sure who told you it was okay to speak to a parent that way, but I’m here to tell you it’s not.
I type my reply: I don’t know who told you it’s okay to fuck someone else’s wife, but that’s not great either.
I laugh. Josh says I’m good at holding a grudge. He has no idea.
A chair scrapes the cement of the pool deck as it’s pulled up beside mine. I look over to find Six there. “I feel like getting drunk,” he says. “My family is on my last nerve.”
At last, we are in the same place and on the same page.
The cool and also tedious thing about Six is that he always knows people. Drop him in the middle of the Amazon, and he’ll have some friend there who knows about a party somewhere else, and even though it means wading through a mile of piranha-infested water and getting in a truck driven by a human trafficker, you’re going to that party.
So of course he knows of a party here, and of course it’s clear on the other side of the island where some huge surf competition is occurring.
After a very expensive Uber ride that goes on way longer than I expected, we arrive at an oceanfront house that looks out over the Banzai Pipeline.
“You better text your mom and let her know we might not make dinner,” I tell him. “They had reservations for seven but it’s going to take us an hour to get back.”
He swats my ass. “We are definitely not going to that lame fucking dinner. I’ll let her know.”
The house is full and the deck is too. It’s a music crowd here and I suppose if I ever wanted a shot at morphing into a real musician, the kind I wanted to be, it would make sense for me to talk to these people, but I suspect none of them would take me seriously.
I get a drink and fight my way out to the deck to watch the competition. It’s a single huge wave, curling and unfurling, and the surfers look like ants as they rise up inside it. My heart pounds in terror simply watching them, and that seems like a reasonable response. Until today, I’ve never been to a beach so dangerous that signs warn anyone who isn’t an experienced surfer not to even approach the shore.
I’m leaning on the deck railing watching the competition when a guy walks up beside me and introduces himself. He’s apparently the drummer for a band called The Sweat Monkeys, of whom I’ve never heard. “I’m pretty sure we’re getting a spot at Coachella next year,” he says with feigned ambivalence. He looks over to make sure I’m suitably impressed. I do my best.