Page 66 of Storm in a D Cup

I shrug. ‘I can’t give up what’s not mine. If he wants to go, there’s nothing I can do to make him stay. He and Genie Stacie were a hot item way before he met me. They have history.’

‘So do you, besides two kids,’ she reminds me.

‘The kids are growing up. I hardly think that would stop him. Him and his bloody midlife crisis. I wish he’d just get himself a sports car or something.’

‘He’s not the type,’ Renata says.

‘Well, he used to be. Maybe he changed because of me, and now wants to be who he used to be before he met me.’

Renata studied me, twisting her lip in thought, probably thinking that I was right.

*

As it turned out, after all the toing and froing with Julian’s agent Terry, I did have a book in me. Well, an idea of a book, really – a story that had been inside me all my life. My working title?Youth and Other Albatrosses, that is, the fictionalized story of my teenage years and how they helped me – not – to navigate and understand my own teenagers’ lives.

And now that I had a subject, whenever I sat down to write, my fingers glided across the keyboard as if I was playing some mad symphony I’d invented in my sleep. I wrote and wrote about a teenager so dangerously full of herself but also so naïve and thin-skinned, teetering over the edge of sexual maturity, and a boy who had barely escaped teenage fatherhood.

But not a word on Julian. I couldn’t bring myself to analyze what was going on with us. I was afraid that if I didn’t let sleeping dogs lie, they would wake up and attack me, finishing me off once and for all.

Because this mystery engagement was killing me. Come on, what are the odds? He’s from Boston, a former celebrity sports star, still married, but now lives in Italy? And he’s the only one of us invited (as if any of us would want to go; I trusted that my kids would have my back in an eventual kick in the teeth like that). Factor in Julian’s distancing himself from me completely, his avoiding talking about the baby, or even the future. Even when I asked him where he wanted to go for Christmas, he’d shrugged and said,Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?Jesus, how close was I to the precipice without even knowing it?

A loud rumble made me turn to look out the living room window where a cloud of dust rose. Even Julian, who, for once, was sitting in the same room with me, sat up at the noise of what could only be a sports car. Was it Leonardo? Could he possibly be going to Renata’s again? I had seen his car zooming past our entrance at the bottom of the hill many, many times. But, seeing Renata’s reticence and how we hadn’t spoken for a few days because I’d simply mentioned him again, I’d decided to mind my own business. And yet, the thought of that creep anywhere near my friend…

But it wasn’t a Ferrari. It was aLamborghini– the same one Genie Stacie had rented when she had dropped in on us. Actually, not only was it the same car, it carried the same person – Genie Stacie –plus one.

I stared after Julian as he opened the front door and climbed down the stone steps as Genie Stacie jumped out of the car and threw her arms around him. ‘Julian, Erica – I’d like you to meet my beautiful daughter Josephine Jackson.’

16

Joey

‘It’s Joey, actually,’ said the young girl barely glancing up from her phone.

Dressed in Goth garb from her spiky black hair to the spikes in her nose and eyebrows, Joey looked just like any other pissed-off teenager. The only thing that belied her angry stance was the color of her eyes beneath all that black eyeliner: a crystal clear green with a veil of sadness. I loved her immediately.

This girl was clearly crying out for help. With a mother like Genie Stacie, either you went with it and became her mini-me, or you went polar opposite, which was what Joey had done. Where her mother looked like Barbie, Joey looked like an Alice Cooper nightmare. I get it that it was a thing in L.A., but somehow this look didn’t seem to sit well with her.

Genie and Joey. It somehow sounded like an unfortunateThelma and Louisespin-off. She was the antithesis of Genie Stacie. If the wordderelicthad an image it would have been Josephine Jackson’s persona. Somewhere between seventeen and thirty-five, she reminded me of myself at that age. Except for a few details. My eyes involuntarily slid to her bony arms. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see she was underfed, just minutes away from starved.

‘Don’t slouch, Josephine,’ Genie Stacie ordered, her voice like the crack of a whip, and in defiance, Joey slouched further. I grinned at her and she caught my eye before looking away. It was a sign that there was hope in the world.

As Genie waffled on and on to Julian about her week, I led Joey into the kitchen where Maddy was setting the table, which she only did lately when she was hungry.

Joey looked up from her phone, glancing at her briefly, instantly dismissing her without so much as aHey.

‘Maddy, this is Joey, Genie Stacie’s daughter. Joey, this is my daughter Maddy.’

Maddy stared at her in shock, obviously trying to hide her curiosity. ‘Don’t you ever take your eyes off your phone?’ Maddy asked.

‘Nope,’ Joey answered back as she began to text away.

‘Don’t you know it’s rude to send messages when you meet someone for the first time?’

At that, Joey shrugged. ‘I’m not sending messages, I’m connected to the world. In any case, I’m reviewing a book.’

‘Oh, what book?’ I asked.

‘In Cold Blood. It’s like, awesome.’

---