I smile enthusiastically. “Well, if I was gonna take the leap it would be with you guys. You guys are amazing.”
“Coming from Minnie Forrester’s daughter, that means a lot.”
Shit. No. No no no.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I squint. An unexpected panic comes over Chase’s face that I ignore for the time being.
“It means… that I trust your musical instincts?”
Oh. Well, I suppose that’s a good answer.
“We’ve been burnt in the past by… opportunists,” Skye butts in, and I can feel my cheeks warm.
The rise and fall of my first romantic relationship was a bit too public for my liking. For everyone’s, really. But Chase doesn’t register that she’s talking about Marcus at all, so I try to keep it vague.
“But we’ve learned from that, I hope.”
“Well I hate to break it to you but I’m a total opportunist,” Chase confesses.
“Is that so?” I smile.
“Absolutely. Are you?” he smiles back.
I give his statement a pondering look. I decide that I like this guy. I’ve looked a lot of gift horses in the mouth over the years, coming from a family of music royalty. But this time, I think I’m going to take him up on that and use my own family name like a cheap whore.
This guy doesn’t know me from Eve. Doesn’t know my GPA, doesn’t even know if I spent my entire college career dicking around. But my sister set this whole thing up like I’m Clive Davis, and you know what? I need a win.
“Let’s set up a meeting. How does tomorrow sound?”
“We’ll be there,” he says.
It seems an odd coincidence that the handsome Chase with the heart of an artist should enter my life just when we were discussing rebounds.
I know that he’s probably fucking my sister or close to it. And I know when Skye used the term “rebound,” she probably meant finding me a hot guy to lay underneath for the night. But crushing on the guys that Skye crushed on and inevitably landed is practically a family tradition. And under-the-radar, crushed-on guys that can’t possibly be into me are my absolute jam and my jelly. Besides, this guy actually needs me. Wants me, just not in that way. And like many others before him, he has no idea the club he’s just joined.
Cliff
If it wasn’t for Felix, it never would’ve dawned on me that I could become a regular person.
My family’s money was an out I was expected to take, and no one ventured from the path. Even me, who bitched about the path probably the most. There was an unwritten rule that you could pursue your dreams, but it had to be confined within the parameters of the family. God forbid you become something lowly as a teacher, or even a politician. You could say I broke the mold, but only because my mother tells everyone I’ve lost my mind due to the accident.
Regular people are scary to me. When I was young I thought I was the regular person. I didn’t know I was rich at all, until I was in 4th grade. I mean, I saw poverty, saw that some people didn’t have as much as we had, but you know, at nine years old, if you were to ask me how many people had multiple homes and went on vacations and rode on yachts I would’ve probably said, you know… half. Just to be conservative.
There were always other people wherever we went, doing the same things we were doing. We all knew each other because it was a community. And sure, people acted weird, but I just thought some people were weird. I didn’t think it was because of any kind of disparity. Or that our social circles were forced, out of some incestuous need to keep certain people out.
Once I learned that I was not, in fact, regular, it was regular people who became scary. Intimidating on some level. I didn’t understand what motivated them. Not until I went to Halcyon did I become acquainted with regularity. Only a little. No one worked, no one worried about their next meal or keeping the lights on. But our outward trappings were stripped. Our quarters were the same, no matter who you were or how you looked. Talking about yourself as an extension of others was frowned upon. We were humans, looking for meaning, all of us. Once I left, I went far past regularity to insanity. This is the first time in my life I can go for long periods forgetting who my father is and where I come from.
It’s oddly dead as a doornail this 3am Friday night on a remote stretch of Chicago highway. I’m sitting in my squad car, perusing my phone. One thing about this shift, it gives me a lot of free time to stalk Lyric online. Or at least, the girl that I think is her.
Bria Forrester. The youngest daughter of the famous disco diva Minnie Forrester and her producer father David Charles.
No one fits the profile better than this Bria Forrester. She was tabloid fodder on and off during my eternal stint in the hospital, apparently, but I didn’t remember it until… well, I remembered it.
Not until the day I looked up and saw shaky camera footage of her. Turns out that was also not a dream. Thank goodness the nurses kept TMZ running in the background practically non-stop at rehab. “They should be ashamed,” they tisked at the desk every time they showed some damning grainy footage of her to narrate over. “Her mother’s the one who signed up for that life, not her.”
Felix gets in on the driver side, shuts the door and starts tracking a license.
“Are you gonna help me administer justice here, or what?”
“You got this,” I say, distracted. After a moment he’s gone again. I continue scrolling.
The cruel treatment of Bria Forrester by the tabloids has been much admonished, but never really stopped. Especially among the bloggers and indie MeTv personalities. One influencer seems particularly obsessed with all things Forrester, which is where I get my news.
“She’s moved to Houston,” I say when Felix comes back, starting the engine.
“Who?” he asks.
“This girl who might be the girl,” I answer, “Divadivo44 says she was spotted in Houston.”
Thankfully, Felix humors my admittedly bizarre hobby of stalking a stranger online. He just lets a moment of silence pass as if pushing past the crazy. I’m the poor sad sack that tried to kill himself once, so fortunately for me, he can’t say shit about anything that gives me purpose. Plus, it was sorta his idea.
“Just say ‘Bria Forrester,’” he rolls his eyes, like he even knows what he’s talking about. “We all know she’s the girl by now, it’s the only thing that checks out. Big girl, African American, money to afford Halcyon, obviously upset over something labeled ‘private family issues.’”
I close my eyes and take a breath. The part of me that didn’t want to be the source of this girl’s anguish was the part that didn’t want it to be her. It’s a good thing my memory was MIA for the hardest parts of rehabilitation. If I had to learn to walk again under the pretext of being a piece of shit, knowing that I was the source of Bria Forrester’s slow descent into life-threatening obesity, I don’t know that I would’ve made it. I’m such an idiot, I think to myself, remembering how a few people had said she looked familiar. Jem recognized her the first day.
“No wonder she never felt good enough,” I realize. “She must be shivering cold in that diva mom shadow.”