Mom clutched the banister to steady herself just as three burly moving guys appeared at the top of the stairs. Presley’s mouth dropped open at the sight of two of them juggling the headboard of her bed. The other one was carrying my desk chair.
“Mom?” I asked, my eyes following the men on their way down the stairs. “What’s going on?”
“Whass goin on? I’ll tell you whass goin on. My slutty daughters broke up my marriage,” she howled.
I looked back at Presley, who had stopped watching the movers and was now examining the papers in her hand.
“Mom?” I asked. “What are you talking about? Where’s Vince?”
Our stepfather wasn’t great at smoothing out her moods, but he was still better at it than either of us.
“I dunno where that sonuvabitch is. Don’t care. Prolly got his head up some teenager’s pussy, thass where he is.”
I took a breath and pressed my fingers to my temples. Old habits died hard, and Vince wouldn’t win husband of the year anytime soon. He strayed. We knew he strayed. Mom knew he strayed. She usually took his dalliances in stride, because Vince always came home, always bearing gifts. Very expensive ones. Pamela Benson Davis liked expensive gifts.
Mom was no saint either. Her weekly private yoga lessons with Hot Yogi didn’t improve her flexibility or her mental state.
“Mom, Vince does this, you know he does,” I tried to placate her. “Hell, you do it too!”
“Not like this I don’t,” she said, blinking. I noticed that behind her false lashes, her eyes were wet with tears.
“So why are the movers taking our things? Did he kick us out?”
She listed to the side as she dragged her finger through the air, pointing from me to Presley then back to me. “I’m kicking all your asses out. Your shit is going to charity.”
“Fuck,” Presley whispered. She shoved the papers at me and raced up the stairs, pushing past mover number four, who was carrying out Presley’s vanity mirror. The guy stumbled and lost his grip, and the nearly full-length oval glass crashed down the stairs before shattering into pieces on the hard marble floor.
Mom turned, found her balance, and then started heading up the stairs. “You may want to grab your clothes before they haul those off too,” she said over her shoulder.
“Mom?” I called up to her.
When she reached the top, she turned to me one last time. “You three are dead to me. Dead.”
With that, she pivoted toward her wing of the house.
My ass dropped onto the bottom step, and I focused on the legal papers Presley had shoved at me. They were divorce papers. Vince was the one who had filed.
Crap.
2
“Yo, wassup, Jett?” My stepbrother Rafe clapped my shoulder, yanking me out of The Pleasures of the Damned, a collection of Charles Bukowski poems. The staccato styling of the self-proclaimed “dirty old man” agreed with my current temperament.
I glared at him from above my glasses. Rafe, at six feet three, hovered over the booth. A funky purple knit beret covered his trademark short dreads. His clothes—a pair of faded jeans, a taupe-colored T-shirt with a narrow linen scarf looped around his neck, and a vintage brown leather jacket—hung a little loose on his lean frame, but that was all by design. Rock and roll meets reggae by way of the overpriced vintage shops on Melrose.
He grinned, impervious to my glare. The gap between his two front teeth marred an otherwise perfect face and made him even better looking. I scowled harder.
Immune to my nasty looks, Rafe chucked his leather messenger bag into the booth and slid in opposite of me. Once settled, he grabbed a sugar packet from its holder, ripped it open, and dumped the contents on his tongue.
I would love to say that I did not think about sex while his tongue tasted that sugar, that I did not imagine that same tongue tasting my sweet spots. But since I was stone-cold exhausted, I was weak. My imagination ran wild.
I crossed my legs. Tight. “That is disgusting.”
“You look like shit,” he said, spraying a light coating of sugar crystals at me when he spoke. “Even though you have that hot-for-teacher thing going on with your glasses.”
I removed my glasses and placed them on the table. He peeled open another sugar packet. “Fuck off, Rafe. I am not in the mood.”
He tilted his head, and the expression on his handsome face shifted, softened. He put the sugar down. “Talk to me, babe. What happened? You flunk a midterm or something?”
Rather than answer him, I took a final swallow from the dregs of my coffee cup. He knew me too well.
School was my solace. A space to be Jett Benson. Not Presley’s little sister. Or the older sister who nagged little Nikki. Or the caretaker of our self-destructive groupie mom. No one in my family—extended or otherwise—was college bound except for me. I liked my college life. There were zero reminders of my rock god stepfather and his brood of rock and roll heirs.
“Why are you here, Rafe?”
“Was on my way back from talking to Randall’s Music 101 class and saw your car,” he said. “Thought I’d swing by. Say hello.”
Randall was a retired Grimm Records A&R guy who spent his twilight years teaching classes in UCLA’s music business program.
“What wisdom could you possibly impart on poor Randall’s impressionable students?” I asked. Celebrity rather than talent had always dazzled Randall. It irked me he was passing that quality—which led to mediocrity—on to the next generation of executives. More flash and flesh, less substance.
Not that Rafe wasn’t talented. He was, in spades. But he was also kind of famous. Not to mention rock-star gorgeous. Rafe was the total package. He also knew it.
“My wisdom is vast, Beanpole,” he said. “It may even help your stubborn ass. So, tell me what’s up.”
I glared at him. “Stop calling me that.”
He grinned. I refused to look at his sexy gap tooth and instead waved my hand at the waitress who continued to ignore me. I dropped my arm and flopped back against the vinyl seat when she passed by yet again without so much as a glance in my direction.
I pushed the empty sugar packets into some spilled coffee. “I didn’t get any sleep last night. Nikki and Dion…”
“Like rabbits, huh?” Rafe said, his tone sympathetic. I nodded. “I dealt with that shit for a weekend while I had my crib painted. I moved back to my place a day early. I’d rather sleep in toxic fumes than listen to that noise.” Rafe slammed his palms on the table and raised his voice up about three octaves. “Oh, Dion, touch me there, harder, deeper.”
I swallowed a chuckle as heads swiveled in our direction, shrinking even lower in my seat and releasing my hair from the clip that contained it. Unruly red kinks spilled out, hiding my face, which had gone as crimson as my curls.
“Unfortunately, it’s the only place I have to crash,” I muttered, eyes not moving from the faux wood grain in the laminate table.
“You could always ask to join in,” he said, flashing a devilish smile. “That could be fun.”
“Ew, gross,” I said, going into a full-body shudder. “That’s gross. That’s so gross. And now I can’t unthink it. Thanks a lot.”