But Dax glanced around the room and shook hishead.
23
Dax
“I’m sorry, Jace.”
I was struggling to even think straight since I saw the news on my cell. I wasn’t able to focus on figuring out what was happening at the moment when I kept going back to being that ten-year-old kid, lost and confused about all that was happening in mylife.
“I know this can’t be making much sense to you, and I’m not doing much in the way of helping with that,” Iadmitted.
“Yeah, you’re definitely not doingthat.”
“It’s just…what to you and Hacksmore is cute Lil’ Donnie Gibson was part of a long series of events in my past that I like to pretend neverhappened.”
Jace narrowed his eyes as though I’d lost my mind. “Okay, I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I managed to pick up on that muchalready.”
Fairenough.
“A lot of things were going on in my head when I saw those pics. It would be one thing for anyone to have to see photos of themselves making out plastered across the Internet. Anyone would have the right to be upset. But it was another to see you outed without your consent and then me being outed for something I’ve spent my life divorcing myself from. Then I was thinking about Hacksmore and that if he cut out of the deal, you wouldn’t be able to give any of that money to the center like youwanted.”
Jace rested his hand on my leg. “It sounds like the money is staying right where it is, so why don’t you talk to me about this Donnie Gibson stuff and why it’s fucked with you likethis.”
I could tell he wanted to support me when I was feeling wrecked by my past catching up with me. I was used to compartmentalizing it, acting like it was another life away, but there it was, flashing right in front of me the way cameras once had in that period of my childhood when I attended premieres and award ceremonies with mymom.
Considering what had already been made public, it was bound to come out, so I figured now was the time to be straight withJace.
“I wish I could say it was a remarkable story, but it’s a cliché in Tinseltown. Mom grew up on a ranch in Minnesota. She had big dreams, like so many who hurry off to Hollywood only to be met with disappointment. But she got some lucky breaks, and the fact that she even had a hit in the nineties was somewhat of a miracle for her. It was like she’d died and gone to heaven. She was so big, she’d special-guest on all the popular series of her time and hit the talk-show circuit. She was spoiled rotten by producers and dated some sexy male stars. Like most people who get a break, she thought it was a done deal. She’d arrived, but she didn’t have the foresight to realize that these tides come and go so quickly. For her, even quicker than some. When she was trying to break out of TV and into film, she made some bad career moves and pissed off the wrong people. That on top of lavish expenses left her with debt under one arm and a kid under theother.”
“Sounds like a tough hand,” Jacesaid.
“Well, might have been a tough hand, but Mom was good at bluffing. The actress in her, I guess. She found an agent/manager, and they started dating when I was a kid, trying to get her back in the game. And if she was in the game, I needed to be in it too. It was a family business, after all. That’s what she’d say. As far back as I can remember, she was carting me off to talent shows. I needed to sing, dance, and act. While most kids were learning to tie their shoes, I was landing my first commercial agent. I got a break in a commercial, and then a casting director saw me and brought me in for a TV pilot. That show didn’t get picked up, but they wanted a new kid for another pilot, and they chose me. And that wasThe Gibsons. We had an okay contract for the first season, but after that, Mom’s boyfriend—not the same guy, but a guy who basically played the same role in her life—handled the contracts and got me loads more money. A dream come true, right?” I let out a bitter chuckle at thethought.
“Doesn’t really sound like it was ever yourdream.”
It would have been easy to agree with him, but when was life evereasy?
“In some ways, it was. I wanted it because she wanted it, and I wanted her to be happy. But the attention she craved, the premieres and award ceremonies she loved attending, I didn’t enjoy any of that. Even the acting itself wasn’t fun for me. I’d say the nice part was the friends I made with the cast and crew, because that was more stability than I’d ever had before. And the longer I was known, the less Mom was around. The thing I did for her seemed to keep her away more. She was off trying to revamp her career, but it wasn’t happening. She landed some dead-end jobs, but nothing ever went anywhere. And it was hard on her. She wound up spending what she believed wasourmoney. Wish she would have bought cars and clothes, but heroin was Mom’s drug of choice, though when asked in interviews, she’d swear it was just coke. Lies…lies…and image. That was all Mom knew. Desperately seeking the attention of her public. That was what she’d learned to survive. If they like you, you get everything. If they don’t, you getshit.”
The more I told Jace about her, the more I figured he must’ve observed the apparent disconnect between someone like Nance and someone like my mother. It was only going to go downhill fromthere.
“I don’t think I knew real terror until I came home at thirteen and found Mom lying in the bathtub, fully clothed, looking like she’d been in a bar fight, blood rushing from her nose, her neck caked in vomit. I thought she was dead. Luckily, she’d justOD’d.”
“Thirteen? Dax, I can’t even begin to imagine how horrible that must’vebeen.”
Why was I sharing those things with him, this guy I barely knew? And yet, I knew it was because of all the people in my life, Jace seemed like the least likely to judge me for the past. Even in the short time we’d known one another, I knew that much. The circumstances surrounding the endorsement deal were the only reason a guy like him was in my life, because Jace Kruse was a rarity in my world…perhaps any world,really.
“I was in season three of the series when my mom went to rehab for the fourth…maybe fifth time,” I confessed. “I couldn’t tell you for sure because at that point she was out of my life more than in it. I was staying with an actress from the show because she was the only one who’d ‘watch me.’ That’s what my mom called it when she’d drop me off for a night of babysitting and just leave, gone for weeks or months, sometimes on a drug bender, sometimes for rehab. I never really knew which or when she was telling thetruth.”
Jace stroked my thigh gently, like when we fucked and he was offering me that soothing assurance of his soft caress. As much as I prided myself on being able to take care of myself, in that moment, it felt pretty damn good to have hissupport.
“I can see where your perception of the industry and fame comes from,” hesaid.
“That was just my first taste of what stardom did to a person. Not only what it did to her, but to her friends too. It’s hard on a person when they’re given so much, only to have it all—appreciation, affection, money—pulled out right from under them. It’s a jarring thing for a person when that’s all they ever wanted inlife.”
“Everyone wants those things,Dax.”
He was right, but it was hard for me to explain what I meant. “You’ll have to see what it’s like when it happens to know…really know…the damage it does to a soul. I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve seen fall prey to the la-la-land machine. Insecurities mixed with money and drugs is a terrible combination, and it’s all too common. And the worst part is when the fall is the hardest, when the failure is tremendous, everyone’s watching, writing up articles about you and interviewing those around willing to rat you out for a couple of bucks. It’s all a grand production to thepublic.”
