"I thought it proved people weren't open to it," I said.
"Eh, glass half-empty, glass half-full," he said with a shrug. "I never understood quite what the big deal was. I liked the parties, but they seemed like innocent enough fun. So people like to play dress-up-in Hollywood that's business as usual. So people like to get spanked or led around like a pony by the reins. I cannot understand why anyone would judge someone based on that."
That's because you're a spoiled brat, I thought. Did he really not realize how people felt and how they might judge us? Or how that judgment might hurt us? Then again, how could a privileged man with lots of money and no job ever understand the ways that everyone else in the world relied on reputation and the esteem of others to achieve anything? My father had no aspirations and nothing to lose. He'd already lost the one thing in life he'd loved.
"Ricki," he asked again, one hand reaching toward me, "could I have the photograph?"
I tucked it into my blazer pocket. "No, Dad, I don't think it's a good idea when it could fall into the wrong hands." He might "forget" he gave it to someone the same way he forgot he gave the TTT interview. "I'll keep it safe." I reached out and took his hand instead.
That was the point where he started to cry. I went around to his chair and hugged him. My poor, damaged, lonely father. He'd never fallen in love again so far as I knew. "I'm so sorry, Dad."
"Ricki!"
"Hush, hush, thank you for telling me." I didn't feel like crying, oddly enough. Maybe I just hadn't taken it all in yet. Or maybe he was doing the crying for both of us.
He stood up and kept hugging me, and we rocked gently from side to side.
"Life is very hard when you're alone," he murmured, as he got his tears under control.
"You're not alone, Dad. You've got me and Gwen." I felt a little bad saying that when so often the feeling we had when he jetted off to St. Maarten or Paris for months at a time wasn't that we missed him; it was relief. Did that make us bad daughters?
"Life is hard," he repeated. "I thought she was my soul mate, you know. The person who made me feel fully alive just because she was alive. She wanted to live life to the fullest. I supported that. I supported the idea that if what she wanted, what she needed, to feel fulfilled was to fly on the end of a rope, she should go for it. But look at the price she paid, at the price we both paid, at the price this whole family paid."
By the time he finished saying that, I was crying, too.
"I've spent the past twenty years in a stupor because drinking my way to numbness was the only way to keep myself from railing against the truth. That your grandfather considered his business connections more important than me, than my feelings. Knowing how Anna died, how could he keep running The Governor's Club? How could he expect I wouldn't find it an affront to her memory and a constant reminder to me of her death?"
I felt a terrible chill crawl over my skin. "You think that's why it's in the will that we have to keep it going?"
"He knew I'd shut it down if I got my head out of my ass." He let go of me but kept holding my hands. "Make me a promise, Ricki. I know you have to uphold the will. But promise me you won't get involved."
I stared at him in confusion. What did he mean by "get involved"?
"I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something happened to you, too." He pulled me close again, clinging to me desperately. "Promise me you'll never do bondage. Promise me you'll stay away from ropes and from cocky, strutting doms who think they're infallible!"
What could I do? It was the most connected I'd felt to him in years and years, the first real conversation I'd had with him as an adult, the first time I'd dared hope I might get my "real" dad back again. What would any good daughter do? "I promise, Daddy," I whispered, my throat harsh with heartbreak and doubt.
AXEL
I got a bad feeling when we landed at JFK. The first thing I did was text Ricki and got no reply. My layover there was two hours long and nothing came during that whole stretch.
Maybe she's in a screening, I told myself. Nothing to worry about.
I sent her one more before we took off, telling her I was about to be in the air for six hours but to text me any time if she wanted to and I'd see it when I got to LAX.
I should have tried to sleep on the flight. But jet lag and anxiousness are a bad mix and I ended up writing crappy angst-ridden lyrics for about a dozen songs. What if something had happened to her? Someone would have called to tell me, right? Well, if they knew. Who knew about her and me? The guys, Sakura, Christina, and her sister, Gwen. That was everyone I could think of. I imagined she had been in an accident and gave myself nightmares when I did fall asleep for a short while.
The thing was, I was distracting myself from my true worry, which was that she had shut down again. That she had taken my broken date with her the wrong way, or as a sign that I wasn't relationship material. That my not being there when she needed me had doomed the relationship before it had even started. Maybe it was even true: maybe someone who was going to be traveling the world chasing fame and fortune wasn't the best relationship material.
Mal slept most of the way and I let him. No need to burden him with my angst-y shit. But whatever might have caused her silence, it made me think: if tragedy befell the woman I loved, would that change the whole trajectory of my life? The whole trajectory for the band? Of course it would.
It drove home how hard I had fallen for her. I convinced myself she was fine and her phone was out of battery. I fantasized about bringing her home to meet my mother. No, bringing my mother to Hollywood to meet her. That was better.
Please, Ricki, let everything be all right.
"Mal, what am I going to do if something's happened to Ricki?"
"Do?" My best friend cracked open one eye slowly, like a dragon waking up to find a tasty-looking knight on his doorstep. "I suppose that'll depend on what that 'something' is."
"She didn't answer a text."
"Sometimes people don't, you know."
"True. But theoretically speaking … "
"In theory if something bad happened, presumably you'd get over the heartbreak eventually." Mal cracked his knuckles and pushed his long black hair out of his face. "Assuming you don't get addicted to something as a result."
"I get the feeling you'd kick my ass from here to Trafalgar Square and back if I did."
"I certainly would. Now, seriously, Ax. Try again to explain to me why you are so into this woman."
I imagined my mother asking the same question. "Look, does there have to be a reason? Doesn't anyone believe in love at first sight anymore?"
"Love at first sight doesn't stick unless there's something for it to stick to," Mal said. "I met her too briefly to get much of an impression, but she clearly left a deep impression on you. Deep enough that you skipped out of two separate rehearsals early."
I'd wondered when he was going to call me on that. "I know."
"She's hardly the first woman you fucked before you talked to her."
"That is not true. I mean, we did talk first. We were stuck in a limo for almost an hour before the awards."
Mal didn't pull punches. "And this means you're not merely thinking with your dick? Because you liked her face before her pussy?"
"Mal!"
"Are you outraged because I might be right? Or because I'm wrong?"
"You're wrong!"
"Convince me."
"First of all, just because I was so successful in seducing her does not mean she's an easy lay. She's completely not."
"So you like her because it suits your ego to know you seduced her."
"No. She fits me so well, Mal. She's so real. And she's a sub: she needs a dom. She needs me."
"You're not convincing me that this is about your heart and not your dick," Mal said with a bored-sounding yawn.
"Okay, how's this? I just fantasized about her for an hour. Know what I fantasized about? Introducing her to my mother."
"Oh?" Mal sat up a little. Apparently I had his attention now.
"This is serious. I can barely sleep because I lie awake thinking about her. Wishing she was here." Well, and because of jet lag, but I didn't mention that. "Not being with her physically hurts."
"Hurts in what way?"
"My chest and skin where her body would touch mine when we hug? They just kind of ache when we're apart."
"That sounds terrible," he said with a frown. "Are you sure that's love and not some kind of neurological condition?"
"It's love," I said with a confident nod.
"Isn't that what I've been telling you for how long?" he said with a frustrated snort. "When were you planning to tell her?"
That was an excellent question. "Um, as soon as she answers my text? I hope?"
But when we landed, there was still no answer from her.