“Shut up, Sandy.”
“No, really. You should be proud. I can see where you get your whole… existence from.”
“I don’t know why I thought this would be any other way than it was,” he muttered, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel.
I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic, something biting given I was still running on adrenaline and I didn’t need to be
that
nice, but I stopped myself when I saw the tightness around his eyes, his mouth stretching into a thin line. “How did you think it would be?” I asked, curious.
He laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Not like that.”
I thought about pushing more, but thought it better to back off and see if he would say whatever it was on his own.
Surprisingly, he did after a few seconds. “I just… I don’t know. Anytime I think that maybe there’s a decent human being buried in there somewhere, I get piles of evidence to the contrary. I’m just tired of expecting one thing and getting another, though it’s my fault for having any expectations to begin with, I guess.” He started the SUV and pulled back out onto the road again.
What was it Mike had said weeks ago when he’d first floated this awesomely terrible idea at me?
Don’t you think it’s odd that for all the shit he’s talked about his dad, he still works for him? Maybe not him
directly
, but still. You know what that says to me, princess? It tells me that Darren still cares about what Daddy thinks about him. That he’s still searching for some kind of approval.
And that sucked, if it was true. Which it seemed to be more and more. Because here was a perfectly… acceptable boy who had the unsanitary habit of attempting to fuck everything in sight. Sure, he was obnoxious and annoying and I really did despise him partly (though, maybe not as much as I did, say, four hours ago), but he didn’t deserve to be born into the family he had. Maybe his mother was the nicest person in the world, which I hoped she would be to counteract Taylor’s evil and her son’s idiocy. I hoped he’d had at least
one
good parent growing up.
But even I could understand the need for acceptance. I’d craved it after the indifference I’d gotten from my own parents before they’d died. I was taken in by a family who only cared about making me smile again rather than the makeup I wore. For all I knew, Darren didn’t have that. Or, at the very least, he didn’t have it from the one person he wanted it from.
I thought hard about what to say, because it seemed important that I say the right thing. “Sometimes we hope for things to be a certain way, even though we know most likely it will never be. I think it’s better to temper expectations toward something realistic rather than something fantastical. It makes things easier when people let you down.”
He glanced over at me, lips twitching. “Did you read that out of a fortune cookie?”
I glared at him. “No. I just made that up on the spot. You should be writing this stuff down. It’s life changing. Do you know how many people would
kill
to be in your position right now and be on the receiving end of a Helena Handbasket’s Lovely Life Lesson For Loving Yourself Lovingly For a Long Time™? Like, at least four people.”
“Nana, Paul, Larry and Matty?” he asked.
“Nana, Paul, Larry, and Johnny Depp,” I corrected. “Larry listened to my advice one time and grew this killer mustache that made him look like a Tom of Finland drawing. Matty finally went crazy and shaved it while he was sleeping and told me I’m never allowed to give facial-hair advice ever again, especially to her susceptible husband who thought Tom of Finland was a friend of ours from school. I thought Larry looked like a sexy daddy. Matty thought he looked like a police-sanctioned sketch drawing on a wanted poster for a man accused of accosting teenage girls in a park.”
“You know,” Darren said. “I don’t even question the things you say anymore.”
“That’s good,” I said, reaching over and patting his hand on the gearshift. “It’ll make your life easier in the long run.”
“Oh?” he said, sounding amused. “You’re thinking long-term already. Sandy, please. We’ve only been fake together for a few weeks.”
No matter what he would say later, the sound I made then was completely masculine and I didn’t flush horribly. “That’s… you
don’t
… oh my god.”
He decided to go easy on me. “I guess I should just let it go, huh?” he said. “My father. The fewer expectations I have, the less it’ll hurt after a little while.”
“Why do you want this?” I asked, trying to recover from my latest bout of embarrassment.
“What?”
“Him.”
Darren shrugged, but it spoke volumes when he resolutely kept his eyes forward. “He’s my dad.”
“Has he ever really been?”
He knew what I meant. “He never instigated anything. It was always my mom calling him. And we could never call his house. Or his office. He owned a construction company back then. Made good money. Mom liked him, even after she found out he was married, but I think it was more because he paid her money to keep quiet. Not that she ever asked for it. And she only took what she needed for me, nothing more. That’s just the kind of person she is, I guess. Not that I wanted anything to do with it, not after I found out where it came from. I always thought it was dirty.”
“She sounds like a good woman,” I said quietly.
“She is.” He laughed, but it sounded forced. “Which doesn’t really explain how she got involved with the likes of him, but something we do when we’re younger may not reflect who we are when we’re older.” He glanced over at me before looking away again. “We make stupid choices, you know? Maybe even do something we regret doing and wish there were ways to go back and change it.”
It was only then that I realized my hand was still on his. I pulled it back like he’d burned me. All my bravado fell by the wayside when I remembered my bathroom freak-out and the reasons behind why I’d needed to call Paul.
Because I had undeniable, disgustingly fond feelings for Darren Mayne.
I might have even been in like with him.
Which was awful. Because I didn’t like him at all.
Except for the parts I did.
Which were a lot of parts.
What a terrible thing to happen to me.
And here he was, saying the mistakes of the past were changed by the reflections of the future. Or something. I didn’t know. I was too busy wondering if movies were realistic in that people who threw themselves from moving vehicles were able to get up and run with hardly any injuries at all. I would have to tuck and roll, but I was used to tucking as it was, so it was no skin off my penis.
I reached for the door handle. Of course, that’s when we crossed onto a bridge with a long drop below to a dry riverbed.
“Fuck my life,” I groaned without even meaning to.
“What’s going on?” He glanced at me.
“Nothing!” I said, and my voice absolutely did
not
squeak. “Nothing. Everything is… just fine. I’m fine. You’re fine.” I coughed in horror. I hoped it looked like a normal cough to Darren and not a horror cough. “I mean, you know, not like
fine
, but like, good. We’re both good and everything is fine. We’re just two people driving on a Saturday. A Saturday drive because it’s a nice autumn day with no water below to break my fall should I jump out of a moving car.”
He eyed me warily. “Did you smoke crack in the bathroom and it’s just starting to hit you now? Because that’s really the only explanation I can come up with for why you’re sweaty and your eyes are bugging out of your head.”
“Do I look like I’d do bathroom crack?” I snapped at him. Then, “Wait. Don’t answer that. Also, you
never
tell a lady she looks sweaty. Even if said lady is sweating her balls off. It’s rude and I will fucking cut you if you say that again. And I don’t have buggy
eyes
, you overgrown meatsack.”
He laughed, and his shoulders lost some of the tension they’d carried since he’d picked me up. It should have put me at ease, to hear that sound from him, but it just made things worse. I was in over my head and I didn’t know how I was going to get out of this without it blowing up in my face.
“Are we really going to do this?” he asked, and for a moment, I thought he could see into my head where I was currently stuck in a vision of where I was sitting on his face while he licked my taint on a beach somewhere in Los Cabos while I sipped a margarita out of a glass the size of a goldfish bowl. It was all very detailed and I might have had no idea how I’d gotten there in the first place.
“If you’re flexible,” I said, my voice sex-deep, Helena purring.
“For the drag show?” he asked, tongue darting out and wetting his lips.
“Exactly.” I cleared my throat, trying to shove Helena as far away as I could. If she had her way, we’d be pulled over on the side of the road showing Darren what a lack of a gag reflex looks like. I didn’t think this was the time nor the place for it.
I really needed to get home and untape my penis.
“Nothing too overboard.” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Baby doll,” I said. “I’m a drag queen. There’s no possible way it won’t be too overboard. How do you feel about sequins?”
“Against.”
“Feathers?”
“Apathetic.”
“Assless chaps and then we bedazzle your butt cheeks?”
He groaned again. “Do you see what I do for you? Anyone else, and I’d have left you high and dry a long time ago.”
There was a strange buzzing in my ears and my breath caught in my chest. “And why is that?” I managed to ask.
“What?”
“Why are you doing this for me? Anyone else, you wouldn’t. Why this?” I didn’t even try to hide how breathless I sounded.
“Rule ten,” he said, not looking over at me. “You agreed.”
You don’t get to ask me that.
I nodded, somewhat flustered.
We rode in silence for a while.
Then, “You’ve never called me that before.”
“What?”
He shrugged, attempting indifference but somehow landing on endearingly nervous instead, almost like he was
shy
, for fuck’s sake. “Baby doll.” He coughed, and I saw the blush on his cheeks. “You call Paul that. And Corey. And Vince sometimes. But never me.”
“Oh,” I said awkwardly. “I guess. I just… I mean, we’re friends. Sort of.”
“Sort of friends,” he repeated.
I looked down at my hands, wondering the best way to salvage this without giving away the raging figurative hard-on I apparently had for him. “Yeah, I mean. Right? When we have our fake breakup, maybe we could still be friends. Or something.”
“Fake breakup?” He gripped the steering wheel again, knuckles turning white.
“That’s how this ends,” I reminded him, suddenly very unsure about a lot of things.
“Right,” he said.
“But we could be friends.” Because the thought of us going back to the way things had been before wasn’t sitting right with me.
“Maybe,” he said and nothing else. Like a douche.
I snorted. “Great validation there. Thanks for using your words. Would you rather I go back to hating you? Because I can. If that’s what you want.”
“Shut up, Sandy,” he grumbled. “You never hated me.”
“Maybe,” I mocked.
He rolled his eyes, and the silence that followed wasn’t that bad.
It was almost… comfortable. Like two people who’d spent time together and enjoyed each other’s company without the need to fill the quiet. I’d never really had that with a person before. It was… nice. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend that we weren’t pretending and this was just a normal Saturday for us.
Too bad none of it was real.
WHEN ENACTING
a plot from an eighties movie, there always comes the point where Someone Finds Out That Everything is a Lie. It’s usually done to move the plot forward while creating hysterical drama for all involved and causing the hero(ine) of the story to flail in an attempt to Keep Things Secret Because of Reasons.
Since my life was cinematically idiotic, the ridiculous thing Darren and I were doing couldn’t be kept secret forever. We lasted quite a bit longer than I thought we would, and while that made me question the intelligence of the people around us (while simultaneously patting myself on the back for Meryl Streeping the shit out of them), I was slightly disappointed that it was me that accidentally spilled the truth.
To Charlie, of all people.
Sweet, loveable, elderly Charlie.
And not really
spilled
, per se, but more like he caught me in a compromising position where I was forced to reveal the truth and then threaten (read: beg) for him not to expose me for the faking faker that I was.
I WALKED
into the club early that night, needing to talk to Mike and let him in on our bachelor drag auction plan in such a way that he agreed with me completely and did not try and murder my face. Mike was not a charitable person on a good day, and any time we’d held some kind of fund drive in the past, he’d always taken a larger percentage of the profits than was actually donated in order to cover what he called his operating expenses. In all actuality, Mike was a cheap bastard who did little without finding out how it benefitted him. In this case, I hoped the overhanging threat of the bar closing could make him see it my way. If not, then there was no hope for him and I was going to be so done with his shit.
Luckily for him, I dispensed with any pleasantries as soon as I walked into his trailer and let it all spill out in a stream of pleadings and extortions.
“…and now we
have
to do a drag bachelor auction otherwise the mayor will win the bet and the bar will close and isn’t that just
awesome
because no one can put on a drag bachelor auction like Helena Handbasket,
no one
,” I finished, panting slightly.
Mike’s face was in his hands. That was probably not a good sign.
“So,” I said awkwardly, trying to defuse the situation. “How are you?”