The Leftover Club (20 page)

He laughed.
“Yeah. Guess so.” He sighed as he glanced back at the circle, where everyone was having the time of their lives making out with their friends with no real risk. “Every day in high school is like Halloween,” he said. “We’re all wearing masks. We’re all in disguise.”

I nodded. It was true.

Bryan stayed behind to help us clean up. He didn’t leave until eleven-thirty, which was when the Moms, Dylan and I were ready to leave the rest of the cleanup to the following day. I was beat as I hung up my blue gingham dress and put away the ruby slippers my mom had painstakingly made using tiny red sequins and her hot glue gun.

Someone knocked on my door and I answered with a yawn. It was Dylan, who had likewise shed his costume, and stood there in pajama bottoms and a robe.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

We stood silent for a long moment. Finally he handed me a giftwrapped box. The paper was purple, for Halloween, with tiny little skulls and bones over it. I laughed. “What’s this for?”

“Two things.
I wanted to give you something to say thank you for helping me with the party. It wasn’t your kind of thing and I appreciate all you did to make it work. Kids don’t see that,” he added. “But I wanted you to know that I did.” He paused. “Sorry about Rusty.”

He referred to the senior who had made it very clear he was repulsed by me when he had been forced by the Soda Bottle of Fate to kiss me. I shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“It was still shitty,” Dylan said with the shake of his head. “Guys are jerks.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

“You got lucky when you found Bryan,” he said. “He’s not like all the other guys, is he?”

I shook my head. If only he knew. I glanced back down at the gift in my hand. “You said there were two reasons?”

He nodded. “Early birthday present,” he grinned. Impulsively he leaned over and kissed my cheek, holding it just a beat longer than necessary. “Night, Roni.”

“Night, Dylan,” I said softly as I watched him disappear
down the hall.

October 26, 2007

“This is stupid,” I reiterated as Bryan fussed over my makeup.

“No offense, but you grew up to be a massive buzz kill,” he said. “It’s Halloween. It’s supposed to be fun.”

I glanced in the mirror and saw a bloated version of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
’s Janet Weiss staring back at me. I held the lab coat I was wearing with a white-knuckle grip so it wouldn’t expose my bra and shorts underneath. The only thing worse would be wearing a black curly wig, a corset and garters, thigh high fishnet stockings and platform heels.

But thankfully Bryan had called dibs on Frank-N-
Furter first.

We were going to a midnight showing of the RHPS in Hollywood, and h
ad, by some stroke of madness, decided to go in costume. Dylan and I were Brad and Janet, Bry was Frank-N-Furter and Olive had opted for Riff Raff.

I was mortified when Meghan peeked into the bedroom to tell me she was on her way out to her own costume party.

Unlike me, she looked completely the part as a Gothic vampire. She didn’t even need a wig with her dark hair. Bryan had applied her makeup to give her professional looking fangs and blood, which had endeared him to her just a little bit more.

In the weeks following that first “date” with Dylan, Meghan
saw my social circle widen. She met Olive and Bryan within the week, which had been particularly harrowing for me given my history with Wade and his blatant homophobia. Since they knew I was paranoid that Wade would make good on his threat to take custody, they “toned down” their natural tendencies so that their sexual orientation did not become an immediate issue, and Meghan didn’t really acknowledge their sexuality either way.

In fact she took to Bryan
immediately, especially when she realized he could speak her language about fashion. They bonded over haute couture, and he had even taken her to his studio to show her one of the projects he was working on for a major studio production.

Meghan, who had always dabbled with art, found all this terribly fascinating. She likewise took to Olive, who showed her some of the things she had created. By the time Halloween approached, she had accepted my friends as part of our world.

I was still persona non grata for the most part, although she seemed to be a bit more curious than angry about the decisions I made and the friends I had. I knew that she liked my friends because she kept her snark minimal as they interacted, which made life a little easier on me.

Her relationship with Dylan had been a little trickier. After almost two months, she had thrown her worst at him and he had deflected effortlessly, somewhat earning her respect. She still wasn’t too crazy about my ‘dating,’ tho
ugh Dylan and I were moving at such a glacial pace, I wasn’t sure it exactly qualified. We had shared chaste kisses here and there, but I couldn’t bring myself to act on anything given our past history.

I needed to know that Meghan would not be adversely affected by my choices.

Now that he knew I was ‘dating,’ Wade was interjecting himself more and more into our lives, to remind me – endlessly – how I had failed our family with these very same people. He decided it was his business what kind of relationship I might be having around his daughter. He called me on a weekly basis, chastising me and berating me until I had to hang up the phone.

“He’s an abusive asshole,”
Bry told me. “Tell him to call your lawyers and leave you alone.”

But I hadn’t wanted to do that. We were co-parenting and I wanted to keep the lines of communication open for Meghan’s sake.

Despite his threats, his relationship with Meghan didn’t change much. He usually only took her on weekends that neatly fit his own little schedule, blowing her off at least twice in as many months.

Meghan blamed me, of course. I was an easy target because I was the one who was around. As the weeks wore
on, it would be my friends that ingratiated me to my angry daughter, as was the case when she opened up my bedroom door to ask Bryan to fix her fangs.

“
Is Erin picking you up?” I asked.

“Of course,” Meghan responded
, as if it were a question almost too stupid to answer.

Bry
looked over her shoulder at me and mouthed, “Of course,” which made me smile.

Parenting was a lot less painful when you had other people around to buffer the blows.

“We’re going to be late,” I informed her. “Show starts at midnight.” Midnight was also her curfew on the weekends, but she had already made plans to sleep over at a friend’s. “If you need me, you’ll have to call the cell.”

“Whatever,” she said with a roll of her eyes, before heading out the door.

We met up with Olive and Dylan at the packed theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. Both Dylan and Bryan had stocked up on the necessities. We had newspaper, noisemakers, lighters and toilet paper for the audience participation portion of the show.

We belted out the songs along with the people performing live, with Olive and Bryan dancing in the aisle.

Olive and Bry wanted to head to Santa Monica to eat, but I wasn’t going out in normal public in my underwear. Dylan offered to drive me back to my place, so we parted ways with the others and made it back to my condo just before three in the morning.

As I turned to tell him that I was going to go change, I ended up walking right into his arms. My lab coat fell away as he fitted me to his body. His eyes were dark as they looked down at me. “Alone at last,” he said before he bent to kiss me.

I indulged the kiss and even wrapped my arms around his neck to bring him closer. No one had ever been able to make me feel like Dylan did. In a world where I felt so awkward and out of place, I fit perfectly in those two arms. It was getting more and more comfortable as the weeks wore on.

He broke the kiss before I did. “Hey,” he said softly. “I got you something.”

I arched an eyebrow. “What?”

He chuckled. “That too, but we’ll start with this.” He pulled a CD from his pocket. “I figured your cassette must have worn out by now.”

I laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“Listen for yourself.”

We went into the dimly lit living room and I placed it in my media player. Pretty soon the sounds of 1985 wafted from my speakers. He pulled me back into his arms so that we could dance, just like we had winter of sophomore year. “Want to play spin the bottle?” he murmured against my ear.

“I guess that’s better than strip poker,” I teased.

“I like your idea better,” he grinned. I got lost in those dark brown eyes and his mouth drifted lower to brush against mine. This kiss was not chaste at all. I melted as he parted my lips with his tongue. My mind quickly calculated the probability of my holding off hitting the sheets with Dylan Fenn for one more night.

They were slipping by the second as his hands slid down my bare back to cup my ass beneath the lab coat.

Our steamy kiss was interrupted when my cell phone rang. My phone never rang past midnight, so that spelled trouble. Dylan and I broke apart as I reached for the phone on the table. My eyes widened when I spotted name on the caller ID.

“Meghan?” I asked
as I answered the call.

My question was met with a sob. “Mom?” she said, before dissolving in fresh tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. This drew Dylan’s concern as he stepped closer.

“Can you come get me?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said immediately. “But why can’t Erin bring you home?”

She sobbed even harder and instantly my maternal instinct kicked in. “You
are
at Erin’s, right?”

“No,” she answered in a small voice.

We made it to the Flying Feather Inn in less than fifteen minutes. Dylan had to drive because I was beside myself.

“Calm down,” he kept saying.

“Calm down?” I screeched. “She’s sixteen!”

He sighed as he pulled into the parking lot. “She called you because she had no one else she could call. You blow up at her and you’ll never earn that trust back again. She doesn’t need a warden. She needs a mom.”

In true Meghan fashioned I rolled my eyes. I was out of the car practically before he could put it in park.

I stomped into the lobby of the no-tell motel wearing nothing but my bra, shorts and a lab coat, but I didn’t care. I searched frantically for my daughter. When my eyes fell on her ravaged appearance, my heart immediately softened. My strong, confident daughter sat on one of the sofas hugging her knees
to her chest like she used to do when she was five. Her eyes were still black-rimmed from her heavy makeup, but a lot of it had poured down her face with her tears. I ran over to her immediately. “Baby,” I said as I took her into my arms without another word.

She fell apart the minute my arms closed around her. She sobbed, smearing makeup all over the stark white lab
coat. She clutched me like she was afraid she might drown in her tears. When she uttered, “Mama,” I thought my heart might actually shatter.

Dylan joined us, sitting on the other side of the sofa beside her. “What happened?” he asked softly.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him. She was embarrassed. “I just want to go home,” she wailed softly into my chest. I nodded as I encouraged her to stand so we could lead her back out to the car. I sat in the backseat with her while Dylan drove us home. He walked us to the door, where Meghan slinked through, shoulders slumped.

“Maybe I should go,” he said softly.

My eyes met his. “No. Stay.”

He nodded quietly and followed me inside.

We were sitting on the sofa when she finally emerged, her costume abandoned and her face scrubbed clean, her dark hair tied into two girlish pigtails. We beckoned her to the sofa, where she slipped in between us, turning into my open embrace.

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” she said in a shaky, broken voice as her arms locked around my neck. She was clearly distraught. She hadn’t hugged me like that since she was twelve.

“I take it you didn’t have a good time at the party,” I said softly as I stroked her dark hair.

“There was no party,” she confessed.

Dylan and I shared a glance. “Why were you at a motel, Meghan?” he asked softly.

She slid him an embarrassed glance. “It’s too humiliating.”

He rested his arm along the back of the sofa. “Honey, we’re here in our underwear. What could be more humiliating than that?”

She laughed in spite of herself. Then she groaned. “I didn’t go to Erin’s party because I went out with my boyfriend.”

My throat closed.
“Boyfriend?”

She nodded. “His name is Kyle. I met him at the beginning of the year.” I took a deep breath
as she went on. “He is the most popular boy in class. And he wanted me.” I closed my eyes. I was terrified where this was going. “Nothing had happened. Just kissing, and you know… stuff,” she said with a blush to her cheeks. I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose. “But he wanted tonight to be special, so he arranged everything so we could be together.”

Dylan and I shared a look, but said nothing. We waited for her to go on.

“His brother rented the room and provided some wine. When we got there he lit all these candles and played some romantic music. It was everything I had ever hoped it would be,” she said wistfully. “But when he started kissing me, I knew that these kisses were going somewhere. And suddenly I got really scared. He’s got a reputation, you know? And so I asked him, ‘If I sleep with you, are you going to dump me?’”

I looked at Dylan, who had looked away. Apparently this scenario was familiar for him.
And painful.

“And he got all mad, you know?
Like I had insulted him. He told me to stop being such a girl, that only babies believe in happily ever after. A real woman knows how to please a man.” She burst into fresh tears. “And so I got mad and told him that if he wanted a real woman he should go find one. And he took out his phone and called this senior slut named Chelsea McBride. He made a date with her while I was sitting there on the bed in my underwear,” she concluded in a helpless wail.

I pulled her back into a hug. There was nothing I could say. I brushed her hair and let her cry it out.
But she wasn’t done.

“I called Dad to come get me. I told him that I had made my decision. I definitely wanted to move to Arizona with him and Sasha, to get away from this stupid town and these stupid people.”

My heart sank. “Your dad is moving?”

She nodded and blew her nose.
“By the end of the year. Once I started dating Kyle, I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay. But now I just want to get the hell out of here.”

I swallowed the rock in my throat. “What did your dad say?”

She started crying again. “He said he was at a party and we’d talk tomorrow. Then he hung up.”

I didn’t think I had ever hated Wade more.
“I’m glad you called me, Meghan. I’m always here for you. You know that.”