Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen (6 page)

“
Wilson, come on we need to
go!” Cindy yelled as she walked over to investigate who I was
talking to.

“
OK, well I guess I gotta
go, nice to meet you.”

His brown eyes twinkled. “Yeah, it
was… nice.” I turned away waving as I started back to
Cindy.

“
Wait. Who.Was.That?” Cindy
grabbed my arm and swung me around.

“
John’s son,
Wayne.”

“
Who’s John?”

“
The guy that sat next to
me in the plane, John Samuel.” My chest tightened and I felt the
blood rush to my face.

“
OK, well introduce me,”
she demanded as she pushed me towards him.

“
Wayne?” I called before he
turned, and that was when it happened. It was a total accident. It
could have happened to anyone. It just so happened to be me. As
Wayne turned to look at me his arm swung around and his hand
brushed across my breasts. It didn’t hurt; it was just so much more
than embarrassing. My face blushed beet red, I didn’t want to look
him in the eyes.

“
Oh I’m so sorry. I didn’t
know you were still standing there.” His cheeks ran red.

“
I wasn’t. Anyway, this is
Cindy, my roommate.” I presented her using my hand to indicate a
connection between them. “Cindy this is Wayne.
Wayne…Cindy.”

“
It’s my pleasure meeting
you,” Cindy whispered and pushed her hand to him.

“
Nice to meet you too.” He
looked at me widening his eyes. I couldn’t help but signal back to
him with a shrug. Embarrassed or not, I felt a connection with him.
Wow, I just met him and we already have something in common, the
distaste of Cindy’s
‘I’m all that’
attitude. I looked past him, and noticed his
father calling him.

“
Well, I’d better go; you
know how parents with no patience can be.” He turned to my
roommate, “nice to meet you, Cindy.” He turned back to me. “Hope to
see you again, Wilson. I’m really sorry about knocking into
your—you.” His eyes narrowed, his face blushed and for the first
time, I felt a flutter for someone other than Max. He turned away
and I watched his backside as he strutted over to his
dad.

“
Frickin take a picture, it
will last longer. The dude has to be gay. He didn’t even make eye
contact with me. He is definitely batting for the other team. All
straight guys I know make eye contact.” She grabbed my arm and
twisted me to walk the other way. I didn’t answer her. I just
smiled. That encounter would help me last four hours in the car
with her.

Nick, our driver, led us to
a midnight black Sequoia four wheel drive SUV. He seemed a little
stressed out that he was driving us to Aspen. He loaded Cindy’s
suitcase into the back and ran around to her. She stood there
waiting for him to open the door. Unbelievable, it was like she
enjoyed making him her slave. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes
I wouldn’t have believed it. Somewhere between the Oakland airport
and Denver, she had turned into one of those self-absorbed bitches
you see on reality TV shows. You know the kind, they crash through
the front door making a grand entrance to a party and then start
making out with your best friend’s boyfriend. Or they throw a
massive rag session because their friend bought the same shirt they
bought and refused to take it back. Insignificant events in the
realm of what normal people call the
real
world. She obviously didn’t
exist in the same reality that normal people did.

I knew how to deal with people like
her. I have been dealing with them since I was eight years old and
entered the boarding school milieu. You have to let what they say
roll off your back; but stand up to them when you are backed into a
corner. You walked a fine line when you were surrounded by
self-absorbed, center-of-the-universe type people. Hang around them
too much, you’d find yourself acting like they did; avoid them and
you’d start wishing they would include you in their world; a very
fine line.

Nick drove us without saying a word. I
thought it was weird. I wasn’t the type of person to make small
talk, but the trip to Aspen was over four hours and I didn’t think
I could take sitting in a car without hearing him say something.
Not even a rumble from clearing his throat, nothing. So being who I
was, I took advantage of the actual gaps of time Cindy didn’t fill
with commentary about Chase, Aspen, or herself.

“
Do you live in Aspen?” It
was an innocent enough question. It wasn’t like I was asking him
out on a date or anything. His eyes went wide and his lips pulled
across his teeth. His shoulders tightened. You’d think I
just
hit
on him
in front of his girlfriend.
Gosh, I was
just making conversation that didn’t have anything to do with
Cindy.

“
No.”

“
Where do you live?” His
eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, squinting to tell me to
stop.

“
Denver. I live in Denver,”
he mumbled.

“
Excuse me, NICK—at what
point does my father pay you to talk? Wilson, he is here to get us
to Aspen and that is it. He isn’t being paid to tell you where he
is from.” She pushed her headphones in her ears and blared some
band with a high pitched prepubescent girl’s voice. She was going
to damage her hearing turning those things up that high. Geez, I
sounded just like Joanie telling me to turn the volume down on my
iPod. My response was always the same, OK, MOM.

I think something went down
between Cindy and Nick.
Yeah I said
it!
Someone had to. She was way too mean
and vindictive to him. He was way too submissive. Maybe he didn’t
fall all over her when she tried to hit on him. Or maybe they dated
and he did something to piss her off. My mind ran off with so many
stories, in minutes I had her pregnant with twins and he ran off
with the butler’s sixteen year old daughter Mindy. When the
relationship with Mindy went south, he came crawling back to Mr.
Browler and asked to be Cindy’s chauffeur. Self inflicted torture
for leaving her barefoot and pregnant.

“
How did you start working
for the Browler’s?” I wanted to know. I needed to debunk the whole
story line about Mindy. He looked back at me in the mirror then
shifted to check Cindy and back to me.

“
My mother and Cindy’s
father married nine years ago. Her father is paying me to pick you
up.” A smile spread across his face. He looked like the blocks of
humility shattered from his shoulders and his whole demeanor
shifted from burdened to liberated.

“
Why do you let her treat
you like dog shit?”

He shrugged his shoulders and leaned
his head to the side. His eyes shifted between Cindy and me. I
turned and noticed she had her eyes closed.

“
She hates that her father
married my mother.” He kept shifting his eyes from the road to
her.

“
That’s not your fault.
Least she could do was to see that you both are in the same boat,”
I preached.

“
I know. But that’s not
going to happen anytime soon. I’ve been in her family for over ten
years, and she still doesn’t see me as more than a gold digger’s
son.”

“
I’m sorry, that must
really suck.”

“
No, I lived with her
father and my mother while she was shipped off to a boarding
school. Now I’m a freshman at the University of
Colorado.”

“
She never talked about her
mom, is she still alive?”

“
Yeah, I guess she lives in
New York. Nobody ever sees her. She met a guy on the Internet and
split. Left Cindy and nobody’s heard from her since.” His eyes
grew, as he realized he might have shared too much information
about Cindy’s private life with me.

“
Don’t worry, I won’t rat
you out. Secrets’ safe with me.” I winked at him and let him go
back to driving.

“
Thanks, I appreciate
that.”

I closed my eyes as the
miles rolled by. I wanted to think about Wayne and Max. Visualize
them fighting each other over my affections. Instead, all I could
think about was Cindy. Damn it! She was asleep and she
still
monopolized my
mind. How she must’ve felt knowing her mother left her for a guy
off the Internet. Maybe that’s why she acted the way she did. It
was one thing to have someone take you away from your mother, but
to have her just up and abandon you—wow that was messed
up.

There was a small part of me that
believed my mother wanted me. Up until I turned twelve, I believed
she was doing everything in her power to get me back. After that I
gave up on believing. Cindy and I had more in common than I wanted
to admit. We both had really screwed up life donors.

The Sequoia swerved to the right
enough to wake me up from my cat-nap.

“
What the hell is going
on?” Cindy screamed with her earphones still plugged into the sides
of her head.

“
Nothin’,” Nick
mumbled.

“
It’s so obvious I’m not
talking about the space between your ears. I’m talking about your
crazy driving.” She pulled the earphones out and waited for his
explanation.

“
I need to take a break. Go
to the bathroom.” His face blushed, I saw him glance at me in the
mirror.

“
Fine, I could use the
break to stretch my legs. Next time, warn me.” She leaned back and
wrapped the earphone wires around her iPhone. She cursed him under
her breath.

He swerved onto the exit and found the
first gas station across the street. I was never one that liked to
pee in a gas station bathroom, but when you gotta go, you have to
deal with the filthy, oil stained fixtures and urine caked
toilets.

I followed Cindy to the restroom. I
looked at the door, just my luck; it was a male and female
restroom. They were the worst. You didn’t get a choice on which
toilet to use. If someone didn’t flush, you were S.O.L. The door
behind me swung open and there stood Nick. He used the other
restroom across the hall. I didn’t feel like following him, but I
had to go, so I slipped in behind him and into the restroom without
touching the door.

Fifteen minutes later we were back on
the highway and heading to beautiful Aspen. I wanted to forget
about Cindy’s screwed up relationship with her mother. I didn’t
have room in my head to sort the memories of Max, Wayne, and the
artificial memories I created of her mother slamming the door in
her face at eight years old. All I wanted to do was close my eyes
and see Wayne in the airport—put him into social situations I
projected in my mind; ski slopes and lodges with cozy fires filling
huge stone fireplaces, see myself laughing at his jokes as he
rubbed my sore feet.

Then just as Wayne was about to pull
off my other sock Max showed up in my fantasy. I didn’t even know
how he got there. He just appeared in front of us.

“
What is going on here?”
Max asked Wayne. Those familiar fluttering butterflies decided to
show up in my stomach.

“
I’m rubbing my
girlfriend’s feet,” Wayne told him. The butterflies burst from my
gut and flew up and out to the open air.

“
Who are you?” Wayne put my
foot down on the cushion of the chair and stood up. They faced each
other with barreled chests and eyes that stared each other down.
Wow, I’d never imagined two hot guys fighting over me
before.

“
I’m
her husband.”

My eyes flew open and my heart pounded
so hard it was about to come bursting from my chest. I sat up
pulling the seatbelt tight across my neck. I felt the pressure as
it rose in the back of my throat, the excitement of a daydream that
was too much.

“
What’s wrong? Are you OK?”
Cindy blurted out. I couldn’t answer her at first. My voice was
caught in the huge bubble of shock that wedged itself above my
larynx. There was no way I was going to tell her what had just
happened in my fantasy. I would have to come up with something
else. I wished Joanie was there. I scanned my mind for some lame
excuse for my jerking awake.

“
I was falling, in my
dream. Guess it’s the motion of the car.” G
ood cover up. Way to think fast.
I
took a deep breath and thought about what I had just witnessed in
my dream.

“
You need to drive better!”
She stared Nick down. I waited for her to pop him upside the head,
but she didn’t.

“
No, his driving is fine.”
The guilt for even mentioning his driving swelled in my
gut.

“
Sorry about that.” He
looked at me in the rearview mirror and flared his
nostrils.

“
Don’t worry, it wasn’t
your fault,” I answered his apology and looked away.

“
Of course it was!
Everything is his fault,” Cindy said.

She must hate him. It wasn’t his fault
that her father chose to marry his mom. The more I thought about
how wicked she was to him, the more I couldn’t take it. I was done
holding my tongue. This poor guy was taking the brunt of Cindy’s
anger at her father. Someone had to step in.

“
You need to give him a
break! You’ve been nothing but rude to him since we arrived in
Denver.”