Free Brando 2 by J.D. Hawkins Page A

need. Everything I don’t
deserve, but somehow lucked myself into.
    “I
could go for Chinese,”
Haley
says, swiping a lock of hair from her face.
    “Chinese
it is, then.”
    “Or
maybe Italian.”
    “Haven’t
you had enough Italian?”
I
grin, with dumb glee.
    Haley
rolls her eyes. “Do
you have kids, Brando?”
    “Hell
no!” I
say, almost jumping back at the weird heaviness of the question.
    “Then
don’t
make dad jokes,”
Haley
says with a sweet smile.
    I
laugh. My normal laugh, which is big, long, and can be heard from
across the street. Which is why it happens.
    “Over
there!”
    “Shit!
That’s
her!”
    “Haley!”
    “Haley!”
    “Haley!”
    The
paparazzi are on us in seconds, like jackals with SLRs. Yapping and
filling the night sky with flashes from their peeping-tom lenses.
There are more than a dozen of them, bombarding Haley with random
shouts and questions. One of the bodyguards moves toward the street,
pushing several of them with him, while the other two form a barrier
between the photographers and us.
    We
shove through, guided by the bodyguards like the world’s
clumsiest football play. I cover Haley with my coat like a smuggled
package, ruining multiple gossip editors’
morning
stories in the process. We make it to the side of the road, where a
yellow cab is already waiting for us.
    I’m
about to shove Haley into the cab, dive in after her, and start
thinking about food, when she stops and pulls away from me. That’s
how quickly it happens. That’s
how fast my happiness disappears. A new record.
    “What
did you say?”
Haley
shouts, as she squeezes between the bodyguards to get a full view of
the reporters.
    “Rex
Bentley!”
comes
the reply from multiple scumbags at once. “Are
you really Rex Bentley’s
daughter?”
    “Haley!”
I
shout, grabbing her arm and holding the cab door open with the other.
“Come
on!”
    Haley
freezes, brings a hand to her head, and looks down wildly, trying to
find a straight thought in the maelstrom of noise and attention. The
bodyguards go full linebacker, sweeping the reporters away with giant
arms in order to buy us some space.
    “You’re
Rex Bentley’s
daughter! What’s
your real name? Why did you keep this a secret? Haley!”
    When
Haley raises her head again she looks at me. She doesn’t
need to say a word. Her tight lips, her cold eyes, her clenched jaw
says it all.
    “Haley,
wait,” I
say, sounding more desperate than the reporters, “No.
Don’t…I
didn’t
do this. This isn’t
me. I swear.”
    She
shoves me aside and slides into the taxi, her hand on the door. When
she speaks it’s
a low hiss, a coiled ball of disappointment and resentment that she
seems to pull from the pit of her stomach.
    “You
were the only one I told. The only one I trusted.”
    “Haley,
wait! Please! I didn’t—”
    “Fuck
you, Brando,” she
sneers through the streak of tears, as she slams the door of the cab
closed. It speeds away with the reporters following desperately
behind for a while.
    “Do
you need a cab, boss?”
one
of the bodyguards asks.
    “Yeah.
Find one that’ll
run me over.”

 

Chapter 12
     
    Haley
     
    I
cried all the way through the six hour flight to San Francisco. I
cried when I spoke to the lady at the car rental agency. I cried for
most of the 35. By the time I pull up to my mother’s
sloped, brick house on a hill in Santa Cruz, I think I’m
all cried out. But when she comes out the door and screams “Sweetie!”
I
start bawling harder than I have since I lost my first talent show at
eleven years old.
    She
carries me inside, through the seventies décor
and the antique furniture she never gave away, past the stacks of
records and the acoustic guitars she hardly uses anymore but still
loves, into the living room with the thick carpet and the smell of
oak that I never notice until I’ve
been away a while. She places me on the velour couch, drapes a
hand-crocheted afghan around my shoulders, and sits beside