52 Reasons to Hate My Father Page 2

  I hold her tightly and coo into her tall, butterfly-shaped ears, rubbing my nose in the soft fur of her neck. I rescued Holly from a busted puppy mill three years ago. She was a mess when I first got her, refusing to come anywhere near me for almost six months. But now we’re inseparable. And despite what you might see or read in the tabloids, she’s not just another fashion accessory for me. She’s my world. My lifeline.

  In fact, simply having her here with me now instantly shifts my mood. It’s amazing how she’s able to do that. People can be so annoying sometimes. With all their stupid opinions and hidden agendas. But dogs? Dogs don’t have any agendas. They’re as honest and open and devoted as you can get. And that’s why they’ll always cheer you up. They’ll always love you. No matter how badly you screw up. No matter where you happen to crash your Mercedes convertible.

  Thankfully, I manage to find a bottle of ibuprofen in my train case. I shake a handful into my palm and down them with a swig of the Italian mineral water that’s sitting on the coffee table, grimacing at the aftertaste.

  “Oh, gross!” I gag. “I can’t believe my father drinks this crap.” Without even turning around, I yell out to no one in particular, “Can someone bring me some Voss, please?”

  The water arrives less than a minute later, as if there’s a Voss vending machine stashed in the shower stall or something. I gulp it down eagerly and then pour some into the bottle’s oversize cylindrical cap and offer it to Holly.

  Bruce exits the master bedroom where he was making a call and announces to everyone that the Captain has landed and is boarding the chopper now. He’ll be here in twenty minutes.

  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Captain is my father. He insists everyone use these stupid code names for everything. The Nest is our main house, the Landing Pad is this place, the Apple Core is our Park Avenue town house in Manhattan, and Bruce, my father’s go-to man for practically everything, is known simply as the Lieutenant. There’s a whole list somewhere. It’s updated monthly and sent out by e-mail. I haven’t seen one for years though. Ever since I discovered how to use my spam filter.

  As people start buzzing around the room in preparation for the Captain’s grand entrance, I execute some prep work of my own. After downing the remainder of the water, I fire off a text message to Jia and T, my two best friends in the whole world, and implore them to get here ASAP for moral support. Then I head into the bathroom to check my face.

  My reflection actually frightens me to the point where I swear I’m having one of those body-swapping experiences that you see in the movies. I don’t even look like myself. My mascara is smudged to oblivion, my hair is flattened against one side of my head, and my eyes are the color of pinot noir, with more bags under them than the bellhop wheeled in on his cart ten minutes ago.

  I turn on the faucet, dip my hand under the tap, and carefully rub my fingertip from my eyelashes to my cheekbone, smearing my mascara even more so that it now runs down my face in long tear-like streaks.

  I smile at my handiwork.

  Perfect.

  Then I switch off the light, shuffle back into the living room, and sink into my chaise longue to await my father’s arrival.

  COME AND GONE

  Jia and T are the first to arrive. They must have been close by when they received my text. Bruce watches reproachfully as they sashay through the door, gasp dramatically upon seeing my disheveled state, and dash over to me, spewing rapid words of sympathy and disbelief like two overeager fountains. He catches my eye and gives me a look of disdain but I promptly ignore it, turning my attention back to my real support team.

  “Oh my God, Lex,” Jia exclaims, kneeling on the floor next to the chaise. “We heard the news on Twitter on the way home from the club. We couldn’t believe it!”

  “We told Klein to turn the car around straightaway!” T explains breathlessly in her flawless Queen’s English accent.

  Jia’s dark brown eyes glisten with tears before her head collapses against my stomach. “We thought you were dead!”

  With a laugh, I reach out and touch a spirally lock of her short caramel-colored hair. “I’m fine, you guys. Thanks for coming.”

  Jia, T, and I have been best friends since the first year of prep school. “The troublesome trio,” as the teachers quickly came to call us. Jia is the daughter of basketball legend Devin Jones, who used to play for the Lakers and now owns like a hundred car dealerships, movie theaters, and T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants. Not that she’d ever be caught eating at one.

  T’s mom used to be a member of this really famous British girl band that had a bunch of platinum albums in the early nineties. Her dad was a guitar player who toured with them but T hardly sees him anymore because when the band broke up and T’s mom quickly blew through all her album royalties, she ended up moving from London to LA to marry the president of this huge software corporation and she brought T with her. Now T lives in Malibu in this crazy, environmentally conscious Smart Home with a refrigerator that talks to you when you run out of milk and a thermostat that automatically adjusts to your body temperature.

  “Oh my God,” Jia says, lifting her head back up. The bronzer on her smooth mocha skin shimmers under the track lighting of the hotel suite. “You’ll never guess what Mendi did after you left.”

  “Never guess.” T confirms with a nod of her head.

  “Wait,” I say, biting my lip in anticipation. “Let me try. Give me a hint.”

  But before they can answer, Bruce clears his throat so loudly and obnoxiously you would think he had an entire chicken wing wedged in there. The girls look up at him expectantly while I just roll my eyes and groan. “What is it, Bruce?”

  I can see his left cheek twitching. It means he’s gnawing on the inside of his mouth again. He does that when he’s attempting to hold something back. My guess is it’s probably another outburst.

  He takes a deep breath and then in an even, yet tense voice says, “While we’re all grateful for Jia and Tessa’s—”

  “T.” She’s quick to correct him.

  The twitching begins again but after a few seconds, it’s dispelled by a tight-lipped smile in her direction. “Jia and T ’s support,” he amends. “Given the imminence of your father’s arrival, I suggest they wait downstairs in the lobby.”

  The girls start to rise, but I grab hold of Jia’s arm and yank her back down. “No!” I cry, narrowing my eyes at Bruce. “These are my friends—my family,” I add, knowing how much it’ll piss him off. “They stay.”

  “It’s all right, love,” T soothes, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. “You should have some alone time with your dad.”

  “Ha!” I let out an indignant snort and gesture to the roomful of people. “Yeah. Me, my father, and all of our closest friends. We’re one big happy family.”

  But T just offers me a meager smile in response as she lets my hand drop with a thud against the side of the chaise. “We’ll be right downstairs,” she says.

  I watch helplessly as my friends—my life rafts—sail out the door, before turning my angry glare back on Bruce. I’m ready to really let him have it this time but unfortunately I’m not given the opportunity. The entire room is suddenly silenced by the sound of the door opening again.

  I don’t need to pull myself up to know that it’s my father who has just walked into the room. I can see it on the faces of his doting employees. I can hear it in the unmistakable sound of his imposing footsteps. In the way the door clicks obediently closed behind him. In the reverent silence that follows. After seventeen years of living with Richard Larrabee as a father, you learn to recognize the sound of his entrance. And of his exit.

  All activity flutters to a halt. Phone conversations are put on hold. Pens stop scratching against paper. Deft fingers immobilize atop keyboards. Every pair of eyes is on the man who walked through the door. Who now stands tall and ominous behind my chaise longue. I can hear him breathing. Feel his shadow fall across my face. I quietly suck in a breath and wait.<
br />
  “What’s the situation?” he asks Bruce, stepping past my makeshift bed and stalking through the living room of the suite.

  Bruce moves in step with him as if to loyally accompany him the ten lousy steps it takes to get to the dining room. “It’s being handled,” he assures him. “The store owner will not press charges. I have a judge on call who is willing to be lenient in the DUI sentencing. No jail time. Just a fine.”

  “Good. And the press?”

  “Caroline is handling the press.” Bruce nods to the Frenchwoman who escorted me here in the limo, and she dutifully rises from her chair at the table, brandishing a phone in either hand as if to provide visual proof as to exactly how busy she’s been.

  “I’ve issued an official statement but I think a press conference with you in the morning would be a prudent move at this point.”

  “Fine.” My father agrees with a slight wave of his hand, indicating that Caroline’s part in this conversation is over. She returns to her seat.

  Bruce continues to ramble as my father paces back and forth along the length of the dining room table, every so often supplying succinct one- or two-word decrees when Bruce comes to the end of a sentence that warrants instruction.

  Holly wedges herself between my inclined body and the back of the chaise and starts to tremble, her ears pinned back in fear. In the three years I’ve had her, she’s never taken a particular liking to my father and I don’t blame her. Holly has always been an excellent judge of character.

  I scratch the back of her neck and whisper soothing words.

  “What’s the total?” I hear my father demand after Bruce has finished his laundry list of damages.

  Bruce takes a pen out of his suit jacket pocket, scribbles something on a hotel notepad, then rips off the top sheet and hands it to my father.

  I watch his face carefully for a reaction but of course there’s none. It’s foolish of me to expect otherwise. To expect to see something magically appear where there’s never been anything.

  That’s how my father got to be who he is. How Larrabee Media got to be the most successful media corporation in the world. Because of his uncanny ability to remain completely impassive. Completely detached.

  Even in the face of disaster.

  “Fine,” he says, allowing one authoritative nod. “Make it happen.”

  He turns to the remaining eager faces that hover around the table awaiting their next directive like soldiers in a war zone.

  “Good work, everyone,” he declares in a solid, unwavering tone. “Thanks for your diligence in this … unfortunate matter. I’ll make sure you’re well compensated for your extra efforts.”

  Then he turns to me, acknowledging my existence for the first time since he entered the room. Without even bothering to sit up, I let my gaze drift toward him. Our eyes connect but nothing is exchanged. No information communicated. No emotions bartered. At least when Bruce shoots me one of his looks, I know what he’s thinking. My father’s eyes are empty. Void of all feeling.

  Indifferent.

  Once again, I’m not really sure why I expected anything else.

  In one swift motion, his gaze breaks from mine, leaving me with the distinct sensation of falling. Like the inevitable snap of a single piece of fishing line that’s been holding me suspended two hundred feet above the ground.

  “I’ll be at the Lighthouse if anyone needs me,” he announces as he stalks back through the living room. His large frame disappears behind the chaise longue and I hear the all-too-familiar sound of a door opening and closing.

  Then the flurry of activity resumes as everyone goes back to work.

  COST ANALYSIS

  I don’t text Jia and T right away to tell them that the coast is clear. They’ll see my father marching through the hotel lobby soon enough. Instead, I shuffle over to the dining room table and, amid the commotion of phone calls, e-mails, and frenetic conversations, I manage to discreetly slip the small hotel notepad off the table and carry it, concealed against my thigh, into the bedroom.

  “I’m going to sleep,” I say in a voice soft enough that no one will hear, and then close the double doors behind me.

  I lift Holly onto the fluffy, white king-size bed and she quickly goes to work pawing at the duvet, arranging it to her liking, before plopping down and curling into a perfect little doughnut of fur. She’s relaxed now that he’s gone.

  I wish I was that resilient.

  I perch on the edge of the bed and remove a pencil from the nightstand drawer. Then I lightly brush the tip back and forth over the blank pad, watching the indentation left behind from the last note magically reveal itself through the zigzag of graphite scribbles.

  I squint my eyes and hold the pad up to the dim light of the bedside lamp until I can make out Bruce’s messy handwriting.

  The only thing that’s written is a number.

  1.7

  The cost of my most recent mistake. The financial burden my father will have to bear to make it all go away. To keep the family name from being marred by the muddy footprints that I manage to leave behind wherever I go.

  There’s no doubt the estimate is in millions. When you deal in the kind of numbers my father does, the scale is implied. Writing it out would only mean superfluous zeros. My father doesn’t deal in hundreds or thousands. It’s simply not worth his time.

  I toss the notepad aside and fall back against the pillows. This night has become a total disaster. First Mendi, then the crash and the press, and now this.

  I allow myself thirty seconds of tears—no more—before quickly pulling myself together in preparation for my friends’ return. Fortunately, my makeup is already smeared so they can’t tell I’ve been crying when they burst into the room and collapse on the bed next to me.

  As I listen to them go back and forth, taking turns asking questions and offering condolences, I can feel my eyelids start to get heavy. The events of the evening are starting to take their toll and the adrenaline is wearing off. Suddenly the only thing I can think about is sleep.

  T must notice me dozing because she cuts herself off midsentence and says, “Oh, Lex, I’m so sorry. You must be totally knackered. We’ll be sure to stay so you don’t have to be alone.”

  I smile through my haze. “You don’ haf to do that,” I garble. “I’m jus’ fine. Go home … call you when I wake up.”

  “And we’ll go shopping,” Jia adds.

  I nod dazedly. “Yes. Shopping. Equals good.”

  I can hear them both giggle as T helps me under the covers and pulls them up to my chin, kissing me lightly on the forehead. “Four more days,” she reminds me as she gently touches my cheek. “Four more days and this will all be over, right?”

  “Righ’,” I say in a ragged voice.

  The door closes softly behind them and I roll onto my side and pull Holly into the crook of my arm, burying my face in her silky fur. She doesn’t protest.

  I can still hear the din of voices outside the bedroom door but they’re drowned out by the sound of T’s words echoing in my ears.

  Four more days.

  Four more days and I can escape this place.

  With that thought running through my mind, I manage to drift off to sleep with a smile on my face.

  KEEPING UP WITH THE LARRABEES

  I wake to the sound of my father’s voice. At first I’m far too groggy to fully comprehend the situation and for a moment I think that he’s actually here. In the bedroom of the suite. Talking directly to me. The thought jolts me awake and I sit upright in bed, frightening Holly, who darts up from beneath the covers where she’s buried herself somewhere during the abbreviated night.

  Then I see my father on TV, addressing a roomful of cameras and inquiring members of the press, and I sink back down and relax.

  I glance at the clock on the nightstand. It’s eleven in the morning. It certainly didn’t take Caroline long to organize that press conference she suggested last night. Not that I’m surprised. Things tend to move at
a “right now” pace whenever my father is concerned.

  I’m not sure who turned on the TV, but the remote is nowhere to be seen and I’m far too lazy to get out of bed to shut it off so I simply close my eyes and try to zone out the sound. This proves difficult as my father has a presence that’s nearly impossible to ignore.

  “I am deeply saddened and distressed about last night’s incident involving my beloved daughter, Lexington,” he is saying. “It was a very scary moment for me and all the members of the Larrabee family and we are extremely grateful that she has survived it unharmed. Please be assured that Lexington is fine, albeit a bit shaken up and incredibly remorseful about her actions. I flew in from New York last night to spend time with her and comfort her through this difficult time. She is currently recuperating and was therefore unable to join me this morning but she asked me to communicate her deepest and most sincere apologies to the kind owners of the convenience store that was damaged during the accident. As you know, Lexington is my only daughter. She is extremely important to me and I love her very much. I assure you that her well-being is my number-one priority at this point and I am taking it upon myself, personally, to make sure she gets the help and guidance she needs to make a full recovery and to come out of this experience a healthier and more grounded person. Thank you.”

  My hand grapples for something—anything!—on the nightstand. I clutch my fingers around the first thing I come in contact with—my cell phone—and chuck it as hard as I can at the screen. It manages to make contact with the mute button before falling to the floor with a horrible cracking sound.

  The silence is beautiful but, unfortunately, short-lived. The door creaks open a few seconds later and a head pops in. It’s not someone I recognize, which means the night shift has been replaced by a new crew of lackeys.

  “Is everything okay?” the woman asks, looking uneasily from me to the busted cell phone on the floor.