Catch Me Page 4

  “Crazy, right?” Hendrix says beside me.

  I nod slowly in response and clear my throat. “I saw him today. The Harmon jet flew from San Fran to LA and landed while I was waiting.”

  I turn my head to face Hendrix when I hear him chuckle. “That must’ve been something. He was there with Gia, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hendrix’s lips twist and he sucks his teeth. “I don’t know what you saw in that guy.” He cuts me off before I get a chance to defend Shea. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a cool guy, he’s a great person … but he’s not someone I want my little sister going out with.”

  “I agree, which is why I’m not going out with him. He would’ve never settled to be with me anyway,” I say. It’s the truth, but it sucks to speak the words aloud.

  “He’s an idiot, Bee. He doesn’t know what he’s missing. Funny thing about that is, when he is finally ready to settle down, he’ll come back and you’ll be gone.”

  I stare at him for a long time, processing his words, knowing he’s completely right. What is it about no longer having somebody and seeing them happy without us that makes us want them more? It just shocks me to hear Hendrix say it because that’s pretty much where he’s headed. He’s completely pushing Sarah in that direction and he obviously knows it. Men can be such clueless assholes sometimes.

  “You’re one to talk,” I mutter, turning my head away.

  “Have you spoken to Mom lately?” he asks, jabbing me harder than I got him.

  My teeth clench at the question. I’ve never been one of those people that can’t take what she dishes out, but that one little question is a hell of a sucker punch.

  “Nope.”

  Hendrix exhales loudly. “Bee, I know she’s a bitch sometimes, but she’s still your mom.”

  I swallow, holding back the rude remarks that are dying to spill out of my mouth, and turn my face to look at him. “I know that, but for the first time in a long time I feel like I’m healthy. I’m not obsessing over my diet or what creams to use on my face or what shampoo makes my hair shinier. I’m not worried about not fitting into size two jeans. I’m finally coming around to accept that my ass is never going to be small enough to fit sample designer clothing, and I’m okay with that. I can’t talk to her because every time I do, she makes me feel like shit. She makes me feel worthless and fat and hideous, and I can’t go back to being the person that believed her.”

  By the time I finish my rant, the tears that have been pricking my eyes are flowing freely. My brother is silent as he listens to me, but the sure look on his face has crumbled. He slides over and wraps his arms around me, pulling my face to his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers against my hair.

  “It’s fine,” I reply, blinking rapidly to get rid of my tears. I hate that I let myself cry. I hate that I let her affect me this way even when she’s merely mentioned. I used to look back on what my life has been, the choices I’ve made and the losses I’ve dealt with, and blame myself. Now I blame her. Now I hate her. I hate her for being so cruel to me, my father for letting her, my brother for being too busy, God for forsaking me when I felt I needed him most, and myself for being weak and giving into the bullshit I make myself believe about it all.

  “We’re home,” Hendrix murmurs when the car pulls up to his luxurious building.

  Is this home? I want to ask him. I’ve never had a concrete meaning for the word. I’ve never had a place that I truly considered home because I’ve always felt like a burden in all of my parents’ homes. When we get upstairs and I put my purse down, I take a moment to assess his place. I’ve been here countless times, but it’s never struck me as a homey place. Looking around I see everything a home should have: furniture, artwork, a kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, but there’s something missing, specifically in this one. He doesn’t have Melody or Sarah here to greet him when he gets in from a long day at work. He comes home to this humongous space, kicks off his shoes and hangs out by himself most nights. I just don’t understand it. I walk around, picking up the picture frames he has laid out on his side table and hold one with an outline of a heart. The picture is of Melody’s first birthday. Sarah’s carrying Melody on her hip, Sarah’s blonde hair was cut short then, her green eyes are smiling as bright as her lips as she looks at Hendrix with the most adoring expression on her face. Hendrix is looking back at her with his arm wrapped around her shoulder, and Melody is holding her hands out to touch her Minnie Mouse cake. I can’t help but wonder: if your heart is in LA, how could your home be in Manhattan? And where is mine? I seem to have misplaced my heart so long ago and I don’t know where to even begin looking for it.

  The loud buzzing sound of my alarm clock stirs me out of the amazing dream I’m having. I groan loudly as I tap my hand on the nightstand in an effort to make it stop.

  “For the love of god, shut that thing up!” Nina mumbles beside me. She ended up staying over after our shopping trip turned into us going to a restaurant and her downing a bottle of wine by herself.

  I sit up and throw the covers off of me, pressing the off button as I make my way to the bathroom.

  “Gotta get ready for work,” I say over my shoulder as I shut the door behind me and begin to strip off my Snoopy pajamas.

  Hendrix told me that the dress code they go by is business casual, which can mean a lot of things. I didn’t want to risk it and look like the only idiot wearing flats, so I ended up buying a lot of skirts, matching frilly blouses and dress pumps. After dressing in a blue knee length skirt that hugs my hips and a white blouse with a navy blue collar, I step into a pair of navy patented pumps, finish my makeup and fluff up the ends of my wavy hair. I take a look in the mirror and nod, happy with what I did in thirty-five minutes. Nina is simultaneously pulling on the jeans she wore last night and checking her phone when I step out of the bathroom. She’s muttering something as she scrolls down her screen but stops when she looks up and sees me.

  “I told you those skirts would look good on you!” she says with a victorious smile.

  I smile back. “I like them.”

  “You look like sex, you know that, right?” she says.

  I laugh, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. “I didn’t realize sex had a look.”

  She nods, pursing her lips. “It does. You see something and you think: sex. That’s the look you got going with the way that skirt hugs your hips. Turn around, your ass probably looks amazing too.”

  I turn around exaggeratedly and shake my butt for her, which earns me a short laugh.

  She groans. “I hate you. I wish I had an ass like that.”

  “Like what? Full of cellulite?” I ask with a laugh.

  “Shut up. You don’t have cellulite. You make it sound like you have a cheese ass or something. It looks good as hell, Bee,” she says when I make a face.

  “Whatever. The grass is always greener on the other side and all that jazz. I would kill to look like you,” I respond.

  Nina has the perfect body, in my eyes. She’s thin with slight curves, she doesn’t have much of a butt, but it’s shapely, and her boobs are a perfect C cup. Basically, she looks good in everything. My mother always said I should work out harder so that I could have a body like Nina’s. I tried hard to do that for a while, until it took a toll on me. It’s exhausting to watch what you eat and throw up what you know you shouldn’t but couldn’t help eating anyway.

  “You’re so blind, Bee. I love you, but you can’t possibly look in the mirror and not be happy with what you see. You have beautiful curves, and you need to embrace that shit and own it. Our bodies aren’t all that different. I just have the boobs and you have the butt. We’re backwards.” She walks to the bathroom and turns around when she’s standing in the threshold. “You should see the way people look at you when you walk by them. Pay attention. And consider yourself lucky. At least you can get a boob job. Do you know you can’t sit down for weeks if you get ass implants? Trust me, I Googled that shit.”

  I
laugh and grab my purse on my way out of my room. I walk down the stairs and round the corner to the kitchen, pausing right before I get there when I hear my brother talking on the phone. His back is facing me, but I know he heard my loud heels clicking on the hardwood floor. I don’t want to purposely eavesdrop, but from the tone of his voice I know he’s speaking to my mother, and I’m curious about their conversation.

  “Yep. She’ll do great. I know. All right, Mom, I’ll talk to you later. Sure, I’ll tell her,” Hendrix says, turning around to face me as he hangs up. “Morning. Mom said to wish you good luck at work.”

  “Awesome,” I reply shortly.

  He exhales and runs his fingers through his wavy hair but doesn’t make any further comments on the topic as he hands me a coffee mug. “Did Nina sleep here? I heard you guys get in pretty late,” he says after a while.

  “Yeah, she decided she wanted to close down the little bar we went to in The Village,” I murmur distractedly as I sort through the cereal boxes in his pantry.

  “Hmm. Were you drinking?” he asks as nonchalantly as he can, but the edge in his voice makes me pause on the box of Fruit Loops and turn to face him. His caramel eyes are looking at me with both questions and concern and I wish he had no reason to do either.

  “No, Hen,” I respond, turning around to pull out the box of Frosted Flakes. “I don’t usually drink. But I can, you know? Drinking has never really been an issue for me.” It’s what I do after I’ve had the countless amount of drinks.

  “Yeah, but still. I’ve heard that any kind of addict is an addict,” he says, cringing as soon as the last word leaves his mouth.

  “It’s okay. We can talk about it,” I assure him. “And I’m not really an addict, Hen. I was going through a lot of shit.”

  “Still, Brooklyn …”

  “Hendrix. I’m not an addict.”

  “You went to rehab. You go to meetings a couple of times a year. You had a sponsor,” he says quickly, before I can cut him off.

  “I went to rehab because I was scared shitless. I go to meetings because I want to help others that may be in the same shoes I was in, and they’re not all meetings for addicts, you know that. And I had a sponsor because she and I understood each other and she helped me deal with a lot of my emotions,” I say calmly, getting the milk out of the fridge and sitting down to eat my breakfast as I explain myself.

  “You take medication,” he says, sitting on the barstool in front of me.

  “I haven’t in a year and that was for my depression, not for my supposed addiction. What the hell, Hendrix?”

  He’s starting to irritate the shit out of me. I’m trying to keep my cool, but it’s hard when I’m being given the third degree this early in the morning on a day that I’m already nervous about as it is. A nagging feeling tells me this has something to do with his conversation with my mother, but if I ask him and he confirms that, I will go ape shit, so I would rather not know.

  “Sorry. Sorry. I just worry, and for some reason it’s easier to worry about you when you’re on the other side of the country. I can pretend that you’re just sitting at home working on microphone designs every night and not out with friends at bars and stuff,” he says with a long exhale, running his hand over his hair again.

  “It’s fine. It’s just … it’s really early for this. I’m already freaking out about work and doing a good job and hoping people like me—not that it matters because either way I’ll be stuck there and now everyone is gonna think I’m only there because I’m your sister and I get everything handed to me on a silver platter—and it sucks because this isn’t even anything I wanted to do. I’ve never done this openly and for real, and now that I am, I’m thinking I might suck at it or maybe I’ve lost my touch and can’t find anybody good. I’m going to end up letting everybody down and Daddy’s going to think I suck and tell Mom and she’s gonna rub it in my face.”

  My words are pouring out of me quickly and my heart is hammering just as fast. In this moment I feel absolutely lost and afraid, and not for the first time I wonder what the hell I let my father talk me into. Hendrix’s face falls and he shakes his head slowly, standing up and walking around the table to hug me to his side.

  “You’re going to be fine, Bee. You’re going to be more than fine. And let people think whatever they want to think. Everyone thinks I’m the CCO because I’m Dad’s kid, and though that may be true, I also worked my ass off in school and have been working my ass off for years to get to where I am. So fuck ‘em, let ‘em say whatever they wanna say.”

  I nod and take a deep breath. “Thanks.”

  Nina joins us, wearing one of the T-shirts I bought yesterday. Her dark hair is pulled into a high ponytail and she’s barefoot, lazily swinging the black stilettos she wore last night in her left hand.

  “What’s up, bitches?” she greets. “You got coffee? Or are hens not domesticated?”

  Hendrix grumbles something that sounds like “fucking moron” under his breath as he reaches in the cabinet to get her a mug.

  “Sweeeet,” Nina says, placing her mug on the table and serving herself coffee. “I like this mug, you asshole.”

  I laugh, covering my mouth with both hands to keep the cereal from sputtering out of my mouth when I read the mug he handed her: I am surrounded by fucking idiots.

  “You can thank Bee, she gave it to me for Christmas,” Hendrix says.

  Nina rolls her big brown eyes at us. “Why do I hang out with you? You guys are so fucking weird.”

  “Because you have no friends,” Hendrix comments.

  “Because you love us,” I say at the same time.

  Hendrix makes a face. “That’s not corny,” he says, looking at me.

  I shrug and continue eating while they talk about Nina’s plays and the lack of clothing in the one she invited him to watch. I tune them out as I begin to worry about the day and how it’ll be to work with my brother every day. I make mental notes of things I have to do as soon as I get a break. Call Allie and ask her about the two pending microphones. Figure out what wholesaler we can get the earphones from. Find out who can put us in contact with a supplier for recording studios to see if bedazzled earphones are even a good option for us. I know I need to simmer down so I don’t stress myself out more than I am, but it’s so hard when I know I have things to do.

  “You’ll have to go to my next one, Hen,” Nina says. “It’s not nude. It’s actually a rockstar themed musical. You’d love it.”

  “Cool. I’ll go to that. Has Uncle Rob gone at all lately?” I ask, chiming into their conversation.

  “Sometimes. He’s been busy helping Victor set up his new store, so he hasn’t been by in a couple of months,” Nina explains as she slips her shoes on. “All right guys, have a good day at work. Bee, call me later and tell me how it went.”

  Hendrix and I get our stuff and leave shortly after Nina does, and he explains to me that he always tries to leave at the same time because even though the building is only ten blocks away, it’s taken him over an hour to get there sometimes. I’ve been to New York countless times, but I’ve never had to worry about how long it takes to get somewhere in the mornings, so this bit of information is shocking. My eyes are glued to the sidewalk where hundreds of people are walking and talking on their phones and texting. It amazes me that only a handful of them actually speak to each other and not the device in their hand. Not that I’m one to talk because I’m always on my phone, but it kind of makes me wonder how many landmarks and things are unappreciated by the people who walk past them daily.

  My phone vibrates in my lap, which makes me laugh quietly, and I see an email from Allie with images of the microphones she’s assembled. I practically squeal at the sight of them. Every time I see my little logo on a new one, the happiness in my heart blooms a little more. It’s a little bee with a crown on it, simple but elegant, and more importantly it’s very personal to me. It’s the little image that my best friend Ryan used to draw for me whenever we exchanged note
s in the hallways in school. All of the little notes had that little bee on them. It’s the same little bee I have tattooed on my back in honor of him. Having it displayed on our line of microphones doesn’t take the pain of him being gone away, but it definitely makes me feel like I’m keeping his memory alive.

  I reply back to Allie and hit send right as we’re pulling up to the Harmon Records building. Waiting for Marcus to open the door for me, I check my face in my compact mirror one last time, making sure that I don’t embarrass myself by having food between my teeth or something. I snap it shut just as my door is being opened and slide out, Hendrix following closely behind.

  “Welcome to your new home away from home,” Hendrix says, draping his arm over my shoulder.

  “Yep. God, I should’ve taken a shot of something before coming here,” I say, shaking my head when I feel Hendrix stiffen beside me.

  “Geez, Hen, it was a joke and please don’t make me repeat my whole spiel again,” I counter.

  “All right, I’ll drop it,” he mutters ushering me toward the elevators. “I’ll give you the tour now since we’re on our way up anyway. Not much has changed since you last came, but we’ve added a couple of wings that I know you haven’t seen since, well, when you come you usually go straight to my office and right back out.”

  We move toward the back, making space for the people stepping into the elevator and ride up to the forty-third floor in silence, only listening to the chatter around us. A couple of men and women say hi to Hendrix as they spot him, but other than that, we remain uninterrupted. Most people get off as we ascend, leaving only a handful of Harmon employees to continue the ride with us. When the elevator is more comfortable, we move away from each other, and Hendrix starts talking to one of the guys standing beside us. The guy is in his early twenties, I think, and keeps eyeing me as he talks to my brother. I offer him a small smile as I stand there awkwardly, waiting for my brother to either stop talking or introduce us. Thankfully, we make it to the forty-second floor and Hendrix tells “Bradley” that he’ll “catch him later” as he pulls me out of the elevator, which catches me off guard since this isn’t our stop.