Chapter Sixteen. Sam
chapter sixteen
SAM
My mom doesn’t know I’m here. It’s a hell of a thought to have at my age, but I can’t shake it from the moment we park the car.
It feels like when I was a kid and my mom would let me race to the next crosswalk the way we do now with Ben.
She’s so short that sometimes it was hard to spot her when I turned around and I’d think, I went too far.
Only this time when I turn, Mackenzie’s there, matching pace on the sidewalk next to me. Eyes steady and waiting. Her lips cut into a conspiratorial kind of smirk that calms my nerves.
Or at least it does until we turn the corner on a sunny, crowded Boston street and nearly barrel into the last person I’m expecting to see.
“Rocket?” Mackenzie exclaims.
Rocket blinks at the two of us in our sunglasses and baseball caps. “Holy shit! What are you two doing here?”
“Working on the album,” Mackenzie says without missing a beat. I stand dumbfounded as she pulls Rocket in for a hug. “What are you doing here?”
Rocket’s eyes track down the street and then back to us. I pat him on the back and he flinches. He’s jumpy. Or maybe it’s me.
“Visiting my folks,” says Rocket. “Plus, an open mic down the street tonight. You should totally come.”
“We’ll be out of here by then, but knock ’em dead,” says Mackenzie.
Rocket nods, then disappears down the street so fast that we might have hallucinated him. Mackenzie looks just as bewildered as I am, blinking at the spot where Rocket just disappeared.
“Well,” I say, “it’s official. This might be the weirdest day of my life.”
“No kidding,” says Mackenzie.
She puts the address to the bar in her phone and leads the way. My eyes graze past the little storefronts as I follow Mackenzie through the brick buildings of Newbury Street like a beacon in a storm. I want to tell her how grateful I am, but the words are stuck in my throat.
Mackenzie knocks her shoulder into mine. “You good?”
Only then do I realize we’ve come to a gradual stop.
“I’m something,” I murmur.
I’m half expecting her to offer to call it off. To pack up the car and head out like this whole trip was a blip. But she doesn’t have to offer—we both already know she’d do it, no questions asked.
“I’ll be down the block,” she says instead, then pulls me into a firm, grounding hug. She lingers, saying the next words right into my ear. “Just remember. He’s lucky to get to know you. You’re a good man.”
I let myself into the bar in a daze. It’s old but dignified, the kind of place that has been here a lot longer than I have. According to Caspar, who retired in Boston a few years back, this is the one place in the city he can trust to be “discreet.”
“I’m here for a reservation under ‘C.’”
The hostess’s expression stays entirely serene. “Of course,” she says. “Right this way.”
I’m led past the dark, wooden interiors of the bar to a small back room. There are a few high-top tables and only a bit of sun illuminating the dark wood from high windows, and the place smells like old tobacco smoke and leather.
“I’ll lead him back when he arrives,” says the hostess.
I settle on a stool. A minute passes, and then another. I keep my eye on the door, trying to calm the embarrassing pounding in my heart. I’ve had too much experience with making first impressions to get worked up about one now.
But this isn’t just my dad’s first impression of me. It’s his first impression of three decades of me. Everything I’ve made out of my life, without him in it.
The hostess comes back after a few minutes and tells me he’s been held up. I pull my phone out. No messages. Why tell the hostess and not just text?
Mackenzie’s kept me calm all day, but now the nerves I’ve been ignoring are crawling under my skin.
A half hour passes. Then an hour. The hostess asks for the fourth time if I want anything to drink while I wait.
God only knows how much time passes before the door opens and I turn, exasperated, only to see the man himself.
Caspar Quentin is every bit as much “larger than life” in person as he is on a stage.
There’s the pirate-like swagger as he walks into the room.
The distinctively scruffy hair, now gone a pepper gray.
The metallic studs in his ears and cuffs around his wrist, the ripped denim jacket, the steel-toed boots.
The broad, rubber band smile against his piercing eyes that I realize, in that instant, are the exact shade of hazel as mine.
“Sorry about the wait, kiddo. Had a group of fans recognize me out front and it was pandemonium.” He jerks his thumb back at the hostess. “Glad Bella here could run interference.”
Bella nods, happy and flushed. “The usual?” she asks.
“Yeah. One for me and one for the rug rat,” he says to me, with a quick, mischievous wink.
I bite down my unease, knowing how many times I’ve made that same wink myself.
Caspar walks over to me, grabbing the back of the stool next to me with one hand and easing onto it like it’s a rodeo horse. He lets out a satisfied sigh, then puts a hand on my shoulder, giving me a long look as if to drink me in.
It feels oddly like a performance. Like he rehearsed this in his head the same way he must rehearse spoken bits between songs onstage.
“Sam,” he declares.
I raise my brows, swallowing down the sudden urge to laugh at him. “Caspar,” I say back.
Bella is already back with two beers. He waves without even looking in her direction, then says to me, “But why am I apologizing? You know all about the pitfalls of fame, so I hear. Apple didn’t fall far from the tree!”
I take a sip of my beer, trying to stave off the flat disappointment. It’s only been a minute. But I have an uneasy feeling that it will only go downhill from here.
“Guess not,” I manage.
He ribs me so hard that I slosh beer on the table. “Didn’t you ever wonder where you got it from?”
He takes a long swig of his drink, watching me out of the corner of his eye.
“My mom sings,” I remind him coolly.
He smiles with fewer teeth when he sets the glass back down. “So she does,” he says, and then straightens up. “How is that gem of a gal?”
“She’s great,” I say. No thanks to you , some petty part of me wants to add.
But that isn’t entirely true. After my mom told me about Caspar, she explained that he sent checks when I was growing up.
She used a portion of the money to send me to a nice school in Manhattan and to pay for my music classes, but other than that she put every cent of it away for me, determined to raise me on her own terms.
I made plenty of money with music right out of high school, so she didn’t mention it until I knew about Caspar. I tried to make her take the money when I found out. She compromised, and put it in Ben’s name. As far as I know, Caspar’s never asked.
“Good to hear it, good to hear it,” says Caspar.
We both go quiet, sipping our beers and not looking at each other. I have my second childish thought of the day: I just want to go home.
Caspar claps his hands together, the sound echoing like a gunshot through the empty room. “So—what do you want to know about me?”
A few minutes ago, everything. But already most of my thoughts are on the door.
“Because I was thinking—we wrap up this quick drink here, go hang with some of my buddies at a spot downtown. You’ll love ’em.”
He starts listing off names of a few other rock stars—all men around his age, most I’ve already met myself—watching for my reaction. My disappointment gives way to a faint revulsion.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got a cocky streak. But I hope to god I’ve never sounded like this much of an ass, and that I never will.
“What I want to know is…”
I force myself to look at him. At my same eyes. At my same unaffected posture. The resemblance is so uncanny that I wonder how I never noticed, with all the times I’ve seen him on-screen.
“Why now?” I ask. “I mean, what made you finally get in touch?”
Caspar turns his gaze from me to his beer, but not fast enough for me to miss it—the quick shift in his eyes. A window to something sharp and deep that shuts as fast as it opens.
“Well,” he says gruffly, and then shrugs. When he finally does turn to me, it’s with a self-assured smile that doesn’t reach the edges of his lips.
“I’m not—sick or bankrupt or some shit like that,” he says. “I’ve just reached a point where I’m wondering what the point of it all is, you know? This fame stuff. It is what it is. But I want something else. Something more.”
He’s looking at me expectantly, like he’s waiting for me to put him at ease. But I’ve got nothing. I wasn’t supposed to be the one who did that here. He’s the—parent, for lack of a better word.
“You know what I mean,” he says, shrugging again. “It’s a weird, lonely road we chose. You lose a lot of so-called friends along the way.”
He raises his mostly empty glass to “cheers” me. I don’t touch my own.
“I’ve kept all the people I love close,” I say.
There’s a cutting edge in Caspar’s eye then. “Not always, I hear.”
The tension finally snaps, fast and brutal. Still, I keep my voice even.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
Caspar leans back as if to assess me.
“That we’re not so different, you and me,” he says. “With a son you didn’t mean to have. That you couldn’t be around for.”
It’s uncalled for, but it still does exactly what he meant for it to do. It hits me in the weakest spot. I came here thinking Caspar wanted to meet me at his level, but he’s been trying to knock me down a peg since before he walked into the bar.
I have no idea why, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the truth. I thought we might be able to relate to each other. Now the idea that I might be like him makes me feel sick.
“I couldn’t because I didn’t know. You could,” I say, my jaw tight. “You chose not to stick around.”
Caspar levels me with a look of smug disbelief. “You’re telling me you really had no idea that kid was yours?”
The fury that rises up in me is so white-hot that it scares me—not just because of how fast it hits, but how fast it gives way to something worse. Something like anguish.
I meant what I said to Mackenzie in the car. I may have been reckless in my heyday, but I did my damn best to make sure nobody got hurt.
But didn’t someone, in the end?
Ben spent the first four years of his life without a dad—and then when he got one, he got me . A lifelong liability. No matter how much I love him, no matter how much I’m able to provide, he’ll always have a dad whose reputation follows him wherever he goes.
You’re a good man. Mackenzie’s words still have just enough weight to ground me. I won’t give Caspar the fight he’s looking for. I’ve got enough of a fight in myself.
“Believe what you want,” I say. “But I love Ben. I wouldn’t trade a damn second with him for the world. So no. We’re not the same.”
Caspar opens his mouth to protest, but I stand from my stool.
“Thank you for meeting with me. It was—thank you,” I say, as sincerely as I can.
Only then does Caspar’s facade start to crumble. His hand shakes against his glass, his eyes watering. He doesn’t look like a legend anymore, but a cautionary tale.
To his credit, he follows me to the curb. We clap each other on the shoulder. We say empty things about staying in touch. I stumble across the street, not sure where else to put myself except far from him.
And then Mackenzie is pulling me into a quiet alley and I’m sinking into her arms. She doesn’t say a word.
There is nothing but the even in and out of her breath against my chest, nothing but her cool hands braced comfortingly on my back.
Nothing but the words still echoing between my ears— I’ve kept all the people I love close —and the sudden understanding that Mackenzie is one of them.
Someone I love and lost once, and could still so easily lose.