Chapter 13 #3
“Not sure if I should encourage her addiction, but what the hell.” Mike took the money DJ handed over and exited the vehicle, with DJ adding, “Bring me a receipt.”
At Roy’s curious look, he explained, “I give all my cash receipts to Moss’s bookkeeper, so I can track my spending. He tells me if I’m going off the rails.”
“What’s off the rails for a mega rockstar? Buying a planet?”
Ignoring him, DJ dug into the cooler they’d brought and pulled out one of his bottled teas, plus a soda for Roy, handing it over. “Maya put a bunch of her little cheese spinach rolls in. She knows you like those.”
“I’ll have one if you have three.”
“How about you have two and I’ll have two.”
“Deal.”
DJ sent him an even look. “That’s what you intended all along.”
Roy merely raised a brow, but DJ ate the two. Mike returned, and under DJ’s direction, he wrapped the bird bath in a car blanket and stowed it into the back.
Roy was pretty sure DJ had just bought his mother a thousand-dollar gift, but DJ’s only interest seemed to be that Roy’s mother would like it.
During Roy’s discussions with Moss, the manager had confirmed DJ’s spending habits. He knows what not having money is like, as in not having enough to eat. So he’s not wasteful, but he’s generous. He doesn’t use it to buy people’s affection, but he helps and appreciates others.
DJ also gave a good chunk of his earnings to charities, particularly those related to adoption and improving the conditions of foster kids.
The drive to Roy’s mother was about four hours. DJ napped through most of it, but occasionally participated in casual conversation with Mike and Roy.
Gilda, Roy’s mom, lived in an updated ranch style home on several acres.
When they pulled down the driveway, she was refilling her bird feeders in the side yard.
Roy had told her they were coming, so when she straightened to study the car, a hopeful smile crossed her face.
It always gave his heart a twinge, because he remembered when she could recognize him right off.
“Does she know I’m going to be with you?” DJ had asked.
“I told her when I called her last night. She’s probably cooked for both of us.”
His mother’s food would help DJ’s appetite. Roy didn’t know many people who could resist her cooking. Or her desserts.
“I forgot to mention,” he told DJ. “My mother is mostly blind. She can sort of see, but not much.”
“Got it.” DJ let out a low wolf whistle as Gilda approached the car. “Wow. So here’s the Italian contribution to your good looks.”
“Behave. Don’t flirt with my mother.”
“She’s going to flirt with me. I don’t want to be rude.”
His mother was beautiful. Gilda Blackwell had smiling brown eyes and dyed dark brown hair loose and curling around her olive-skinned face.
She’d been curvy most of Roy’s life, but at sixty-eight she was thinner and had an older person’s fragility to her, even though she was as energetic as the birds that came and went on her feeders with the frequency of fighter jets on a carrier.
As they emerged from the car, DJ adopted his genial celebrity face, pleasant but projecting some reserve. Roy knew he wouldn’t need that long. Maybe not at all.
“I’m so glad you two came by,” Gilda said, engulfing Roy in a warm hug.
He found himself holding her closer than he’d intended, his nose in her hair to take in her familiar scent.
He’d let himself have the short breakdown in the guest cottage, but since then he’d kept himself focused on DJ.
He hadn’t realized much he needed this kind of comfort.
He wanted to hold onto her longer and knew he shouldn’t, but she didn’t let go.
She was his mother and understood what he needed, often more than he did himself.
Which was why she stretched out her other arm and brought DJ into her embrace, holding the two of them. DJ’s arm went around her waist to steady the movement, since his mother was way shorter than both of them.
The brief flash of surprise in DJ’s face was followed by a wave of what Roy himself was feeling. That push-pull of yes, I really needed that with oh, fuck don’t let me fall apart.
With perfect timing, Gilda slid back before the latter took the upper hand. She touched Roy’s face and gave him a loving look, then gripped DJ’s arm. “Come on in. We’ll chat a bit and then eat. I threw something together for you.”
Roy gave DJ a knowing and amused look, and they followed her in.
Though the kid’s social muscles were out of shape from the trauma of loss and so many days in hibernation, he soon proved himself capable of being his usual pain-in-the-ass self.
“Gilda, I need some stories of Roy as a kid. The speculation is he was spawned from a Minotaur’s tears.”
“That would have made my labor a lot easier.” She tilted her head toward Roy.
“He was a serious metal-head, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, heavens yes. He liked to go to the vintage record store in town and hang out there, listen to tracks with the owner. And then there was his band phase, when he got his hands on a guitar and drum set from a yard sale.”
“Please tell me you have video.”
“No,” Roy said decisively.
Gilda chuckled. “He had two passions. One was music, the other was the job he has now. Want to hear about his first protection detail?”
Roy groaned as she cheerfully offered the story to an attentive DJ. “It was a girl in his fifth-grade class, Melissa Soon. She was being bothered by a group of mean girls. Roy watched over her for the whole school year.”
“How did you deter the mean girls?” DJ asked Roy. “I can’t see you hitting a girl, even at that age.”
“Girls don’t usually bully another girl when a boy’s with her.” Roy shrugged.
“In middle school,” Gilda continued, “one of the smaller boys remembered what he did for Melissa and asked for his help with some bullies. Roy brought his brother into it, and they started their own protection agency.”
Roy tensed when she mentioned his brother. The flicker in DJ’s gaze said he’d noted it, but he stayed on point. “How did they pay you?”
“Depended on the situation.”
“Did you have to beat up the bullies?”
“Roy was smarter than that,” Gilda said with a smirk.
“He realized that beating up troublemakers wasn’t the best long term solution for his ‘clients.’ So if he protected a boy who was good in science, he’d set him up to tutor another student.
Kids that get bullied often have trouble making friends, so those tutoring sessions led to friendships. ”
“Let me guess. The kid he was tutoring was usually an athlete or bigger kid, or one popular enough he could make sure the bullying stopped for good.” DJ elbowed Roy. “You big softie.”
“Clients tend to get clingy,” Roy said. “You got to slough them off somehow.”
DJ made a face at him as Gilda laughed. She shifted to a different subject. “Be sure and run by your place while you’re here. Elise left you a stack of mail. Nothing urgent, but your magazine subscriptions are there.”
“You live around here?” DJ asked him.
“He has a place about an hour away,” his mother corrected. “He rarely lives there. I tell him he should just sell it and keep his things here to save himself money, but…” She looked toward Roy.
“I don’t want to inflict my party lifestyle on my mother,” Roy said gravely.
DJ swept Gilda with an appraising glance. “She looks like a total party animal to me. You’re just afraid your army of rowdy friends will like her better.” He patted Gilda’s hand. “Don’t feel bad. No son wants to see his mom tossing back shots and table dancing in her underwear.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Oh, I like this one, Roy. You can bring him back anytime.”
“See? She already likes me better than you. I’d be happy to live with you. The whole band could come crash here on weekends. We can…”
It had been too easy to fall into it, to glance over his shoulder to confirm that Steve, Tal and Pete were grinning in agreement and ready to jump in. Just like when he fingered a promising lick and they knew where he was going, filling it out with the right sounds.
But they weren’t there.
DJ didn’t know how long he phased out, but when he came to, there was a buzzing in his ears, a harsh rasp that he realized was his breath.
He was sitting on the floor, his head between his knees, Roy’s hand on his back.
Gilda knelt in front of him, holding a cool compress on his neck.
“Just give him a minute,” she murmured. “Poor boy. It’s all right. ”
It wasn’t even close to all right, but the meaning was it’s going to be all right, you just have to get through it.
“Sorry,” DJ managed. “So sorry. Goddamn it. Sorry for cursing, too. Fuck it all.”
“Sshh, nothing to apologize for. They would have been welcome here, DJ. Just as you’re welcome anytime.”
As Roy took over holding the compress on DJ’s nape, Gilda put her hand on DJ’s knee. “Roy says your foster mother doesn’t live far from here.”
The simple statement gutted him, made him look into her kind eyes and spill out the guilt.
With every day that passed, it was taking up more space, adding more weight on his heart.
“I haven’t been able to call and talk to her.
It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done plenty of shitty things. ”
He was sure she kept touching base with Moss every day. The worst part was knowing she understood, that she didn’t expect more from him. She wouldn’t see it that way, but he sure did. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to change it.
“Maybe she and I should get together for lunch and talk about our boys,” Gilda suggested. “Send me her number, if you think she’d like that. She could probably use another mother to talk to right now.”
The brisk practicality was a gentler female version of what he was used to hearing in Roy’s voice when he was directing his team, saying stuff that made sense, and awful stuff more manageable.