"It's Hendrix," I say.
Edgar nods. "Hendrix," he says. "Your parents must have been music fans."
"My mom was," I tell him. I don't tell him the whole story. My mother wanted to name me Hendrix Morrison. She was a music teacher who loved classic rock. She and my father were an odd combination, the Army Colonel and the hippie musician. The Colonel insisted she name me something more manly. My middle name, Cannon, was their compromise. I guess it was fitting, since artillery turned out to be my job in the Marines. Then everyone took to calling me "Cannon" anyhow. Chicks thought it had to do with my dick size.
"Well, I'll bet she's proud of you now," he says.
"I'm sure she is." I don't know if that would be true or not. I'm not sure what the hell she'd think of me now, actually.
"Addison doesn't like all that stuff, the fame and all that," Edgar says, out of the blue.
"You like her," I observe.
"She's not stuck up like a lot of stars are," Edgar says. "She's a nice girl. You take care of her."
I catch the note of protectiveness in his tone. It's funny how Addison has a way of making people protective of her. In my case, protecting her means I sure as hell need to keep my damaged bullshit away from her.
SIX YEARS, ELEVEN MONTHS AGO
"What do you think?" Grace dangles her feet over the edge of the pool, kicking her toes lazily in the water. She leans back and arches her chest up, her boobs basically falling out of her bikini top, but she doesn't care. My older sister is gorgeous, and she knows it. She's always known it. Why I wound up being the famous one is something I'll never know. Grace was always the pretty one, with her emerald-colored eyes and dark hair and legs that are at least a foot longer than mine. Not to mention her boobs. I think she basically got the boob gene, because my A-cups do nothing to fill out my swimsuit.
"What do I think about what?"
"Come on," she says. "You know what. Or who, really. Our new stepbrother."
I wrinkle my nose. "I have no opinion whatsoever."
Grace grins. "Don't be such a goody-goody," she says. "You totally have an opinion. You just don't want to say it out loud because it's not nice and you're the nice girl."
I exhale heavily. Everyone has pegged me as the "nice girl" since I was a kid, including Grace. Especially Grace. I'm the good girl and she's the bad girl. Grace says it jokingly, but there's always an edge to it. Our mother, never able to see anyone except in black-and-white categories, labeled us that way when we were young. She hated Grace's father, and Grace took the brunt of it. It doesn't help that Grace and I look like total opposites. Or that Grace has completely embraced the bad girl role, rebelling against everything possible and coming home with tattoos and piercings and basically whatever she can do to get my mother's attention. What Grace doesn't realize is that being the good girl is just as annoying. It's not as much fun for me as she thinks it is. "I'm not the nice girl," I say.
Grace looks at me over the top of her sunglasses and laughs. "Sure you're not, Adds," she says. "What have you done lately -- or ever -- that makes you a bad girl?"
"I -- " I pause, trying to come up with something. I'm only fifteen. It's not like there have been a million opportunities to be a bad girl, even when I was on tour last summer. "I drank beer with Sam Crawford in his room while we were on tour."
Grace gives me a long look. "You were hanging out in Sam Crawford's room?" she asks. "And he gave you beer?"
My heart catches in my throat. Crap. I don't want to get him in trouble or anything. Sam is a few years older than me – nineteen -- and he's totally cute. I thought he was going to try to kiss me, but he didn't, and honestly, I was disappointed. "Yeah. It was no big deal."
Grace laughs. "No big deal because you drink beer all the time, you lush?"
I can feel the heat of embarrassment on my face. Sometimes I totally hate Grace. I can't tell when she's teasing me for being too much of a goody-goody or lecturing me for doing something wrong. "I've had beer before, you know."
"Sam Crawford shouldn't be giving you beer," she says, her tone clipped. "Did he try anything with you?"
"No," I say.
"Good."
"But I totally would have if he did," I spit out. "He's cute and he's nice and I thought he was going to, but he didn't."
"Sam Crawford shouldn't be making a move on you," she says. "He's too old for you. And he's a dick, anyway."
"How do you know?" I ask. "And he's not too old. He's nineteen. That's four years older."
"That's a big difference," she says. It's barely more than the difference between our ages. And she's sitting here hanging out with me. I don't push my luck with her by pointing those things out, because Grace hanging out with me doesn't happen very often enough anymore. She's busy running around with her friends and boyfriends. She used to bring her friends back home to meet me, back when her friends cared who I was. It used to annoy me when she'd show me off to her friends like some kind of trophy, but now she's hanging out with a new group that doesn't think I'm cool enough. And now I kind of miss it.