“Why me?” I hear his answer in my head before he says it.
“Don’t know, honey. But there’s a reason for everything.” Dad pats my hand. “We’l just have to wait patiently to see what it is.”
As I do every time he says that or something like this, I bite back what I’d say if I could reply honestly. I don’t believe there’s a reason for everything, and having faith doesn’t mean I’m blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believe bad things happen to good people. I believe there’s evil in the world that I wil never understand, but wil never stop fighting.
If I believed for two seconds that there was a reason behind some of the awful things that occur in this life, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.
Chapter 3
REID
“Wel , this is promising.” Dad walks across the kitchen, setting his attaché on the granite-topped buffet.
I don’t bother to reply. He’s been goading me like this since I was a kid. Took me a while to learn not to take the bait and let him prove how much more intel igent he is. My father gets paid to argue—and by the size of this house, the cut of his custom-made silk-blend suit and the cars in the garage, he’s bril iant at it.
It must gal the crap out of him that I do what I do and earn more money than he does. Of course, he has no idea how hard I work when I’m filming, but who cares. Let him think I do next to nothing. Just pisses him off more, which is fine with me.
“I even made coffee.” I gesture to the half-ful carafe, stil warming.
He fil s his travel mug and screws the lid on. “Is your mother up?”
“Haven’t seen her.”
“You’l need to cal a car to get to work,” he reminds me,
“since your license has been suspended for six months.” He sounds way too satisfied about that.
“I thought you were gonna take me.” I blink my baby blues at him. His mouth opens and no sound comes out as I fight for a straight face. “I’m joking, Dad—I already cal ed the service. They’l be here in ten minutes.”
“Oh.” Scowling, his mouth snaps closed. “Wel , fine then.”
I’m not sure if I should be amused or pissed that he’s so surprised.
***
When I hand the driver the sheet with the charity build-a-house address, he studies it before looking at me with a perplexed expression.
“Yeah, dude, it’s correct,” I say, anticipating his question.
“Just take me there, okay?”
He opens the back door to the black Mercedes. “Yes, sir, Mr. Alexander.” As we pul away, it occurs to me that this car wil be f**king conspicuous in the neighborhood where I’l be for the next month. If I took a regular taxi it would only be marginal y better. To blend in, I’d need to hire a gang member in a pimped out Monte Carlo to drop me off.
On the drive, I read through some of the scripts George and I are considering for upcoming projects, but none of them motivate me to look beyond the first page. A year ago, I’d have been happy enough with several, but now I’m thinking they’re al the stupidest shit I’ve ever read. I attribute this new perception to Emma, my costar in School Pride. She told me last fal she’d rather do serious films than movies that have immediate blockbuster potential.
Why her viewpoint rubbed off on me at al , I have no clue.
Emma is also the only girl I’ve bothered to pursue but not caught in years, and I screwed up any possible second chance by hooking up with other girls when she didn’t cave.
I begged her for another shot, but the damage was done.
By the time the cast met up for the premiere, she was with Graham, another costar. My longtime ex, Brooke, wanted him. She offered me a devil’s bargain: Brooke would seduce Graham, and Emma would fal right into my arms.
Graham didn’t go for it, but thanks to Brooke’s scheming, Emma thought he had. She was distraught.
Fragile. I had her right where I wanted her, but I couldn’t do it. One of the few principles I have where girls are concerned: lying to get a girl in bed is cheating. If I cheat to win, I didn’t real y win.
I got a little overly introspective after that. A short-lived state, luckily. I snapped out of it after my accident, when I had a few compulsory meetings with a court-appointed therapist who suggested that maybe I was trying to kil myself. I laughed in his face. I mean, there’s a difference between being suicidal and not giving a shit if you live or die. Right?
“Sir?” the driver says. “We’re here… if you’re sure this is where you want to be dropped…”
Outside the dark tinted glass lies a sea of generic bungalows—paint fading, bars on windows and doors, each house separated by a few feet from the next one and surrounded by limp, untended palm trees amidst otherwise sparse vegetation. I stare at the partial y-completed house, which is literal y steps from the road—just like al the others.
A house number sloppily painted onto a piece of raw plywood leaning against the front matches the number on the court info.
“Yeah, this is it. Be here at or before three to pick me up. I don’t want to wait, for obvious reasons.” I normal y wouldn’t be caught dead driving through this neighborhood, let alone helping to build yet another piece-of-crap house.
This sucks ass.
“Yes, sir, I’l be here by 2:45.”
Activity around the house has come to a standstil , because everyone is staring at the guy exiting a chauffeured Mercedes in the gang-infested neighborhood.