Page 19 of Bloom

“Well, Tommy and I kind of rekindled our friendship,” she says haltingly.

“If he’s just your ‘friend’,” I say, biting down on the word, “then why are you on tour with him?” My housemates glance at me, sensing the change in tone.

“Well, I suppose he’s actually kind of my boyfriend.”

“Oh,” I say, trying to sound calm although I’m not actually sure I am. “So how long has this been going on?”

“A few months,” she says.

“A few months? But you and Dad only split a few weeks ago!”

“No, not really,” she says. “We split up when I found out about Holly. We were just waiting to tell you.”

“Waiting until when?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she says. “Whenever it felt right.”

In other words, they were waiting until he got outed by the papers. I hang up and sit there, stupefied, looking at the phone in my hand.

“Are you okay?” asks Ginny.

“My mom is dating the lead singer of Thunder Jungle,” I tell her.

“No shit?” exclaims Max. “Oh my God! They were my favorite band as a kid!” He then proceeds to jump on the couch and sing their biggest hit — “Night of the Dragon”, a song which largely involves screeching only those four words, again and again, with a sporadic refrain of “you won’t know what hit ya!”.

“Didn’t your mom date him, back in the day?” Ginny asks.

“Hey,” says Max. “Was that your mom in the video for ‘White Hot Love’?”

He runs to get his laptop, and is back 20 seconds later, trying to pull up the video on YouTube.

“You’re being a little insensitive, Max,” intones James, from across the room. But he’s trying not to smile.

“Found it,” says Max, watching me turn away. “Don’t you want to see it?”

“Are you freaking kidding me?” I ask. “No, I don’t want to see my mother dancing like a skank all over a dude wearing a leather vest and no shirt.”

But both Ginny and James have crossed the room to watch over his shoulder.

“God your mom is hot,” whispers Max, no longer joking. “She could be your fucking twin.” At which point James shuts the laptop.

“What?” asks Max, bewildered.

“You want to be pervy about her mom, be my guest,” says James. “But don’t bring her into it.” And he storms out of the room.

The three of us look at each other, and only Max seems to find the whole thing amusing. Once again, it’s nice that James wants to defend my honor. But why does it seem that he’s angry at me for having to do it?

Chapter 14

If I needed further confirmation that this thing with Edward wasn’t going away easily, I receive it when Ginny brings a tabloid over to the bar the next night.

“Hey, just so you know,” she says, flipping open to the article about Edward and handing it to me, “your name is out.”

My stomach drops. Not just my name, but a picture of me that I’ve never even seen before, clearly taken at a party sometime last year. I guess I should be relieved that they didn’t somehow find a picture of me in my underwear, but I’m not thrilled. Technically it’s a good picture, but I’m laughing and I look like some kind of party girl, which I’m really not. And I look enough like my mom that associations will be made regardless of who I actually am. The only positives are that the magazine refers to me as “Eleanor” and the photo is far enough away that people here might not put it together.

James slides the magazine away from us to his side of the bar and his face falls. I wait for his inevitable condemnation but it doesn’t come. “I’m sorry,” he tells me. “This just isn’t right.” He pitches the entire magazine into the trash while the protest is still coming out of Ginny’s mouth, and he cuts it off. “Ginny, don’t bring this shit in here again.”

“I just thought she ought to know,” she argues.