Unlike Any Other (Unexpected #1) (4 page)

2015

Dad stops, he isn’t kidding about exchanging stories.

“I don’t understand what this exercise will accomplish,” I try the logical route. “This is about you, not me.”

“It’s about us,” he retorts. “The family. Fun fact, AJ, you were the first one who abandoned the family, sweetie.”

There wasn’t anything fun about it. They pushed me and I had to leave.

“It’s complicated.”

I chuckle because those were JC’s words earlier today.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start, Dad. Yes, I left at the worst time. I needed you guys to catch me… no, I had already fallen. I needed you to pull me out and that day you only accomplished pushing me further down.” There’s an orange-sized bulge stuck in my throat, knots inside the pit of my stomach, and my legs aren’t strong enough to carry me out of this room to a safe place where I don’t have to remember.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” he suggests. “You look older, nothing like that two-year-old with piggy tails who believed I could conquer the world for her.”

“Well, yeah, I grew up.” I touch my curly hair and smile at those uneven piggy tails I wore. “Life is good. Let’s get back to you.”

“Three, six years?” I don’t understand what he’s trying to guess.

“You drifted away in small doses until one day our little girl was completely erased from our lives.”

Yes, doses. I created my own veil of protection, the one that became a big brick wall by the time I was twenty-one. It took ten years for me to build and only days to seal it, isolating myself from everyone.

“Where did we go wrong?”

“It wasn’t only you, Dad…”

I was the quiet one of the three. Well, not exactly the quiet one, but my parents didn’t have to worry about me setting the barn on fire. I might have come up with the ideas, but my brothers were the ones who executed those silly things without my help.

Like, one day I wondered what would happen if we released the chickens into the wild. It had only been a thought, but MJ and JC wanted to know. A month without video games, that’s what happens when the chickens are released.

As my parents made up a few stories about themselves—Gabe mostly—I suggested that warming up aluminum in a microwave was just a lie; it wouldn’t set on fire.

It actually does.

They set the microwave on fire. Thank goodness by then, my parents had fire extinguishers handy.

The ideas came from everywhere, not only me. Television, newspapers… anything they saw and thought was interesting, they experimented with. Those two were a handful. I can’t blame my parents for watching them twenty-four-seven. However, they forgot to watch me most of the time.

Their watchful eye turned to me when things happened. Like fainting in the middle of a hike, and finding out I had juvenile diabetes. Then the attention was all on me until I learned to take care of myself, and they didn’t have to monitor me closely.

As a teacher and an adult I understand why my brothers stole the spotlight. I have my eye on all of my fifteen kindergarten students, but three of them pull my attention from the rest most of the time. One of them tried to escape my room because he wanted to go home and play with his new video game.

The child in me had a hard time understanding why my brothers grabbed all the attention. I wanted some of it, yet, I didn’t want the punishment that came along with it. The times I misbehaved, I made sure to wipe my tracks.

“AJ?”

“It’s stupid, Dad.” The adult in me wants to get out of this one. “A lot of it was stupid, childish, immature… take your pick. I know better now.”

“Can you let that little girl tell me what happened?”

“It all began almost at the same time I realized how big you two were.” I stretch my arms as much as I can simulating the enormity of their fame.

“I mean, I’ve seen the few movies, the ones we were allowed to watch—age appropriate and all that. But that was it. You were this famous according to little old me.” I put my hands together and only separate them about an inch. “Then one day I had that accident… not sure if you remember. You gave me a different identity and suddenly I had no parents because no one knew who I was… but at ten, I thought it was because I had become a little monster with charred hair and a broken arm.”

Not what I was here for, to talk about me or why I resented them.

The wall around my heart cracks as the memories push against it to escape. Those feelings will soon resurface and with them the hurt.

Not the hurt.

My body shivers with this talk about all these feelings I harbored from them for so long.

“Little, yes. Monster, never.” Dad gives me a big bear hug. “Is the huge explosion that happened three years ago included in this sensitive subject?”

“In part, yes. At ten, my life changed drastically.” I let some of the rage out with a big exhale. “Inside my head, of course.”

2001

My family, a couple of friends, and I were camping in upstate New York. We planned the vacation around the meteor showers and as we waited for the sky to darken everyone sang around the fire. When the showers began, my parents, their bodyguard—Mr. Bradley—his son, and my brothers headed to the telescopes that were set far from the fire. Instead of following them, I stayed back and used my new binoculars that dad bought me for bird watching.

It happened so fast, I rose from my seat and watched the shooting stars fall. One after the other, I made wishes and as one fell, I turned to search for the next and the next. The whole time I kept my eyes on the sky not watching where I stepped, and in a matter of seconds I tripped and fell into the bonfire.

Between the superficial burns, a broken arm, charred hair, and a couple of big bruises, they rushed me to the nearest emergency room. There’s not much recollection of how or when I got there. Only that I spent two entire days inside the white walls of a hospital while the doctors tended to my wounds. My only company, Arthur Bradley, the bodyguard.

My parent’s absence, the name Breezy Bradley on my bracelet, and the man who protected us pretending to be my dad didn’t make sense to me.

A few things became apparent to my then ten-year-old mind. They—my parents—abandoned me. They didn’t love me. Something was wrong with me.

Right after I left the hospital, I was sent to camp like every summer.

“Dad, please let me stay,” I begged him. “My singed hair, all these scabs on my face, and this cast make me look like Frankenstein. You can’t send me.”

“AJ, don’t be shallow.” His hands automatically went to his hips and those blue eyes became ice. “We paid for the camp already. The doctor said you were fine to head to the mountains and we have plans. No one can stay with you.”

“Grandma?” I opened my eyes wide and my lips quivered.

“I won’t let you play me this time.” He grabbed my bags and headed to the car. “Jump in the car. Now.”

I did what I was told. When Gabriel’s eyes turned ice-blue, no one could change his mind, not even a cute puppy pout. They didn’t like me anymore. I was getting fat, ugly, and clumsy. They shoved me on a plane and in a few hours I was miles away from the comfort of my home.

The driver dropped me off at some art camp while my brothers headed to the Air Force Academy for a series of sports camps. I didn’t have them either. Not their fault, but… they always had each other.

My counselors cringed the moment they saw me. However, the children—they were the worst. Pointing out how weird I looked compared to everyone else around. With the scabs on the face, uneven curly hair, and the cast, they named me ‘The Thing’ from the Fantastic Four. All deformed and smashed up. For three weeks, isolation became my friend.

After that, I refused to be sent to any camp or deal with outsiders. I had everything I needed at home. I gradually drew into myself, only letting my brothers in and resenting my parents.

I loved them, but I hated that they felt ashamed of me.

2015

“We were never ashamed of you, baby girl,” I assure her meeting a pair of sad, puppy eyes and a slumped posture. “I’m sorry we made you feel that way.”

It was true. I pushed her to go to that camp. We feared that if we gave into her demands, she’d grow up to be a spoiled brat. We worked hard to make sure her brothers never thought of her as different or special because she was a girl. Instead, we paid more attention to her brothers to compensate.

“Can we get back to you now?” Her eyes concentrate on the beige carpet. “We were at the point where you became the new heartthrob of the eighties, about to let your hair grow, and… Did you ever sport a mullet?”

“No, I always had my hair short and parted in the middle, that has never changed,” I touch it wondering if I should do something new, but disregard the thought right away. “Back to the auditions and movie roles then…

1986

I changed agents, as the first was part of a model agency that didn’t want to expand their horizons back then. They recommended me to one person who in no time landed me a few minor roles in movies shooting in New York. As my face became familiar, some brands I had worked for and new brands wanted me to be in their catalogs, campaigns or commercials—depending on what they wanted me for.

It became my way of life, and I used most of my money to set up my own investment portfolio. I trained with different coaches, had a lean diet, and learned the basics of various martial arts. All as an investment for my future career. It wasn’t too long before I landed the role of Joe Quinton in the movie
Never End
. It was a massive production that won me fame and money.
Never End 2
was even a bigger hit, however, that was it for the
Never End
films.

My career suddenly reached the plateau stage. Then my agent died, and I wanted less action and more substance, but few agents in New York had the reach of those in California.

There wasn’t much choice for me; either I moved to Hollywood or I headed back home and took over my father’s insurance business. My decision to head to California included the fine print that if I didn’t make it by the time I ran out of money, I’d move back in with my parents.

For my new adventure, I bought a car and drove it all the way to the other corner of the country where, unfortunately, not many welcomed me. In fact, as I knocked on the doors of the people I knew, and no agent wanted to take me, I pondered if I should sell the car and take a plane back home.

I called Tara, the casting director of my first movie, and she gave me an address.

It was a small office in the center of LA with white walls, brown carpet and only one desk with a phone in the middle of the main room.

“We’re just moving in,” Tara said, without me asking her what the deal was with her office. “I’m going solo.”

I doubted she had noticed that I hadn’t greeted her as I arrived, but I let her continue. She pulled out a thick book and handed it to me.

“It’s an indie production with almost no budget and I wrote it.” ‘Perdition’ read the first page. “I won’t lie. There’s no pay, Gabe, unless we make some money out of it, then instead of a salary you get a slice of the pie—one percent.”

Young and stupid are both terms that applied to me back then. My big mouth not only said, ‘Yes, I’m in,’ it actually said, “If I invest, will my slice of the pie increase?”

“Of course, but I can’t guarantee that you will recover your money, let alone make some money out of it.”

“What can we lose?”

If I lost to the house, I would head home and do what my mother wanted me to do years before: marry a local girl, and take over the business.

I ceased from searching for an agent, but placed a few calls in hopes that when the movie was over and if it did well, I’d get signed.

With my few belongings still in my car, I headed to Omaha, Nebraska, where we’d film two-thirds of the movie. I’d worry about finding an apartment after we headed back for the last leg of filming, when I would be contributing with the post-production. I wanted to learn the ins and outs of the film industry and it helped to cut costs. If not for the future, at least I could tell my children that I knew how things were done behind the scenes when taking them to the movies.

Omaha wasn’t much different from Albany, perhaps because of its flora. A small city, it took no longer than five minutes to drive from the north edge of town to the south corner. All the actors and the crew stayed at the same hotel, in fact, we didn’t have trailers and there wasn’t much difference between how much each one would make. Well, except the two investors, our cut was different from the others.

For the first time since college, I’d be sharing a room with another person. The advantage in this case was that we had a housekeeper and I wouldn’t have to worry about having to pick up after myself because of my roommate’s OCD.

The lineup surprised me. Tara had been able to pull together a great cast. Later, I learned she cashed in the favors everyone owed her. Not one of us could say no to her. In one way or another, she had either helped our careers, or in my case, discovered us. Among her talented cast was a famous rock star—the front man of the band where her brother-in-law worked as a bodyguard.

The night before we started filming, everyone met in the lobby of the hotel. A small area with burgundy walls, checker ivory floors, and a dark wood color front desk. There, Tara assigned rooms, handed out filming schedules, and gave us some other instructions.

That was one of the pivotal moments of my career and my personal life. I met my best friend, the love of my life, and learned to love acting.

“I can’t be sharing rooms with her,” a soft female voice spoke after Tara handed out the room keys.

Instead of checking who I’d be rooming with, I leaned forward and spotted a petite blonde pointing toward a tall brunette whose hair was bigger than the flower pot behind her.

“Abigail,” Tara addressed her. “We have a contract. You and Lara will share, and if you break the contract, you’ll have to pay for any production delays.”

Abigail Ritz and Lara Stevens had worked together in several teenage movies. Everyone who followed the basic news channels were aware of their feud. They fought for the same guy years ago, Lara’s fiancé at that moment. He had been Abigail’s boyfriend first. Some entrepreneur who liked to have beautiful celebrities on his arm.

Abigail Ritz was more famous in the early eighties, but just as the women fought for the same guy, they also fought for roles. If they worked in the same movie, the fights became public domain. Lara was tall with dark, long hair and deep, blue eyes while Abigail was petite and curvy with green eyes and blonde hair.

After Tara had wrapped up the meeting, I went to speak with Abigail. “Everything okay?” I extended my hand. “Gabe Colt.”

“Yes, of course.” She smoothed her hair before extending her hand. “Nice to meet you, Gabe.”

For artistic purposes, I had shortened my name from Gabriel James Colthurst to just Gabe Colt. A name I wanted to change legally but haven’t had the time.

From the corner of my eye I spotted someone approaching us, then I heard his voice.

“Colt,” he called out. I turned around and found a man about an inch shorter than me, long, brown hair that matched Lara’s length and volume, and a bandana tied around his forehead. He wore leather pants, leather jacket, and a pair of industrial boots with chains around them—weird. “Christian Ainsley Decker, your new roommate.”

Tara had to be kidding me, the Rock God was Christian Decker and I was rooming with him. The idea of suggesting to switch became appealing. I could get to know little Abby while he could exchange hair product secrets with Lara.

“It’s my lucky day,” Decker muttered. “I’m rooming with Mr. Hot Shot, would you mind switching rooms, darling?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Abby. “You and I can get to know one another as I make you reach places no other man has taken you before.”

Abby giggled and tried to compose her posture.

“I’ll see the two of you around.” Abigail scurried away.

In the end, it didn’t matter who I roomed with; I had a schedule to meet and my daily routine to follow. The most damage he could do was play his music too loud. My college roommate had cranked his heavy metal all the way up when he wanted to study. The only difference between back then and now would be that I could complain to the creator instead of the fan.

Decker’s band, Dreadful Souls, emulated the genre of heavy metal of which I wasn’t a fan. His band played that shit as he screamed nonsense lyrics. Or they played cheesy ballads that had women dropping their panties and throwing them at him during their concerts. My roommate made me go with him to one of their concerts since I owed him one.

We headed to the elevator rolling our luggage behind us when he spoke.

“I think it’s fifty-fifty.”

His intent to answer something I hadn’t asked didn’t make sense and I chose to ignore him because the less we talked, the less I had to deal with his personality. Not that I knew anything about this long haired freak.

“Who do you think she would she sleep with first, you or me? If you want, I’ll leave her to you,” Decker blurted as he opened the door to our room.

Tan wallpaper, brown carpet, two beds, and one bathroom didn’t leave much space for the two of us.

“I don’t need your charity,” I responded.

What the hell?

“Is it the hair or the music?” he asked with a lazy grin.

I roared with laughter and answered truthfully, “Both.”

“Honest.” he slightly bowed as his lips stretched all the way to his eyes. “I like that in a person. I’m not too crazy about your judgmental attitude, but we can work around it.”

I opened my luggage, headed to the closet to hang up the few things I needed and split the drawers. If my money wasn’t tied up as part of the contract, I’d look for another room and avoid this man.

As I turned around, he was untying the bandana and along with it, the wig he wore. Same with the leather jacket and chaps. Suddenly, Chris Decker was an ordinary person wearing a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and those strange boots.

“Yes, the hair,” he mentioned pointing at his head. “I cut it regularly. It came off a couple of years ago, but my agent and the band don’t like the change. We’re a metal band with big hair and all the shit that’s involved. I’m the hair and neither my band, nor the fans can think beyond it. It won’t be long though before the band is gone. I evolved, but they refused to. Let me tell you, prissy boy, a couple of years ago I would’ve pounded your pretty face for giving me that attitude.”

“Is it the prissy attitude or the pretty face?”

We both laughed.

“So, what was it?” I ask, “The attitude or the not so pretty face?”

“He never answered.” A lighthearted smile creases Dad’s lips. “But after unpacking, we headed to a burger joint and had dinner. And the beginning of a great friendship began. We both forgot that his music was hideous and I was a pretentious bastard.”

“His music isn’t hideous,” I defend both the music and the artist—for Pete’s sake, Christian is a genius. “Nor are you a pretentious bastard.”