Catch You If You Fall (Burnouts Book 2) Read online

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  Steve finally found a sure-fire way to keep unwanted female attention to a minimum--Bryce. They had become some sort of odd-couple best friends, and it worked for both of them. He would never admit it to anyone, but Bryce was a lonely guy. He was pretty close to Robert and Todd, but they worked a lot and had each other when they weren’t working. He might have wanted a partner or steady boyfriend, but he also suffered from the worst taste in men. He was drawn to anyone who might not want him; straights, users, and losers, he would always say.

  He bought a family membership so Steve could go to the gym with him and that‘s where they started hanging out on Friday nights. Everyone probably assumed they were a couple, but Steve never had given a shit what other’s thought of him. He wasn’t about to start now. He probably confirmed their suspicions one night when he defended Bryce to a muscle-head asshole who wanted him out of the locker room. Bryce wasn’t getting far arguing in his high-pitched, sing-song voice so Steve jumped in the fray.

  “Dude, leave him alone. He doesn’t want what you got.”

  “Why don’t you stay out of it?”

  “Just saying, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. My friend here has a thing for big dicks, and …”

  “You been looking?” The guy challenged Steve.

  “Nope, don’t have to.” He pointed to the guy’s massive arms and chest. “It’s sad what roids will do to a dick.” Then he turned away, and took off his towel to get dressed. He didn’t know if the guy was watching or not, but if he was, he got the point.

  He was making decent money at the Kauffman’s, and his savings was starting to grow, slowly. He would never outright take money from Bryce, but the guy made it easy for Steve to spend as little as possible. He kept the condo stocked with food and drinks, and often forgot to add the electric bill into Steve’s rent, or sometimes tried to forget to collect rent altogether.

  When he had a couple grand saved, Steve was ready to get a car. Bryce was ready to give him his (because he reasoned he wanted a new one anyway), but Steve refused. Robert suggested he get something new and reliable and had him looking at small, boxy, foreign cars, but he wasn’t ready to turn in his man card just yet. Maybe he’d get one of those when he was Robert’s age and had a kid to haul around. In the end, he found a gently-used, convertible, gold Caddie from one of their clients that had its own funky style and tons of comfort for long trips to see MG. He had Bryce snap a few pictures, so he could email them to MG. She loved it, because it was so him, and she loved him.

  Todd started teaching a decorating class in the evenings at the local community college. He brought in a copy of the extension classes catalog with the Small Business Accounting class circled and starred. He dropped it on Steve’s desk.

  “I can’t afford college, but thanks.” Steve pushed it aside.

  “One, it’s not a credited class so it doesn’t cost all that much.” He pushed the booklet back to the center of Steve’s desk. “And two, it’s an investment in yourself.”

  Steve smirked at the second idea.

  “It’s time you backed yourself, put up your own money, invested in your future.” He dropped his voice so no one else in the place could hear. “Look, I know your old man never did, and that sucks, but it’s time for you to push past that and be your own man--make some decisions that will take you where you want to go. You could easily open your own business. I know it. Now you’ve got to know it.”

  Steve couldn’t look him in the eyes. The speech really shook him up, so he studied the catalog and nodded. The class was only sixty dollars. He never knew you could take a college class for sixty dollars. His heart skipped a beat. He could do this.

  He signed up for the class the next afternoon then went through the catalog and marked all the others he wanted to take once he finished that one. There was a lot of really great shit he could learn at prices he could afford.

  He didn’t exactly mention it in his email to MG. Instead he took a picture of the circled class description in the catalog to see if she caught on. Deep down he knew he was really testing to see if she would think he could do it. He needed her support and encouragement. He needed her to believe in him. Because in the end, he knew he was really doing it all for her.

  Chapter 28

  Unfortunately, the first trip Steve took in his car wasn’t to see MG in New York. Instead he volunteered to drive Casey, Laura, Wayne, Gina, and Raquel to Carrie’s husband’s funeral.

  Casey called Steve on a Wednesday afternoon to tell him that Nick had been killed in a car accident and that the funeral would be that Friday. He had only met the guy twice, so even Steve was surprised at how hard he took the news. He just kept thinking that Nick had only been twenty-three years old, two years older than him. He kept thinking about Carrie’s twins, who had just turned one, and how they would never know their dad.

  Casey said the accident had been Nick’s fault; that he had been drinking and driving on one of the curvy, two-lane roads that surround the Lake of the Ozarks. How many times had they all been drinking and driven? How many times had he been high and gone out on the motorcycle? Nick killed two people in the crash, and Steve kept thinking that the same thing could have easily happened to him.

  In Nick, Steve clearly saw everything he used to be, everything he had left behind and made the choice to walk away from since his trip to see MG. It might be wrong to think badly of the dead, but Steve was pissed at Nick--as pissed as he used to be at himself. He was dead because he hadn’t grown up and taken control of his own life. He had been trying to numb the pain of a life that kept happening to him.

  In Todd and Robert, he saw a way to live life that he had never seen growing up. He’d always seen the adults in his life drifting along, dodging and dealing with one shit storm after another. And just like Nick, they numbed their pain with alcohol and drugs. Bad stuff had happened to his bosses. Todd’s family disowned him when he announced that he was gay. But he didn’t let that define his life. He and Robert, and now Steve, made a decision every day to deal with the bad shit and make their lives better.

  So Steve drove all his friends to the funeral, and he hung close to Carrie, holding her hand and helping in any way that he could. Her eyes were so vacant that he wasn’t sure she would even remember him being there, but what mattered was that he knew he was there for her. He was happy to see that the flowers he and Bryce had helped MG and her mom order had made it. At the lunch that followed the burial, he declined the whiskey that was being passed around as mourners drank toasts to Nick.

  He felt like a changed man. Hell, he finally felt like a man and not a boy waiting for his life to happen to him.

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  Daniel’s rise to fame happened freakishly fast. He had talent but so did a ton of other musicians. While they were playing small clubs for years and fighting for a record deal, he had stepped into a mammoth star-making machine that propelled him to the top of the heap with its money and connections.

  His first hit was a love song. He thought he had chosen it because it worked well with his voice, but in hindsight, his agent chose it because he knew it would press all the right buttons for pre-teen girls.

  And now that he was caught up in the machine, and he had no idea how to get out of it or even if he should. Wasn’t this what he wanted? People loved his music. Sure most were under sixteen and female, but Rolling Stone had given him a good review. It had to mean something from a credible magazine … unless it was another piece paid for or created by his people.

  Fuck! His people. He had people! How the hell did he go from living in half of a house in a small town to having people?

  He finished his coffee as he looked out at the beach view from the balcony of the condo he was staying in while he was in LA. It all felt wrong somehow, like he had skipped ahead too many steps to get here, like here wasn’t where he really wanted to be.

  He needed to get ready. He had an interview today with some Japanese magazine whose titl
e he couldn’t pronounce that probably translated to “Pretty Boys for Little Girls.” Then tonight he had some red carpet thing where he was supposed to talk to the press about how he didn’t have a date, but sure could use one. He rolled his eyes at the blatant ploy, which wasn’t exactly a lie.

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  MG was half watching the red carpet show before the Teen Choice awards. It was normally not something she would watch, but Margaux had called her and said she could have sworn she had seen Daniel in the background, so MG turned it on.

  Sure enough, there he was. Only he wasn’t just walking by in the background. He was being interviewed. He did look amazingly good, but not like himself, in the funky, Euro-designer clothes he was wearing. And she wasn’t sure what they had done to his hair or if he was wearing makeup, but damn he looked young, like he “could order from the kid’s menu” kind of young.

  She grinned from ear to ear. This was her sweet friend, Daniel. The guy who rescued her sorry-ass from the nightmare migraine/Josh incident. And there he was, on the red carpet, talking about his hit song and looking like a million dollars. He thanked the interviewer and walked away toward the crowd. An ear-splitting peal of teen-girl screeching erupted. Holy shit! She knew he was cute, but, really … His press agent must have seeded the crowd with paid screamers. She winced at that idea, because she knew that was exactly what he had feared, the kind of fame he didn’t want.

  MG had been home from her summer job for two weeks and had another week before she was supposed to be back at school, but she was dragging her feet. She really didn’t want to go back. She missed her friends and wanted to see them, but the fact that she still had no idea what degree she wanted from this massively-expensive school made her ill.

  Randy and her mom were still reassuring her that it would all work out, that she would find a direction. They kept pointing out that she had made good grades for a year and a half now, so they knew she could do this. She countered that neither of them had a degree, and they were doing great. But they both came back with the same response--they had both taken the hard route and didn’t wish it on her.

  So she chose another semester of classes that sort of sounded interesting: marketing, advertising, media communications, and floral arranging. The last one actually sounded like the most fun, but she was pretty sure you couldn’t major in it. It was the art elective she chose because she couldn’t draw worth a squat.

  She was also going to try living in the sorority house. Alex’s roommate had graduated, so she was going to room with her. She was the only one MG would live with, because Alex understood that sometimes MG needed to shut and lock the door to get away from the screaming, giggling, bickering estrogen overload in the sorority house.

  On the drive from the Poughkeepsie station to school, Randy could see her lack of enthusiasm.

  “After this semester you’ll be half way there.”

  She half smiled at his encouragement but changed the subject before she got depressed. “I want to come work for you when I’m done.”

  He smiled “We could probably work that out. Leticia and Greg both said you’re a natural.”

  “They did?” MG was shocked Leticia had given her a thumbs up, although she did work more and play less toward the end of the tour. Hanging out with the band members got old pretty fast, and she really loved the work.

  “You make me proud, you know.” She blushed. She wanted to make him proud but she also wondered what he would do if she didn’t do what he wanted. Would he still be proud of her if she didn’t finish this degree?

  She lay on her bed and called Steve after she got settled in her new room. He didn’t say what she thought he would when she told him about school not feeling right this semester.

  “You’ve gotta go with your gut, babe.”

  “Really, so you think I should quit?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said you should listen to your gut.”

  He sounded different and had since Nick’s funeral. They had exchanged a lot of emails when it happened, but she hadn’t been able to talk with him about it on the phone when she was in Europe. He sounded so much more sure of himself and life in general.

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “I get it. I’m not gonna push you to do anything. I only want you to be happy.”

  “I’m happy when I’m with you.”

  “Me too. We’ll get there.” He sounded so sure about them being together now too. She liked this new side of him a lot, but she also felt like she had lost her partner in being lost.

  “Maybe I’ll quit and come live with you.”

  “I want you to live with me, just not yet. I don’t think Bryce would appreciate it.”

  “I thought you were going to move out soon, get your own apartment.”

  “I was,” he hesitated like he wasn’t sure he was ready to tell her something, “I’m staying a little longer. I’m really building up some savings staying here.”

  “That’s good.”

  “If I stay through the end of the year, I think I would have enough for a down payment on a house.”

  She almost choked on her gum. “A house?”

  “Yeah, nothing big. You remember those nice little houses over by the park?”

  “Yeah.” She had always liked that section of town. Most of the houses were old but renovated and incredibly cute. She loved his plan, but hated it. It was like he was suddenly a man on a mission, and she was still floundering along. She could go live in a cute house with him, that would be fantastic, but she would have no degree and no job with Randy. She would have to rely completely on her boyfriend, just like her mom had done, and she hated that idea. She wanted them to be equal, lost or found, but doing it together.

  He heard her hesitation. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be one of those. I just … I started another class, Personal Finance, and we did this worksheet on what it takes to buy a house and … I couldn’t believe I could do it.”

  “No, it’s cool. I’m glad you’re liking the class so much and getting so much out of it,” Unlike me, she thought. “Just, I don’t know, keep me in the loop. I don’t want us to somehow end up apart again.”

  “I would never let that happen.” His new-found confidence was so strong that she believed him.

  Chapter 29

  Living in the sorority house was ten times more chaotic than MG had anticipated. She had only been crashing there sometimes on the weekends, so she figured it must be quieter during the week. Oh, hell no.

  Every night there were at least a few girls who didn’t need or want to study, even if she did. And they were great at convincing MG that she could miss class “just this one time” or make up the work later. (Not that she fought them too hard.) She felt a loyalty that wouldn’t let her miss a night of the Tuesday night drinking club, but now she was also part of the group that watched The Bachelor on Monday nights and American Idol on Thursdays. Viv got her started on an afternoon soap, which she had vowed to hate, but it was just too damn much fun watching it and making fun of it with a bunch of other girls there.

  Living in the house also put her in the middle of the drama she only heard rumors of on the rest of the campus. She knew some were true. Meegan did answer her cell phone and had a and conversation with Tessa while she was having sex with a Theta Nu. She said the guy was so boring she figured she’d talk to Tessa to make it more interesting.

  Viv was charged with public indecency when she got caught peeing in the parking lot behind the Gamma Delta house, and MG had to abandon her marketing project to go bail her out.

  Her ability to create fun out of nothing also came back to life with so many willing partners-in-crime in the house. Alex and MG found a bar in the next town one afternoon where the owner had left his elderly Italian grandpa to tend bar. They were the only two in the place, and the old guy loved them, so he broke out some stuff called Centerba that tasted bitter and had them both falling off their chairs within the hour. Neither could drive, so they called the
house and asked someone to come get them. Margaux volunteered, and when she asked where they were they just kept telling her, “far, far, away” then dropping the phone in a fit of giggles. Luckily, Grandpa could hold his liquor and gave Margaux directions.

  She was having a huge amount of fun, but she was also failing. And this time it was so bad that she couldn’t come up with enough extra credit projects or creative excuses to fix the problem. She needed to call Randy and tell him she was wasting his money, but she didn’t know him well enough to know how he would handle it.

  So she called Steve, and cried to him, more than once. He would calm her down and convince her that she could and should tell Randy and her mom, but her resolve would die by the next morning. She wanted to leave school but then again she didn’t. What would she do if she weren’t there?

  She called Carrie too, and they cried together. Ever since Nick died, Carrie’s life had spun out of control, and she and MG were partners in pain. Their favorites thing to do was call each other late at night, when Carrie’s kids were sleeping, and laugh about stuff they did in high school. It was funny how they both remembered different things or the same event two different ways.

  “Do you remember that time we went riding around in Ed Kenley’s car? With him and Phil Grumley?”

  Carrie laughed hard. “And Casey was in the back seat?”

  MG started laughing too, because they both knew where this story was going, but it was still one of their favorites. “And she said, ‘Can you roll up the window, I’m getting a real blow job back here.’”

  They were both laughing so hard they were crying now.

  “She had no idea what a blow job was?”

  “Well, Steve took care of that.” Carrie was glad MG brought up that part of the story. MG really didn’t seem bothered by the sexual history they all shared.