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All these secrets, Blue thought. She tugged on her BODY BY BEER T-shirt. “I haven’t made it to the shower yet. Although you won’t see that much difference after I do. I don’t care about clothes.”
“You care in your own way,” April said.
“What do you mean?”
“Clothes are great camouflage.”
“With me, it’s not so much camouflage as comfort.” Not exactly true, but she was only willing to reveal so much.
April’s cell rang. She glanced at the screen a
nd excused herself. Riley lay on the blanket and rested her head on her backpack. Blue watched a pair of ducks go bottoms-up looking for food. “I wish I’d brought my sketch pad,” she said when April returned. “It’s so pretty here.”
“Are you formally trained?”
“Yes and no.” Blue briefly outlined her academic career and the highlights of her less than satisfactory experience with the college art department. A soft wheezy sound drifted their way. Riley had fallen asleep on the blanket.
“I reached her father’s manager,” April said. “He promised someone would be here by the end of the day to pick her up.”
Blue couldn’t believe she was sitting with a person who knew how to reach Jack Patriot’s manager. April nudged a dandelion with the toe of her raffia sandal. “Have you and Dean set a date?”
Blue wouldn’t perpetuate Dean’s lie, but she also didn’t intend to clean up after him. “It hasn’t gotten nearly to that point.”
“As far as I know, you’re the only woman he’s ever asked to marry him.”
“He’s only attracted to me because I’m different. Once the newness wears off, he’ll find a way out.”
“You believe that?”
“I hardly know anything about him,” she said truthfully. “I didn’t even know for sure who his father was until today.”
“He hates talking about his childhood, or at least the parts of it that involve me and Jack. I don’t blame him. I lived a totally irresponsible life.”
Riley sighed in her sleep. Blue cocked her head. “Was it really so bad?”
“Yeah, it was. I never called myself a groupie because I didn’t put out for everybody. But I put out for way too many of them, and there are only so many rockers you can take on before you cross the line.”
Blue would have loved asking exactly who those rockers had been. Fortunately, she still had some self-restraint left. But the double standard behind what April had just said bothered her. “How come nobody wags a finger at the rockers who were doing the groupies? Why is it always the women?”
“Because that’s the way the world’s made. Some women embrace their groupie past. Pamela Des Barres has written books about it. But it was wrong for me. I let them use my body like a garbage can. I let them. Nobody forced me. I didn’t respect myself, and that’s what shamed me.” She tilted her face into the sun. “I fed off the lifestyle. The music, the men, the drugs. I let it imprison me. I loved dancing in the clubs all night, then blowing off my modeling assignment the next day to hop on a private plane and fly across the country, conveniently forgetting I’d also promised to visit my son at school.” She gazed at Blue. “You should have seen Dean’s face when I actually kept one of my promises. He’d drag me from one friend to the next, showing me off to everyone, talking so fast he’d get red in the face. It was like he had to prove to his friends that I really existed. That stopped somewhere around thirteen. A little kid will forgive his mother just about anything, but once he gets older, you’ve pretty much lost your chance at redemption.”
Blue thought of her own mother. “You straightened your life out. You have to feel good about that.”
“It was a long journey.”
“I think it would be good for Dean to forgive you.”
“Don’t, Blue. You can’t imagine what I put him through.”
Blue could imagine it. Maybe not in the way April meant, but she knew what it felt like not being able to count on a parent. “Still…At some point he has to see you’re not that same person. He should at least give you a chance.”
“Stay out of it. I know you mean well, but Dean has every reason to feel the way he does. If he hadn’t figured out how to protect himself, he’d never have become the man he is now.” She checked her watch, then rose from the chair. “I need to talk to the painters.”
Blue glanced down at Riley, who’d curled into a comma on the blanket. “Let’s let her sleep. I’ll stay.”
“You don’t mind?”
“I’ll sketch for a while, if you have some paper.”
