Page 59 of For The Record

Maybe I don’t deserve his friendship.

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IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY! a tabloid headline blares back at me in the convenience store checkout aisle. HOW ANTONIO PEREZ AND HIS SON BOTH HARASSED THE EMPLOYEES OF THEIR ENTERTAINMENT EMPIRES!

The pictures of me and my father are spliced side by side. One of Antonio Perez hand in hand with his latest fiancée, his expression cool and collected. The other image is me, walking down the sidewalk, one hand futilely thrown up to keep the paparazzi from snapping photos.

I savagely yank it off of the shelf, nearly toppling the magazine rack. It’s the last one on there. “I’ll take this, please.”

It plunks onto the counter next to a mini bottle of aspirin, a bag of ice, a box of band-aids (Mickey Mouse, the only one left) and Neosporin. The cashier looks down at the magazine, then back up at me: bruised knuckles and black eye, looking the worse for wear after pulling an all-nighter.

I wait for him to say something. He doesn’t, which is the wiser move.

“That’ll be eight-seventy-nine,” he says.

I fork out a ten-dollar bill and grab my things in the Circle K bag. Why should I feel ashamed to meet his eye or anyone else’s? I’m not the one who’s done wrong. I haven’t sinned in some horrific way, in the way that Alina has by slandering me. In the way that Naoya did, by stealing a song from one of my artists and poaching Alina over to Lagoon Records.

If I’m not the one in the wrong, why do I feel so awful?

Maybe because you just got sucker-punched by Naoya Sugawa.Despite his features, which Tumblr calls “e-boy aesthetic” mixed with “pure cinnamon roll,” the guy can throw a punch.

Shut up, Leo.

Yet deep down, I know the answer. It’s not even the physical beating that I took or the one I doled out that leaves me with aches and pains. It’s this hollow sense of loss that’s drained me dry. The thought that all I have done for the past three or four years is work, and make money, and add zeroes to my bank account. And with one slanderous lie, it can slip from my hands like water through a sieve. So what do I have now?

After eating a midnight snack, I get home around two am and call Raina, looking at her message icon that says she’s available and still awake. “Raina?”

Sitting on the edge of my bed, wearing day-old clothes and the smell of a beer that someone spilled on me, I stare down at my cupped palms, the phone on speaker balancing on my knee.

“I ran away because Mama noticed there was a bottle missing from the wine cellar,” she says with a sniff. “But it’s not my fault! Casey and Liana slept over on Saturday and one of them took it.”

I’m about to tell her that running away just makes her look guilty, but that’s probably a bad idea, and I’d bet anything she already knows. “And then what happened?”

“Well, I heard her talking about it to Dad. And then Dad said that wine is just like drinking Communion wine, and then they got into a fight so I took a taxi to your house and I let myself in with the spare key under the fake potted plant.” She says this whole thing in one breath. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But did she still threaten to use the flip-flop on you?” I say, smiling at the memory of my own childhood punishments, which were few. Except for my juggling phase, when I broke a lot of her favourite fine china.

“Always.” She sniffs. “Can you talk to her? She grounded me for a month.”

“You know she wouldn’t listen to me anyway,” I say, which is true. No matter what happens or how much time elapses, in my mother’s eyes, I’m still the child toddling around after her and tugging on the hem of her apron.

“I know.” She sighs, then yawns. “And then, it got worse.”

“Worse how?” Something clenches in my gut.

“She found the invitation that Antonio sent me…”

“What invitation?” I demand, on high alert after everything that’s happened.

“To his wedding.”

“He invited you to his wedding?”

“Calm down, Leo, I was going to burn the invite.”

At that, I relax. “You promise?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

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