Bad at Love by Karina Halle
Not that Norm would care or notice. Everyone in the club is laughing their heads off, including myself. When the show is finally over and we’re walking down Sunset back to the car, my ribs are hurting from laughing so hard.
“I’ll have to remember that chickpea joke,” Marina says between giggles as we stroll beside each other. “I don’t know if I have the deadpan delivery, but I can practice.”
“Might I suggest saving that joke for the third date?”
She grins at me. “No promises.” Then she turns to the passing traffic and opens her arms at the cars. “I love you LA!” she yells at no one in particular. Someone honks.
I grab her arm and pull her along the sidewalk. “What was that for?”
“I don’t know,” she says with a laugh. “Nights like this I just love this city. Where else can you go see a show like that at the last minute? Where else has these palm trees and this warmth and this feeling that you can be anything, do anything, the sky’s the limit. It’s a city of dreamers and I get to dream alongside every one of them.”
“And I’m just another dreamer, sweet girl.”
“Sweet girl?”
Yeah.
Where the hell did that come from? “It just happened. I can go back to calling you Bumble if you want.”
“You can call me anything tonight.”
“I know you’re high on adrenaline from laughing for hours and I don’t want to ruin that but are you okay with the fact that we haven’t really done anything in the, how did you call it again, the art of seduction?”
“I think I’ve learned enough for tonight,” she says, her brows knitting together. “There’s always date number two…if you think I’ve earned a second date.”
“It was always a given.”
“I mean, I stopped at two martinis and I didn’t mention bees once.”
“You’re practically a new woman.”
We reach the car in the parking lot and I pause beside the passenger door. “Need a ride home, blondie?”
“As long as you don’t try anything foolish,” she says.
“Foolish?” I say as I open the door for her and she gets in. I climb in the driver’s seat. “What would be foolish?”
“Trying to kiss me goodnight,” she says.
“My god, woman. You are a bloody challenge, aren’t you?”
She smiles, sarcastically sweet.
“How about this?” I say, leaning over and opening the glove compartment, bringing out a Magic 8 Ball. “I’ll ask the ball and see what it says I should do.”
“Oh my god!” she exclaims, taking the ball out of my hands and turning it around and around. “You really do have one!”
“I told you.”
“I thought you were joking. Who the hell carries around a Magic 8 Ball?”
“I don’t carry it around.” I snatch it out of her hands. “I have one in the car and one in my room.”
“Laz,” she says slowly, looking me over like I’ve suddenly morphed into a circus freak. “You know this makes you really weird, right?”
“I’m aware.”
“So, like, my whole obsession with bees, which by the way, is totally justifiable when you consider my career, seems kind of normal by comparison. I mean, you don’t have a career in…fortune telling.”
“You could have said professional billiards player.”
“Do you tell your dates about this?”
I give her a dry look. “What do you think?”
She sighs. “Oh what does it matter, I bet if they did know, they’d still sleep with you.”
“Maybe. I haven’t dared to show anyone.”
“So even someone like Simone never knew about this.”
I laugh. “This. You make it sound like I keep locks of hair from all my ex-girlfriends in a shoebox under my bed or something to that nature.”
She looks horrified.
“Which I don’t,” I go on. “It’s sad that I had to clarify that right now. Anyway, it’s just for fun. It keeps the pressure off and no I don’t blindly do what it says. I’m not that daft. But it helps in a pinch.”
Her eyes study me intently for a moment. The she nods. “Yeah, it’s still weird, I don’t care how you justify it.”
“Then I guess we’re just a pair of fucking weirdos aren’t we now?” I stare down at the ball, then close my eyes and say. “Should I kiss Marina goodnight?”
I shake the ball vigorously, open my eyes and take a look.
A blue triangle that says LOL floats to the surface.
Marina bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, it has a sense of humor! Is it sentient?”
“Obviously this is the upgraded version. I have the old-fashioned kind at home,” I tell her as I stick the ball back in the glove compartment and shut it. I know I should probably feel like a bit of a wanker or something for showing her that, let alone actually asking the bloody thing if I should kiss her or not. But I have zero regrets.
So far…
“Well, sorry to tell you then but if the 8 Ball says it’s a laughable idea, it’s a laughable idea.”
“Fine. But if you’re willing to accept the answer tonight, you should be willing to accept whatever answer it gives me on our next date.”
“Since when did dating turn into gambling?”
“When you agreed to go out with me, Bumble.”
“Guess I should have seen that coming.”
Chapter Six
Laz
“Walking in My Shoes”
I wake up feeling inspired.
I have to thank my dreams for that.
I don’t exactly remember them but I remember the feelings they gave me, imprinted somewhere inside. It was warmth and happiness followed by self-sabotaging and despair. Something beautiful and wonderful had happened to me and then I ruined it all, more comfortable being cold and alone. I wear misery like a worn coat and in my dream it was no different.
It sounds slightly morbid, but it’s the best kind of dream I can have. You know, from a creative point of view. Emotions at a high, swirling inside me, based on nothing. Nothing in my real life is at stake, everything is the same, and these feelings are fleeting. Harmless. So I immediately grab my pen and paper beside the bed and start writing.
I end up filling six pages full of one whole poem, something I can easily break apart later into sections and then parcel it out on Instagram. I’ve been posting so much old stuff lately that I think people might be getting sick of it.
I could actually write more but my phone rings and just like that, all the creativity is drained out of me, like it was never here to begin with. I know it’s my mother calling, she’s the only person I know who doesn’t text.
I stare at the cell for a moment and rally together the strength to talk to her. It would be so much easier for it to go to voice mail but I hadn’t talked to her in a few weeks now, which I feel guilty about, even though she hadn’t called me either.
“Hi mum,” I say into the phone.
“Lazarus, sweetheart,” she says. “It wouldn’t kill you to call would it?”
More than a decade outside of Manchester and her accent is as strong as ever.
“Sorry mum, just been busy. How are things?”
“Oh, you know. The same old. Listen, I have a favor to ask you.” She got to the point fast, as usual. “Noah has been…hard to manage lately. You know he won’t talk to me and he absolutely refuses to talk to Daryl. So I was wondering if you’d be able to come by and take him out for ice cream or something.”
The way she’s talking about Noah, it makes him sound like he’s an eight-year-old kid, not fourteen. Then again, that’s the way she always talks about him. I know it isn’t easy for stepparents but my mother has been with Daryl for thirteen years now and it’s like Noah and Jane are still Daryl’s kids and not her own.
Then again, I’m my mother’s son and she sent me off to boarding school for most of my life, so being parent of the year isn’t exactly her forte.
“He’s lonely,” she says. “He needs a friend. I’m not sure he has any…good ones.”
I automatically pick up on the vibe she’s putting out there and already know what Noah’s problem is. Or rather, their problem with him.
“Okay, tell him I’ll be by in an hour and a half.”
I hang up and get ready. My mother, my stepfather Daryl, and Noah, all live in Santa Clarita, which can take no time at all or all bloody day, depending on the traffic. With it being a Sunday, I get there a bit early which gives me a moment to check in with Marina.
How are you doing? I text her. I thought she would have already texted me this morning like she usually does and now I’m paranoid that maybe our whole dynamic has been turned on its head after what happened last night. The date ended on a good note but even so, the fact that we went out on a date to begin with isn’t the norm for us.
I wait in the car outside the iron front gates of the Murdock household, hoping she’ll respond right away. She’s usually good for a little encouragement before I drive through these gates and into the ninth circle of Hell, but this time I’m on my own.
I put my phone in my pocket, enter the security code and the gates part for me. I drive through the long circular driveway and take the parking spot on the opposite side of the pillars.
My stepfather, Daryl Murdock, is a television producer for CBS. He had a lot of big shows in the late 80’s and 90’s and though any hits have tapered off for him particularly, he’s rolling in the dough.
And it shows. The house is massive, a grand white building that you’d more likely see in Louisiana instead of something you’d see in southern California. The lawn is wide and expansive framed by tall sycamore and oak and the gardens are overseen by my mother, who pretends do all the work but really just hires a gardener instead.
I had to live in this house for the first two years I was in America and though it was long ago, it feels like it was just yesterday. At the time, I was eighteen, fresh out of school and with no idea what my future held. It was when I was in boarding school, hours outside of Manchester, that my father left my mother. I would say he left “us” but since I rarely saw them, it doesn’t sound right.
After that my mother decided to see what the USA was all about, leaving me behind in England. She met Daryl in LA—who was recently divorced for the fourth time—and I guess he was blinded by her beauty. My mother’s always been a very attractive woman, like someone out of a gothic Victorian, all dark wavy hair with delicate features and pale skin.
They fell in love and the rest was history. They actually never married legally and Daryl blames it on him having been married too many times before. I actually think it’s because my mother and father never actually got a divorce. He couldn’t be bothered to stick around for that.
I park the Camaro in the guest parking (yes, the place is big enough for guest parking and because Daryl does so much networking, he often has guests over all the time) and make my way up the front steps to the door.
I knock and wait. Even when I lived here I knocked and I waited. I didn’t even have a key. I could tell that Daryl wasn’t that fond of having me live with them and even now that I’ve been out for ten years, he’s still not fond of me. Like my mother, I got the impression that he never wanted any kids, so I wasn’t exactly welcome. But when his ex-wife died, Jane and Noah, came to live with him and my mother. Which makes for one dysfunctional family.
Rosalie, their housekeeper, answers the door and gives me a big smile when she sees it’s me.
“Lazarus,” she says warmly, “come in. So good to see you. Have you gotten taller?”
She says this each time. Rosalie is a middle-aged Thai lady who has been employed by Daryl for as long as I can remember. In a stark, white-walled house where everything is put in its place, cold and sterile, Rosalie is the only source of life. Well, her and Noah.
“I assure you I have not gotten taller,” I tell her, giving her a quick hug. “I’m actually here for Noah.”
She nods. “Miss Sarah told me already. She and Mr. Daryl are out at brunch with friends. Noah is just in his room.”
“How is he?” I ask her, lowering my voice. “Just between you and me, because I don’t think my mother has a good, shall we say, handle on the situation.”
She nods, her expression turning grim. “He’s a good boy. He’s just figuring himself out. Back at home, boys are allowed to be who they want, masculine, feminine, it doesn’t matter. In this city, too, people are open-minded. But his parents…”
She trails off. She’ll never speak ill of her employers, not even around me, but I know how she feels about them.
“I understand,” I tell her. “I’ll probably take him out to see a movie or something.”
“You’re a good soul,” she tells me, patting me on the arm before she hurries off and is swallowed up by the house.
I take in a deep breath and climb the winding staircase to the second floor, heading down the hall past my old bedroom, Jane’s old bedroom, until I come to Noah’s.
“Noah, it’s Laz,” I say, rapping on his door. I wait a few moments, listening. I don’t want to walk in uninvited in case he’s doing what I was doing all day when I was fourteen, jerking it until my hand was sore.
“Noah,” I say again, knocking louder.
Finally, I hear some shuffling and the door opens.
Noah stares up at me with a sullen expression. “What?”
“What?” I repeat. “No, hey buddy it’s good to see you?”
“Why are you here? You’re here cuz Sarah told you to be here, right?”
I clear my throat. “Mum told me I should probably come by but I’m not here because of her, alright?”
He rolls his eyes and tries to shut the door. I shove my shoulder between and pry it open.
“Come on,” I tell him. “I’ll take you to the movies, whatever you want to see. My treat.”
“I have money,” he says. “And I can go to the movies to myself. You don’t see anyone stopping me.”
“You really don’t want to go?” I ask, watching him closely. Fuck, I can’t tell what this boy is thinking. “Movies, lunch, whatever you want. We can drive to the bloody beach, I don’t care.”
“Not interested.”
Now I’m the one rolling my eyes. Been in this house ten minutes and I’m already reverting. “Fine,” I tell him. “I’ll leave you alone. I just thought you needed a friend, someone to talk to. I’ll be going.”
I’m not faking it either. I am leaving. I love Noah but our relationship goes two ways. Teenager or not, I can’t always be chasing him, trying to be the big brother he never had. With Jane out on the east coast now, I feel he needs me now more than ever but maybe he doesn’t.
I go down the hall, down the stairs, as far as the car, about the check my phone to see if Marina had texted back yet when I hear him yell, “Laz!”
I look back at the door. “Change your mind?”
“Can we go to Venice?”
“Sure,” I tell him. Maybe we’ll see Scooby on his penny farther while we’re down there.
“Great, I’ll be right back,” he says and then disappears into the house.
He’s gone for long enough that I take out my phone and see that Marina responded. I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I’m good. Just finished teaching a class I totally forgot about until this morning.
“What are you smiling at, your girlfriend?” Noah teases me as he comes around to the passenger side. I slip the phone in my pocket and get inside.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I tell him, putting on my seatbelt.
“Yeah right,” he says, adjusting his bright purple backpack adorned with glittering stars between his
“New backpack?”
He looks down at it and his features harden, making him look far older than fourteen. As different as Noah and Daryl are, they do look alike. Both are on the short side, but slim and compact, with angular features. Noah’s hair has been a multitude of styles and colors, now it’s long in the front, buzz-cut in the back, like a reverse mullet, and neon blue.
“I like it,” I say quickly. “Though I thought maybe you’d want to match your backpack to your hair.”
He manages a quiet laugh. “Yeah. I was thinking that but then I’d have to buy a new backpack every week and I know Dad’s allowance won’t stretch that far. Especially over something like this.”
“Let me guess, he gave you grief over it?”
“How did you know?” He leans back in his seat. “I know why your mom called you, by the way. We had a fight last night.”
“What about?”
“The backpack,” he says, kicking it. “Because Dad said it was gay.”
I bite down on my tongue, hard, because there are so many fucking things I would love to get into right now about Daryl, but I have to remember that the guy is still Noah’s father, even if he is a grade A wanker.
“Your father,” I begin, choosing my words carefully, “isn’t exactly open-minded. We both know this. What did you end up telling him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” he says defensively. “There’s nothing to tell. I just like colors. I don’t know. He kept saying he didn’t want people to think I was gay, that I was hanging out with the wrong people, like Sam, I mean, how can anyone not like Sam? He wouldn’t drop it, he just kept picking on every single detail of my life, like he was goading me, like he wanted me to admit it.”
“Admit what?”
He shrugs, his face scrunching up. “I don’t know. Whatever I am. But Laz, I don’t know what I am.” He looks over at me, face white like he’s frightened to death. Suddenly I’m having deja-vu of Marina last night in that very same spot.
“Noah, you’re you. That’s all you need to know. That’s all that matters right now. You’re still figuring yourself out. Fuck, I’m still figuring out myself.”