Chapter Sixteen

The next morning, Jocelyn sat in her bed staring at her ceiling. A knock on her door brought her out of her own little world. Vince poked his head into the room.

"You want something to eat?" he asked.

Jocelyn laid back down and pulled the sheets up around her shoulders.

"No, I'm fine."

"Jocelyn, the last thing you had was that glass of orange juice I brought you up yesterday, and you only took a sip out of that. You should really try eating something."

"What do you care?" Jocelyn spat.

Vince clenched his jaw and sat the food he had brought up for her on the bed.

"Fine, if you don't want to eat that's your problem, but you don't have to be a bitch to people who are trying to help you."

He walked out of the room and slammed the door. Jocelyn frowned and pulled the sheets over her head.

"I don't get your sister," Vince said as he plopped onto the couch.

Letty laughed and threw a pillow at Vince.

"You'll never be able to understand her."

Vince shoved a hand through his hair.

"I don't know what the hell is wrong with her. I go up there, trying to be nice, which is really hard for me, and she's a complete bitch."

Letty tried to suppress a smile.

"She's going through a lot right now. Just give her a couple of days."

"But I was trying to help."

"I know that, V, and she knows that. Jocelyn has never been one to accept help. She thinks that she can do it all by herself, but she can't," Letty said sadly.

"Why don't you say something to her or try to help?"

"I have tried everything, but she's too damn stubborn. I swear she's the female version of you when it comes to stubbornness."

"Hey, I resent that," Vince replied.

"But you know it's true," Letty said with a small smile.

Vince picked up the pillow that Letty had thrown at him earlier and threw it back.

"Yeah, yeah."

A couple of hours later, Jocelyn slipped out of her room to go to the bathroom.

"What are you doing?" a voice asked from the top of the stairs.

Jocelyn clamped a hand over her mouth to stop from screaming.

"Dom, you scared the shit out of me," she replied.

He smirked and walked closer to her. "You didn't answer my question."

"I was going to the bathroom."

Dom stood next to Jocelyn and said, "I thought you were supposed to be on bed rest for two weeks."

She frowned and began to walk back into her room.

"What the hell am I supposed to do? Pee on myself?" she mumbled.

Dom laughed and put his hand on her good shoulder.

"Wanna go for a ride?" he asked.

Jocelyn looked at him and smiled. "Where's everybody else?" she asked, cautiously.

"Everybody is out except for V; he's asleep on the couch."

"You promise you won't tell on me?" she asked.

Dom laughed. "I'm the one taking you remember?"

Jocelyn smiled. "I feel like a five-year-old trying to steal cookies out of the cookie jar," she said as they both began to walk down stairs.

Dom motioned for her to be quiet. They both crept down to the bottom of the stairs. Jocelyn stepped in front of Dom and placed her hand on the door knob. Dom stopped her when Vince shifted on the couch. The two of them watched Vince closely.

"Coast is clear," Dom whispered once Vince didn't move again.

Jocelyn nodded and opened the door slowly. They both slipped out of the house and walked over to Dom's car.

"I haven't snuck out of a house since I was seventeen...I seriously thought V was going to wake up."

Dom laughed as he opened the driver's door. Once they were both inside, Dom started his car and pulled out. "Where to, Princess?"

Jocelyn shrugged. "I don't know. It just feels so good to be out of the house. Take me anywhere."

Dom nodded. "I know where we can go."

Letty walked into the house about an hour later.

"Wake up, V. It's almost three." Letty passed him and walked into the kitchen.

Vince growled and flipped Letty off. He sat up on the couch and peered around the room. Needless to say, he wasn't happy about waking up.

"Go check on your girl, V," Letty said called from the kitchen. She grabbed a Corona and walked back into the living.

"She's not my girl," Vince replied as he began to walk up the stairs.

Letty laughed and sat down on the couch. She turned on the TV and began to flip through the channels. 'Where's Dom?' she thought, but didn't have time to worry about it because a noise from upstairs distracted her.

"Vince, what the hell is going on up there?" Letty said as she walked to the base of the stairs.

Vince came out of Jocelyn's room holding his hand, which was bleeding.

"What the hell did you do to your hand?"

"She's gone," he screamed. Letty could see the rage in his eyes. She backed up.

"What do you mean she's gone?"

"I mean she's not fucking there, Letty. She's not in her room. She fucking disappeared. You understand what I'm saying?" Vince spat.

Letty raised her arms in surrender.

"I get your point, but where the hell could she have gone? You were supposed to be watching her."

Vince shoved a hand through his hair. "Fuck."

Letty yanked up her cell phone and dialed Leon's number.

"Maybe she called up Leon or somebody and they went somewhere," she said to a pacing Vince.

Her heart was beating a mile a minute. 'Where the hell are you Joce?'

"Hey Leon, have you seen Joce...no...damnit, has Jesse or Mia? Fuck. No...she's not here, Leon...I have no clue...Yeah, give me a call if you hear anything...bye."

"They haven't seen her."

"What about Dom?" Vince asked. "He was here when I fell asleep."

"I'm going to kick his ass," Letty mumbled as she dialed Dom's number.

"Phone's ringing," Jocelyn said to Dom as she picked up his cell phone.

"Who is it?"

Jocelyn's eyes glanced over the Called ID.

"Ick," she said, scrunching up her nose. "It's Letty. I wouldn't answer it if I were you."

She handed the phone over to Dom, who turned it off. Jocelyn laughed.

"You know you're going to get your ass kicked when you get home."

"No, I'm not," Dom said, confidently. "Here we are."

Jocelyn smiled as she looked at her surroundings. Dom had taken her to the same beach that Vince had taken her to a couple of days before.

"Vince told me that he had taken you here," Dom explained. "I just wanted to remind you of happier times."

Jocelyn smiled. "Thank you, Dom," she said giving him a hug.

"Come on."

Dom opened the door to the RX-7 and slipped out of it. Jocelyn followed suit.

"Man, this place is beautiful," Jocelyn said.

Dom smiled. 'I may get my ass kicked when I get home,' he thought. 'But this is all that matters. She's happy.'

Jocelyn walked slowly down to the beach and took her shoes off. It was now that Dom noticed the sling on her arms and the slight limp she had from the stitches in her abdomen.

"What all did they have to do at the hospital?" Dom asked as he appeared at her side.

Jocelyn sat her shoes on the ground and walked to the water line. She wiggled her toes in the sand.

"They, uh, had to put eight stitches in my shoulder and ten in my abdomen. They also bandaged them and gave me a sling, but I haven't worn it until today. It was just getting on my nerves, but this morning it just hurt so I figured that I better put it back on. Plus they gave me some pain meds, but I don't take 'em when Letty gives them to me. They make me feel funny."

Dom nodded and smiled slightly as he watched her play in the sand with her feet.

"I feel like a five-year-old," she said, giggling.

Dom knew then that he had done the right thing. Jocelyn was getting depressed up in her room. She needed to be outside in the sun. She needed to be rescued.

"So tell me about your family," he said as they both began to walk along the beach. Dom shoved his hands into his pockets and waited patiently for Jocelyn to respond.

"Well in order to understand my family, you have to understand how my last names come into play. My mom's name is Cheryl Garcia, so that's where the Garcia part comes into my name, and my father's name is Marc Rodriguez. When my parents divorced, I took my mom's maiden name. So my name now is Jocelyn Marie Rodriguez-Garcia."

"Ah, I see."

"Now we get to the interesting stuff," Jocelyn said with a small smile. "When my mom was nineteen, she went to New York to pursue an acting career. It was there that she must some hot shot lawyer by the name of Daniel Varrick. Daniel took my mom under his wing and they married three months later. The marriage started to crumble almost immediately after the honeymoon. About half way through the first year, Mom found out that she was pregnant. Nine months later she had a boy, whom she named Chris.

"A couple of months later, Daniel filed for divorce and custody of Chris. Since Mom's acting career wasn't doing too well, she was forced to start working at a small diner. Needless to say, Daniel won custody because it was better for Chris to grow up with a rich single dad than a poor single mom, you know what I mean? Mom was devastated and began to drink away her sorrows and money at the local bars. It was at one of those bars that she met my father, who had been stood up by his date.

"Well, my mom and my dad hooked up that night and ended up getting married a year later. Dad managed to convince Mom to move to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where most of her family lived. Three years later, I was born and a year later my brother, Jacob was born. Things were going great up until the summer I turned 8. Jacob ended up dying from cancer of some sort, my parents never really went into detail about how sick he was because it always upset me. Also, my dad's an architect and a guy from LA saw some projects that he had worked on and really liked them. He hired him to do a project out here that would take 4-6 months minimum. I'm not even exactly sure what he was to do, but it required him to move out there. Dad didn't want to pull me from a school that I had been going to since Kindergarten only to have me come back the next year, so he moved out to LA by himself.

"When Spring Break rolled around, my mom planned a trip out to LA to visit my father. She didn't say anything to him because she wanted it to be a surprise. We arrived at his house and found that he was living with another woman and her daughter. Dad claimed that he was just being a nice guy and letting her live there. My mom may have been a drunk, but she was no fool. She left LA and never looked back. They divorced later that year."

"That was Letty's mom, right?" Dom asked.

Jocelyn nodded. "You know, I wasn't mad at Samantha. Mom tried to get me to hate her, but I couldn't. I didn't blame her for the divorce. I blamed my dad. You see, my mom has always had a problem with drinking, but when she was with Dad, it was under control. However, when dad left, she started drinking again. It got so bad that I had to live with Chris and Daniel for over a year while she went through rehab."

"Why not live with your dad or your relatives down there?"

"My mom's family had disowned her by that time, and I was still mad at my dad."

"How come I've never met you before? I mean I've known Letty almost all of her life and I know your dad. But I've only heard them speak of you maybe once or twice," he said.

Jocelyn sighed and dragged her feet in the sand. "That was my fault. I really didn't want anything to do with my dad or LA for the longest time. I came out here one school year when I was 16, I think Letty was 18, and we hung out every morning before she went to school. I was home schooled. We used to eat breakfast at the old mom and pop restaurant. That was the year we got really close. By the end of the year, it was like we had grown up together and it's been that way since. When I got home, I found out that my mom had tried to overdose on sleeping pills. She did it because she thought I was trying to leave her. After that, I never left Baton Rouge. Letty and Chris visited on holidays, but I refused to leave because I thought that she might try to kill herself again."

"So Letty is your step-sister and Chris is your..."

"Half brother, but we don't see it that way. Letty is my sister, Samantha is my mom, and Chris is my brother. Hell Letty and Chris act like brother and sister, and they're not even related."

Dom nodded. "Where does Chris live?"

"Chris lives up in New York. The last I heard, he was a stock broker for some firm. He supposed to visit me sometime at the end of the year."

"So what does Daniel think? I mean has he tried to help your mom in anyway?"

"He sends money out every month, but she spends it on booze. She's been in and out of rehab for years. I can't tell you how many DUIs she's had. The day of my high school graduation, she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in public. When it came time for college, I left. I just couldn't deal with it anymore, and that was when I met Carter...As for what Daniel thinks, he loves me like a daughter. It's like I have two dads and two moms, really."

"Well what about your real dad? How are you guys now?"

"We're fine now. I finally forgave him and things have been peachy since...You know, I think this is the first time I've told anyone about my family."

Dom smiled. "I just thought you needed someone to talk to. Plus it might be good for me to have someone to talk to while Letty is pissed at me."

Jocelyn laughed. "Yeah, you're going to need some help there. I've been on the receiving end of her bitching several times; it's not a walk in the park."

Letty clenched her jaw as she sat her phone down.

"She's with him."

"How do you know?" Vince asked as he stopped pacing.

"His phone's off. His phone is never off unless he's doing something he's not supposed to be doing."

Vince shook his head. "That bastard."

"She had doctor's orders to stay in bed. What the hell would posses her to just leave with Dom? I mean her stitches could get ripped out or something. Worse, she could get hurt again. Sometimes I think she has a death wish," Letty seethed.

Vince sighed and plopped onto the couch. "Either that or he does," he replied.