A DAUGHTER'S LOVE
CHAPTER SEVEN - WHEN THE HEARTBREAK ISN'T WORTH IT
After a Monday where little had happened, except for Becky attending school during the day and doing some more bonding with Audrey in the evening, she'd turned up school expecting little out of the ordinary to happen that day, but boy, would she ever be proven wrong!
It needed to as well, seeing as she'd already spent a week in 1989 and it didn't feel to her as if she was any closer to clearing up the big mystery of who would try to hurt Laura, than she had been when she'd first gotten there. Even if it felt like she'd picked up something resembling a clue here and there, with only a little over three weeks to go, she needed a breakthrough and soon or her "Mission" would turn out to be a huge failure.
The first thing that she quickly found out was that Laura and Bobby had some kind of big fight the day before, only Laura wouldn't tell her what it had all been about, which irritated her to no end. Especially since she had a sneaking suspicion that this bad boy version of her father was also the kind of guy, who probably kept up dealings with some shady people, to put it mildly. He'd never been keen on telling her too much about this time of his life (probably because of the shame that he felt was related to it), still she could easily guess that if Laura had been big on doing drugs, then a rebellious and testosterone-fueled young man like himself would have found it hard to say no, as would his rather unintelligent and immature bestie, Mike Nelson.
Another piece of drama, even if it was of a very minor kind, came from no one other than Audrey, who'd decided to take Becky's advice and grab the bull by the horns when it came to James Hurley. Normally this wouldn't be news that anyone there cared about, and it wouldn't have been if the hopeless romantic Audrey hadn't channeled her inner theater kid and declared her crush on him in a poem, in front of their entire English class. Of course, she hadn't directly mentioned him by name, but she'd mentioned that her crush in the poem rode a motorcycle and played guitar, which pretty much narrowed it down to one guy. What's more, in a move that was even more daring of the usually rather shy Audrey, she'd asked him head-on right after the class had ended, if he wanted to go and see a movie with her that evening and even to Becky's surprise, he'd instantly accepted her proposal.
Seeing Donna and Laura's different reactions to this, however, was what made the situation even more interesting from Becky's point of view, with Donna looking more upset than she should have been while Laura turned far quieter than she usually was.
"Do you think that Audrey and James will become a couple now?" she tried casually asking Laura while they were waiting to be picked up by Laura's father Leland, who was running a bit late.
Usually, she would be riding with Audrey, seeing as they lived at the same hotel, but she'd asked Laura if she couldn't catch a ride with her over to the department store, where Laura was working at the perfume counter with her work-pal Ronette that afternoon. Both as a chance to talk privately talk to her, but also as a chance to do a bit of shopping for some new clothes, to replace some of the ones from the lost and found box at the hospital that she'd been wearing so far. Was it a smart way to spend her meager funds? Perhaps not, but her and pastel colors had never been a pretty mix, no matter which decade that we're talking about! Plus, you clearly got a whole lot more for a dollar in 1989 than you did in 2017!
"They seem like a weird match to me. I can't see them going on more than one date" Laura briefly answered her. as she looked up the street for her father's overtly gas-sucking Oldsmobile to come into view.
"I don't know. I mean, they're both single, so there's nothing to get in the way there. Unless you know something that I don't?" she probingly asked Laura, who got a little uncomfortable at the question.
"Why would I know anything about the two of them that you don't?" Laura nervously asked her back, in a slightly lowered voice that was starting to speak volumes about her true feelings towards James.
"You tell me. I'm not the one who's known both of them since you guys were in kindergarten" she told Laura, again as a way to try to get her to give it up, when it came to revealing her true feelings.
"If you want a brutally honest low-down, here it is: Audrey is nearly full a year older than me, but she still has the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old! The one and only reason that I can think of why James would even consider saying yes to being her date, is to get back at me!" Laura, who'd seemingly lost herself in the moment and had over spoken, told her and not long after realized what she'd just said.
"Why would he want to get back at you?" she asked Laura, whom she now had right where she needed her.
"I ..." Laura began, before quickly coming to the conclusion that the easiest way out of this was to tell the truth, or at least some version of it. "Look, I know James like almost no one else does and he can be overly sensitive sometimes. Trust me, the last thing that he needs is to have an overgrown child such as Audrey, to have to be a babysitter and boyfriend to at the same time. He needs someone like me or Donna, who are on the same maturity level as he is".
"Don't you think that it's being mean to Audrey, when you're saying nasty things about her behind her back like this?" she asked Laura, who looked like she more or less agreed with her.
"I like Audrey, and I think that it's adorable how pure and innocent that she still is, but you can't deny that she lives in her own little fantasy dream-world most of the time. James is a storybook sensitive artist and if someone played around with his heart, like I know that she would just from her not knowing better yet, it could have dire consequences for him. Does that perfectly explain my feelings on the subject?" Laura asked her, sounding like she was hoping that she wouldn't have to answer more questions about Twin Peaks High's latest couple, who had no doubt been the topic of many gossip discussions at the school that day.
"I guess so. Only, why did you mention yourself first, when you talked about what kind of girl that you thought James would be the best match for?" she inquired, just as Leland's car finally came within eyesight.
"I just did, okay? Don't read more into it than that" Laura annoyedly said to her, putting an end to this little interrogation.
Following her little shopping trip (which had been insanely cheap compared to what it would have cost her roughly twenty-eight years later!), Becky's only plans for the rest of the day had been to catch a taxi back to her dwellings at the hotel and do some of the homework that she'd been assigned. Even if she didn't have to and was only there very temporarily, she still saw this as a small chance to prove to herself that she could have been more than a C-Minus student at best, had she applied herself to school and not coasted through her own final two high school years in a selfish, drug-fueled stupor. As it turned out on the other hand, it wouldn't take her all that long to finish what little there was of it. Thus, with it seeming like a waste of her precious time to lounge out on her comfy bed in front of the TV for an evening, she instead made the snap decision to see if she could sneak her way into "The Roadhouse", to score herself a couple of beers in there and hopefully, enjoy some fine live music.
Strange as it may sound, seeing as "The Roadhouse" was also one of the only bars in town where it wasn't much of a secret around town that they weren't big on enforcing the age restrictions on drinking, Becky could easily count the times that she'd been in there on one hand prior to this evening. One of those reasons was without a doubt that her parents had warned her early on that random fights breaking out were a common occurrence down there (a sentiment that they certainly weren't too far off with!), but it was just as much because herself and Steven had always been far more of a pair of heavy drug-takers than even a pair of occasional drinkers, plus if she had to be honest, there wasn't really any kind of alcohol that tasted all that pleasant to her tastebuds. Then, after she'd finally gotten herself clean, she'd stayed far away from all kinds of stimulants out of the fear that it could lead her to a relapse, which in turn made this the first time in over half a year that she'd indulged in any of them in the slightest.
One positive thing that she could say about the largest bar in town anno 1989, was that it had a nice and darkly-lit atmosphere to it that fit well with the music, song by some kind of blonde, waif-looking girl with a live band, who had a very cute love song about wanting her ex-boyfriend to be "Rocking Back Inside Her Heart" that Becky (even if she didn't know it yet) wouldn't be able to get out of her brain for several days after this evening was over. Honestly though, it felt a little surreal to her to have this kind of slow and dreamy pop music playing in front of their mostly rowdy looking patrons, yet there was no denying that they were all eating it up like it was the second coming of sliced bread.
Even the beer wasn't tasting all that bad to her, although after only two of them, she was already starting to feel the effect of the alcohol. In fact, she was thinking about calling it an evening early, when another student from her high school came over to her, looking like he was more or less drunk out of his skull.
"Laura's friend! I didn't even see you there!", the very drunk teenage version of her "Father To-Be" greeted her, all the while he was clearly fighting a hard fight not to stumble over his own legs.
"Do you even remember my name?" she smart-assed asked him back and could easily see that he was having trouble remembering it, no doubt thanks to the state of his soaked-in-booze brain at this moment.
"Sure, I do! It's ... something with "Y" at the end of it! Okay, I'm officially throwing in the towel! What's your name again?" he drunkenly asked her, before he wisely took a seat on the vacant barstool next to hers.
"It's Becky" she reminded him.
"See? I wasn't too far off, was I?" he got out to her with a voice full of drunken slur, as he tried to look into her eyes. Something that clearly was a challenge for him, seeing as his wandering eyes were obviously having all kinds of trouble keeping their focus on anything.
"Have you been doing a little too much celebrating tonight, Bobby?" she asked him and saw him shake his head.
"Tonight, it's more like drowning my sorrows. Want to drown them with me?" he asked her, and although she couldn't imagine that he'd last more than another beer or two, she still saw no harm in accepting his proposal.
They say that you're only certain to get the truth and nothing but the truth from children and drunk people and as she'd hoped from the second that he'd chatted her up, the boy who would soon into the future become her father was a veritable fountain of information, once she'd gotten his vocal cords going into a state of overdrive.
"Laura has never really loved me!" he complained to her, right after they'd had a pair of Vodka shooters that had her own head spinning a little as well.
"I'm sure that she does!" she tried to console him with, like a proper drinking buddy should.
"She's only with me because she knows that I can never say no to her. Don't tell her this, but the biggest mistake that I've ever made in my life was cheating on Shelly with her. What the hell was I thinking?" he scolded himself before taking a large swig of his beer. "If I'd played my cards right, then I would still have had her on my arm right now and she never would have given that jerkoff Leo a second glance. Have you met him?"
"Yeah, I've had the displeasure" she answered him in a tone that made it clear how she felt about him.
"The guy is a frigging psycho, but what can I do? I can't just break up with Laura in the hope that Shelly will be willing to risk her life and leave Leo for me. Even if I'm sure that Laura has at least one more guy on the side. Girls, man! Present company excluded, of course!" he gallantly added, just so that she wouldn't feel too offended by his outburst.
"Easy there, Tiger! I'm not into making out with guys, who are so drunk that they can barely stand up if that's what you're fishing for" she told her would-be dad, who simply smiled to himself at her rejection of him.
"Do you want to hear something strange?" he asked her.
"Anytime" she replied.
"It's like there's this voice in the back of my head that's telling me that hitting on you would just be plain wrong, for some reason! I've never experienced that with any girl that I wasn't closely related to before! Instead, I ... and I have no idea why I'm saying this, feel like I'm supposed to protect you right now! You aren't in any danger, are you?" Becky's drunken "Father-to-Be" asked her, as she had to fight not to smile to herself at what he'd just told her.
"I sure hope not!" she answered him, trying to sound as cheerful and carefree as possible. "So, what do you make of the latest couple at school?"
"James and Audrey? I wish him all of the luck in the world with her, because if anyone will need it from now on, it will be him! As long as he stays away from my girl, that's all that I care about. Do yourself a favor and stay single, Becky. All of this heartbreak of being in a relationship just isn't worth your trouble!" Bobby bluntly stated and for a moment or two, she couldn't help feeling sorry for this version of her father that his many girl-troubles all went back to one wrong decision, a few years earlier.
More than that, it also made her realize why he'd never remarried after his marriage to her mom had failed. After all, who would want to put themselves through that kind of emotional turmoil again, considering that it had already come this close to completely breaking the poor guy this one time before?
Stepping back into the hotel lobby after an evening where she'd had more drinks than she'd had in the past year combined (and after having shared a taxi with her to be father, whom she'd managed to convince that it wasn't in any way, shape or form safe for him to drive a car in his questionable state), Becky had to make sure not to look too inebriated on her way up to her room, considering that she in this world was officially a minor and was only living in such pleasant quarters thanks to a personal request from the sheriff.
Getting to know her dad again in this way had in any case been a trip for the ages, and she had to admit that there was something endearing about him that already showed shades of the man that he would someday become. Even if he had this put-on "Rebel Without a Cause" attitude going on most of the time, he was clearly a very sensitive guy too just like James was, he just showed it in a different way. She couldn't help feeling some disdain for Laura either, for how she was playing them out against one another in a battle for her heart that it was likely that neither of the two boys had ever stood a fighting chance at winning, anyway.
As she laid her head down on her pillow, she had to agree with her dad on one thing: Sometimes, the heartbreak of being in a relationship just isn't worth it.
END OF CHAPTER SEVEN