Gap Year - 99. Chapter 99

April 25, 2004

The Pacific Coast Highway

Pacific Palisades, CA

Will

“Nice that traffic is light,” Travis said. “I’m usually fighting it going the other way.” It was 8:00 in the morning, and we were heading to Malibu so Travis and I could get situated, and so we could surf.

“That’s because it’s Sunday, dipshit,” I said, giving him crap.

“Whatever,” he said, which made Stef smirk because he’d said it just like I did.

“I am wondering how you are planning to handle Curtis Buck?” Grand asked, suddenly pivoting us onto a serious topic.

“Handle him?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said in a mildly annoyed tone, because he probably didn’t want to spell things out. “You all expressed considerable animosity towards him last night, and you,” he said, speaking directly to my father, “directly threatened him.”

“I threatened him?” Dad challenged.

“You said you would rip off his head and piss down his neck,” I said flatly, then tried not to laugh. He gave me an annoyed look. “Dude, that was a classic line.”

Travis chuckled. “I think that after last night, you’ll have to stand in line to do that.”

“I think that as feelings are still intense after the revelations we heard, it would be a wise idea not to act on our collective desire for vengeance until we have had a chance to think things through,” Grand continued. “I also think it would not be unreasonable for us to pledge not to take unilateral action in severing Curtis Buck’s head.”

Stef, Grand, and my father were sitting in the back seat facing forward, while Travis, Jake, and I sat across from them facing towards the rear. I paused to study the others in the car with me. Without looking at them, I could sense the anger emanating from Travis and Jake that just the mention of Curtis’s name had evoked. Stef and Grand had clearly talked about this, because they both were very calm and focused on the topic. While those guys all had issues with Curtis, the most dangerous one, my father, sat there almost in a trance. In that weird way that I had sometimes, where I could read his mind, I could tell that he’d already given a lot of thought as to how he was going to handle Curtis Buck. He was the man who had engineered the deaths of Carson and Bryan, and had masterminded a plan to pin their murders on Alexandra Carmichael. He could be just as thorough and organized as Grand, but he was much more ruthless. It was unlikely that Curtis Buck would survive much longer.

At the same time, I could almost see the struggle inside of him. He did not want to talk about this, he did not want to discuss his plans or ideas about it, and he did not want to lie to us, so he couldn’t make that pledge. He looked cornered. My first instinct was to jump in and force him to make that promise, knowing that would compel him to act collectively with the rest of us, and that it would probably help make sure he didn’t get into trouble. That instinct faded when I realized I was about to treat him the same way he usually treated me, and I remembered how much that pissed me off. I thought back to my trip to Australia, and how he’d had so little confidence in me he’d done everything he could to get me to agree to his coming with me. Yet here I was, contemplating doing something similar to him, where I questioned whether he could make smart decisions without input from the rest of us. I decided to take the bullet for him, so to speak. “I’m not willing to do that, not yet,” I said to Grand.

“And why not?” he demanded, quite annoyed with me.

“That whole dinner and all those revelations have clearly freaked all of us out,” I said. “I don’t want to think about them; I don’t want to worry about them. All I want to do is get in the water, catch a wave, and forget about all of this shit for a while.”

“Dude, me too,” Travis said.

“I do not understand why a pledge of temporary non-violence is problematic,” Grand persisted.

“Because that requires that I think about it, and I’m not going to do that,” I said.

“I agree with Will,” my father said, and gave me a grateful look.

“Dude, check out that wave!” I said to Travis, and pointed out to the Pacific where there may or may not have been a major water formation.

“We are almost there!” Travis said excitedly, and that served to throw Grand’s big, planned détente out the window, as we spent the rest of the ride focused on the ocean.

We all but charged out of the limo and into the great room, with its stunning views of the beach. A really nice wave was forming, all but taunting us into the water. “Come on,” I said. Travis and I tore up to our room, all but ripped off our clothes, then went running downstairs so quickly that Travis’s towel fell off. He bent over to pick it up, then found himself staring at Grand. I was impressed that Grand managed to keep his eyes on Travis’s face, even as Travis hurriedly wrapped the towel around his naked body.

“I think that if you want to keep your virtue intact in this house, you would be advised to keep that towel on,” Grand said, cracking us up.

“Your grandson already fucked all the virtue out of me,” Travis said, making me laugh even harder. Stef walked up and he did not have Grand’s mental discipline, so his eyes feasted in a subtle way on Travis’s torso.

“Then he is a grandson to be proud of,” Stef said.

We were all laughing, enjoying this moment of fun, when Grand opted to get serious and ruin the mood. “Your response to my proposal in the car continues to perplex me, enough that I am interfering with your mad dash to the surf to ask you about it.”

“In other words, this is a really big deal to you,” I said, getting snickers from Stef and Travis for once again simplifying Grand’s thought.

“Yes,” he said acidly.

“Dad wasn’t ready to make that pledge yet, and you were backing him into a corner,” I said to him, now being totally serious.

“Yet perhaps that is when it is best to agree to a collective course of action,” Stef suggested.

“I have confidence in Dad’s ability to make good decisions in this case, and I think you should as well,” I said to both of them boldly. “Surf’s up!”

I used that as an excuse to escape with Travis and head down to the surf room. We made it out to the Second Point, but where there had been big waves before, there was now a lull. “The ocean is just resting,” Travis pronounced sagely as we paddled on our boards.

“The Pacific is napping?” I challenged, then laughed with him.

“Totally,” he said.

He was right, in that I could almost feel the energy, the surging power of the water around me. “It’s about to wake up,” I said. I saw my father and Jake with their boards, hurrying into the water as a big wave began to form.

“No shit!” Travis said excitedly. We paddled into position, with him in front of me.

“Don’t get in my way,” I said playfully, then the wave was upon us. It was an awesome wave, big enough to challenge me but not so big as to make me want to really tear it up. Instead, I just enjoyed my ride, and what attention I could spare I used to watch Travis. He was more solid than I was, as if he were glued confidently to his board, while I was probably nimbler. Appropriately enough, at the end of our runs, he rode the wave out so he landed almost gently in the water, while I got thrashed in its final burst of strength.

I shook my head to clear the water out of my ears, then hopped on my board and started to paddle back out. Dad joined me and paddled next to me. “Nice wave,” he said grumpily, since he’d missed it.

“There will be more,” I said, like I was the wave god. Turned out that I was right, and the four of us had a blast, spending the morning battling the Pacific. We were prone on our boards, waiting for the next challenge the surf would throw at us, when a wave started to form. We all got in position to ride it, but while it started out with lots of promise, it looked like it would end up being a disappointment. Kind of like some men, I thought, and giggled to myself.

Jake and Travis opted to go for it anyway, but Dad and I hung back. “Didn’t think that was going to amount to much, and I was right,” he said, as we watched the wave give those two a lame run.

“You were right,” I agreed.

“Thanks for trying to distract Grand in the car,” Dad said.

“You looked trapped, and I could tell you didn’t want to make a Gandhi pledge,” I said, referring to being non-violent.

“I haven’t figured out how I’m going to handle Curtis Buck yet, but I’m going to take that son of a bitch down,” he said, with real malice in his voice.

“I think everyone wants to do that, so it’s probably not a bad idea to work as a team on this,” I said.

“Then why did you not agree to Grand’s pact?” Dad asked.

“Grand was brave enough to delay me getting down here to the water to ask me just that,” I said, getting a chuckle from him. “I told him that I had confidence in your ability to make good decisions in this case.”

He stared at me, not a little amazed. “Thanks,” he said. Our moment was interrupted when the water changed again, and this time the wave was kick-ass. It ended up taking us for such a good ride, we ended up near the beach, and since Jake and Travis were there, it seemed like a good time to grab lunch.

“You picked a shitty wave,” I taunted Travis.

“Yeah, you were right one time,” he said. “Keep singing that chorus.”

“All day long,” I said, bantering with him. We went in and ate indecently fast, then went out and spent a few more hours in the water. In a serendipitous coincidence, the waves seemed to die about the same time that we needed to go in.

“That was really fun,” Jake said.

“You’ve gotten a lot better at surfing,” I said. He had natural athletic ability, so it wasn’t a surprise that he could master any sport he tried his hand at, but even so his progress had been remarkable. In just a few months, he’d gone from being barely competent to someone who could confidently tackle and enjoy really tough waves.

“Thank you,” he said, and put an arm around me in an affectionate way. “I almost have to learn how to do this if I’m going to tag along after your father.”

“It is helpful that I don’t constantly have to rescue you from drowning,” Dad joked.

“I think you underestimate the benefits of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,” I said.

“Will and I are going on a surfing road trip this summer,” Travis announced. “You should come with us.”

“We are?” I asked, wondering what he was talking about.

“Remember our pledge in New York?” Travis asked. I smiled and nodded.

“What pledge?” Jake asked.

“After Travis sang ‘Surfin’ USA’ at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, we promised to surf all of those beaches,” I said.

“That’s a really fun idea,” Dad said. “Maybe we can take some time and do that.” That last comment was almost directed to Jake as a question.

“I can do that,” Jake promised. We all gave him odd looks, since he was pretty absorbed in running the foundation. “I have good people working for me. I can be gone, and they’ll do well.”

“Impressive,” I said. “You’ll have to teach Dad your delegation skills.”

“I delegate just fine,” Dad grumbled. We took off our wetsuits, rinsed off our gear, wrapped ourselves up in the towels we’d come down wearing, then vanished into our respective rooms to fuck and get ready.

Travis and I just tossed on sweats and t-shirts, so it was no surprise that we were downstairs before Dad and Jake. “Kind of quiet here today,” Travis noted.

“Cody and Kevin went away for the weekend, and Jeff’s got something going on downtown,” I said, since I’d already asked about that.

“Yeah, but even the people who are still supposed to be here are gone,” he said. “Where’d they go?”

“Out there,” I said, gesturing at the patio, where I saw the back of Stef’s head. I felt my mood start to collapse a little bit when I realized that Dad, Grand, Stef, and Jake were about to bail and go back to Escorial. I’d had at least one of them around constantly since Travis had run away. We walked out onto the deck and my melancholy evaporated when I saw Darius. “Dude!” I said. He stood up and gave me a huge hug.

“Hey,” he said, in a casual way that contradicted the intense physical bonding we’d just experienced. He moved past me and focused on Travis. “I’ve been hearing about all the shit you’ve been dealing with.”

“Fun times,” Travis said.

“If you need anything, I got your back,” Darius said. Travis nodded, but Darius stopped him, focusing his eyes on Travis’s with major intensity. “Dude, I’m serious.”

“Thanks,” Travis said, and then Darius gave him as warm a hug as he’d given me, which was about the most intense type of physical contact Darius would allow himself to have with another man.

“You’re family now,” Darius said to him. “That means that if you fuck up, I get to kick your ass.”

“It’s kind of like an S&M experience,” I said, annoying Darius by making it sound sexual.

“Right,” Darius said. Our conversation was interrupted when Dad and Jake got there, to get equally warm greetings from Darius.

“That was really nice of you to come up here, even though you got here just when we’re about to leave,” Dad said.

“I came up to see Stef and Grand, then I was planning to stick around and hang out with Will and Travis,” Darius said.

“Oh,” Dad said, because he hadn’t picked up on the fact that Darius was teasing him. He finally figured it out when Travis and I started laughing. “Assholes,” he grumbled.

“Come down next Sunday and hang out with me,” Darius suggested.

Dad looked at Jake, who nodded slightly. “Then I’ll be here next Sunday.”

“You can see me too,” I said to Dad, pretending to be bratty.

“Shut the fuck up before he changes his mind,” Darius joked. Our banter ended, and that seemed to initiate a long, drawn-out series of goodbyes. I’d spent so much time with Grand and Stef lately it was both weird and sad to see them leaving, but in the end, I was relieved to have that major scene ended, and to have the place largely to ourselves.

I grabbed three beers, then handed one each to Travis and Darius as I sat down at the table with them. “Stef tell you all about the fun dinner yesterday?” Travis asked.

“Probably,” Darius said. “Dude, what the fuck is wrong with your sister?”

“It’s fucked up,” Travis said, probably because he was too pissed off at Taylor to think about trying to defend her.

“I dated her once, and it was like there were three of us going out: me, your sister, and Curtis. I didn’t know that was the real deal,” Darius said.

“Dude, you had a ménage à trois with Curtis Buck,” I teased. Darius theatrically spit out his beer, making us laugh pretty hard. That seemed to be the cue for me to light up a joint.

“I wonder what Zach was thinking?” I asked, even though it was probably not the best idea for me to focus my attention on him. “I mean, his girlfriend is fucking her father.”

“He didn’t know,” Darius said, shaking his head.

“He knew,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Darius said.

“When Travis dropped that bomb on us, Zach didn’t look surprised at all,” I said, explaining my rationale to him. “Plus, that conversation he had with Curtis at Big’s party, he was way too confident to go there unless he had something like this to hang over Curtis’s head.”

“Alright, I can see that,” Darius said. “I don’t get it, but I think you’re right.”

“I think he really cares about Taylor,” I said, getting very surprised looks from Travis and Darius.

“That can’t be right,” Travis said. “He only cares about himself.”

“It’s just my guess,” I said. I told them what I thought. I wasn’t going to argue about it.

“He has a thing for damsels in distress, just like he did with you,” Darius teased.

“Galloping in with his big lance to save the day,” Travis joked, showing me that the weed had now fully kicked in.

“Big called me today,” Darius said. “His mind is completely blown.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the guy who is good at figuring out complex situations,” I said cautiously.

“That’s Will’s way of saying he’s a tool,” Travis interpreted. It annoyed me when he did that, then I laughed internally when I realized that he’d done the same thing to me that I did to Grand, and I’d initially reacted just like Grand usually did.

“He’s not wrong,” Darius said.

“So what did he say?” I asked.

“He just told me about the dinner, and kept saying how fucked up it was,” Darius said, then swallowed a bit, because he was nervous.

“What?” I demanded. Travis looked at me oddly, because he didn’t know Darius well enough to read his body language, at least not like I could.

Darius shot his trademark look of intense annoyance at me, then caved to the inevitable. “I invited him to meet me here.”

“Why?” Travis asked.

“He seemed fucked up, and this is a good place since he was in Malibu today,” Darius said. “He should be here in about an hour. If you want, I can just hang out with him in my house.”

“No, that’s fine,” Travis said.

“Your brother is hot. If he’s coming over, I need to change clothes,” I said to Travis.

“Do not hit on my brother,” Travis said, with faux firmness.

“Not while I’ve got you anyway,” I said lovingly, just to gross Darius out.

“I’m going next door,” he said. “I’ll bring Big over when he gets here.”

Travis and I hiked up the stairs to our room and headed like robots to the closet. He was staring at his clothes, looking like he was having a hell of a time making a decision on what to wear. I pushed him gently aside, found the jeans that made his ass look the best, picked out a polo shirt, and handed them to him. “Wear this.”

“Okay,” he said, smiling at me while he shook his head. I grabbed something similar, then we changed pretty quickly. We ended up spending twice as much time in the bathroom, primarily because I was having a bad hair day.

“Are you okay with this, with seeing Big?” I asked him.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked defensively. “I mean, he was the only one of those assholes who actually treated me with respect.”

“Dude, I agree with you, but it seemed to freak you out,” I said.

He sighed. “I keep trying to sort this shit out in my mind, and I’m just looping. I’m worried that he’ll come in while I’m still figuring things out and treat me in that condescending asshole way that he usually does, and that I’ll lose it and tell him to go fuck himself.”

“So if that happens, he’ll get pissed off, but he’ll probably learn something from it, and then maybe next time he sees you he won’t be such a dick,” I said philosophically.

“You’re telling me to grow a pair,” he accused, once again summarizing my sentence, only this time I laughed.

“Duh,” I said.

“You got a copy machine?” he asked, abruptly changing the topic.

“Yeah,” I said, in the same tone I’d used to say ‘duh’ to him right before that.

“I need to make copies of this letter,” he said, showing me the letter his grandfather wrote. “Three of them.”

“Come on,” I said, and led him downstairs to my father’s study. I opened the cabinet doors behind his desk to reveal a copier/printer, took the document from him, and made three copies like he’d asked. I was being very careful not to read it, even though I was sorely tempted. “Here,” I said, and pulled out three envelopes.

“Thanks,” he said. He folded them up and put them in the envelopes, then handed one to me. “I want you to hang onto this for me, just in case.”

I was going to argue with him about what use that would be, but after all the shit he’d dealt with, it seemed reasonable. “I can do that.”

“Can you make a copy of this for me too?” he asked. It was the flyer that Angel Kurtz was carrying.

“Sure,” I said, and copied that as well.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” he asked me, gesturing at the envelope.

“You asked me to hang onto it, not to read it,” I said.

He rolled his eyes at me. “If I didn’t want you to read it, I would have told you not to read it, and I would have sealed it,” he said logically.

“Then I’ll read it,” I said. We sat down around my father’s conference table and I pulled out this letter that had completely rearranged the Buck family.

Dear Travis,

If you’re reading this letter, that means two things have happened: you just turned 18, and I am dead. Happy birthday, although I suspect that the news I’m going to divulge here will all but destroy any joy you will feel at being an adult and free from your father’s control.

You have always thought of me as your grandfather, but in fact, I am your father. In 1985, when you were conceived, it was a particularly trying time for both your mother and me. Your mother was having some significant problems with Curtis, while I was grieving after having just lost your grandmother to breast cancer. We gave each other comfort, and found some solace with each other, both emotionally and physically.

I just read that last paragraph, and other than the first sentence, it’s bullshit. Your mother has always had a roving eye, and I know for a fact she’s had a number of affairs. I’m even worse. I have never been able to be faithful in a relationship. Your grandmother put up with my dalliances and was willing to ignore them provided I was discreet. I guess that for us, it was a marriage that was more about tolerating and coping with each other’s weaknesses than appreciating our qualities.

In one of the more ironic events that has happened to me, your mother seduced a young pool boy named Jacob Pike, who happened to be the product of a liaison I had had with his mother about sixteen or seventeen years before you were born. I’d met his mother, Janet, at an event in Las Vegas, and ended up spending a weekend with her. I found out she was pregnant with Jacob some time later, after she had gotten married, when she reached out to me for advice. Evidently Jacob’s father had finally discerned that Jacob was not his biological son, and their marriage had become quite unpleasant. I provided her with a little bit of money to help them out, and also called some friends and helped Mr. Pike get on a more lucrative career track, but after that, she demanded that I not initiate any contact with Jacob, and then she cut all ties with me. I felt that I should at least honor her wishes.

I’m sharing this with you for a couple of reasons. First, you have a half-brother out there, and I am fairly certain he is the only other child I have besides you and Curtis. If you have a chance to meet him, I want you to know what happened. The second reason is more relevant. Your mother was convinced that Jacob was responsible for impregnating her. We only had one liaison, and after that she seemed determined to act as if it had never happened, so pinning paternity on Jacob made that plausible. Curtis kept tabs on her, and despite her attempts to dodge his surveillance, he’d documented her various sexual encounters, evidence he produced during their divorce. As you got older, it became obvious that you were not his son. You look nothing like him, and fortunately have none of his character traits. Curtis then simply did the math, and not knowing that I had slept with Miranda, concluded that Jacob was your father. The fact that the two of you looked so similar made that conclusion easy, and the fact that I always had a beard made it less likely he’d think it was possible I was responsible.

Your mother seemed content to leave it at that, but I was not. Of all the bonds I have had with family members, my relationship with you is the one I value the most. There is something there, a connection between us, that made me wonder if our genetic link was more direct. I was able to get a DNA analysis done, and found that my suspicions were correct, and that you were indeed my son and not my grandson.

I have labored over what to do with that knowledge. If I disclosed it, it would completely upend our family, and would seriously damage my relationships with Curtis, with your mother, and with your siblings, and possibly yours as well. And while that is concerning, I am most worried that I would damage our relationship. Perhaps, though, the most accurate reason for my silence is cowardice. I do not want to face everyone and admit that I slept with my daughter-in-law, and I do not want to admit that my philandering ways have so negatively impacted your life and the life of Jacob. Instead, I am waiting until I’m dead to admit my sins.

By now you are no doubt fully aware of what a horrible person Curtis is, and it will come as no surprise that he was going to cut you completely out of any inheritance you might have derived from the Buck fortune. The strictures on your trusts were not my idea, but were compromises to ensure that you had money allocated to you, and while I could not restrict how he managed the trusts for your siblings, I made sure that the bulk of your assets were kept free from his control. As Tom Spaetz will explain, I also set up a separate trust for you, since as my son you deserve a greater share of my wealth than you would have as my grandson. Over the years I have funneled money into that trust, to the point that I think the final division of my estate is fair.

I have also left a trust for Jacob Pike. I have directed Tom to reach out and disclose this to him 30 days after you receive this letter to give you a chance to digest this news. It is up to you, and I have no right to even ask you to do this, but it would please me if you would at least make contact with him. I sense that he is an honorable man, and that you would both benefit by being in each other’s lives.

You can tell that I have no confidence that Curtis will be able to take our family legacy and increase it; on the contrary, he is likely to dissipate it all. In so many ways, you are the only hope left for our family and our legacy, so I have entrusted you with what assets I could and hope you can make sure that the Bucks will continue to play an influential role in California, at least.

Most of all, though, I want you to know that while I have claimed to love people in my life, those words were mostly formulaic, and were hollow statements I was expected to make. I think the only time I really said “I love you” to someone and meant it was when I was talking to you.

Tom Buck

“Wow,” I said, because I had no idea what else to say. “How do you feel about this?”

Travis shrugged. “Got an appointment with my shrink tomorrow after school.”

“Yeah, but right here, right now, what’s going through your mind?” I asked.

“I’d say it feels good to know the truth,” he said. “Even though what he did was fucked up, he was one of the most important people in my life, and it’s good to know that he loved me.”

“You’re an easy guy to love,” I said, smiling at him. He smiled back, then leaned in to give me a nice kiss.