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chapter ten: have some courtesy, some sympathy, and some taste

a/n:

every single person in the myrtle dynasty has severe mommy and/or daddy issues.

tw(s) ─ the blossoming of coach blood. slightly hypocritical rich people slander. mentions of drug addicts doing drugs. rory has abandonment issues. les can't follow an order to save his life. connie is violent (les deserves it.)

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Bombay himself picks Rory up from her interview. He arrives with style, looking down his nose and over the bridge of his sunglasses at her as the car he's driving purrs with life beneath him. She stands there on the curb and blinks behind the lenses of her Ray-Bans, wondering if, the next time she opens her eyes again, he won't be behind the wheel of a car that's better fit for a bachelor going through a midlife crisis than a thirty-year-old hockey coach. She opens her mouth to tell him that much -- to inform him kindly that he looks ridiculous, that his car is too old for him, and that picking her up in a Honda full of fast food wrappers would've been less embarrassing -- but none of those words come out.

All she can do is make this sound that gets mangled in her throat, equal parts a laugh at his expense and a horrified groan.

"Are you getting in?" If Bombay notices her discomfort, he doesn't comment on it. "We've got places to be, Myrtle."

After a split second of debating whether or not it's worth incurring her father's wrath just to not appear like Gordon Bombay's suspiciously (illegally) young arm candy, Rory gives up and gets in the passenger seat of the car. He pulls away from the sidewalk before she can even get her seatbelt fastened and she's nearly jerked right out of her seat as he tries to work the car with inexperienced hands.

"You've never driven a stick, have you?" She asks, blowing the hairs from her eyes, as her seatbelt finally clicks into place.

Bombay avoids the question. "Isn't this all so exciting?"

His driving is enough of an answer for her. She's forced to brace herself against the door as he, by God's good grace, manages to get them into the flow of Los Angeles traffic.

When he grins at her, she stares back.

"Not really." She gives him a quick glance over, soaking in everything from his hair to the loafers she's so sure are on his feet. "I do this all the time-- you do know that I've been doing this all my life, right? It's important to me that you know that."

"Yeah, I know. That's why we wanted you."

Rory nearly snorts at the usage of the word we. If Bombay thinks that he's got even a modicum of say in anything Hendrix does, he's not the man the rest told her he was.

(Much dumber, and definitely greedier.)

"So, you didn't even fight for any of your kids, not even Charlie, because I, a kid you barely know, have done this before?"

"I know you." For a defense lawyer, Bombay isn't very good at lying. "There's all kinds of stuff about you out there--"

"Ah, yes, because the interview I did with Teen People when I was ten is such a reliable source."

Just admit it, she stares so intently at the side of his face that she hopes she burns him, you only want me here because of my name. Tibbles already exposed this whole thing.

(In the back of her head, she runs through the tell-tale signs of an alcoholic who has fallen off the wagon again. She looks into his eyes and listens intently to his speech, and she hopes that she won't have to resort to any drastic measures.)

"Well, are horses still your favorite animal?"

Rory sucks her teeth. "Yeah... I guess they are."

"Then they're more reliable than you think."

She smiles sardonically and chuckles a peeved smile.

Are horses still your favorite animal?

The audacity of it makes her shift in her seat. Just a few days ago he was staring her father down for this -- for the too-grand gestures, and the condescending words, and the self-aggrandizing attitude -- and here he is, a thirty-year-old man, trying his damndest to fill Don Tibbles' shoes. Their sponsor's representative has given him the idea that he's made of solid Teflon, untouchable because he's the face of a brand run by slimy people who make subpar gear.

Is it truly her place to call him out on his behavior, though?

He's her coach. She should respect him, even if he hasn't done much to earn any respect from the new kids and has, to put it bluntly, almost turned himself out for his fifteen seconds of fame.

Besides, if she has to think about the fact that Hendrix is using her, she'll be forced to think about who else might be using her, too, and she doesn't want that.

So, instead, she takes a deep breath and assumes an air of grace and poise.

"My father says you've been busy at your place in Malibu."

"Yeah. Just a little shindig with a few big names."

"Oh, really?" Says the girl who knows Wayne Gretzky personally. "That's so cool."

He doesn't catch her sarcasm.

"It is, isn't it? Mr. Tibbles and I have been thinking of even doing a shoe brand for me, to go along with the games and such for you kids, of course."

Rory hopes that her sunglasses are big enough to hide the disbelief in her eyes.

Oh, he's way over his head, now.

Don Tibbles is a crook, or a lunatic, or both, and his company is far too disreputable to get half of the things that they want. Video games with them in it? Merchandise with their faces and names on it? That doesn't even happen for Olympic winners most of the time, and hockey players even less so, so the fact that Bombay has fallen for this farce is alarming.

"You know, if you want to meet people who can help you, I think you should come with me to brunch after the photo shoot.

Bombay doesn't even think about it before agreeing. She hums.

She might not be able to say anything out of respect for his position, but that doesn't mean the women her aunt hangs around with won't be able to get through to him.

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Back at the hotel, Averman grapples with a very, very different problem.

Cowering away from the decorative pillow that Connie slams down on his head with enough force to knock a grown man out, he kicks his legs and shouts for someone, anyone, to save him from the onslaught. He doesn't know what he did to deserve this. He just knows that she came out of nowhere, shouting at him before she hit him so hard that his glasses almost broke his face -- and that, knowing him, he must have done something. His brain moves at a snail's pace in comparison to his mouth and he's always saying something that he'll regret.

(His father always told him that he'd get his ass kicked if he didn't learn to run. He just never thought a girl would be doing this to him.)

"How. Could. You. Be. So. Stupid?" Connie's voice strains with the exertion she's using. "Have you learned nothing? Have I taught you nothing?!"

"I don't even know what I did!" He blocks another hit to the face.

"Yes, you do!"

He makes a strained sound.

What did he do?

Did he make too many jokes about Connie seeing Luis behind Guy's back? That was all in good fun-- Connie was laughing at them! If he was going to get beaten up for that, he's sure that Guy would've been the one standing over him, and that there would be fists thrown instead of pillows.

(His friend tends to be on the gentle side, but he was pretty good at giving wedgies when they were kids.)

Was it him making fun of Julie for being benched? He was so sure that neither of the girls heard that, and he didn't really mean it--

"God, you're such an asshole, Averman! How could you do that to her?"

Okay. Maybe it's about the Julie thing.

"Jesus Christ, woman, what the hell is your problem!--"

His attempt to grab the pillow from her is thwarted.

"My problem is that, somehow, after being my friend since kindergarten, you still don't know how to treat women!"

"What?"

His salvation comes in the form of a half-asleep Guy who, having followed the commotion that roused him from his nap, wraps his arms around his girlfriend and lifts her off the ground so she can't assault Averman anymore.

"What's going on?" He rasps, squinting a little in the light.

If Averman's heart hadn't jumped up to his throat, he'd have mocked his best friend's bedhead.

"Let me go, Guy!" Connie huffs, wriggling around. "He deserves what's coming to him."

Guy doesn't let her go but he does turn to the redhead with furrowed brows. "What did you do?"

He opens his mouth and then closes it. He wants to ask why he always has to be the problem but he doesn't because it's very apparent that he, as he often is, is the problem.

"I don't know! Your psycho girlfriend just came in here while I was watching tv and started beating the crap out of me!"

"Watch it." Guy scolds him as his girlfriend flips Averman off.

"You broke Rory's heart, that's what you did!"

"What?" Both boys ask at the same time.

"Not only did you idiots take her out just so you could perv on chicks, but you used her name to get what you wanted! Now she's terrified that we only want to be her friend because she's rich, and it's all your fault!"

Averman's heart sinks.

Oh.

Guy releases Connie and turns to him, heaving a sigh.

"Tell me you didn't."

"I didn't know--"

"Moron!"

Connie huffs indignantly when Guy takes the pillow from her before she can hit him again.

"Oh, man," Averman groans, sitting up. He runs his hands up his face and through his hair, "I didn't know-- shit, man, we didn't mean to! We didn't think that she'd think that!"

"I know you didn't think! You never think!"

Instead of also cursing at him, Guy throws the pillow at Averman's face.

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Her aunt throws her brunch in some high-end, French place in Beverly Hills.

The housewives of businessmen, lawyers, and heirs to old money fortunes gather in the center of the room and loudly worship the ground that Peggy Bancroft, their living God, walks. As they day drink and pick at the food they won't eat, they listen to every word that comes out of Rory's aunt's mouth like her plans for fundraisers and future business expansion are the keys to salvation after death. And Bombay sits with them, reveling in the attention he gets from the sharks as they circle him.

Rory, on the other hand, sits with Greg at a table off to the side and watches the real-life Stepford Wives with unease.

"Is this my future?" She asks her cousin in a low tone, her face scrunching as she leans toward him. "Is this, like, what I'm destined to be?"

Greg pauses in the middle of a bite of quiche.

"Uh, probably not." He shakes his head and smiles. "You were born into it. They married into it. It's different."

Rory doesn't take her eyes off the women in front of them, though. "What do you reckon they even do all day?"

"I don't know... This. Interior decorating. Raise their kids, I guess?"

"No. They pay some poorer woman to do that and then throw a bitch fit when their kids call the au pair 'mommy.'"

Greg's eyebrows knit with concern. "Is that what happened to your first nanny?"

"Yep."

"Huh. Interesting."

"They don't do anything." Rory rests her chin on her fist. "Can you imagine that? A whole life of doing nothing?"

"I mean, you've, like, done more things in your life than I have, so I don't know if I'm a good measure for this."

"You work." She frowns.

"In my mom's store. Chuck's always been the more industrious of the two of us, and you've got us beaten."

Rory thinks that Greg might be selling himself short.

People like two of them-- the ones born into wealth, the kids who were raised by their nannies while their mothers went to brunches and their fathers fucked their mother's sisters-- don't tend to do much.

As their great uncle loves to tell her on the rare occasion she visits, kids like them have idle hands. And, while she's very sure that's really just his excuse to manipulate her into doing labor on his farm, the philosophy is there. She's never met anyone else of their caliber who'd ever gotten their hands dirty with something that isn't crime. They, like the women who sit across the room and giggle at a clueless Bombay like he's a cute dog in a sweater, don't have any substance. With no goals, hopes, or ambitions, they just sit there and rot, existing using their parents' dime.

Managing his mother's store three years shy of thirty might not feel like anything big to Greg, but it is.

So, she tells him that. "Chuck working in the company shouldn't make you feel like you're not doing as much as him, y'know. If anything, you're probably doing better than him."

Greg cocks an eyebrow, his face crumbled with doubt, but Rory just holds his gaze, unwavering.

"At the very least, you don't have a coke addiction."

He snorts and shakes his head.

Rory smiles.

"He doesn't have an addiction--"

It's her turn to be riddled with disbelief.

"Look, Greg, I understand sibling loyalty," She cuts herself off because she doesn't, not yet at least, and then continues, "but Charles does have a problem. He used to have to do a bump just to get through my birthday parties."

"Yeah, well, your mom isn't easy to stomach while sober."

Rory takes a sip of her orange juice to prevent from commenting.

(Because God does she understand that sentiment.)

Like the Devil does when his name is said, Greg's brother shows up only moments later. Fashionably late, he arrives with a flourish and in a cloud of Ralph Lauren cologne; he dazzles the women with a cheeky grin as walks through the room and kisses his frustrated mother on the crown of her head.

Then he sets his eyes on them.

Greg deflates slightly at the sight of his older brother, but Rory smiles and waves.

Chuck waves back as he approaches.

"Hey, there, Chuck."

"Hey." Greg takes another bite.

Chuck ruffles his brother's hair, much to Greg's dismay, and then slumps into the chair next to Rory. Placing a hand on the back of her seat, he leans over and kisses her on the temple.

"Hey, kiddo." He grins, snatching a piece of fruit from her plate. When she goes to tell him to get his own food, he talks over her. "What'd I miss?"

"Lo's having a crisis."

"Yeah, but that happens all the time," Rory steps on Greg's foot, "so, we don't have to talk about it."

Chuck's interest has already been piqued, though.

"What are you in crisis about?"

"Lots of things." She shrugs. "But my dad's paying for a therapist, so you don't have to worry about it."

Mirth swims in her eldest cousin's eyes.

Neither of them says anything. They both, somehow on the same page without even saying a word, just stare at her, dissecting her with their eyes. With a precision that only two people who'd held her newborn self and then watched her grow, they peel her skin back and try to see what is going on inside her head.

Rory tries not to make eye contact.

She pushes her food around her plate with her fork and fidgets under their gazes, and then she breaks.

"I might like a boy whose fathoms beneath me, but I think that he's only interested in me because he's fathoms beneath me."

Greg looks up again. He lifts an eyebrow. "Fathoms?"

"You know, kid," Chuck taps her on the arm gently with the back of his hand, "you do this funny thing where you open your mouth but your old man's voice comes out. Tell me in your own words."

Rory narrows her eyes and, with a roll of her eyes, dumbs down her speech almost spitefully.

"I, unfortunately, like one of the boys on my team. He, and a few others-- my friends, I guess-- begged me to use my name so that they could get into Les Habitudes and gawk at models."

As his older brother sucks a sharp breath between his teeth, Greg thinks about what he saw yesterday.

"Yeowch."

"I know right?"

"Look, it's not entirely his fault. He's a teen. Teenage boys are, like, five years behind girls in development."

"I literally told him that I've never had any friends who weren't interested in the fact that my father is one of the richest men in America right now."

"Yeah, and? Doesn't change the fact that he's dumb."

"Which one?"

Greg's interjection makes both of them stop and turn to him.

"What?"

"They came into the store after you," Greg says, "which one of the boys was it?"

Chuck's eyes alight with this information and he turns to her, too. "Yeah. Which of them was it?"

Shoulders slumped, she scoffs weakly.

"You weren't even there, Chuck."

"I saw you all in the paper." He shrugs. The grin on his face takes almost a malicious turn. "Which one has you all upset?"

Rory stares back at him and hopes he doesn't know how fast her heart is beating. (He, when he was twenty-eight and she was eleven, once narrowly avoided felony charges for beating one of the high school seniors in her boarding school to a pulp for mistreating her.)

"He's... the redhead."

"The redhead?" Greg obviously doesn't mean to come across as so harsh because he clears his throat and tries to suppress the look of shock on his face. "The, uh, the one with the glasses? And the freckles?"

"Yes." She straightens in her seat.

This is going to be a tough few minutes. Especially since Chuck, whose face is now scrunched, has never been regarded as kind.

(No. That was always Greg's job. And then, when he pulled away from the family, it was hers.)

"No way."

"Yes, way. His name is Lester Averman, and I happen to find him very funny."

"Funny?" The eldest member of the third Myrtle generation snorts. "You don't cry over boys who are funny. Boys who are charming? Maybe. Pretty boys who just can't decide what they want? Definitely. But boys who are funny? If they're funny, you laugh at them."

To Rory, Lester Averman is pretty.

Not in a conventional way, but definitely pretty.

She knows that not every single person will share that belief, but she does. He may be crude with his jokes, and not the smartest, especially when it comes to feelings, but he, with his gray eyes and bespeckled skin, is a beautiful boy.

Distractingly so.

(Maybe she has a bit more of a crush than she thought.)

But, Rory can't articulate those thoughts. The words in defense of a boy who made her cry all die on her tongue.

"What do you know about being attracted to boys?"

"I've been known to cross into the other territory once or twice."

Rory blinks at Chuck. Greg's eyebrows reach his hairline.

"Remember that guy I brought to Madrid back in eighty-nine? He wasn't some old friend from college-- I don't think I had any friends in college."

"Wow." Is all the teenager can say.

Greg, however, sits back in his chair.

"Chuck, you brought home, like, eight friends from college."

As Rory whispers manwhore under her breath, Chuck, not waiting for his brother to catch on, puts his attention back on her. When he smiles menacingly at her, she just reminds herself of just how badly his twenty-one-year-old self wanted to be like Val Kilmer's character from Top Gun, and that makes her much less nervous.

"So, what are we going to do about this boy?"

"We aren't going to do anything. I am going to handle it on my own."

"Is this one of those things where we tell you not to do something and, because you're fifteen, you go and do it anyway? Because I, for one, thought you were above that, Lorelei."

"Screw you, Charles."

"Aren't you sweet?" He reaches over to pinch her cheek and barely flinches when she smacks it away.

"I don't see why you guys are so damn concerned." Rory crosses her arms over her chest. "Just because you don't think he's attractive and he's poorer than me doesn't mean--"

"Hey, I'm not shitting on him for being poor. If you want to date a dude who isn't poorer than you, you'll have to date some oil baron's grandson or Prince Charles' eldest."

Rory shudders at the thought of one day being the girlfriend of Prince William.

"I'm shitting on him because he made you cry."

"Everything makes me cry."

"That isn't a good thing." Chuck points out, stealing another piece of fruit.

"He didn't mean it." She says, and she says it so surely that she convinces herself of it.

"Mhm. Do your cousin a solid and remember that all men are dicks because the only thing they're thinking with dangles between their legs."

Rory goes to tell him that it's rich coming from him, the man who'd had a pattern of girlfriends (and boyfriends, apparently) that got brought to holidays or vacations but never came around a second time, but she's cut off, unceremoniously, by Greg.

"But, you've dated girls." Greg squints, his brain struggling to keep up with the fast-paced conversation.

She smiles a pitying smile and Chuck, breathing a laugh, shakes his head.

"Get with the times, Gregory. It's called bisexuality. You should really read up on your queer theory, little brother--"

"Oh, no, I wasn't-- you-- It's not like a problem--" Greg stammers and, in his rush to prove that he is both politically correct and supportive of his brother, nearly knocks a cup over as he gestures with his hands. "It's just shocking, you know."

Rory keeps Chuck from saying anything more by putting a hand on his arm and jumping to the gun.

"He's just messing with you."

"You love to spoil my fun."

"That's what little cousins are for."

He chuckles, and she pretends not to see when he rubs his thumb under his nose and sniffs.

"So," Chuck asks after a particularly loud chorus of giggles sounds from across the room puts an end to their comfortable quiet, "who's the quack?"

He gestures with that same thumb over to Bombay. Rory has to cough to cover the laugh at his unintentional pun.

"That quack would be my coach, Gordon Bombay." She wonders if he can feel their gazes on him from across the room. "He's Hendrix's finest."

"So that's why he looks like that. Don Tibbles has shoved his hand up his ass and turned him into a greasy little puppet."

Greg nods. "I, uh, tried to talk to him earlier. He's got a lot to say about himself, and not a lot to say about the team."

That, for whatever reason, makes Rory sigh.

(The reason being that feels for Charlie. She understands what it's like to be loved, but not enough and not in the right way, by a father.)

"The bottle of gel says you only need a dime-sized amount." Chuck continues, eyes narrowed. "Do you think he knows that? Do you think that he knows that, while Hendrix is fucking him, he looks stupid?"

Rory shakes her head and lets the abrasive tone of his comment roll over her. "He has no clue that he's even being screwed over, here."

"Poor dude." Greg mumbles.

"No. Not poor dude." Chuck waggles his finger. "Don't have any sympathy for the idiot who sold his soul."

"I don't think he knew what he was getting into, either."

"They never do."

Rory stares at Bombay. She stares, and stares, and watches as he makes drinks with bottles of champagne worth more than his monthly rent in Minnesota and laughs with women he thinks adore him, and she tries to find it within herself to defend him, but the words never come.

If Gordon Bombay wants to be like her father and Tibbles, then she'll let him.

She's got more pressing matters than defending a man without honor.

"You guys should come visit more often."

Both of them look at her.

"You couldn't pay me to go back and get degraded by your father or that old man."

Greg agrees with his brother immediately. "Yeah, what he said."

"I don't care about you visiting my dad or our grandfather-- though, you should, he's not getting any younger." She doesn't miss the glances the brothers exchange with one another across the table. "You should come back and visit me."

At that, both Greg and Chuck seem to halt. They look at her with such soft expressions and Rory's valiant struggle to seem mature enough to sit at a table with the two of them fades away.

In a few moments, she's reduced herself back to the little girl whose first steps were spent chasing her cousins. They imparted their music tastes to her, a tendency to say 'uh' too many times in a sentence, and the strange feeling in her gut that she gets whenever a car goes faster than it should, and then they left her.

They got jobs and stopped showing up to family events, and they never called.

And Rory, the accident baby born twelve years too late to have any real bond with them, was left behind.

"Okay." Greg says softly. "I can, uh, I can do that."

He smiles and she smiles a watery smile in return.

Chuck squeezes her shoulder tightly and it makes her attempt to not cry harder.

Bombay calls her name across the room like she's his waitress-- or, more aptly, a prop in his venture to stardom.

Rory has to grip the table to steady herself. She can't keep getting emotional like this.

Putting on her best attempt at a socialite smile (one that's so similar to her mother's that Greg shrinks in his seat), she stands and grabs her flute of just orange juice with her freshly manicured fingers.

"If you'll excuse me, I think I have to go make a few women think that my coach is worthy of an investment."

When she reaches him, Bombay squeezes her arm.

Her smile twitches around the edges. Her patience is wearing thin.

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While a piece of Rory withers away in some restaurant, Averman, having swallowed what little pride he has, stands in front of the last person he ever wanted to speak to. Henri Leblanc listens to him recount the events of the past few days, a pinch in his brow as he fails to notice the way that the redhead clenches his fists down by his sides (and the way that his hatred for France swims in his eyes as the other members of the ski team giggle at his expense.) Henri listens, and nods, and it frustrates Averman so much that, by the time he's finished with his spiel, he wants to just turn around and walk away; his face is red, and his heart is beating, and he can feel his dignity floating away.

Henri sighs a sigh that ages him, though, and that has Les rooted to the spot.

"Do you really want to know what I think?"

"Yes." Averman forces out, his jaw clenched as sweat gathers at his brow. "That's why I came to you in the first place."

"Apologize to her. Tell her you are sorry, and bring her flowers, but do not tell her about your feelings."

That makes him pause. All the heat rapidly leaves his body and he feels cold.

"What?"

"I love Lorelei." Henri says it so intensely that his stomach aches. "She is beautiful, inside and out, and she is so full of love, but you must listen to me when I say that her family will tear you apart."

And Averman, who has never followed an instruction a day in his life, laughs.

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a/n:

rory's family is only really slightly in this book. they play a much bigger role toward the end of the next book, especially greg and chuck, so look forward to that!

anyway, i can't wait for rory to rip bombay's head off and eat it like a praying mantis <3

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you