Page 31 of Misadventures And Ms. Demeanor

"Why are they so into it?"

"Aunt Velma and Esther?" He nodded. "They were Roller Dolls back in the seventies. Won a few championships. When I moved in with Aunt Velma, she taught me all about it."

"You grew up with your aunt?"

"Nowyou're curious?" I asked.

He shrugged.

"Yes. My parents left me with her when I was five."

He frowned. "Left you?"

"Left me," I repeated. There wasn't anything more to tell. They were free spirits and hadn't wanted to be burdened with a headstrong, independent child so they dumped me on Aunt Velma's doorstep. "And you? Did you grow up with that white picket fence you're looking for?"

JT's jaw clenched. "No. My mother ran off with my piano teacher when I was six. My dad turned to alcohol and porn to ease the ache."

That sucked. I knew what it felt like to be left, but to be stuck with a disinterested parent was something different. Aunt Velma had never been disinterested. Crazy, but not disinterested.

"So you hate porn stars because your dad watched porn a lot?"

"I hate what it did to him." He sighed. "Goldie knew who I was the other day because my dad used to make me go into her store and pick up video rentals for him. She knew I was too young and dragged me into the back to talk to me about sex like she did to some of my friends who'd tried to rent from her. But she didn't give me the sex talk. She knew about my dad and that the movies were for him. Instead of having a minor walk into her store, she arranged it so the movies were left for me at her husband's doctor's office."

"She did that? That must have saved you tons of embarrassment," I replied. It was also really nice of her.

"Embarrassment? Are you kidding? Goldie's husband is an obstetrician. I had to go into a waiting room full of women who were pregnant or getting stuff looked at...down there.I was sixteen."

I couldn't help but laugh. "I guess that was how she gave you the sex talk after all."

"No kidding. Visions of pregnant women had me steering clear of sex for a long time."

"Porn isn't real, you know."

JT eyed me. "Huh. I didn't know that," he replied sarcastically. "Like you for example?"

"Well, Silky Tangles at least. It's her job. It's fake. She's an actress." I said those one after another as I ticked them off with my fingers on the steering wheel.

"You're saying I shouldn't be so hard on you because you're a porn star." It was my turn to eye him. "Fine. Fine. Your turn. If you don't like being in Bozeman, why come back at all? Where do you live anyway?"

I frowned. "Nowhere really. I had a place in LA, but that fell through earlier this month." I was not telling him about Roger. No way, no how. "I travel so much that I don't really have a place of my own. No furniture. No knick knacks. No picket fence."

"Don't you want one?" he countered.

I thought for a minute. "I never really thought about it, I guess, because I never had that. Aunt Velma's great and all, but she's...larger than life. That's why I went off to boarding school."

"It was so bad you wanted to go to boarding school?"

"When I got my period for the first time, I was fourteen. She not only had a period party and invited all my girlfriends, she invited the boys in my class as well."

JT squirmed at the use of the word period in a sentence not in reference to a portion of a hockey game. "Gotcha. No need to say more."

"I didn't really feel like I belonged anywhere. I guess..." I paused and sighed, lulled by the straightness of the road. "I guess I still don't. I don't have this dream I'm striving for like you do. I'm striving for...something, but I don't know exactly what it is. I'm thinking I'll know when I find it."

"Wow, that's really?—"

"Holy fuck!" I shouted jumping up in my seat, but caught within the confines of the seatbelt. Something furry wound around my ankles, scaring the ever-loving daylights out of me, then claws dug into my leg.

I slammed on the brakes and held onto the wheel in a death grip as I steered the RV over to the shoulder of the road, the sound of the rumble strips on the white line irritatingly loud. A hiss and a meow from hell came from the floor by my feet. We stopped so abruptly we both jerked against our seat belts and something from the back hurtled through the air and hit the front windshield, shattering through it so it lodged just beneath where the rearview mirror should be.