Hot Mess (13 page)

Thirteen

T
he next morning, after a night of dry-mouthed, nervous, restless sleep, I kicked Rachel’s door open and barged into her room.

“Holy shit!” she shrieked, tearing off her “Princess” eye mask. “What the hell is it? You scared the crap out of me, Emma.”

I was totally giddy—I couldn’t even get my thoughts out in full sentences.

“I gotta talk!” I squealed and jumped into her bed. “Last night! Vodka! Hot guy! Coworker! High heels!” The story came tumbling out in fragments and spurts as Rachel wiped the sleep from her eyes and tried to keep up.

Rachel took a few secs to prop herself up in bed. “So wait,” she interjected, trying to connect the dots. “You went out with Jayla and had plums and then you met some old guy who used to be your boss?”

“No, Rachel, goddamn it, keep up.” I pulled myself together a little and started from the top. “The club was called Plumm and he’s not my boss, he
knows
my boss. And he’s so hot, I can’t even stand it. He’s a walking streak of foxiness! And now I’m freaking out because what if I see him at work? He’s going to know that I’m not a junior media whatever and that I’m not twenty-two and I’ll be completely screwed.”

Rachel’s clouds of confusion lifted.

“Ohhh! Okay, I get it,” she said after a pause, and finally started to get excited. “And you exchanged numbers?”

“Uh, well, no, actually, we didn’t.” I hadn’t realized that until now. I’d dashed off so fast, I might’ve left a glass slipper behind.

“Really? He didn’t ask for it?”

I shook my head, my excitement melting into heartbreak mush.

“Oh, well then, you don’t have anything to worry about. It doesn’t even sound like he liked you that much.” Rachel grinned at me as if she were being helpful and hadn’t just muttered one of the worst sentences I’d ever heard.

I glared at her and sighed sharply, “Thank you, Rachel. That’s precisely what I wanted to hear.”

“No, Em. I don’t mean it in a bad way,” she protested.

Sometimes even best friends need a punch in the mouth. I held back, but just barely.

I needed real advice and some positive energy and I wasn’t getting either in Rachel’s bed. “I’m going to talk to Jayla,” I said gravely, and got up to leave. “Someone who actually interacts with real, live men, not lame computer profiles.”

“Oh jeez.” Rachel rolled her eyes. But as soon as I left the room, I heard her shuffling after me into Jayla’s room, which, for once, she was actually in. She must have gotten up in the middle of the night. The mascara drips were wiped off and she’d changed out of the dress that I’d put her to bed in. As much as I wanted to be a friend to Jayla, my fingers were crossed that she’d never want to talk about her meltdown last night. And, from her “You met a boy? Tell me more!” I guessed that she felt the same way or maybe had just blacked out the last half hour of our evening.

Rachel and I flopped down on her gold duvet and I poured out the story of meeting my future boyfriend and then totally crapping everything up with the lies about graduating college and working in the real world. After I finished, I took a deep breath and waited for Jayla’s verdict, hoping that it would somehow involve finding him immediately and then making out.

“Hmm.” Jayla considered the situation, tapping her BeDazzled iPhone against her chin—yes, she slept with it—and weighed my options. “Well, obviously, you can’t tell him the truth.”

“Really?” I was a little surprised. It just felt like telling the truth would be the right thing to do. “I kind of think I should. I mean, I feel a little guilty about lying to this guy.”

“Ha!” Jayla laughed, throwing her head back. “You feel guilty? Emma, do you have any idea how much men lie to us? Any idea? Let me tell you a little story. In the fall, Chlo set me up with this kid, Carter.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “The guy you didn’t want to see last night? The Shrek-in-Burberry one?”

“Yes,” she sighed regretfully. “The fat donkey one. So he and I go out, we hit it off, and everything was going really, really well. We met each other’s friends, he called me his girlfriend. I even met his parents!”

“
You
had a real boyfriend?” Rachel asked incredulously. Even though we’d only known her for like three and a half weeks, it was obvious to us that this girl was a wild child in every sense. Imagining her with one person was impossible—even for brunch, this girl traveled in packs.

“He was a good kisser and he was rich, nothing more than that,” she huffed indignantly, but I sensed that she had really liked this guy. “Anyway, we were together for two months or so and he just stopped calling. For no reason. I e-mailed him and he’s like, ‘Sorry I haven’t called. I should have told you sooner, but I’m bipolar.’”

Rachel and I gasped in unison and Jayla went on.

“Oh, that’s not even the worst part. So I wait a few days to clear my head, I cry a ton, I do all this research on manic depression and I decided that, you know what? I liked him enough, we could work it out. I, Jayla Louise St. Clare, had enough happiness and stability in my life to support the two of us.” I almost choked. After her breakdown last night, I’d say she was about as stable as a rocking chair on a balance beam. She continued, “I called him and told him that I was there for him and was willing to see it through. And do you know what he said to me? Do you?”

We shook our heads, wide-eyed.

“‘Oh Jayla, you’re so funny. I was just kidding. I’m not bipolar. I’m just an asshole!’”

“What?” Rachel shrieked. “So he was lying about a serious mental disorder to get out of a relationship?”

Jayla nodded.

“Jayla, that’s awful, I’m sorry.” I suddenly felt really ashamed of my selfishness. Why was I forcing her to talk about boys when she was clearly still getting over this jerk-lips? “Did you end up running into him last night? Is that what happened?”

“Uh, we…I, no. No, I didn’t see Carter.” She fiddled with her Juicy Couture pillow and I had a sneaking suspicion she was lying, but Jayla sort of scared me and I didn’t want to call her out on it.

“I can’t believe your middle name is Louise,” squealed Rachel, laughing and mercifully changing the subject before Jayla switched back into meltdown mode.

“Shut up!” Jayla laughed back. “It’s a family name, okay? Anyway, the point is, girls lie about little things but guys lie big.
Big
. So don’t even worry about this Colin thing.”

After that horror story, Jayla’s point did make a little more sense. But just because
one
guy lied to Jayla didn’t mean that I had to seek revenge on
this
guy.

“So I really shouldn’t tell him the truth?” I checked.

The girls both shook their heads.

“You’ll look crazy,” Jayla reasoned. “Don’t tell him unless you have to, and then you just laugh and say you were kidding and he was too drunk to get the joke or something like that.”

“Yeah,” Rachel chimed in. “And I seriously doubt you’ll see him again anyway.”

Again, Rachel had the knack for zeroing in on exactly what I didn’t want to hear. But what if I
didn’t see him again
? I could feel my face turning into a sourpuss just thinking about it. Thankfully, Jayla came to my rescue.

“You’d be surprised. Manhattan is a pretty small town when it comes down to it. I run into exes all the time. So you need to look fabulous all the time. You really need to kick it up a notch.”

Looking fabulous
all the time
? Even with Jayla’s extreme makeover last night, I was still a few clicks away from truly fabulous. “Done up every day? That’s just so not me. Plus, I don’t have any fabulous clothes,” I whined. “I wear the same nasty black pants to work every day. I look like a waiter.”

“Well, sister,” Jayla said, throwing back the covers and prancing out of bed and into her closet. “You have a credit card that isn’t going to max itself out, now is it?” She poked her head out of the walk-in and through a bright smile shouted, “Shopping trip!”

We were out the door a half hour later, Jayla and Rachel not letting the fact that my credit card was parent-sponsored be an excuse to keep me from spending mad money. By the end of the day, I had four new bags of clothes and we all had our New York aliases written in gold hanging from our necks. After explaining to Jayla that not everyone’s parents get the idea of retail therapy, we concocted a pretty solid-sounding story to tell my parents about needing to put a ton of money on their card because my hair clogged the shower drain and caused a major emergency plumbing situation in the apartment that needed fixing. I felt bad about the lie. I mean, they were footing the entire bill for my summer in Manhattan, the least I could do was not drain their retirement savings.

Monday, I got up a half hour early to primp and put on the perfect oh-just-happened-to-run-into-you-in-the-hightech-elevator-looking-fabulous outfit.

As soon as I set foot on the sidewalk, paranoia took over. What if Colin was on the train? Or right across the street from me?

I realized that since I didn’t know where Colin lived, he could be walking right behind me the entire way to work. There were so many people on the street, I couldn’t possibly inspect them all without looking like a total psychopath.

I held my breath as I walked through the MediaInc lobby and hugged the walls like a rat, nervously scuttling into an elevator. I couldn’t even enjoy the televator today. All I could do was imagine the possible conversation starters I could use if I ran into him.

“Oh, hi, you probably don’t recognize me when I’m not dripping in spilled cocktail, but I’m that girl from the other night…the one you talked to for a while…well, maybe like only forty-five minutes, but that’s kind of a while…and I thought you were flirting…. My best friend said you probably weren’t, but…anyway, I’d be interested in jamming my tongue in your mouth. You know, making out.”

Holy shit. This was going to be a nightmare. And way worse than the one I had about taking the PSATs naked.

I thought that once I was safely in my cubicle, protected by the gray pseudo-walls, I could relax. But sitting there, I realized that I was basically a sitting duck, totally immobile should Colin saunter past.

“Yo, Emmerino!”

I gasped loudly as Derek waddled his Dockers and shirtsleeves over to my cube. I was jumpier than a virgin at a prison rodeo. This was going to be a very long day.

“Why are you all hunched over like that? You look like you’re sad.”

I realized I was slunk halfway down in my chair and had scooted all the files on my desk around my face like a fort.

“I’m not sad,” I said quickly, scanning the office behind him like a CIA agent worried she’d been followed.

“Are you sure you’re not sad about not having a boyfriend?”

Derek was like instant worst day ever. You could just insert him into any day of your life and boom, automatically, it’s the worst day you’ve ever had.

“No, Derek, I’m not.” I couldn’t hide the frustration in my voice.

“Why, you
finally
got yourself a boyfriend?” He said “finally” as if I’d been single for fifty years and had seven cats and a facial deformity.

“What? Well, no.” Why did I humor him with answers to his asinine questions? Tomorrow, I was just going to pretend that I went deaf overnight.

“Oh, well, don’t worry about it. I was single for several years before I got married. So if you ever want to talk to me about your issues trusting men—”

I cut him off. “Derek, no. I don’t have issues trusting men and I don’t want to talk. Okay?”

He put his hands up like I was the one with the social problems in this equation. “Whoa-ho! Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or do you have PMS?” I tried to knock him dead with my thoughts, but he just kept right on. “Don’t answer that, okay? Anyway, Nora’s out sick today, so you get to help alphabetize the client fiscal report files from last year. Score!” He pumped his fists in the air and did what I could only assume was a touchdown dance but he looked more like Mick Jagger with two sprained ankles.

I feigned enthusiasm and followed Derek to a conference room with twenty-five boxes of files to be sorted.

The next six hours passed uneventfully, me tucked safely away from possible Colin sightings. And while this should have made me happy, I began to wonder which would be worse—constant office run-ins or never seeing him again? Those green eyes were meant to be seen again.

Sitting in the conference room alone with my Dymo label maker, I called it like it was. “This summer sucks!” I said out loud. Here I was, trapped in this god-awful job while the weather was warm and beautiful, and the one hot guy I’d met was totally out of my league…or on his way to becoming Derek Dorfman himself and I had just vodka tonic–ed myself into thinking he was cool. I tried to picture Colin ten years from now, with a little less hair and some fat wife named Peg. I laughed out loud and thought that anyone as hot as Colin would surely stay that way forever. But then again, look at Britney Spears. This could be his peak—his MTV Music Award performance in a gold thong and glitter. Now, that was a visual. A strangely erotic one.