Hot Mess (22 page)

Twenty

“W
elly, well, well!” I whistled as Jayla scurried around the apartment in her favorite Ella Moss dress. “What are you all dressed up for, Ms. Fancy?”

“Date! Jake! Late! Ahhh! Shoes?”

Rachel extracted Jayla’s favorite Manolos from under the sofa and tossed them over to her. I plunked down next to Rachel to observe the frenzy fest.

“I’m sorry, I just hallucinated,” I said. “I thought you said you were going on a date with Jake. My starfish cousin Jake.” Had my cousin finally grown a pair and followed my advice? Surely not. “Did you ask him out?”

“Puh-lease!” she stopped mid-dash. “I don’t ask guys out. It sends them all the wrong signals. I am a prize to be won, not some desperate freak who begs men to like her. Women should never show the first signs of interest. Ever.”

I think Jayla alone set the feminist movement back about fifty years.

“But enough yapping, girls. He’s coming, like, any second, and I still haven’t had time to put on my fake lashes.”

“Jay, come on,” Rachel laughed. “He’s seen you bawling and covered in snot, you don’t need to pretend it’s Halloween. I think he already likes you.”

“But they’re Shu Uemera. I paid like a hundred dollars for the set and they will make me look flirty and glam,” Jayla said with a dramatic wave of her slender arms, clearly copying some makeup counter woman. She then dashed into her bathroom.

“Lady, if one of those falls off into your forty-dollar lobster tempura, you will look”—Rachel mimed her same jazzy-hand flit—“ridiculous and transsexual.”

“Where are you guys going?” I asked, still in shock that my Geek Machine 5000 cousin had actually managed to ask her out.

“He’s taking me to Nobu.” I heard her curse the eyelash adhesive at the bathroom sink. “He said it’s his favorite restaurant, and it’s totally mine, too. I mean, what are the odds?”

Rachel and I exchanged knowing smiles and suppressed giggles.

The phone rang and Jayla ran from the bathroom and lunged to reach it.

“Yeah, send him up.” Jayla flushed with—could it be?—nerves. I didn’t think that Jayla St. Clare got nervous.

“I think I need a drink,” she huffed.

“No!” we shouted in unison.

“You need to stop meeting and seducing men when you’re drunk. That’s starting out on so the wrong path,” Rachel preached. She was going to be a pretty good mom one day.

I had never seen Jayla so anxious, not even before the Carter barbecue.

“Fine!” she sighed. “But I gotta open this door, I feel like I’m suffocating!”

She flung the front door open the same second Jake appeared, his fist poised to knock. I could have run over and squeezed his cheeks, he looked so cute in his button-down shirt with his messy hair all combed and parted to the side.

“Oh, Jay! I, uh…,” he stammered.

“Yeah, me. Just…you know, door!” she fumbled. They were like two robots set to “Awkward,” a cacophony of fumbles and half thoughts.

“You…nice,” he managed.

“Dinner. Dress,” Jayla offered incoherently before Rachel mercifully stepped in and suggested they go downstairs and get a cab. The instant the door latched behind the Awky Twins, Rachel and I burst into laughter.

“Beep bop boop!” Rachel said robotically, jerking around the apartment doing her best impression of Jake and Jayla. “Jayla equals pretty. Cannot compute hotness. Overload! Overload!”

“Doot doot doot! De Niro’s sushi. Place. Equals love,” I responded in monotone.

I was too focused on my robot dance to dodge Rachel’s hand as she slapped me on my arm.

“Ow! What the hell?”

“Colin was over here last night, wasn’t he? I just remembered that! You are such a shitbird for not telling me every single detail.” She collapsed on the couch and got suddenly serious. “So, what happened?”

“I know, I know,” I said, covering my face and blushing. For the first time in my life, I kind of didn’t want to tell Rachel the details. Like, I could tell her about him being a good kisser and whatever, but that just wouldn’t capture it. There was just something so right about Colin, like maybe it was that he was mature. Or maybe it was that he just wasn’t Brian. I don’t know. But it was almost like talking about it would taint it or make it less real or something. So I changed the subject and I told Rachel that maybe I would let her look at the stuff that I had written for
The Devil Wears Dockers
.

“I’d really love to. I’m totally into this editing thing at work. It’s like it just came naturally to me. And I really like doing it.” I could tell she was a little embarrassed about bragging, but I’m sure it was totally true. Rachel always was a pretty hard worker and got decent grades. She was probably kicking ass at her internship while I was just working for an ass.

“Well then, I’d totally be into hearing your ideas for sprucing it up when the proposal’s done,” I said.

“For sure. But hey, why don’t you try making it into an article before you tackle a whole book instead? Maybe I could get this to be one of our home page updates or something. I could pitch it to Jamie.” She was bubbling up with excitement. And I had to admit, as I let it process, it really was a good idea. An article seemed so much more doable than a book.

“Really? She’d listen to one of your ideas?” That’d be a first for The Dorf. Unless I rapped my suggestions.
Well, my name is Emma and I’m here to say, I ain’t going to collate no more today. That’s right, boss, I’m talking to you. And I need some cash for this busted job, too.

“Yeah. Jamie is really awesome.” Again, Rachel’s voice turned serious. “You know, it’s weird. I came to this city wanting boys, boys, boys and totally not even caring if I ended up getting fired from Sirlie or whatever. But being around all women all the time, well…they never talk about boys. Never. They talk about art, and traveling, and weirdo French movies that I’ve never seen. And they seem really happy. I kind of understand the whole ‘girl-only school’ thing. I just get so much done when I’m not worried about my lip gloss and how my boobs look.”

For the record, Rach’s boobs always looked fan-freaking-tastic. Still, what she said made me think about my total uselessness at work. Had I not been spending so much time totally obsessing about Colin, maybe I could’ve come up with a way to learn something this summer. And I mean something more relevant than discovering how much more awesome the vending machine’s honey wheat pretzels were than the plain salted kind.

I sat on the couch for a while, thinking. Getting something published on Sirlie.com would be awesome, not to mention a boost for my college apps, which could make up for the internship being such a dud. Eventually I said good night and made excuses about being tired. But once I was in my bedroom with the door closed, I devoted the rest of the evening to getting at least one of my Derek stories ready for Rachel to submit to Sirlie. But even writing a short article wasn’t easy. I wrote and deleted and rewrote for nearly three hours, not getting much further than page one. I tapped away on my keyboard until I heard the front door unlock and Jayla entering the apartment. I saved and then clicked my laptop closed and rushed out to the living room.

“Omigod, spill, spill, spill!” Rachel was squealing and jumping around Jayla when I came out of my room. We dragged her over to the couch and flopped ourselves down.

Jayla had a dreamy smile on her face. “Okay, so we get to Nobu and he was a total gentleman—opening the door for me, paying for the cab. All that. And then he walks up to the hostess and is like, ‘Table for two.’ And she asks if he has a reservation and he says that he
doesn’t
! Can you believe that? He thought we could get into Nobu without reservations.” Considering I don’t think he’d even heard of the place before I mentioned it, I totally could believe it. But I kept quiet. “So I was like, ‘Jake, I thought this was your favorite place. How could you not know to get reservations?’ And then he confessed that he’d never been and just said that he liked it because you told him I did.”

I gave a guilty shrug.

“Anyway, so we just walked around SoHo until we found the cutest little sushi place. And, you know, it was kind of better being somewhere quiet with him. And, like, people I knew weren’t coming up to me every five seconds, so I could give our conversation all my attention. And he was just so cute the whole night. Anyway, here’s where the story gets interesting.” Rach and I leaned in. “Interesting” in Jayla terms can mean anything from making out with a B-list celebrity to, well, making out with an A-list celebrity.

“So, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and then on my way out, I stopped in the hall outside the bathroom and was fishing for my lip gloss in my purse and a man walks up to me and says, ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re here with someone but I can’t take my eyes off you.’ And do you know who that man was?”

“Carter?” Rachel guessed. Jayla curled her lips in horror at the mention of his name. I quickly yelled “Adrien Grenier?” to get her mind off Carter and whatever Jayla meltdown he was about to induce.

“Been there. But still, better!” Jayla shrieked, clapping her hands. “Adam Brody!”

Rachel and I screamed. How have I gone through this entire summer without seeing even one D-list celeb and Jayla can’t leave the apartment without seeing someone drool-inducingly hot?

“You are kidding me!” I wailed. “Please, please tell me you left with him or at least got his number or made out in the handicapped stall! Or somewhere. Please, Jayla!”

Jay furrowed her brow and shrugged her shoulders, bewildered by her own actions and my complete lack of family loyalty. “No. I didn’t. I mean, I have loved and lusted over that sex god since, like, back when
The OC
was on. I knew that girls would give kidneys to be in my place. And let me tell you, ladies, he is beyond hot in person. But I don’t know. I could see Jake sitting at the table and he had this cute little smile on his face and just seemed so happy. And I realized that I was really happy whenever I was with him, which is even weirder. So I said, ‘Sorry, but I’m here with my boyfriend,’ and went back to the table.”

“Boyfriend?” Rachel yelped, wide-eyed with disbelief that anyone could remember a husband of fifty years let alone a night-long relationship in front of such total gorgeousness. After one date can you really call a guy your boyfriend? Didn’t you need to have the going-steady talk or at least a first kiss before you got that label?

“I mean, if I’d give up a night with Seth Cohen for Jake, then he has to be my bf, right? What better test is there than that?”

We shook our heads in total confusion and awe. I wondered if Jake knew of his elevated status from geeky tagalong to full-fledged boyfriend.

“Who knew that a lowly crustacean would catch Jayla St. Clare?” I laughed, and Jayla pretended not to remember calling Jake a starfish.

“Hmm. That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.” She suppressed a smile in mock seriousness and I hit her with a pillow. “You guys, the kiss was perfection!” She took a moment to sigh to herself. “Wow. Emma, if those kissing skills run in your family, your Colin is one lucky dude.”

I was trying to be supportive and cool with the Jayla/ Jake developments, but family kissing references might be where I drew the line. Total gagfest.

The next day, Colin picked me up and we went to a really cute little street fair on Bleecker Street. There were tables and tables of supercheap jewelry—of which I fully took advantage and left with some chunky bangles—all kinds of food vendors, and kiosks with I
New York gear. Colin and I walked through the fair hand in hand. It was such a nice way to spend a summer afternoon. It almost felt like I was a grown-up.

After passing the last table of crafts, we went to sit in Washington Square Park and gorged ourselves on gyros and chocolate-dipped bananas. Once we’d washed the tzatziki and chocolate off our fingers with our water bottle leftovers, I rested my head on his shoulder. I felt like I was in a “diamonds are forever” commercial.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked, and realized how stupid that sounded as soon as the words hit the air. “I, uh, I mean, what
did
you want to be. You know, when you were a kid and stuff.” Why was I so worried about Derek spilling the beans about me being in high school when I was so clearly going to slip up and turn myself in?

He chuckled. “I know what you mean.” He put a hand on my knee. “Well, I really thought I was going to be a pro soccer player.”

“Really? You were going to be the next Beckham?” I eyed him closely. “Hmm, yes, you’re definitely hot enough.”

He pulled me in for a brief kiss and squeezed my thigh. “Well, thank you for the blatant yet flattering lies. I tore my meniscus at the very beginning of senior year and haven’t really played since. I tried, though, and ended up taking thirty-five aspirin a day because my knee hurt so badly. Anyway, when my dad found out, he made me stop altogether.” He muttered a curse softly and scowled into the distance.

“Do you get along with your dad?” I asked cautiously, not wanting to get into a
Dr. Phil
special if he would rather not talk about it.