Chasing Harry Winston (2 page)

The girls had just taken their first sips when the doorbell rang. Emmy looked at Leigh, who just said, “Adriana.”

“It’s open!” Leigh called toward the front door, but Adriana had already figured that out. She stormed into the living room and stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the scene.

“What is going on here?” she demanded. Adriana’s slight Brazilian accent, little more than a soft, sexy lilting when she was calm, made her almost unintelligible when she felt, in her own words, “passionate” about someone or something. Which was pretty much always. “Where are the drinks?”

Leigh motioned to the kitchen. “Water’s still hot. Check the cupboard above the microwave. I have a whole bunch of different flavors in—”

“No tea!” Adriana screeched and pointed to Emmy. “Can’t you see she’s miserable? We need
real
drinks. I’ll make caipirinhas.”

“I don’t have any mint. Or limes. Actually, I’m not even sure I have the right booze,” Leigh said.

“I brought everything.” Adriana lifted a large paper bag over her head and grinned.

Leigh often found Adriana’s abruptness irritating, sometimes a little overwhelming, but tonight she was grateful to her for taking control of the situation. It had been nearly twelve years since Leigh first saw Adriana’s smile, and still it left her feeling awestruck and a little anxious.
How could someone possibly be that beautiful?
she wondered for the hundred thousandth time.
What higher power orchestrated such a perfect union of genes? Who decided that one single solitary soul deserved
skin
like that?
It was so fundamentally unfair.

It was another few minutes before the drinks were mixed and distributed and everyone had settled down; Emmy and Adriana sprawled on the couch; Leigh sat cross-legged on the floor.

“So, tell us what happened,” Leigh said, placing a hand on Emmy’s ankle. “Just take your time and tell us all about it.”

Emmy sighed and, for the first time since she arrived, appeared cried out. “There’s not that much to tell. She’s absolutely adorable—like, nauseatingly cute. And young. Really, really young.”

“What’s really, really young?” Leigh asked.

“Twenty-three.”

“That’s not
so
young.”

“She has a MySpace profile,” Emmy said.

Leigh grimaced.

“And she’s on Facebook.”

“Good lord,” Adriana muttered.

“Yeah, I know. Her favorite color is lavender and her favorite book is
The South Beach Diet
and she just
adores
cookie dough, campfires, and watching Saturday-morning cartoons. Oh, and she simply
must
get nine hours of sleep or else she’s really, really cranky.”

“What else?” Leigh asked, although she could predict the answer.

“What else do you want to know?”

Adriana started the quiz show–like round.

“Name?”

“Brianna Sheldon.”

“College?”

“SMU, Comm major, Kappa Kappa Gamma.” Emmy enunciated these last three words with a perfect Valley Girl inflection.

“Hometown?”

“Born in Richmond, raised in a suburb of Charleston.”

“Music?”

“Like you even have to ask. Kenny Chesney.”

“High school sport?”

“Let’s just all say it in unison….” Emmy said.

“Cheerleading,” Adriana and Leigh simultaneously.

“Given.” Emmy sighed, but then she smiled for a second. “I found some pictures of her from her sister’s wedding photographer’s Web site—she even manages to look good in teal taffeta. The whole thing is positively nauseating.”

The girls all laughed, each accustomed to this oldest of female-bonding traditions. When your life was in the gutter because your ex-boyfriend suddenly surfaced on weddingchannel.com, nothing offered comfort like trashing the new girlfriend. It was actually how they had become friends in the first place. Leigh and Emmy met each other first in Astronomy 101, a class both were taking to fulfill the dreaded science requirement. Neither realized until it was too late that Astro was actually an aggressive mixture of chemistry, calculus, and physics—not the chance to learn all the constellations and look at the pretty stars, like they had hoped. They were the two least-competent and lowest-scoring members of their lab group, and their TA had strung together enough English words to let them know that they’d better start improving or they would fail the class, which prompted Leigh and Emmy to meet three times a week in the study lounge at Emmy’s dorm, a glass-enclosed, fluorescent-lit pod wedged between the kitchen and the coed bathroom. The girls were just beginning to tackle the review notes for the upcoming midterm when they heard banging followed by distinctly female shrieks. Emmy and Leigh looked at each other and smiled as they listened to the angry words being exchanged down the hall, sure it was yet another argument between a scorned sorority girl and the drunken guy who hadn’t called the next day. The yelling shifted, however, and within seconds Emmy and Leigh watched as a gorgeous honey blonde with a sexy accent took a verbal barrage from a hysterical, red-faced, significantly less pretty blonde directly outside the study lounge.

“I can’t believe I voted for you!” the red-faced girl screamed. “I actually stood up in front of the whole chapter to speak on your behalf, and this is how you show your appreciation? By sleeping with my boyfriend?”

The stunner with the accent sighed. When she spoke, it was with quiet resignation. “Annie, I’ve said I’m sorry. I never would have done that had I known he was your boyfriend.”

This was not calming to the screamer. “How could you not have known? We’ve been together for, like, months!”

“I didn’t know, because he accosted
me
last night, flirted with
me
, bought
me
drinks, and asked
me
to his fraternity formal. I’m sorry if it didn’t occur to me that he had a girlfriend. If it had, I assure you, I wouldn’t have been interested.” The girl held out her hand in a gesture of reconciliation and apology. “Please. Men aren’t that important. Let’s forget about it, okay?”

“Forget about it?” the girl hissed, almost snarled, through closed teeth. “You’re nothing more than a little freshman whore, sleeping with the seniors because you think they actually like you. Stay away from me and stay away from him, and keep your stupid freshman trampiness out of my life. Understood?” The girl’s voice had gotten louder; by the time she’d asked if Adriana understood, she was shouting again.

Emmy and Leigh watched as Adriana took a long look at the girl, appeared to weigh a response in her mind, and then, deciding against it, simply said, “Understood perfectly.” Immediately the angry blonde swiveled on one Puma and flounced away. Adriana finally allowed herself to smile before noticing Emmy and Leigh watching from the lounge.

“Did you just see that?” Adriana asked, moving into the doorway.

Emmy coughed and Leigh blushed and nodded. “She was really pissed,” Leigh said.

Adriana laughed. “As she so kindly pointed out, I’m just some stupid freshman. How am I supposed to know who’s dating who around here? Especially when the guy in question spent half the night telling me how great it is to be single again after being tied down for the last four months. Was I supposed to hook him up to a polygraph?”

Leigh leaned back in her chair and took a swig from her Diet Coke. “Maybe you should start carrying a list of every single older girl on campus and their phone numbers. That way, every time you meet a guy, you can call every one of them to make sure he’s available.”

Adriana’s face broke into a huge smile, and Leigh was charmed: She saw immediately why the boy from the previous night had lost all memory of his girlfriend in Adriana’s presence. “I’m Adriana,” she said, giving first Leigh and then Emmy a little wave. “Apparently also known as Class of 2000 Queen Slut.”

Leigh introduced herself. “Hey. I’m Leigh. I was thinking of rushing next semester, until I just met your ‘sister.’ So thanks for that informative lesson.”

Emmy dog-eared her textbook page and smiled up at Adriana. “My name is Emmy. I also go by The Last Remaining Virgin in the Class of 2000, in case you haven’t heard. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The girls had talked that night for three hours, and when they were finished, they had established a game plan for the next few weeks: Adriana would drop out of the sorority she had joined under duress (pressure from her mother), Leigh would withdraw her application to rush in the spring, and Emmy would lose her virginity the moment she met an appropriate candidate.

In the twelve years since that night, the girls had barely come up for air.

“And I also happened to read on her Friendster page—using Duncan’s password, of course—that she dreams of having two boys and a girl and wants to be a young mom. Isn’t that just precious? It doesn’t seem that part bothered Duncan.”

Leigh and Adriana exchanged glances then looked at Emmy, who was completely absorbed in removing a cuticle in an apparent effort not to cry.

So there it was. The new girl’s age, her cheerleading, even her oh-so-adorable name might have been infuriating, but they weren’t intolerable; the fact that she, too, yearned to be a mom as soon as humanly possible was the real clincher. For as long as anyone could remember, Emmy had been very vocal about her desire to have children. Obsessed. She told anyone who would listen that she wanted a huge family, and she wanted it as soon as possible. Four, five, six kids—boys, girls, a bunch of each; it didn’t matter to Emmy, as long as it happened…soon. And while Duncan certainly knew better than anyone how badly Emmy wanted to be a mom, he had managed to wriggle free of any major discussions about the topic. The first two years of their relationship, Emmy had kept this particular desire to herself. After all, they were only twenty-five, and even she knew there was plenty of time. But as their years together started to cycle past at what felt like warp speed and Emmy grew more insistent, Duncan only got cagier. He would say things like “Statistically speaking, chances are I’ll have kids one day,” and Emmy would ignore the lack of enthusiasm and his telling pronoun choice, focusing instead on the fact that Duncan had uttered those three magical words:
I’ll have kids.
It was because of those magical words that Emmy conceded Duncan his overnight “work” absences and once—god knows why now—an inexplicable brush with chlamydia. After all, he had agreed to be the father of her future children.

Adriana broke the silence by doing what she always did when she got uncomfortable: changing the subject entirely.

“Leigh,
querida
, it’s seventy-five degrees outside. Why are you dressed for the middle of winter?”

Leigh looked at her thick fleece pants and matching sweatshirt and shrugged.

“Do you not feel well? Are you cold?”

“I don’t know; it was just what was laying around. What does it matter?”

“It’s not that it matters, it’s just strange that someone so, how should I say it,
temperature aware
isn’t positively melting right now.”

Leigh wasn’t about to admit that she was actually warm—too warm—but that there were extenuating circumstances. Adriana might have asked, but she definitely didn’t want to hear that Leigh swathed herself in clothing because she hated when the backs of her arms or thighs stuck to the leather couch. That of course she’d prefer to sit around in a pair of boxers and a tank top, but the skin-on-leather stickiness—not to mention the annoying ripping noises every time she shifted position—made this impossible. Leigh knew they would think her crazy if she explained that she’d actually already worn all of her lightweight, full-length pajama pants (and even all of her yoga pants) and that because she preferred to wear them without underwear, they were really only single-use pants and ended up in the wash pretty quickly. So she was really wearing the fleece sweat suit only because it was the single clean option in her closet that was capable of protecting her from the dreaded leather couch, which both her mother and Emmy had insisted would be the right choice even though Leigh had really wanted the modern fabric one that wouldn’t have felt like sitting in a vat of rubber cement all the time. Not to even
mention
the fact that in a few short months (six) it would be winter, and she’d still have to dress like an Eskimo because regardless of how toasty warm she kept the apartment, the couch would feel like ice against her bare skin instead of snuggly and soft like the MicroSuede one everyone else had vetoed. No, it would be better to just leave well enough alone.

“Hmm,” Leigh murmured, hoping to end the conversation by saying nothing. “I think we’re ready for another round.”

The second drink went down easier than the first, so easily in fact that even the increased upstairs thumping no longer made Leigh feel quite so…unhinged. It was time to rally for her friend.

“So, give us the top three things the cheerleader will be less than thrilled to discover about Duncan,” Leigh said, placing her soles together and pushing her knees to the floor, feeling the stretch in her inner thighs.

“Yes, yes, a good idea.” Adriana nodded.

A chunk of Emmy’s naturally brunette hair—she was the only one among the three of them, and possibly the only woman in all of Manhattan, who had never dyed, permed, highlighted, straightened, or even so much as spritzed lemon juice on her shoulder-length mane—fell out of her ponytail, covering half of her bangs and her entire left eye. Leigh yearned to reach up and tuck it behind Emmy’s ear, but she resisted. Instead she popped another piece of Nicorette in her mouth.

Emmy looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what are his flaws? Disgusting habits? Deal-breakers?” Leigh asked.

Adriana threw up her hands in exasperation. “Come on, Emmy. Anything! Quirks, hang-ups, obsessions, addictions, secrets…It’ll make you feel better. Tell us what was wrong with him.”