Hot Mess (16 page)

I wondered if I should explain that Jayla wasn’t just drunk, she was choking on ex misery, but whatever—I’d probably just end up making another horrendous incest reference. Ugh.

“Thanks,” I said, relieved. “This sucks, I was having a really good time.”

“Me too,” he said, looking deep into my eyes. For a second I thought we were going to kiss, but my douche cousin hollered for me to hurry up. Jayla was right. Jake was a total cockblock.

I stood up to leave and wiped the bun crumbs off my dress. I stepped gingerly around the patio furniture, trying not to get my flip-flop caught in the hardwood deck as I walked away.

“Wait,” he said, touching my arm. “We’re still on for Tuesday, right?”

Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday through Friday—I was all his. But casual, Emma! WWJD—what would Jayla do?

I shrugged slightly, picturing my roommate, the Queen of Nonchalant, tepidly accepting a date with Prince William or Josh Duhamel.

“Sure.”

I lingered for a few seconds that felt like an eternity, forcing myself to look him in the eye. I managed to pull off a saucy smirk and even a wink which didn’t feel too facial-ticky and then fled in the direction Jake was pulling me.

Fifteen

T
he fragile bubble of strength Jayla had mustered to stalk out of the barbecue burst as soon as the cab door shut.

“Oh my God!” she wailed as Jake threw his arm nervously around her. “Why-y-y-y is he with that girl-l-l-l-l?”

Jake and I fumbled awkwardly to comfort her, caught off guard at her sudden vulnerability. I did the only thing I could do. I made really bad jokes.

“Wow, Jay, you’re so right. Carter is a total Shrek look-alike. But, like, troll-ier.” I giggled halfheartedly. “You’re way better off without him.”

She looked up suddenly, wide-eyed with new rage. “You didn’t even see him, Emma. And he didn’t look like a troll. He looked hot, hotter than usual. And,” she said, her voice quavering again, “I am
not
better off without him. I loved him. And he was supposed to love me. We were meant to be together.”

I shrugged helplessly as Jake patted her hair. I had a feeling he wasn’t too upset about being wedged against her in her hour of need, even if she was puffy-eyed and manic. He slung his arm around her slender shoulders and she leaned instinctively into his chest, clinging slightly to his faded Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. I totally saw him take a whiff of her hair.

“Wait,” he said. “Who was this guy? An ex or something?”

“Not
an ex,
” I explained. “
The
ex. They were bf/gf and then he just stopped calling and blamed it on an imaginary mental illness.”

Uck, I was disgusted even saying it out loud. Was this what I had to look forward to when I got older—a world full of totally psychotic guys who did nothing but vomit up lies to perfectly normal girls?

“No, Em, seriously,” he huffed, not at all believing the tale of feigned psychosis. “What happened between them?”

The cab lurched around a corner, heaving us to the left. Normally I’d call out “Jell-O!” and try to squish whoever was sitting next to me, but somehow that didn’t seem appropriate. I opened my mouth to launch into an anti-man diatribe, but Jayla cut in. “He introduced me to his parents. I mean, who does that? Who does that to a fling?”

“An ass clown, that’s who,” Jake growled.

“He was the first guy who actually seemed to take me seriously. He didn’t treat me like just some rich bitch maxing out her daddy’s credit card, doing nothing with her life. We’d talk about art and go to gallery openings and he’d say, ‘This is Miss Jayla St. Clare. She’s the hottest young artist in the city.’ Why would he say that?”

As Jake opened his mouth to answer, the cab careened up to our building and screeched to a stop. I tried to wedge my hand into my purse, pinned against me from Jayla’s dead weight, but Jake had already handed the driver a twenty. Even if he allegedly looked like something from a tide pool, he was at least a gentleman. I climbed out as Jake helped Jayla from the backseat. As soon as she was out of the cab, she folded herself back into Jake’s arms, paper doll–style, expecting him to carry her up to the apartment. I could see there was no way that was happening alone—surprisingly, hours of playing Nintendo Wii hadn’t left Jake with the burliest of physiques. I grabbed one of Jayla’s arms and draped it around my shoulder, wishing that she hadn’t worn such wobbly shoes.

“Jayla, those heels were made for walking, okay? So get them moving. We can’t really carry you.”

The girl was tiny, but total dead weight can be hard to maneuver in ninety-eight-degree heat. Even with that goading, she didn’t really help us out much. Looking like some sort of six-legged, three-headed, crying, sweating monster, we hobbled into the lobby.

“Hi,” I grunted at the white-haired doorman. His eyes went wide with panic, not used to seeing the mistress of Apartment 30B in such condition.

He scuttled over to us as fast as his seventy-year-old legs would take him. “What’s happened to Miss St. Clare? Should I call a doctor?”

“Oof, no,” I puffed, readjusting her feeble body so that I could nudge her along with my hip. “She’s okay, just had a bad day, that’s all.”

I saw him eye the brass luggage trolley, but then probably realized he’d get fired for heaving a tenant onto it like a battered old Samsonite.

“Bad day? To be quite honest, I’m used to seeing the young miss after a pint too many, but not anything like this.”

A pint? As in, of beer? I smirked to myself at the thought of Jayla St. Princess consuming a pint of anything that wasn’t nonfat yogurt.

He shuffled ahead of us and held the elevator doors.

“Yeah,” I huffed, Jake and I practically dragging her toward the elevator as she started crying all over again. My back was starting to hurt. “Nothing a good mud mask can’t cure. Thanks for your help!”

He waved unsurely, hobbled back to his desk, and craned his neck to watch Jayla as the doors closed behind us. A few minutes later we’d made it back to the apartment and into Jayla’s room, its limp, miserable occupant in tow.

“Okay, can we start at the beginning here?” I panted as Jake gently laid Jayla down on her gold satin bedspread and sat beside her. I was confused and wanted answers. “What exactly happened the other night at Plumm when you melted? You saw Shrek Carter there, too, didn’t you?”

I was hoping she’d forget that Jake was there and spill. She gave Jake a glance, clearly embarrassed that the poor guy was going to witness the most secret of girl activities—becoming “the crazy girl.” But like drunken binges at Taco Bell, once you break the seal you can’t stop. And her dramatic exit from the barbecue definitely counted as breaking the seal.

“Yes,” she said miserably, sitting up and hugging a “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Juicy” pillow to her chest. I sat down on the foot of her bed. I knew this confession was going to be a biggie. Jake pushed up his glasses nervously and shoved his hands into his pockets, not knowing where to look or what to do. Poor guy, he was a Level Ten awkward even in the best of situations. His circuits must have been about to blow.

Jayla took a deep breath and started talking. “Okay, what happened at Plumm was that Chloe and I went outside to smoke, and he comes walking up looking”—her eyes glassed over as her mind pulled her back into the memory—“amazing in this black Burberry shirt. Once I got a whiff of his cologne, it was all over. I couldn’t even help myself. Chloe actually had to physically grab at me to try and hold me back, but I wriggled loose and stumbled up to him. It’s sort of blurry, but I think I just started gushing about how good it was to see him and how good he looked and then I noticed that he was with some girl, some ugly skank who I knew I recognized from somewhere. And then the girl came up to us, looked me up and down—as if she even could judge me, she was wearing freaking Banana Republic—and then swept him away inside and I was left outside, like a locked-out puppy. Like a dog, Emma, like a
dog
! I mean, it’s one thing to get dumped, I can handle that—I really can.” Her voice broke as she choked back tears. “But to have him leave me for her? It was like a knife through my heart. At least rebound with a model, a rocket scientist, a goddamn Bollywood actress!” She started sobbing, curling slightly into a fetal ball, her whole body shaking with her wailing convulsions. But suddenly she pulled herself somewhat together and sat up again, looking at me gravely.

“Then,” she continued guiltily, “when you said you were going to Thirty-four Leonard today, I totally knew that Carter would be there. His best friend lives in that building.” Her eyes darted back and forth between us and then down in psycho stalking shame. “And when I saw him there, he was with that same skankface. And I realized where I recognized her from. She was his coworker, the one he said was so lame and everyone at the office would call her Deadfish behind her back because she was personalityless and had bad breath. So I went up to them and I’m all, ‘Oh! I know you, you’re Deadfi—you’re Heidi! I’m Jayla.’ And she gave me this horrible look and said the nastiest thing ever!”

Jake and I waited as Jayla blew her nose.

“She said, ‘Carter, who is this? A Hilary Duff drag queen?’” And with that humiliating insult, Jayla wailed afresh and buried her head in the pillows and bawled.

“Oh, that vicious slimy bitch.” I scootched up from my spot on the bed to console her. “God, who is soulless enough to say something like that?” I asked as I finger-brushed her blond hair in what I thought was an act of comfort, but might have been more like molestation.

“What’s bad about that? You do kind of look like Hilary Duff,” Jake said brightly, before adding quickly, “I mean, she’s superhot.”

“Oh please!” Jayla hissed at him. I actually almost laughed when I looked over at him. He looked re-donk sitting on her pink tuffet of a makeup stool. “He knows that I’m sensitive about looking like that wannabe-punk Goody Two-shoes! Which means he probably told her that. God, I can just picture them in her lame apartment, in Williamsburg or someplace so sickeningly pretentious, lying in bed and laughing at reruns of
Material Girls
on HBO. God, I wish he were dead. And by dead, I really mean, comes back to me!” She dissolved into moans and wails all over again.

“Well, if he’s dead, then how can he come—” Jake mused, but I caught his eye and shook my head. Now was not a time for logic. Desperate for something to contribute, Jake tried again.

“You know, in my opinion, you look way more like,” he started, and I realized with horror what he was about to say and I lunged for his face but the words made it out anyway, “Haylie Duff than her sister.”

Three blocks away, people probably heard Jayla’s bloodcurdling scream. She shrieked us right out of her room, yelling for us to get out and hollering incoherently about horse faces and nepotism.

As the door slammed in our faces, I realized we were all in for a long night. I turned to my cousin and he was shaking like a wet Chihuahua from his first glimpse into the wild world of girl post-breakup craziness.

“I need a drink,” Jake said, and rummaged through the fridge for a beer.

“Me too,” I said, plopping down on my fave sofa cushion and flipping on the TV just in time to catch the last ten minutes of
Law & Order: SVU
.

“Emma,” he scolded, “I’m serious about you not drinking. You’re only eighteen and you’re my cousin.”

I threw him a steely gaze. “It’d be an awful shame if Jayla just happened to find out about those World of Warcraft tournaments you so enjoy, now wouldn’t it Jacob? I would hate to just let it slip out, right now, when you’re doing such a good job of being her knight in shining armor.”

He gritted his teeth in defeat and huffed, “Fine.
One
drink.”

As he passed me a beer we heard muffled crashes from Jayla’s room and Jake shifted uneasily.

“Maybe I should go in there. I don’t think she should be alone right now.”

I started to protest but before I could stop him he grabbed a box of Kleenex and was marching headlong into Hurricane Jayla. I lay back down on the couch and tried to get absorbed in watching Detective Stabler collar the serial pedophile. But I was still digesting the insanity that was this night and couldn’t pay attention.

Maybe being front-row center for Jayla’s atomic meltdown was a sign from God showing me just how bad boyfriends and girlfriends can turn out. I mean, sure, I’d had crushes that didn’t work out, suffered a broken heart, and definitely shed some tears, but nothing like what I’d just watched. Maybe Jayla was just weaker than I was. I felt a twinge of guilt for even thinking something like that about Jayla, who’d been nothing but supportive and helpful to me in my breakup/boyquest mission. Of course she wasn’t weaker than I was. I guess I’d just never had someone lie to me like that.

The second the word “lie” floated into my head, I instantly thought about Colin and felt another stab of guilt. Lying about your age all the way through dating someone was way worse than a lie about a feigned mental illness to end a relationship. I shook my head, trying to knock out thoughts of me being an awful liar. But then, I shouldn’t have been worrying about it anyway. I wasn’t even in a relationship with Colin…yet. But that could hopefully change. I mean, was it just me or had the night—aside from Jayla’s quarter-life crisis—been a total success? What if he actually liked me?

The muffled wails and bumps from Jayla’s room finally stopped, and I felt justified devoting the rest of the night to just lying there enjoying the butterflies in my tummy and envisioning a first kiss with Colin over and over and over again. I wondered if he would put his hand on my face or just kind of lean in for one of those cute first kisses that are supercasual, like in
Good Will Hunting
. Ah! This was too much to take. I got up and shuffled through the fridge, looking for something to sublimate my desire and restlessness, when the front door swung open and Rachel pranced in, sighing dreamily.

“I’m in love, Emma.”

I jumped up and flapped my hands excitedly. “Me too!” I squealed, and Rachel rushed over to the sofa and we giggled and fought over who should tell their story first.

“Okay, okay. You go,” she said. Rachel twisted her head in the direction of Jayla’s room, wrinkling her nose at the closed door—Jayla usually left it open so we could paw through her closet in case of a fashion emergency while she was out being a party monster. “Wait, is Jayla actually home? It’s Saturday night.”

“Sweet cracker sandwich, woman. You don’t even want to know!” But Rachel was just as fascinated/obsessed with Jayla as I was, and she totally did want to know. So I started the roller-coaster ride of a tale, kind of glossing over the Colin flirtfest so I could save it for when she really wanted to gush about it later. For now, I focused on the Jayla St. Clare firestorm. “Okay, I could kind of tell she was acting weird, but didn’t really get why until the way end. It turns out that that Carter douche showed up, which she for sure saw coming, and the next thing I know, she’s completely out of control. I practically had to carry all hundred and twenty pounds of her out of the party.” The back of my neck, where Jayla had rested her arm and then pretty much swung from, was still sore. I moved my hand there to massage it.

“Hold up.” Rachel shimmied herself around on the cushion so she was now sitting tall on her knees. “I’m still stuck on the part when I saw you guys go into the subway. How did you con her into that?” Her eyebrows were raised in sincere shock. “Did you tell her that every cab was carrying bird flu or something?”