Hot Mess (23 page)

“I don’t know, kind of. I was really messed up about the soccer thing for a long time. He was the one who had pushed me to do it for so many years. He was my coach all the way through middle school, and then in high school never missed a game. Soccer was our thing. You know—what we talked about and related everything to. Then it was just like, ‘Okay, I say you’re done, son.’ And it was hard. I mean, hard with him and just plain hard. Soccer had been my life and all of my friends were soccer players and all of my free time was soccer.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just stroked his hair. Again, I found myself comparing Colin to Brian, even though I knew what I had with each of them was so different. But in all of the time I spent with Brian, he’d never opened up to me like Colin just had. It just made whatever was going on with Colin seem so much more important and real.

“Anyway,” he said dismissively, “so I just moved here after school. That’s the good thing about Manhattan. You can just kind of disappear into the city and find yourself. People can be totally different from who they used to be.”

I swallowed and nodded. Eventually I was going to have to tell this guy the truth, right? Maybe now was the perfect time. As fear and foreboding began to creep into my mind, I decided that it was far too nice a day to spoil with such unpleasantness.

We walked slowly, hand in hand, back to my apartment, where we found Jayla all dolled up in a gorgeous little cocktail dress, her hands covered in what looked like flour. But judging by her wide-eyed panic, well, it could have been something far more potent.

“Who in the
hell
let me think that cooking for Jake was a good idea?” she shrieked, fumbling around in the utensil drawer for something we probably didn’t have. “This is Phillip Lim. Dry cleaning is never going to get this burnt disaster smell out.”

Smoke swirled around the kitchen and something was bubbling over on the stove. There was an explosion sound in the microwave and brown goop oozed out the bottom of the door.

Colin waved a hand in front of his face to clear the smoke. “So, what are you cooking?” he asked dubiously.

“Cooking? I’m not cooking anything.” She was yelling over the sound of a beeping timer. “You mean, what am I burning? I’m burning that.” She pointed to an open Tyler Florence cookbook without looking up from the drawer.

“Shiitake mushrooms in phyllo dough purses?” Colin asked. I was hacking on the smoke.

“That’s just the appetizer,” she said breathlessly. “Tequila-glazed chicken with a lime reduction sauce for the main course. Crap! Emma, do we have a zester?”

Colin and I exchanged worried glances and he bit back a laugh.

A zester? Didn’t she realize that nothing more than takeout eating and Easy Mac nuking went on in this kitchen? “Did it come with the George Foreman? If not, I’m going to say no.”

“Oh my God, this is a fucking mess!” she sighed with exasperation, and sank miserably to the kitchen floor. “I hate cooking and I have no idea what made me suggest it. That’s it, I’m calling Tiny Thai.”

She sat in her slump for a bit longer. Colin stepped over her to the still-beeping timer and turned it off. “That was driving me crazy,” he mumbled, and then started to turn off the oven and made some moves to clean up the rest of the gourmet explosion.

“Jay, get up. I’m not letting my boyf…” I trailed off, not sure if I could really call him my boyfriend yet. “Colin. I’m not letting Colin clean up after you.”

“Fine,” she groaned dramatically, and pulled herself up off the floor, little chunks of pastry flour stuck to the butt of her dress. We all worked together to scrape the oven clean and wipe up the splattered counters. As Jayla tossed the last of the burned chicken and soggy dough balls into the trash, she speed-dialed for takeout, ordering fifty dollars’ worth of upscale Thai food.

“Do not blow my cover!” she warned us sternly just after she hung up. Colin crossed his heart and swore to secrecy.

“Okay, thanks for your help, you guys. Do I still look okay?” She looked like she’d been through a culinary minefield.

“Um, you might want to change…and shower again,” I said, trying not to insult.

Jayla dashed into her beauty parlor of a room and reprepared herself as we waited for the delivery guy. She was date ready by the time Jake arrived—thankfully
after
the delivery guy did—and she made me hide the empty takeout containers in my bedroom trash can. I heard her say, “Oh, this recipe? Ha, just something I learned at culinary school last summer,” as I closed the door to my room to let them be alone.

“So,” Colin said mischievously as he tugged at my belt, “whatcha feel like doing?”

“Hmmm. We could…read the Bible?” I joked, knowing full well what was on his mind.

“Uh-huh.” He smiled and pulled me down so I was sitting on the bed next to him.

“Or we could have a milk-drinking contest.” I pretended not to notice his mouth moving toward my ear.

“Keep talking,” he whispered as he nibbled my ear. The ear nibbles and cheek pecks quickly turned into real kisses that went on forever…in-a-good-way forever, not a-long-day-at-work forever. Finally, with all of the courage that I could summon, I asked him to sleep over. In all my time with Brian, we’d only had one real sleepover, and that was at his prom. And like a million other people were in the hotel room with us, so it barely counted. Even though it made me totally poor, living without parents definitely had its benefits!

The next morning, I woke up to Colin standing over me, holding a brown paper bag. I smiled at his bed head fauxhawk. It was pretty cute on him. And then I realized that I probably had a freaky punk hairdo going on, too. I tried to casually finger-comb my hair into something remotely normal.

“Oh, good. You’re up, sleepy. I just ran out for bagels. I got five—I figured Rachel, Jake, and Jayla would want some, too,” he said, and then headed out of my room and into the kitchen to set the spread out on the counter.

I followed behind him, doing the still-half-asleep zombie walk. “Wait. Jake’s still here?”

“Well, yeah.”

I could be so clueless sometimes. If we were all adults, why
wouldn’t
he still be there? Colin laughed and patted me on the head as Rachel came shuffling drowsily out of her room. Her morning hairdo made Medusa look like a Pantene commercial.

The lovebirds didn’t emerge from Jayla’s bedroom until after Colin left. The second Jake was out the door, Jayla pulled Rachel and me into her room. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the details. Jayla’s graphic retellings of evenings with boys already made me a little uncomfortable, but knowing that the boy was related to me would definitely make it more cringe inducing.

“Oh. My. God!” she exclaimed, hugging her Juicy pillow. “Jake Freeman is a make-out machine!”

“Sweet Jesus,” I sighed.

I could feel myself turning purple. Jayla started reliving the night for us, beginning at the second Jake walked in the door. I could tell she was about to get into the graphic details of the evening, and I totally was not ready to hear any of it.

“Jeez, I drank a lot of OJ this morning. I’ve got to pee.” It was a flimsy excuse, but I really wanted to get out of there for the most heated parts of Jayla’s evening recounting. “But don’t stop. Keep going with the story. I’ll catch up when I get back.” Rachel tried to yank me back in the room, but I bolted way too fast.

After what I thought was an ample amount of time to relive one night of hard-core spit swapping, I peeked back in. Jayla and Rachel were still in storytelling mode.

“I don’t even want to know,” I interrupted from the doorway. “Can we just eat the bagels Colin got us and never speak about my cousin’s sexpertise ever again, okay?”

Rachel laughed and rolled her eyes, “Okay, okay. Hey, will you get me a poppy seed? With some capers and nookie—” Her eyes opened wide at the shock of her own gaffe. “Omigod, I meant
nova
, Em! Nova!”

Twenty-one

T
here was no way around it, the summer was winding down. Jayla and Jake were already making beach house plans for Labor Day, which was two whole weeks away. Meanwhile, I was spending my last moments in the city duping, dating, and stressing over Colin.

“Emma, you should probably fess up to this, okay? If he likes you, then he really likes you,” Rachel said seriously over Sunday evening sushi.

“So not right, Rach,” Jayla interrupted. “You’re going to be leaving in a week, and realistically, you two probably won’t keep in touch. Just enjoy it and let it be a summer thing.”

The thought of Colin and me parting ways, never to be together again, made me sick enough to hurl up my miso.

“But this isn’t just a summer thing,” I whined. “I mean, it will be if I don’t tell him the truth, you know? But maybe if I do, we’ll work past it.”

Rachel nodded as Jayla’s head shook.

“Look, you’ve got to keep the lie going.” Jayla was firm. “Just tell him that you got hired by a rival company in the city or something, then figure out the rest later.” She motioned for me to pass the edamame, which I did.

That didn’t sound like much of a plan. I poked at my seaweed salad and felt the knot in my stomach cinch a little tighter. The more I thought about ending things with Colin, the more ill I felt. Later that night, long after my sushi had digested, I still felt really crappy about things. I lay in my bed and ran my Colin options over and over. I decided that Jayla was probably right. I’d tell Colin that I was leaving MediaInc—which was completely true—and that this week would be my last. Also completely true.

Even with the decision set, I woke up in the a.m. still sick with remorse about heaping more lies onto my already ginormous lie pile. My workday of collating and coffee making was even more unbearable than usual because I couldn’t even look forward to going home at five. Instead, I was going out to dinner with sweet Colin to tell him a big fat hairy pimple-covered lie.

We met at the restaurant—because Colin didn’t want people at work to know that he was dating someone in the office—and I immediately broke the fake news.

“So, I’m starting at Media Corp next week. It was such a good offer, I couldn’t refuse.” I finished my fat fib and shoved a piece of bread in my mouth so I couldn’t yell “Psych!” and ruin weeks of my carefully crafted cover.

“Oh, babe, really? Leaving MediaInc? I didn’t even know that you were applying other places,” he said. He frowned for a second, and for an instant I hoped that he’d see through my disgusting lies and smack some sense into me. But almost as soon as his scowl formed, it dissolved, breaking into a smile. “Hey, that means I can squire you around town without worrying that we’re going to ruin both our careers. Things could certainly be worse.”

He leaned across the table to kiss me, but I turned away, too full of guilt and afraid one smooch would infect him with my liar’s disease.

“Um, you know, I don’t really feel that well,” I lied, and grabbed for my purse.

“What is this, another Freeman dine ’n’ dash? I thought we’d moved past this,” he only half joked. But I knew I had to get the hell out of there before something unpleasant came out of me, whether it be the truth or my lunch.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said lamely, and ran out of the restaurant, maneuvering through tables of diners that were probably a whole lot less dysfunctional than I was. Finally outside, I took a deep breath, hoping that some fresh air would help the situation. But the humid ninety-something-degree lungful just made me feel even more like retching. Too nauseous to take the subway, I hailed a cab and jumped in.

“Why am I doing this? How did I get here?” I wondered aloud to the stinky leather seats. The driver was too busy yelling into his earpiece to notice my backseat meltdown. I rubbed my temples and decided for the millionth time that no, I could not come clean. I was almost done in New York. I could do this. I had to.

“Hey, Emmarooni! What’s cooking?” Tuesday morning Derek was lunging into my cube and was just too goddamned perky for nine a.m.

I looked up from Seventeen.com and scowled at him silently, too tired from yet another sleepless, guilt-ridden night.

“Great news, Em Dawg. I have an end-of-the-summer project for you. I can’t believe that I forgot about this all summer. Thank God I remembered before you left.” He plopped his Rolodex down onto my cube counter. “I’m going to need you to enter all of these contacts into my Outlook electronic address book.”

I fingered through the plastic-encased contact information. “There are at least a thousand business cards in this thing!”

He either ignored or didn’t register the desperation in my voice as a mercy plea. “I know! This is a great way for you to get familiar with names in the industry. Think of how much you’re going to learn in this last week.” He shot me his finger-guns special and disappeared into his office to manage his fantasy football team.

I mentally replayed his last few sentences.
The industry
. Wasn’t
the
industry showbiz? This was just
an
industry. And a sucky, boring industry probably filled with sucky, boring people. And after weeks of working there, I didn’t even know a single thing about this industry. I flipped through the Rolodex. A card for a dog groomer. A handwritten number labeled “gutter cleaning.” And one for his proctologist. Gross. Yep, it looked like I was going to be doing a lot of industry insider learning with this project.

At 9:07 I realized that I’d been at work a whole seven minutes and hadn’t checked my personal e-mail. That might be a summer record. I logged into Gmail and there was a blank e-mail from Rachel. All it had was a subject line that read “Check out Sirlie.com NOW!!!!”

I clicked over to Sirlie and I couldn’t believe it. An article entitled “The Devil Wears Dockers” was up online! My name was in print! Well, on a computer screen. But that was still really awesome. I quickly speed-read my work.

The Devil Wears Dockers by
Emma Freeman

I’m an unpaid intern, so low on the corporate totem poll that I’m practically underground. And that’s fine, really, I signed up for it. But what I didn’t know was that I had signed up for a summer in a warped version of
The Devil Wears Prada
. Except in this version, my Anna Wintour is a khaki-clad, over-the-hill manchild, and aside from one swiped bottle of Wite-Out, I got no swag.

Just to give you a taste of this Devil in Kirkland Signature, here’s one of our conversations:

“Emma, have you been crying?” he bellowed loudly enough for the entire floor to hear.

“No, Eric. I haven’t been crying.”

“Really, Em? ’Cause you look sad. And I just thought that it might be not being able to lose that little bit of weight you’ve put on since working here.” He leaned over, his huge gut cascading over the khaki fabric of his pants. “Because, you know, it’s so stylish to be stick thin these days and all. I could understand why you’d be upset.” And then he did the point-to-his-eyes-and-then-my-eyes move, which brought his creep factor up to an 11 out of 10. “I’m watching you, kid.”

A variation of this conversation has kicked off every single morning of this summer. If it’s not about me growing an office ass, it’s about me looking hungover, or looking like I don’t have enough makeup on, or being sad about not having a boyfriend. Really, the list is as long as the summer. And even though these a.m. conversations are so regular, he still always catches me off guard. Mostly because he kind of creeps up behind me, surprisingly stealthy for an obese man, and drums on my cube wall so that the entire shanty structure quakes and at least four of my pinned-up pictures of Pete Wentz come fluttering down.

I was so excited, my eye darted back and forth reading the article, especially my byline, again and again. After scrolling through for the fourth time, I reached for my cell and went to the supply closet to call Rachel where no one would hear me.

She picked up immediately. I didn’t even let her say hello.

“So awesome, Rach! Thank you soooooo much. This has totally made the entire awful internship worth it. I’m a star…a chic feminist website star!”

“Yay! I’m so glad you’re happy! For a second I thought you’d be mad that I took it off your computer, but you’re such a perfectionist, you would never have sent anything to me.” It was only then that I realized that I hadn’t actually sent her the piece. And normally I would be pissed that she was snooping, but I was way too excited to get into a bitch match over something so small as a little prying. “And what you wrote was so good, we really didn’t have to edit it much. People here are really digging it, too. Jamie says that in the hour you’ve been up, you’ve already gotten twice the hits that an article normally gets. And it’s going to be up until Friday.” I was practically glowing in the dark closet I was so pumped. It wasn’t a book deal. But it was pretty cool.

“Holy crap. I really
am
a feminist star! Think any lesbians are going to hit on me now?” I joked.

“How many times do I have to tell you?
Fem-in-ists!
Not lesbians!”

“Rach, I’m kidding! Of course I know the difference. Okay, I’ve got to go, Derek has me working on this totally lame end-of-summer project.” And then, all of a sudden, reality sank in hard. “Rach, oh my God! Derek! He could see this. What would happen to me?” While the whole idea of the book was to kind of seek revenge on the King of the Doofs, I was in such a dreamland when I was thinking about the fame and fortune of a book that I had barely thought about his reaction. Plus, the book wouldn’t have come out while I was actually still working for him. There would have been way more distance from MediaInc. But this was so in his face while
I
was still in his face! My skin started to get hot from panic.

“Honestly, do you really care about his feelings?” Rachel asked. “He’s never cared about yours.”

“It’s not just that,” I responded. “What if he fires me and tells Golf Gal! Eileen who tells my mom? She’d hit the roof.”

Rachel was completely calm on her side of the phone. “Let’s get real here. Derek isn’t exactly the target demographic for a sassy feminist site. He’s probably never even heard of Sirlie, let alone checks it on a regular basis. He’s never going to see this.”

Just as I let Rachel talk me out of a nervous breakdown, a whole other rush of panic crashed over me.

“Oh my God. Oh my
God,
Rachel!
What. About. Colin?
” I hissed frantically into the phone, choking on my own words. Colin was another thing that I hadn’t worried about when the writing idea was just an idea, not a relationship-shattering reality.

Again, Rach assured me that Colin likely wasn’t a regular on Sirlie and would never see it. “But maybe this is a sign that you should tell him, Emma. I really can’t see lying to someone you care about like that,” she mothered me. “But seriously, don’t forget to be happy about this. Getting published on Sirlie is a huge first step, okay? I’ll see you tonight and we can celebrate your writing debut.”

I hung up the phone and headed back to my cube, deflated and worried. What would I do if Derek or Colin saw the article? Maybe I could hack into MediaInc’s Internet server and cut out the service for the next week. By the time it got up and running again, my piece would be buried deep in the Sirlie archives and Derek and Colin would be none the wiser…and by “wiser” I mean hurt, embarrassed, and betrayed. True, Derek was a total jerkass and kind of deserved this Internet shaming. But if this did somehow trickle down to my mother, I’d probably be in my mid-thirties by the time I was ungrounded.

As bad as that scenario was, it was
nothing
compared to the supersized fiasco that would ensue if Colin found himself face to face with my masterpiece. Rather than entertain thoughts of the disaster, I did what any smart girl would do, I went to the vending machine and stocked up. If anything was going to get me through today, it was going to be a caffeine-laced sugar rush.

When I walked in the door that night, Rachel had set up a little celebration station for me with two cupcakes, confetti, and a noisemaker that she was blowing so loudly, I was surprised our neighbors weren’t evacuating for a fire drill.

“Congratulations!” she yelled, and jumped over to me for a hug. She pulled me over to the kitchen counter and shoved a chocolate-frosted cupcake at me. “Here, let’s celebrate!”

After a day of Diet Coke and candy bars, the last thing I needed was a cupcake. But me saying no to baked goods happens about as often as a successful celeb rehab. Of course I dug in, but I still was not really in a celebratory mood. I just couldn’t stop thinking of Colin and how much damage I’d done, even if he didn’t find out through Sirlie. The truth was bound to come out at some point, and he’d just be in so much pain. Not to mention pissed.

“And the best thing about this is that it’s all expensed by Sirlie.” Rachel was estatic and totally wasn’t picking up on my bummed-out vibes. “My boss is all about treating our writers to a little fun. I tried to get us some champagne, but totally got carded. It was so embarrassing because I tried to do the ‘Oh no, I must have forgotten my ID, but I swear I’m twenty-one’ thing and then the alcohol guy was like, ‘Okay, what year were you born in?’ and I just totally panicked and said, ‘Um, 1971.’” She started laughing at how ridiculous that was and I couldn’t help giggling, too. “That would make me like 107 years old or something! Anyway, I put the bottle back and jetted out of there as fast as I freaking could.”