Hot Mess (7 page)

Jake’s contribution was sugar and calories. He’d brought along a banana cream cake from someplace called Magnolia. Jayla gasped when it was brought out and sighed that she loved Magnolia so much, she hoped she could be buried underneath it when she was dead.

“Well, you know,” Jake said, puffing his chest and trying so hard to be smooth, “my friend is the bouncer there. I can get you in whenever you want.”

Bakeries had bouncers? This town was insane. Jayla’s eyes widened. Apparently, this was the one place in New York where the velvet ropes didn’t part for her.

“Jake! That would be amazing,” she said, touching his arm lightly. I’m pretty sure he swooned. Wait, can boys swoon?

We ate cake until we all felt sick and Rachel plopped a few presents on the table.

“Your family sent these down with me so you could open them on your real birthday. But here, open mine first.”

Rachel got me a gift certificate to this jewelry store where you could put your name on a gold necklace, like the one Carrie Bradshaw wore.

“It can say ‘Emma.’ How chic will that be?” Rachel giggled.

“‘Emma’?” Jayla shook her head. “Oh no, no. You need a really sexy Manhattan alias. Everyone here has one. You can’t be giving out your real name to randos at clubs.”

“What’s yours?” Jake asked.

“Jinx. It’s a Bond girl. I always try to pick a Bond name for myself. Emma, I think yours should be…” She bit her glossy lips. “Domino!”

“Domino?” I laughed but then considered it. “Domino Freeman!”

“Oh
God
no, not ‘Freeman’! How about ‘Domino Frost’? That sounds so hot!”

“Domino Frost.” I repeated it several times and Rachel demanded that she get a new name too.

“Okay, Rach, you need a hot socialite name. Something that says ‘Hamptons.’ You’d make a perfect…
Bitsy. Bitsy Onassis
!”

Rachel squealed with delight. Any comparison to a Kennedy, blood-related or not, was like being knighted. As I opened up a bottle of Curious perfume from my parents, Jayla christened Jake “Chip McAllister.”

“He’s a kid I went to Choate with. Dated him for a hot second,” she said simply, as if that was a totally thorough explanation. Jake beamed at the idea of being named after someone who’d ever swapped spit with Jayla.

“Okay, last one.” Rachel pushed a card from my grandparents toward me.

I tore open the familiar red Hallmark envelope. Oh, Nana and Pop Pop! This was about the third time they’d given me the same birthday card:
Granddaughter, you’ve grown into a fine young woman…

“It’s a subscription to
National Geographic
!” I laughed. “Domino Frost: Saver of Rain Forests! And I really thought this was the year they’d give me that trust fund I’ve been hinting at.”

Rachel and Jake laughed but Jayla looked kind of confused. I don’t think she got the joke.

After dinner Jake took a cab back to his place and the three of us waddled back to our apartment, my pants threatening to burst at any second. I was rarin’ to check my e-mail and MySpace and see what kind of birthday wishes I’d received—fine, what kind of birthday wishes
from Brian
I’d received. And yes, technically, I was pretty much over him (kind of), but come on, a girl’s got to obsess about something.

Two seconds after we walked through the door, Rachel was already on
my
computer.

“Sorry, my battery is dead,” she said, already logging onto Gmail. “I can’t find my charger.”

Um, it was
my
birthday and that meant I got first dibs on everything, computer time included.

“That’s fine, I just need to check my e-mail real quick,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Yeah, just let me reply to this.”

“No!
Now
!” Smooth, Emma, real smooth.

“All right, ’roid rage, just take it easy there.” Rachel slid the MacBook toward me. “You want to see if Brian wrote you anything, don’t you?”

“Pffft, no!” I was a terrible liar, but as my best friend, it was Rachel’s duty to ignore that and just be supportive.

“Take your time,” she said, patting me on the head as she retreated to her room. “I’ll just be in here jotting down the reasons why Brian McSwain will end up living in a trailer with only a farty dog to keep him company.”

I clicked my way through the log-in page and quickly ran through my inbox. Wait, seriously? No message from Brian? On my
birthday
? He was never great at remembering that sort of stuff, but
hello
! We all know that birthday alerts come up. I bit back tears. I wasn’t thinking about Bri all that much, but deep down, I had told myself that my birthday was the last chance for him to make things right again. If he sent me some big expensive bouquet of flowers or made some really heartfelt declaration over the phone or even just a freaking MySpace comment—I don’t know if I’d totally take him back, but I’d totally
think
about totally taking him back. But not even a comment on my page? It was like a kick to the stomach. With a sad sigh, I officially changed my MySpace status to single and un–“It’s Complicated” myself on Facebook. I climbed into bed and wiped away a few tears that slipped out. I fell asleep dreaming of the new New York–ified me that would sashay back into Bridgefield in September and blow everyone’s, especially Brian’s, stupid suburban minds.

Eight

I’
d planned to spend my last jobless summer days tanning with Rachel on the roof deck and having my new stylist—Jayla—pick out fabulous working-girl ensembles. But it turned out that I kind of overestimated Jayla’s enthusiasm for hanging out with us. For the next two nights in a row, she left the apartment in the evening, sparkly and fabulous, and came home early in the morning, raccoon-eyed and lethargic, without ever offering an invite to either of us. It was very clear that she lived on one side of the red velvet ropes and we of the underaged persuasion were definitely on the other.

So, without help from a real-life fashionista, I scoured
Glamour
and
Cosmo,
hoping they would give me some guidance on outfits that went from office wear into nighttime gear when you lost the blazer and added some dangly earrings.

“Rach, this is totally what we need.” I pointed to this nautical chic day-to-evening look. “Let’s head out to H&M and see if we can find it for way cheaper. I can be ready in fifteen.”

Rachel barely looked up from her laptop. “You go, I’m just going to stay here and take care of some things.”

“Take care of some things? Are you suddenly a mother of three who has to juggle a career, parenting, and the housework? We have nothing to take care of here. We don’t even have homework.”

She was so busy with whatever Internet crap she was doing, she didn’t even hear me.

“Yo, Wolferine. Snap out of it.” I slammed her laptop closed. “Stop Googling yourself and come with.”

“Hey, hey, hey! What are you doing?” She propped the screen back open and continued her cruise down the information superhighway.

“What are you doing?” I craned my neck around to find out what could possibly be more enticing than buying poorly made trendy clothing. And then to my horror, I saw what site she was surfing. It couldn’t have been more shocking if it were a message board at IHeartSanjaya.com or more embarrassing than a “your shopping cart” page at LaneBryant.com.

I gasped, then choked, and flopped down beside her on the couch. “JDate? Rachel, you’re seventeen! You don’t need to resort to online dating. You’re only going to meet those pervs that end up on
To Catch a Predator
!”

“So not true!” Jayla said, having awoken from her daily catnap and pranced into the common room. “One of my friends had free dinners this entire spring courtesy of Match. And she totally met her current boyfriend, who is way cute and in no way a middle-aged sexual predator.” Rachel shot me a told-you-so look. “But, Rachel, you might want to rethink the JDate thing. My friend told me that all of the men on that site are short and nebbishy.”

“Short and nebbishy?” Rachel swooned at the thought. “Exactly what a good Jewish girl should be looking for!” She could tell I was still way anti the online dating. “Em, I moved here to get some dating experience. I’m cool with going to college a virgin, but I don’t have to be a raging virgin. A few dates would take the edge off.”

Jayla nodded her approval of the strategy.

“The only thing is that I really need to lose ten pounds before I put my picture up.” She grabbed the flab of tummy that even Kate Bosworth would have when sitting down. “So maybe I’ll wait to start for another week or so.”

I was about to give her the best-friend requisite you’re-so-not-fat talk, but Jayla cut in before I could start.

“Hello! That’s why God invented Photoshop!” She snatched the laptop from Rachel and plopped down on the other side of her. She cracked her knuckles and wiggled her fingers. “Okay, I’m ready. Let me see your pic.”

By the time she’d finished, Rachel’s body looked even hotter than it already was, the roots from her April Sun-In experiment were gone, and her vampirishly pale skin was as bronze as a third-place medal.

“Do me, do me!” I ran into my room and grabbed my laptop, shook it out of sleep mode, and found a pic of myself on Flickr to pass over to Jayla. I wasn’t going to be online dating, but still, I wanted to experience the miraculous powers of Photoshop. Within ten minutes, my picture had blue eyes, a butt Jessica Biel would kill for, and cleavage that I couldn’t get in real life with four Wonderbras.

“Make him look less like a starfish!” A giggling Rachel shoved her laptop back to Jayla with a close-up of Jake on the screen.

And that’s pretty much how we spent the entire afternoon, doctoring photos and creating a JDate profile for Rachel. By five o’clock, she had two offers for dinner. She responded to the guy who had a Panic! quote in his profile and headed with Jayla to her room for wardrobe and makeup.

The two emerged from Jayla’s House of Style an hour later and Jayla announced, “Ladies and, well, various houseplants, I’d like to introduce you to the newest hottie on the New York dating scene. She’s a heartbreaker and tuchas shaker, Ms. Rachel “Chosen Men Choose Me” Wolfe!” Rach pranced through the door—and she looked cute! No, scratch that,
hot
! And the best thing was, she knew it. She stomped it out Tyra style around the living room for a while.

“And now for me,” Jayla said, disappearing back into her room, starting her own beautification.

Rachel struck a final pose, complete with the
ANTM
pursed mouth and the sacred “fierce” eyes, then plopped next to me on the couch.

“Em.” She turned to me with a superserious look. “I’m kind of freaking the freak out.”

“About what? You look great!”

“No, of course I know that.”

“Oh, sorry to state the obvious, Ms. Thang,” I sassed.

But Rachel was in no mood for snark. “No, I mean, like, better than normal or whatever, but I’m actually getting really nervous. Like, for the date. This is going to be my first real date ever. Up until now, the longest time I’ve ever spent one-on-one with a boy was Seven Minutes in Heaven. And charming conversation wasn’t exactly the main point there.”

I smiled at the memory. It was in sixth grade and was the first real boy-girl party Rachel and I had ever been invited to. We were more nervous than Isaiah Washington at a gay pride parade. We had planned everything out for weeks: which UGGs we’d wear with which minis (ick, why was that look ever acceptable?), who to ask to slow dance, signals to give each other if we needed to be saved from Johnny Smigler’s cheese breath, and timing for joint bathroom runs to check for food chunks in our braces. But when we got there, no one was dancing or even talking really. Everyone was sitting in a circle playing Seven-Minute Spin—pretty much spin the bottle, except for when you landed on someone, you didn’t just kiss them, you went into the sports equipment closet with them for seven minutes. Being totally dorkified as I was (and, let’s be honest, still am), I told everyone that I thought I was getting a cold and couldn’t play. I ate French onion dip and baby carrots all evening while everyone else, including Rachel, pranced in and out of the closet in pairs.

I snapped out of the middle school memory and back into the sassy summer crisis. “Okay, calm down. There’s no way I’m letting you have a panic attack and sweat off the bajillion dollars of makeup Jayla just applied, okay?” She took a deep breath as I continued, “Really, don’t worry about this at all. You’re going to be fine. Guys are just like girls, except for, you know, hairier and they pay for stuff. So just be normal, talk about what you normally talk about, and he’ll totally love you, okay?”

She mumbled an “okay” but I could tell she was still a mega case of nerves. I squeezed her hand, careful not to mess her freshly touched-up nail polish. Jayla bounced out of her room, clad in a dress that ended right where her underwear started—if she was even wearing any, who knew with her?

“Let’s hit it, babe. We have hearts to break!” Jayla grabbed Rachel and headed for the door, my best friend throwing me a look of wide-eyed panic over her shoulder.

“Have fun, sexies!” I called out after them as they headed to the elevator arm in arm. I gave Rachel a thumbs-up that I thought might be encouraging and then waved as I shut our apartment door.

An entire evening alone stretched out in front of me. I thought about doing something New York–y, like heading down to this pizza place in Brooklyn that
Let’s Go
declared the best New York–style pizza. But Brooklyn? I would probably get crazy lost, never find the pizza, and have to call Jake to come rescue me. So I did what seemed like the next best thing—I ordered Chinese and burrowed myself into blankets on the couch for a night of TiVo.

“So?” I badgered Rach as soon as she walked out of her room, eyes still swollen with sleep and hair sticking out electrocution style. “One-to-ten it on the awkward scale.” I was up way earlier than her from my wild-n-crazy night in and had already planted myself back on the couch.

She slumped into the armchair. “Well, when I walked up to him, it was like an eleven-point-five. I totally didn’t know how we were going to say hi. Like, a hug, a kiss on the cheek, a handshake? So I kind of waited for some sort of cue from him and there, like, wasn’t any. So I just went in for the hug. And, like, at that second, he put his hand out for a shake, so he pretty much punched me in the gut. And then I was like, well, that’s as awkward as it can get, right? So it totally made me relax and after that, I was fine.”

I laughed at the thought of my BFF taking a jab to the stomach.

“Well, I knew you’d be fine. How was he?”

“Oh, good on paper, but that’s it.”

I wrinkled my nose and took a sip of the über-expensive pomegranate juice Jayla kept in the fridge for Pomtinis. I was just borrowing it. I’d get her back when I went grocery shopping next—which would probably be never, but the thought was there. “What does that mean?”

“You know, like if I had seen his dating resume, I would have thought that he was perfect. Good family from New Jersey, wants to be a doctor, loves dogs, not wearing athletic sandals. Generally good in theory, you know? But in person—well, he talked about the summer chem class he was taking in excruciating detail. I thought about forking myself in the eye it was so boring. But then I remembered that I forgot to bring any extra contacts to New York, so I can’t really fuck this pair up. Remind me to ask the parentals to send up more next time they call, ’kay? Whatever. I have another JDate tonight.”

I couldn’t believe this. Rachel, who normally wasn’t even allowed to be out past nine-thirty on a weeknight, was now dating seven days a week.

She got up to fix herself some cereal as Jayla came in through the front door. She slowly ambled into the apartment, teetering on her four inches of heel, and then patted her hips front to back. She looked like she’d lost her wallet or something. “Crappity crap. I lost another pair of La Perlas.”

I shook my head and exchanged eye-rolls with Rachel. Who were these guys she was shacking up with? A rotation of the same ones or new dudes she picked up every night? I smiled, picturing a giant stable, but instead of horses in the stalls, there were bankers and lawyers and actors stamping their feet and tossing their hair around.

“How was dinner and, um, whatever else?” Rachel asked.

I had a feeling this was going to be a great story.

“Oh, good. You know, nothing special.” She moved her hand to her jaw and massaged the joint. “I think I gave myself TMJ last night. But you know, when you’ve got a Nike shoe named after you, you have pretty good control over your own body.” And with that, Jayla headed to her room for a nap that would last until date time tonight.

Rachel turned to me. “Is TMJ a designer I don’t know about?”

“Uh…kind of.” I changed the subject, not wanting to get into a full-blown health class. “So, shopping today? We still need our first-day-of-work outfits.” I was getting a little stir-crazy from staying in the apartment for forty-eight hours straight. I needed out. And I needed something else to wear other than black polyblend H&M pants. It was nice I didn’t have to iron them, but I could foresee some temperature issues—it was getting so humid outside, I could practically shower on the street corner.

But to my disappointment, I was dissed for the second time in twenty-four hours. “You go,” Rachel sighed, then stood up and stretched. “I’m probably going to lounge around here for a while and maybe nap, too.” Then she turned and headed back into her room as if choosing napping over shopping was totally acceptable.

Hello? What happened to “We’d never be lonely if we were together”? I was officially feeling lonely. Because I was the only one of us who slept normal hours, I was suddenly a social outcast. What was I supposed to do all day with those two sleeping? Frustrated, I threw a towel and some SPF 4 into my purse and decided to take a field trip to Central Park—alone. But as soon as I left the building, I realized that I’d been in such a huff I’d forgotten to take my map. Not wanting to head back upstairs to my snoozeville apartment, I headed across the street to the patch of green and brown that counted as a park in the middle of Union Square. Two hours later, after almost getting decapitated by a twelve-year-old on a skateboard, I’d gotten a wicked painful, can’t-wear-a-bra-for-two-days burn on my back because neither of those bitches were there to help me lather up. Social skanks.

The next few days continued just like that. Jayla partied a ton, rubbing shoulders and other, unmentionable parts with New York’s most fabulous resident models, Eurotrash, and rich older men. And Rachel was up to her pulkies in JDates that never panned out. Both girls kept their vampire schedules of sleeping during sunlight and only commenced socializing during twilight.

After two days of nursing a sunburn and pretty much memorizing every episode of
The Hills
(and fine, MyStalking Brian and just about every other person in Bridgefield), I decided to stop the pity party and take myself out on an adventure.

“I mean, that’s what I’m here for, right?” I said to my reflection as I pulled on the last of my clothes that qualified as “clean enough.” I was sweating through clothes faster than Anna Wintour goes through assistants, and after barely a week, my entire duffle of clothing was stank-y. I def needed to get some laundry done. Jayla said something about washers in the basement, but from what I knew about New York—and by that I mean what I’d seen on
Law & Order: SVU
—104 percent of all crimes happened in basement laundry rooms. So I figured I’d avoid any potential underground-dwelling sociopaths and drop it off at the Laundromat on the corner—that’s what Jayla did every Sunday. Apparently, people will just do your laundry for you. It sounded a lot like having a mom, but without the curfew. Why would I spend my last few days of jobless freedom messing with quarters and dryer sheets? I hadn’t really thought about bringing a laundry bag to the city, so I’d been sort of shoving my dirty clothes in piles under my bed and hoping they’d magically clean themselves. I scooted past the dust bunnies and extracted my now really filthy clothes and stuffed them into the only thing I could find, a garbage bag. Looking like a hobo, I hauled an enormous Hefty down to the cleaners.