I Love the 80s (2 page)

‘I can only imagine.’ Jenna had blocked most of that date – and, in fact, most of every date Aimee sent her on – completely out of her mind. Better to repress than remember and weep, she always said. Or would have said, had Aimee allowed her to complain about these things without looking as if Jenna had kicked her.

Being single and in her mid-thirties in Manhattan should have been exciting, as there were so many other people in exactly the same situation. There ought to have been some camaraderie, or a sense of shared adventure. Instead, it felt a lot more like being an unpaid participant in a gruelling reality show.

And the fact that her fiancé had left her for a perky aspiring yoga instructor eight months ago was, Jenna told herself, completely irrelevant.

‘He said that when you mentioned that you worked here at Eighties TV, he naturally asked you what your favourite Eighties band was.’ Aimee’s gaze made Jenna uncomfortable, and she looked away, towards the Wild
Boys Live in Rio poster spread she’d put up near the door just last week. ‘And he said that he laughed when you told him you loved the Wild Boys, which isn’t unreasonable, and then you ranted at him.
Like a mental patient.
His words, Jenna.’

The worst part, Jenna thought dimly, was that Aimee’s voice was still so kind. Concerned.

‘He was lucky I didn’t throw something at him,’ she said now. ‘He’s the mental patient if he can’t accept I take the Wild Boys very seriously.’

‘I know you do,’ Aimee replied. ‘I’m beginning to think you need an intervention. I know you keep saying that this has nothing to do with Adam and that you’re fine—’

‘Since when do we speak his name?’ Jenna was outraged. ‘Some things are sacrosanct, Aimee!’

‘Look at this office, Jenna.’ Aimee’s voice was low, urgent. She spread out her palms in front of her. ‘Look at
you.
’

But Jenna didn’t want to do either of those things. Not the way Aimee wanted her to, anyway.

‘This office has a Wild Boys theme to it, yes,’ she admitted, walking out from behind her desk and leaning back against the edge of it. ‘I like Tommy Seer. And I can see how this might be a problem if we worked in, say, an investment bank downtown. But seeing as we work at Eighties TV, what’s the issue?’

‘Some of us
work
at Eighties TV,’ Aimee countered gently, ‘while living in the real world. The real world which is in the twenty-
first
century these days. But you’re acting like it’s still 1987, Jenna, and it’s not healthy!’

‘Again,’ Jenna said, temper mixing with the other, darker things and feeling almost like a relief next to that whole mess, ‘an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Eighties can only be an asset in this particular office. It’s my job.’

Aimee waved her hand up and down, indicating Jenna’s outfit. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You’re a few bangles and a side ponytail away from looking like a member of Bananarama!’

‘So what?’ Jenna demanded, stung. ‘Leggings are totally in. I saw at least ten starlets wearing them in the pages of
US Weekly
!’

She was wearing black leggings beneath an artfully torn denim miniskirt. Complete with bright pink ankle boots and a T-shirt, she felt this comprised a normal workday outfit at Eighties TV, a subsidiary of the giant Video TV, which she and Aimee had worked for since graduating from NYU together. They ran only Eighties videos, all the time. The VJs were much worse than Jenna was in their commitment to Eighties fashion. Sabrina St Clair was known to wear her own version of Michael Jackson’s famous glove on the air, and sometimes even out to dinner.

Jenna wanted to say something about Aimee’s outfit, but, of course, there was nothing to say. There never was. Aimee always looked polished, even at Eighties TV where professional staff were encouraged to dress ‘funky’. Even when they’d been eighteen, Aimee had effortlessly radiated cool competence from the top of her smooth blonde head to her always-pedicured toes.

Jenna, meanwhile, had wild curly brown hair only a
member of Heart circa ‘All I Want to Do Is Make Love to You’ could appreciate, and her fashion sense was pretty much the same as it had been when she was in high school. Which, she reminded herself, was a good thing, given her place of employment.

‘I don’t want to debate the merits of Bananarama,’ Aimee said, shaking her head again.

‘What’s to debate?’ Jenna replied at once. ‘Frankly, I think they’re underrated. “Cruel, Cruel Summer” stands the test of time – more than people think.’

‘I want to point out that you’ve been obsessed with Tommy Seer and the Wild Boys since you were in the sixth grade,’ Aimee said in that too-conciliatory tone, as if Jenna was mentally unstable. Jenna found she hated that tone. Passionately. ‘And while it made sense that you would, you know, sink into all that again when Adam broke up with you—’

‘Is this mention-the-unmentionable day?’ Jenna interjected. ‘What the hell, Aimee?’

‘—it’s been a really long time,’ Aimee finished, ignoring Jenna’s interruption. ‘It’s been almost a year since you guys finally broke up, and you know things were bad for a long time before that.’

Jenna rubbed at her face with her hands, surprised to see that they were shaking.

‘Why are you talking about this?’ she asked, her voice too low to pretend Aimee wasn’t getting to her.

‘It’s time to let Tommy Seer go,’ Aimee said gently. Pityingly. It made Jenna’s eyes well up, and she hated that.
She’d finished crying about Adam and his betrayal a long time ago. She stared out her window, and fought to bring herself back under control.

‘It was sort of adorable and quirky that you were so into the guy when we were in college,’ Aimee continued. ‘I know you saved all those B-sides and 45s, and that’s cute. It is.’ Her gaze was pleading. ‘And I understand why obsessing about the Wild Boys is some kind of safe haven now. Adam was a shit.
Is
a shit. But we’re in our mid-thirties.’

‘Don’t remind me, please.’ Jenna had never planned to be thirty-five and single, living in a tiny one-bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen all by herself. She and Adam had been together forever, and then engaged for almost two years before he’d bailed on her. This wasn’t how her life was supposed to be. She was supposed to be just like Aimee. Married. Happy. Not the discarded fiancée, humiliated after all those years of waiting for Adam. Waiting for him to call her his girlfriend. To move in with her. To settle down. To propose. To set a wedding date.

This was not the plan.

‘Tommy Seer has been dead for nearly twenty-five years,’ Aimee said firmly. As if Jenna had missed that unpleasant fact somehow, and the news might come as some surprise. ‘And you’re using him as a way to hide from the world. This is your life, Jenna. Right here, right now. You have to live it.’

‘I’m trying—’ Jenna began.

‘You are not trying,’ Aimee interrupted her fiercely.
‘You’ve given up.’ She made a low noise. ‘Adam’s moved on, Jenna. The truth is that he moved on a long time ago. When are you going to do the same?’

‘Aimee.’ She could barely get the name out past the lump in her throat. She was momentarily blinded by the wet heat in her eyes, and was terrified she might actually weep. ‘Stop,’ she hissed. ‘Please.’

There was a small silence. She could hear Aimee breathing, and could feel the weight of her love, her concern, floating between them like all their history. It made her hurt.

But then Aimee sighed slightly, and when Jenna glanced over at her, she was smiling. Not brightly, perhaps, but it was a smile.

‘At the very least,’ she said quietly, her blue eyes seeing too much, the way they always did, ‘you have to quit talking about your Wild Boys thing on the first date, okay?’

Why should I give up the Wild Boys when I’ve been
forced
to give up everything else?
Jenna wondered some hours later, still sitting in her office. Okay, maybe Aimee had a point – maybe she was a little bit obsessed – but who did it hurt? What else did she have?

It was late and almost everyone else had already gone home to their spouses and children and grown-up lives. None of which Jenna possessed.
Thanks, Adam
, she thought sarcastically. She very much doubted he and his yoga-loving girlfriend were sitting around brooding over their life choices tonight. The last time she’d seen them, in fact,
they had both been equally, repulsively arrogant about the
necessity
of their love.

That was what he’d said, the back-stabbing, cheating liar. Right to her face, new girlfriend in tow, as he packed up his stuff.
My love for Marisol is a
necessity,
Jenna. You wouldn’t understand.

God, she hated him. More, she sometimes thought, than she’d ever loved him in the first place.

The halls around her office were quiet. Outside, Times Square looked like a video game, with lights streaking in every direction and crowds of people jostling together on the corners in miserable clumps as the late-summer storm poured down on top of them. Thunder rumbled ominously from the low clouds and lightning sliced open the sky. It was all very dramatic, and perfectly appropriate for her mood. She swivelled her chair around so she could prop her legs up on the windowsill, stare at the rain, and really, truly brood.

Jenna had loved the Wild Boys for as long as she could remember. Her favourite aunt Jen, for whom she was named, had encouraged this love – sending Jenna concert T-shirts and limited-edition 45 r.p.m. singles and always making herself available to discuss the band, in satisfying detail.

Jenna knew that the band’s first album had come out when she was about five, so there must have been whole years without them, but she couldn’t remember a
before
. It felt like she had always known every detail there was to know about the four boys from England who had taken
the world by storm. Nick was the shy one who played drums and various other percussion instruments. Sebastian was the too-cool-for-school guitar player. Richie played the keyboards and was the jokester of the group. And finally there was Tommy.

Jenna couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her then. She didn’t have to look behind her at the wall to conjure up a perfect picture of his face, or to hear the sound of his voice. She could feel them both inside her, as if they were a part of her, and she didn’t care how crazy that might sound.

From almost the very start of the Eighties, Tommy Seer had been one of the most famous men in the world. Thanks to his brilliant songwriting and model good looks, the Wild Boys had been one of the first bands to use the just-born concept of music television to catapult themselves into the heart of every pre-teen and teenaged girl in America, including and especially Jenna. Back in Indiana, she had been convinced that if only she and Tommy could meet, they would fall in love and live happily ever after. The fact that she had been all of twelve when he was at his peak, and he’d been in his thirties at the time, was irrelevant.

Jenna had loved him with every fibre of her being and every last cell in her pre-teen body. She had loved his luxuriant dark curls that he wore in the pompadour Eighties style. She had spent years weeping over his soft lips. And she had never seen anything quite as beautiful as his sparkling green eyes.

Almost twenty-five years ago, Tommy Seer had been driving across the Tappan Zee Bridge sometime before midnight one October night, after a fight with his fiancée, the model and occasional actress Eugenia Wentworth. He’d lost control of the car, shot over the side of the bridge into the cold waters of the Hudson river, and sunk.

His body had never been found.

And on some level, Jenna had mourned for him ever since. Other people got over their girlhood crushes, but Jenna had never quite managed to shake hers. It had ebbed and flowed over the years, to be sure, but it had never quite left her. So maybe it wasn’t so surprising that when her real-life love had turned out to be fake, she’d reverted back to the fantasy love that had never done her wrong and never, ever would. Maybe that was the point.

She tipped her chair back to look at her ceiling panels instead of the depressing storm outside. After all, when idols lived, they tended to topple off their pedestals, change dramatically, or simply fade into the background. George Michael had come out of the closet years ago and broken heterosexual female hearts across the globe, David Bowie had settled down into married bliss with Iman, and Sting talked a little too much about tantric sex. Madonna had become increasingly irrelevant, while Cyndi Lauper appeared on
Gossip Girl.
Heart cut off all their hair and performed acoustically. Michael Hutchence died under questionable circumstances and INXS used Reality TV to find his replacement. John Waite and Rick Springfield had completely disappeared. If they stuck
around too long, legends dried up or imploded or became fixtures on Lite FM.

But that had never happened to Tommy. He remained as perfect as the picture of him Jenna had on her wall – the one that she’d carefully saved since she was a girl.

And the fact was, he was a whole lot of perfection. Jenna drank in his poster. What
consultant
could compete with a man who could sing ballads in a voice so low and sweet it made grown women weep? What angry New York guy with male-pattern baldness was likely to hold any sort of candle to a man who looked good in sprayed-on leather pants and a glittery headband? If it hadn’t been for Aimee’s feelings, Jenna wasn’t sure she’d even bother trying to date anyone.

No real men in Jenna’s life had ever so much as approached her feelings for Tommy Seer. They might have been
real
, but they’d never made her heart thump the way Tommy could just by sending out a sidelong glance, like he did repeatedly in the video for ‘Careless Lips Kill Relationships’. She’d been with Adam for years, even lived with him, and he’d never managed to inspire her in that dizzy, magical way. She’d told herself that was because real life meant
settling
, real life meant
being practical
, real life meant
compromise.

But maybe real life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Maybe her fantasy life was better.