Rosebush (5 page)

They were spectacular and so sexy, the kind of shoes that actually make you think you might hear a choir of angels singing. Which was why there was no chance I could wear them. I shook my head. “Those are your new Pradas. No way.”

“Yes, way.”

“They cost like a zillion dollars,” I objected.

Still holding the shoes, Langley put her hands on her hips. “Freals, you have to wear them. I want you to. It’s good luck to have a friend break your shoes in.”

“Did Ivanka tell you that?” Kate asked, all innocence.

“Shut up.” Langley returned to me, her blue eyes sparkling as she held the shoes out at arms’ length. “The only thing I ask is, just don’t wear them in the shower, no matter how much David begs. They’re not waterproof.”

I considered protesting again about borrowing the shoes—they really did cost more than a new telephoto lens—but I knew it was futile. I said, “Promise.” In the end, everyone always did what Langley wanted.

Langley was in charge of our outfits for the night and she hadn’t let us see them yet. She handed us each one of the bags with orders not to open it Or Else and we trooped back down the stairs.

From there we went to Kate’s parents’ beach house, where my surprise for David was taking place. Kate’s father was the Reverend Joseph Carter “J. C.” Valenti, preacher, bestselling motivational speaker, and patriarch of his own reality show
Living Valenti.
Reverend Valenti was on tour promoting the new season of the show as well as his Give It a Valenti Try! series of self-help CDs and day planners somewhere in Eastern Europe. Mrs. Valenti had taken Kate’s two younger sisters to L.A. for a silent-meditation retreat and to meet with agents about a possible
Valenti Girlz!
spin-off show. Which meant we had the place to ourselves except for Zuna, the housekeeper. The idea was that David and I would have a picnic on the balcony outside, talk about the slight alteration to our summer plans I was going to propose and then…then there was Kate’s parents’ bedroom upstairs with the sixteen-head steam shower that, I’d been shocked to discover a few months earlier, was completely surrounded by mirrors.

Assuming everything went well.

When we got there, Langley unveiled our outfits. They were tube tops, puffy skirts, gloves that went to our elbows, and fairy wings. Mine was light blue to go with my dark hair, hers was lavender to contrast with her corn silk blonde hair, and Kate’s was pale yellow to pick up the golden flecks at the center of her eyes. When I saw mine, I literally squealed with delight.

“You did good, kid,” Kate told Langley in her mafioso voice. “Real good.”

We changed in Kate’s yellow-and-red-paisley bedroom at the beach house. Unlike her completely perfect exterior, Kate’s bedroom always looked like it had just that moment been hit by a tornado. Every surface was covered with books or clothes or makeup or jewelry or dried flowers. “I don’t understand how you ever find anything in here,” Langley said, neatening the edges on piles of books.

Kate and I were at the mirror. I was sweeping on a final coat of mascara, and Kate was leaning forward to apply shimmer eye shadow.

“Can’t find equals don’t need,” she said, moving to sort through a bowl full of necklaces.

Langley, already done with her makeup, went to peer into Kate’s closet. Her expression was one of horror mixed with fascination. She stepped in and started poking at things. From inside her muffled voice said, “Hey, I thought you decided not to get this when we were at the mall last week.”

Kate found the necklace she was looking for and reached around to clasp it. I would have offered to help, but I’d learned the first day we met that Kate didn’t like to be touched unless she initiated it. “Get what?”

“This.” Langley emerged from the closet wearing a purple fedora.

Kate’s eyes got wide. “I—I changed my mind and I went back and got it?”

“You went to the mall without me?” Langley pouted, taking off the hat. “That’s against the rules of friendship.”

“It was just for a second?” Kate said quickly. She leaned forward to get a close-up of her mascara. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Kate—” I started to say.

She whirled on me, demanding, “What? Honestly, I liked the color, okay? Why are you giving me the third degree?”

Her eyes blazed at me. Her tone was so vehement I took a step back. “I was just going to tell you that your necklace isn’t clasped right,” I said.

She dropped her gaze and let out a chuckle. “Oh. Thanks.”

Langley had moved to the top of Kate’s dresser and was now flipping through a stack of photos she’d unearthed from inside a copy of
Our Bodies, Ourselves
. “Why don’t you frame any of these? Like this one.” She held out a photo of the three of us with David standing between Kate and me. We’re all looking at the camera and laughing except Kate, who’s gazing toward David with an unreadable expression.

“Why would I want to look at pictures of myself?” Kate asked, pawing through a tray overflowing with necklaces.

“It’s not of you, it’s of your friends,” Langley explained.

“Um, I see you all the time?”

Langley threw up her hands, tossing the photo back onto the dresser. “That’s not the point. But anyway, I like pictures. And I think we should get some film of the three of us. Because we are adorable.
Ooh
, let’s do it in your parents’ bathroom with the big mirror.”

Kate looked at me for help. “Really? This is necessary?”

“Absolutely.” I nodded solemnly.

Kate did her best stage pout. “Fine,” she said, leading the way up the stairs to the master suite.

We took the camera up and filmed ourselves there, then set out for the party.

“Are you nervous?” Kate asked me.

“A little.”

“She doesn’t have to be. One look at her and David will melt,” Langley said. “Just remember, not the shower—”

Kate said something under her breath.

“What?” Langley asked.

“Nothing,” Kate said, adding too fast: “Just that it looks like rain, so the shower might not be the only place Jane could run into danger. Come on.”

Kate’s and Joss’s houses were in a development on the part of the Jersey shore where all the streets were named after birds and all the houses were supersized. Joss’s place was only three blocks away, but they were long and I had to concentrate to remember how to get back with David.

Of course, as it turned out, that didn’t matter.

Chapter 4

When we got
there, the party was a throbbing, gyrating mass of colorful bodies that parted like the ocean as we reached them with something like a collective exhaling of breath, as though everyone had been waiting for us. Kate, Langley, and I danced our way across the floor and they went with me in search of David.

As we approached, a gathering of sophomore girls flew out the door of the music room like newly hatched moths from a cabinet. Inside we found David, Ollie, and Dom sitting side by side on a leather couch. On the table in front of them were cups and the tall yellow bong David called Big Bird. David was wearing sunglasses, Dom was staring vacantly into space nodding his head up and down, and as I watched, Ollie reached up and stifled a yawn. They looked like the three monkeys, see no hear no speak no evil.

Dom gave an appreciative whistle when we came in and said, “Check out the fairy princesses.”

Dom was like a golden retriever puppy, eager to please, sweet, and goofy. Or, as Langley put it, “More Play-Doh than Plato.” He’d been in love with Kate for years, but it was hard to take Dom seriously, so he basically just danced attendance on her. “Don’t you ladies look like a vision from a fairy tale.”

David reached out and tugged on my skirt. “Sexxxy,” he said, pulling me onto his lap. His eyes beneath the glasses were half open, his mouth had a lazy smile, and there was an eighth of an inch of stubble on his cheeks. “I like your surprise.”

“This is just the beginning.”

He raised his eyebrows and the smile got wider. “Do tell.”

“Well—”

“No talking before knocking!” Dom called. “Let’s get the ladies drinks so we can toast.”

He led Kate and Langley out to the kitchen while I settled onto David’s lap.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” I said to Ollie, who hadn’t moved through the entire exchange. Ollie wore a dark-green military-cut jacket, jeans, and vintage brown Gucci loafers.

“My date got held up at a debutant-ball rehearsal.”

David had been taking a bong hit while we talked and now, still holding it in, he nodded and said, “I was thinking about that earlier.”

“About my date?” Ollie asked, frowning.

David exhaled. “No, man. Today in Mrs. Halverson’s class, there was a spider.” He kissed me on the lips. He tasted like gummi bears and pot.

“Dude,” Ollie said. “If this is going to be one of your stony stories that doesn’t go anywhere—”

“No, this is serious, Ollie. So I’m watching this spider building its web in the corner of the window. First it does the main parts, then the little connector rods. It’s like so careful and precise, right? And then, just when it’s done, Mrs. Halverson comes over and says, ‘It’s so stuffy in here I can hardly breathe. Let’s have some air,’ and opens the window. And boom, all the spider’s work was gone.” He paused. “Made me think, man, that was just like life.”

I touched his cheek. “What do you mean, silly boy?”

“You work and work, and all it takes is one bitch to ruin everything.”

Ollie stared ahead steadily and said, “I think it shows that sometimes for one person to keep breathing, something else has to stop.” He turned and looked at me, right at me, jaw tight, his green eyes hard, glittering, and inquisitive. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Um, I guess?” As we were talking, David had moved his fingers from my neck and was now kneading my shoulders. I closed my eyes and leaned into him. “That feels fantastic.”

His teeth nipped my ear. “It would feel better if we weren’t wearing clothes. I like your surprise, but I’ll like you even more out of it.”

Ollie stood up, announced, “I’m going to get a drink,” and took off.

I laughed at David and kissed him lightly on the nose. “This isn’t the surprise. This is just
le amuse-bouche
.”

“I like
le
sound of that.” His eyes focused. “I thought of 139,” he said. His fingers played along the edge of my tube top.

On our third anniversary David had given me a card with a list titled THINGS I LIKE MY GIRLFRIEND JANE EVEN BETTER THAN and he’d been adding to it ever since. The last one, BETTER THAN WEEKENDS WHEN DESPOT DAD IS OUT OF TOWN, had been number 138.

“What is 139?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you when you give me my surprise,” he said, and smiled mischievously. Even with his eyes at half-mast, he was so handsome I could barely believe he was mine.

“I can’t wait.”

“I don’t want to wait. So when’s it going down?”

“In just a few—” I broke off because I saw Kate waving at me frantically from across the room.

“I have to go.”

“Seriously, fairy princess—”

“I’ll be right back.”

“—don’t fly too far away.”

I found Kate and Langley in an upstairs bathroom with flocked brocade wallpaper. Langley was crouched on the floor with her head over the toilet. “What’s wrong? What happened? Was it something from lunch?”

“I didn’t eat lunch.” Her face still against the side of the toilet, Langley thrust her iPhone toward me. “Alex just e-mailed. He says he’s not coming for my birthday party.”

Langley had been planning her party for six months and the most important part of all was the presence of her boyfriend, Alex. “What? That’s crazy. Why not?”

“I don’t know. I tried calling him, but he won’t answer.”

“It
is
four in the morning there.”

“That shouldn’t matter. He must be with someone else.” Her lip quivered and her eyes were pools of misery.

I pointed to the screen of her iPhone. “He signed it ‘love, Alex.’ Maybe something happened. He says he’ll explain later.”

Her hands were fists and her voice was rising with hysteria. “What can he say? There’s no excuse for it. He’s ruining everything.
Everything.
”

“Not everything, L.?” Kate’s tone was quiet, soothing, her face filled with concern. A few wisps of dark-blonde hair fell forward as she leaned down to put her hand on Langley’s shoulder. “Honestly, I’m sure there’s a good reason and—”

“Honestly,”
Langley repeated, mocking the word. She moved her shoulder from Kate’s fingers. “Honestly, what do you know, Kate? Everyone loves you. Your parents, teachers, guys. Men follow you down the street just to tell you how beautiful you are. You have everything and you don’t even care. But I have nothing. No one.”

Kate recoiled like she’d been hit. She hugged her arms around herself.