Beach Lane (26 page)

“Hi, Kit,” she said, kissing him hello.

Kit beamed. Nacho took a step back, a quizzical look on his face.

She smiled at both of them, but just then her cell phone rang.
“Espere um momento,”
she told Nacho. “Excuse me,” she told Kit.

* * *

“Pronto?”

“Jacqui, it’s Luke. Your Luca.” He was obviously drunk, but Jacqui wanted to know what this was all about.

“Sí?”

“Someone called my house at three in the morning and my girlfriend—I mean, my ex-girlfriend—she flipped. We broke up, and, well, I miss you, Jac, I really do.”

“Oh,
pobre babê,
” Jacqui said scathingly.

“And she’s with Leo now, can you believe it?” He was slurring a little. “What is it about that guy? One eye isn’t even quite straight.”

“So what do you say? Me and you? I know you don’t like to be alone,” Luke breathed. “And I’m so lonely.”

Jacqui laughed to herself. So there was justice in this world after all. “That’s a shame, Luca. But
nien.
Ciao.”

She turned the phone off and turned back to Kit and Nacho. Hmm . . . the rakish polo player or Eliza’s childhood friend?

Jacqui paused for a moment.
Isn’t “polo player” just a long way of saying “player”?
Nacho seemed nice, but Jacqui was tired of men who played games.

“Drive me home?” she asked, linking an arm around Kit’s. “Ciao ciao, Nacho.”

Kit grinned. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe nice guys did finish first.

it’s the last night of summer, but it’s the first night for other things

A FEW MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT MARA CREPT UP THE
stairs to their attic bedroom. She found Jacqui asleep in the top bunk.

“Jac? Are you awake?” she asked.

Jacqui raised her head. “Now I am.”

Mara sat on the bed and took off her shoes. When she looked up, Eliza was walking through the door. “Hey.”

She was glad all three of them were together on their last night.

Eliza sparkled in her white dress when she kicked off her shoes. “Help me with this, Mar,” she said as she began pushing her single bed up against Mara’s bottom bunk. “Get down here, Jac,” she whispered.

The three of them snuggled on the one makeshift king-size bed, feeling comfort in the warmth of each other’s bodies.

Eliza told them about how she and Jeremy got back together. “I just love him so much,” she said, burying her face in the pillow at her own cheesiness. “But Buffalo is so far.”

“I’m sure you’ll see each other,” Mara said. She could have slept in Ryan’s bed, but she didn’t want to for some reason. Their last week in the Hamptons had been something out of the middle part of
Titanic
—before the ship sank and everything was perfect and hot and steamy. But on the last night there, she wanted to be in the au pairs’ room. It was the only thing that felt right.

Jacqui told them how Kit had offered all three of them a ride back to the city in his car. That was good. At least they wouldn’t have to take the Jitney. So why were they all so bummed?

“We’ll see each other at Christmas,” Eliza said, voicing the emotion they were all feeling. They were going to miss each other. They had gone through a lot this summer. “Just think, we’ll need winter bikinis!”

“In Palm Beach,” Mara said dreamily. Another chance to get out of Sturbridge.

“What’s it like?” Jacqui asked.

“Awesome,” Eliza yawned. “Parties and galas and we’ll all need new clothes!” Her eyelids dropped. Mara was falling asleep, too. Jacqui turned on her side, grabbing for the covers.

Their summer was over. They had done everything they wanted to do and some things they shouldn’t have. Tomorrow they would drive out on the Montauk Highway for the last time. They would return home older, wiser, and certainly more glamorous.

In the end, it had been best summer of their lives. Maybe there was truth in advertising after all.

acknowledgments

Many heartfelt thanks to the wonderful folks at 17th Street—my absolutely fabulous editor, Sara Shandler, the inspiring Josh Bank, and the encouraging Ben Shrank. Thanks to Les Morgenstein for invaluable insight. Immense gratitude to Emily Thomas for all her brilliant ideas. Thanks to Claudia Gabel and Jennifer Unter for thinking of me for this project. As always, I’m very grateful to Deborah “superagent” Schneider, a guardian angel in high-heeled shoes.

Thanks to Jason Oliver Nixon, Andrew Stone, Paige Herman, and Juliet McCall Dyall at
Hamptons
magazine for giving me a reason to write off my summer rental. Thanks to Karen Robinovitz, my partner in crime, an invaluable resource and a true friend.

Thanks to the de la Cruz and Johnston families for all their support. Thanks to my dad for letting me hog his computer to write this book when mine broke. Thanks to my mom for asking if the naughty parts would be “normal or perverted” (I’ve never laughed so hard, Mom!) Thanks to “Hotel Chit” in New York. Thanks to Aina and Steve for sharing their stories about the Hamptons. Thanks to Kim, David, and Diva for a fantastic summer. Thanks to Jennie for coming out to visit. Thanks to Tristan, Gabriel, Tyler, Peter, Andy, and the rest of The Gang for being The Gang.

Thanks to my husband, Mike, for getting out of the city every Friday night, no matter how late it got.

Thanks dpgroup forum.

Spend another summer with the girls!

eliza discovers fire & brimstone is a new cosmo flavor

IT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE MUCH, BUT THEN THAT WAS PROBABLY
because it was three o’clock in the afternoon, and Seventh Circle, the newest, soon-to-be-hottest club in the Hamptons, wouldn’t get going until after midnight. A potato barn in its former life, Seventh Circle was a large, brown-shingled, rambling wood building set back in the Southampton woods. Only a discreet sign off the highway (seven circles posted to a tree, natch) let the initiated know they had arrived at their destination.

Eliza Thompson steered her black Jetta into the parking lot, feeling at once pleased and apprehensive. She examined her makeup in the rearview mirror, applied a thick layer of lip gloss, stuck two fingers inside her mouth, and pulled them out slowly, just like
Allure
suggested, in order0 to avoid a grandmotheresque lipstick-on-teeth situation.

She checked for detritus of Chanel Glossimer. Nothing. Perfect.

Eliza grabbed her bag—the season’s covetable metallic leather Balenciaga motorcycle clutch. Eliza had bought it in Palm Beach,
during the week she’d spent as a vacation au pair for the Perrys last winter. Inside was a rolled-up resume that listed her sparkling attributes: a Spence education (up until her parents’ bankruptcy last year and their subsequent move to Buffalo, that is), an internship at
Jane
(which had entailed fetching nonfat soy lattes and alphabetizing glitter nail polish), and a reference from her longtime friend and Manhattan boy-about-town, Kit Ashleigh.

Life was almost great again for Eliza. Okay, sure, the Thompsons were still living in Buffalo—a far, far cry from the posh life they’d left behind in New York City—but they had moved from a sordid little rental to a proper three-bedroom condominium in the only luxury high-rise in the city. With a little help from some old friends and loyal clients, her dad was slowly getting back on his feet, and there was money for such things as thousand-dollar handbags again. (Well, there was credit at least.) With her grades and SAT scores (top 99th percentile—Eliza was no dummy), there was a good chance she would be able to wing financial aid and get into Princeton after all. This summer her parents were even renting a little Cape Cod in Westhampton. It had the smallest pool Eliza had ever seen—it was practically a bathtub!—but still, it was a house, it was theirs (for the summer), and it was in the Hamptons.

The only thing keeping Eliza off balance was the Big Palm Beach Secret from last winter. Something had happened while she was there that she’d rather forget, but news traveled fast in the Hamptons and Eliza knew she’d have to come clean soon enough.
She brushed aside the thought for now—it was time to focus on the task at hand: getting a job in the hottest new club in the Hamptons and recapturing her title as the coolest girl in town.

Before Buffalo and bankruptcy, Eliza had been famous for being the prettiest, most popular girl on the New York private school circuit. Sugar Perry, who now ruled in her stead, had been a mere wannabe when Eliza was on the scene. Eliza was the one who set the trends (white-blond highlights), knew about all the best parties (Tuesdays at Butter), and dated the hottest guys (polo-playing Charlie Borshok, who was now Sugar’s boyfriend as well). Being “outed” as a poor au pair last summer had changed all that, but this was a new year, a new summer, and a new Eliza—who just happened to look a lot like the
old
Eliza, the girl everyone wanted to know and all the other girls wanted to
be
.

It was still drizzling, the end of a typical early June East End rainstorm, as Eliza slid quickly out of her Jetta, which she’d begged her parents to lease her for the summer, and checked her cell phone for any missed calls from Jeremy. Last summer, Eliza had fallen in love with Jeremy Stone, the Perrys’ hunky nineteen-year-old gardener, but they’d broken up over the winter since they lived so far away from each other. Now that summer was here, Eliza was dying to see him again. She wasn’t exactly sure where Jeremy would fit in with her plans for getting back on top of the social scene, since he wasn’t rich or famous (although he was very, very cute), but she did know her plans
included
him, and she hoped that would be good enough. With no missed calls
or new texts, Eliza stuffed her phone back in her clutch and headed toward the club.

The door was hanging open, so she let herself inside. Seventh Circle was supposed to be
the
place to be this summer, but here it was, a week after Memorial Day, and it hadn’t even opened yet. There was a thick layer of fresh sawdust on the floor, and a full construction crew was barking orders at one another. The barn had been retrofitted to accommodate a U-shaped zinc bar, and against the back wall stood a built-in glass liquor cabinet almost twenty-five feet high. The guys looked up when they spied Eliza. Several whistled at the sight of her tanned legs underneath her pink smocked Juicy tube dress. It was the kind of dress that made everyone else who wore it look fat or pregnant, but on Eliza it looked cute and sexy.

“Hi, I’m here to see the owners—Alan or Kartik?” Eliza said, pulling her long blond hair into a high ponytail.

One of the hard hats grunted and pointed a finger toward the back of the club. Eliza stepped over a paint tray delicately, picking her way past the sawhorses and a couple of dusty potato sacks, toward two guys yammering into their cell phone headsets.

They were the self-styled kings of Manhattan nightlife, and while their press clippings might reach to the ceiling, neither was taller than five-five, and Eliza towered over both of them in her four-inch Louboutin platforms. Alan Whitman was balding and dough-faced, but he’d been legendary since ninth grade at Riverdale, when he’d begun his career selling pot at the Limelight.
He’d oozed his way up a string of downtown hot spots until he’d raised enough money to open his trio of celebrity playgrounds—Vice, Circus, and Lowdown. He liked to say that before he’d gotten his hands on Paris Hilton, she was just a cute little Dwight sophomore in a rolled-up uniform skirt. He’d been the one who’d waived Paris past the ID check and had personally alerted gossip columnists when she was dancing on the tables—or falling off them—on any given night. His partner, Kartik (one name only), a Miami transplant, had been friends with Madonna back when he was still a teenager and she was still a dog-collar-wearing pop icon, not a dowdy children’s book author who answered to the name Esther.

“What do you mean the liquor license is delayed? Are you serious?” Alan whined into his receiver.

“Babycakes, of course we’ve got the permits in hand,” Kartik smoothly promised on his cell. “We’re ready to roll. We’re all set for the after-party, no problem!”

Eliza stood aside patiently, watching the guys tell two different stories on their phones. It was inspirational, really: If Alan Whitman could transform himself from some geeky kid who sold oregano dime bags out of his Eastman backpack into New York’s most sought-after nightclub promoter, then surely she, Eliza Thompson, could find a way to reinvent herself from fallen Manhattan It Girl into Hamptons royalty. After all, Eliza had always wanted to be a princess.

mara goes from zero to somebody in sixty seconds

THE STRETCH LIMOUSINE IN HER DRIVEWAY WAS THE FIRST
sign that for Mara Waters, life was going to start getting interesting again. During prom season in Sturbridge, it wasn’t unusual to find rented limos parked in front of the tidy ranch-style houses, but this one didn’t sport a
CALL
1-800
DISCO LIMO!
sticker on its bumper. Instead, it had a uniformed chauffeur who held a golf umbrella above Mara’s head and took her bags from her stupefied father.