Being Audrey Hepburn (8 page)

The great thing about Jake was that he knew exactly what he wanted with no backup plan, which was hot as hell—to me anyway. He had complete and utter commitment to his purpose. Not like some people—aka me. Honestly, he was out of my league, but for reasons I didn’t understand, he was into me. Maybe it was because I gave him a hard time about being a rock ’n’ roll heartthrob, since I figured he was beyond my reach. Honestly, he scared me a little.

Jake was one of the few genuinely cool people I knew. The other one was Jess, of course. Considering I was ready to nod off, I was glad all three of us were on shift that day. I was hoping to grab rewind time with Jess to rehash the previous night in detail.

“Hey you,” Jake said. He gave me a sly grin.

“Hey back.”

“You look like roadkill,” said Jess. She tied on her pink apron and grabbed an order pad. “Did you sleep at all?”

“A couple hours.”

Jake shifted just enough away from my locker so I could shove my stuff in.

“How much did your mom freak out?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I was only there for a sec.”

“She’s probably just worried about you,” offered Jake and gave me a look with those soul-puppy eyes.

“What’d she want?” Jess prodded.

“Something incredibly important she couldn’t remember,” I answered, tying on my pink Finer Diner apron. “Just the usual vodka-induced amnesia. She probably doesn’t even know she called me a gazillion times. Maybe she was butt dialing.”

Jess shot me a painful look. She knew how my mom got. What Jess didn’t know was that I had been avoiding Mom way more than usual. There would be a meltdown when she found out I wasn’t going to college next fall. I hadn’t told Jess either. At some point, I was inevitably headed for a complete and total shitastrophy.

“So Lizzy’s a regular party girl, eh?” Jake said. I half-smiled at his warm bad boy eyes. Jake, like everyone I knew, had the
Sopranos
accent that everybody else always made fun of, saying “party” like “potty.”

“Yeah, but nothing compared to you and your groupie worshipers,” I said. Jake laughed.

Jess and I had made a concerted effort in our last year of high school to drop our accent by getting rid of the
w
and
u
sounds we grew up adding to everything. We also sharpened our r’s. But I still let out a “youse” now and then, especially if I’d had a few beers. And whenever Jess stabbed herself with a sewing needle, she gave out the biggest “owwuhwhwwwuhwwwuh”—five whole syllables of ouch. But I think she did that on purpose.

We thought New Yorkers had accents. Even though you didn’t hear a trace of it when he was rocking with the band, Jake talked totally Jersey. Kind of like Audrey and me. That was one of the weirdest, most undeniable things about that night at the Met: not one of the guests talked the way my friends and I did. It was like Americans visiting London: everybody speaks English, but nobody speaks your language.

I couldn’t help comparing everything to last night. God, I was gonna burst if I didn’t get a chance to talk about it. I turned to Jess. She could tell I was about to blurt it all out and shot me a cautionary glance.

“Are you three forming a social club or something?” yelled Buela. “We got customers. You too, lover boy.”

Hurrying up front, we saw there was only one guy sitting in the far booth by the window—typical Buela. We traded annoyed looks with each other, but I figured I was the late one, so it’d better be me. I went over politely to see if he wanted to order something.

“Hey, you want a coffee?”

He silently nodded no. Couldn’t care less. No problem. So much for the lunch rush. It was going to be a very long day.

I was wrong. During the next five hours, we were hit by so many customers that I felt as if I’d fall over from exhaustion. Which was how I ended up dumping an entire deluxe chili con carne and egg special with homemade cornbread hash and salsa all over myself trying to serve an old truck driver named Buddy at table 6. He was a regular, so Buela was furious. Jake leapt across the diner in a flash, cleaning up my mess.

“You okay?” he asked

“Super,” I said, shaking egg yolk and chunks of chili from my hair. “I’m good. Jake, you don’t have to do that.”

“No worries, I got this. Take a break.” Buela seemed anything but fine with that.

He winked at me and began wiping down the side of the booth, now speckled with hash browns.

“You’re the best,” I said. Really, I felt as if I was gonna faint if I didn’t sit down. Shuffling off to the bathroom to clean up, I did my best not to make eye contact with Buela, who was steaming at the cash register. I barely could keep my eyes open.

I grabbed a Coke in the back for the caffeine and sat down in Buela’s office, the only place I could sit down. I took a swig and figured I’d rest my eyes for a second and wished I could crawl into my closet and dream about being Audrey at the Met.

“Hey, I don’t think you want to sleep here forever,” I heard a voice say. “Buela might start deducting rent from your paycheck.”

I opened my eyes and there was Jake, gently shaking me by the shoulders, my head on Buela’s desk and a puddle of drool in the shape of a whale. So not cool. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and then secretly dried the desk with my other sleeve, hoping Jake wouldn’t see. Classy, I know. Jake was smiling, wearing his “dress-up” blue flannel shirt. Our shift must have ended. Shit.

“God. You’ve changed your shirt. How long have I been sleeping for?” I was so screwed.

“Musta been a killer night,” Jake said. He laughed, tossed me a couple aspirins, and handed me a cup of water.

“Yeah, totally killer,” I said groggily and swallowed the aspirin.

Jake didn’t mind how Jersey he was. We had talked about it. He’d never leave. And me? I didn’t know why, but more than ever after last night, it seemed as if I had been dying to get out of there forever. What’s that expression about keeping them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris? It was something like that.

Jake pulled up a chair and straddled it. “So Lizzy, there’s this band called Dalton that’s supposed to be total kick-ass playing at Hiram’s Junction. I’m checkin’ out the drummer for my band. It’s a couple miles away. You up for it?”

I gazed into his smoky eyes full of mischief and nodded my head no. I didn’t even know why.

“Pillow, bed,” I mumbled. He leaned toward me. His fresh, clean shirt smelled so good.

“You sure?”

My body trembled a little bit. I knew where this was going. He moved closer and kissed me on the cheek, his lips slowly making a trail toward my mouth. I didn’t stop him. I kissed him back, closing my eyes, feeling his breath, the warmth radiating from his lips winding through my body, forgetting where we were until there was a bang on the door to the kitchen.

“Am I counting all these tips myself?” Jess called. “Because if I do, I’m taking the whole show. I can definitely use the cash.”

One last breathless kiss, and I pulled myself away from Jake.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” I dragged myself out front. Jake trailed behind, gently pulling the tie on my apron until it fell off. I snatched it back.

“Behave yourself,” I whispered.

We settled up with Jess, and I offered my share to them. Jake, of course, refused to take it. I threw my pink apron into the locker and figured I’d better make the first move or it would look bad.

“G’night, I’m nowhere near cool enough to hang out with you two. Besides, I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“You’re stickin’ with that line?” Jake asked with his sweet hangdog face.

“I gotta check to see if my mom called another hundred times.” They both laughed.

“Okay, then listen. There’s a gig the day after tomorrow that we’re playing and then next weekend—we’re rocking a big showcase for lots of A and R guys at Reilly’s that you’ve got to come to, deal?” he asked. He hesitated for a split second before he gave me a chuck on the shoulder. I wanted another kiss. From the look he gave me, he did, too.

“Okay rock ’n’ roll Romeo, deal.” I chucked him back on the shoulder, which was firm and strong, hard as a rock. As I dragged myself away to my overparked purple monster, I regretted my decision.

I heard Jess console him as they left. “Come on, stud bucket,” she said. “You can take me. Maybe we can both get lucky and pick up some chicks.” Hearing them laugh, I felt like an idiot. I guess there was no reliving my night of glory with Jess either. I hesitated for a second, but my brain was starting to go fuzzy from sleep deprivation. I checked my phone, just to see if Mom had really called.

Shit.

“MS U BATHROOM BUDDY—LET’S CONNECT B4 THE PARTY! TAB.”

Ohmygod—I had a text from Tabitha Eden,
the
Princess of Pop. She was so wasted; I thought for sure she’d forget.

I imagined how incredible it would be to go to an Island Records release party, the entire industry of rock stars, fashionistas, trust funders, and me hanging with my BFF Tabitha Eden on her own turf. But there was no way I’d get close enough to pass the ropes.

And what if we had gotten busted at the Met? Jess fired. Both of us facing felony charges for hacking a million-dollar dress. Humiliation. Shame. Mug shots on the Internet. And though it ended up being, hands down, the greatest night of my entire life, I would have to be incredibly stupid and boneheaded to ever try and pull off another Audrey charade again, right?

12

Crap, crap, crap
.

Rounding the corner in the Beast on the way home from work, there it was—red and blue lights flashing, a New Jersey State Trooper squad car in my driveway.

Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.

My heart bashed at my rib cage. This was it. They’d come to arrest me. They knew about the dress. I tried to breathe, but my lungs felt as though they were being crushed.
Stay calm, stay calm.

Okay, I didn’t actually steal it, right? I didn’t leave the premises. So that wasn’t stealing. It was borrowing. Not even. Really, I just
relocated
the dress from the archives to the main gallery and back again. Like a curator. Except not.

It’s not like I was a klepto, taking a five-finger discount at a jewelry store. Didn’t celebrities swipe stuff all the time? No, it wasn’t stealing. I didn’t steal the dress.

It was way worse. Fraud.

I pretended as if I were someone I’m not. I lied to everyone and let them believe I was
somebody
. I’d spent my whole life imagining what it would be like, full of magic and glamour and tuxedos and sparkle. That night, I’d gotten a taste of “sipping starlight,” as Nan called it, though it was for just an hour. It was flat-out glorious, and inevitably I had to pay for it.

The cop car just sat there with its lights flashing but no sound. I assumed they must still be inside. Jess was right. Trying on a one-of-a-kind, million-dollar dress was a boneheaded move.

Oh crap. I walked Tabitha Eden out the service entrance in the back. I
did
leave the Met with the dress. They’d convict me in a second … you know, like shoplifting jewelry. Once you leave the store, you’re guilty.

A million tiny details of my crime gone wrong flooded my mind. Of course, the Met had dozens of security cameras everywhere. It was a museum filled with valuable things, for chrissakes. I mean, was it okay to grab a six-thousand-year-old pharaohs’ necklace made of gold and turquoise and dance around with it on your neck? Duh. No.

Surely they’d tracked every movement I made and had me red-handed, leaving the building in a hot Givenchy.

About six hundred people, including the most famous people in New York City, saw me in the dress, prancing around, laughing, and drinking champagne. How hard would it have been to pick out
that
dress on a security camera, with a tiara in my hair, no less? Security Joe, he must have told them.

It was eerie how the cop car just sat there, lights flashing, no sound. New Jersey’s finest. I gunned the gas of my Purple Beast and kept driving past my house.

Jess flashed in my frantic thoughts. She was screwed way more than me. I had let my complete and total obsession with Audrey Hepburn drag her smack into the middle of all this. Jess would get blamed, even though it was my fault. I stomped on the brakes and steered the Beast to the curb.

Oh shit, I was the worst, worst friend ever.

The police were probably combing my room for evidence that very second.

Page Six. Oh, crap. What about Page Six?

I was sure the Page Six photo was up on my laptop. Mom probably saw it, or Courtney or my creep brother. Page Six was photographic evidence, now posted on the Internet for every DA in the state to see. I’d practically turned this all on myself.

In my rearview mirror, I caught a glimpse of Mom as she walked out on the stoop dressed in her worn yellow tracksuit. Her face creased with worry, leaning against the rickety railing, she lowered herself dejectedly to sit on the front step of our house like she was in pain, drawing on a cig.

She was sipping from her usual blue travel mug. Apparently, a houseful of police officers wasn’t enough to keep her from the booze. She pulled out her cell phone.

My phone buzzed, and I was terrified it was her.

Instead it was another text from Tabitha.

“POP UP PARTY AT HIGH LINE USE TABBYCAT TO GET IN XOXOXOXOX.”

Jeez, the life of a party girl never seemed further away.

I stepped on the gas and headed for the only place I could think of.

13

The second she opened the door, I was sobbing so hard it felt as thought I might implode.

“Well, this isn’t good, is it, dear?” soothed Nan. She squeezed me tightly and ushered me inside. I made my way to the couch on wobbly legs as Nan closed the front door.

Oh God, she knew. The police had probably already been here. I hoped Nan was okay. Should I have gone somewhere else? I was so wound up, I couldn’t think straight. Sinking down into the cushions on her worn velvet sofa, I inhaled the soothing essence of my Nan—rose oil and vanilla. She sat next to me, her arm encircling me tightly.