Chasing the Dream: Dream Series, Book 3 (6 page)

“So, why did you decide to leave Ohio?”

“Have you ever
been
to Ohio?” I asked, avoiding the topic of the drama that instigated the transfer.

“Well, you’re not missing much, especially compared to New York. I mean…I’m sure that Ohio has some nice parts, but where my school is… was…
Snoozeville
. Surrounded by farms. I grew up surrounded by farms in Napa Valley.”

“And that’s it? Because it was boring?” she prodded.

“Are you sure you’re not planning on becoming a reporter?” I joked. We laughed again, and I continued. As predicted, Jenny already felt like an old friend, so I decided to fill her in.

“My roommate, Lucy, introduced me to this guy, Danny Fitzsimmons, at the beginning of the fall semester. We hit it off really well, or so I thought. Well, he turned out to be not all he presented himself to be. I was humiliated, and angry and just couldn’t stay at that university anymore.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, the fucking dickwad, Danny,” realizing I’d just swore in front of my new friend slash co-worker, quickly apologized. “Ohmigosh, sorry!”

“No fucking problem. I was beginning to think you were a goodie-two-shoes like Sandra Dee from
Grease
.”

I burst out laughing at the thought. I wasn’t a goodie-two-shoes was I? When I had my ears pierced, I didn’t get sick, I swore like a sailor when the situation called for it, and I was no virgin.

When we had both quieted from laughing, I continued. “Okay, so yes, he was… is a major dick, so I nicknamed him Dickwad Danny, and—”

Our food was delivered interrupting my story and suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so great and excused myself to go to the bathroom. Kevin’s warnings about eating food from street vendors came to mind, but the other day, that chicken on a stick smelled so good! I noted that I’d been feeling sick since then. Maybe I had contracted a touch of food poisoning.
That’ll teach me!
I scolded myself, as I puked up next to nothing in my stomach. Or maybe it was the stress of the past week. I have never handled stress well. But I was an adult now. I had better learn to get my shit together.

I cleaned up and returned to the table.

“Okay, so Dickwad Danny. Continue,” she said, picking up our conversation right where we had left off.

So I launched into the screwed up events of my freshman year with Danny. I would have shown her pictures of how freakin’ gorgeous he is on my phone, if I hadn’t deleted all of them when he broke my heart in early April. I told her how sweet he was in the beginning, how all the girls were always after him, and I even told her how amazing he was in the sack without going into detail. Finally I told her how I’d learned of his whorish ways. Against my wishes, I nearly started to cry when I told Jenny about what an ass he’d been.

“In
your
dorm room? In
your
bed? With
two
girls?” she asked, her perfect eyebrows raised high on her forehead.

“Well, you know, his room was already being used by his roommate and his roommate’s girlfriend, so where else was he to go?” I replied with mock sincerity, hoping that I could laugh away the tears. It worked, mostly.

“What did you do?”

“The wimpy part of me wanted to back out of the room and not say a word, but I snapped. I started screaming. I don’t even really remember what I said. But when he asked if I wanted to join in and that one of the girls had always found me attractive—I went batshit crazy. I grabbed their piles of clothes, and left. I sat in the commons area surrounded by friends until Dickwad and his bimbos came looking for me, all three of them wrapped in pink flowery sheets from my bed. They became quite the laughing stocks for many, but some of my so-called friends stayed friends with him because he’s from a wealthy family and they had all planned to go to Daytona Beach for spring break to stay at his parent’s house there. I was supposed to go with them, but changed plans and came to visit my mother who was in New York at the time.”

“That’s too bad that he spoiled your Spring Break like that.”

“Yeah, well, I had way more fun than any of them. Apparently it rained for most of the time, and Danny had picked up a certain ‘pest’ from the bimbos.”

“Pest?” Jenny asked.

“Crabs,” I said, trying to contain my laughter. I was unsuccessful and, again, Jenny and I were howling like a couple of hyenas.

“Are you not hungry?” Jenny asked, pointing at my poked around plate.

“Not very. I thought I was, but I’m having some tummy troubles. A lot going on lately, I guess. And on top of that, I ate a couple of sticks of grilled chicken from a food cart I passed the other day.”

“Not all the food trucks are bad. In fact, some are fantastic! I’ll teach you what to look for with the good ones.”

“Yeah, my neighbor also warned me. Lesson learned,” I smiled back.

I made it back to my apartment around seven that night completely exhausted, but I felt that my first day was more or less a success. I put my leftovers in the fridge, popped off my shoes and fell asleep on the sofa watching Mario Lopez on Access Hollywood at only seven-forty or so in the evening.

T
uesday started out great, despite my sleeping on the sofa. I guess almost ten hours of sleep can negate anything. The alarm on my phone had been set and did its thing, waking me at 5:30am. I showered, dressed, and arranged my long blonde hair a bit more stylishly than I had the day before, still feeling a bit self-conscious from Erin and Jade’s comments yesterday, twisting, knotting and pinning my hair into a bun low on my head. I also took a bit more time with my makeup, accentuating my favorite feature, my eyes.

Jenny had shown me which subways to take to work so I could save time and money on cab fare. Feeling like a rebel by disregarding my dad’s directive to not take the subways, I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, I made one small error getting on the subway. I got on an ‘uptown train’ instead of a ‘downtown train.’ To get to work, Jenny showed me, I would simply get on at the Six train at Seventy-seventh Street to head down to Fifty-first street station and walk over two blocks. The conductor said something on the speakers, which was nearly laughable because seriously, no one could make out what he was muttering. When we stopped at the next station, I saw the intricate tile work on the wall clearly displaying that we were now at the Eighty-sixth street station.
Shit!
The numbers had gone up, so I was on an
uptown.
So, I got off and had to wait for a
downtown
bound train. Lesson learned. The downtown bound train was far more crowded. Good clue. Made sense that more people worked downtown from the ‘Seventies’ than worked uptown.

When all was said and done, I actually made it to work with time to stop at a coffee shop. I picked up a large coffee and a breakfast sandwich that I hoped would stay down.
Never eat from a food cart again!
I reminded myself.

Valerie and I worked through the morning with ease. I focused on my duties and was proud that I only had to ask a couple questions here or there for the forms and filings that were my responsibility. Valerie was very helpful and sincere in her assistance, even though I felt like she didn’t really need me around. We had a nice but quick lunch hour, and it was back to the grind.

The rest of the week went along in much the same way. The ‘office’ was like clockwork. Being in the Public Relations department, things were always hopping, but became almost a mundane rhythm. I imagined that the production department, especially for the news, was more exciting, and I made a mental note to try and go check out that department one day. But I did enjoy the energy and pace of the PR department, so it wasn’t all-bad.

At night, I would re-visit some of my worksheets and notes that I’d collected from sitting in on those seminars and classes with Danny. If I couldn’t find the answer I was looking for, I’d research it online. I did get a little sad when friends from high school would call, now home for summer break, asking me to join them at whatever party they were going to. When I explained my recent turn of events, they were thrilled for me, trying to make plans to fly over and visit with me. I missed my regular group of friends from home, but thought I was doing pretty well for myself in New York after only a week. I had Jenny and Kevin, and there were a couple of other people in the PR department I had gotten to know a bit over the past couple of days. And I would be starting NYU in just eight weeks, and I’d meet more people then.

I spoke to my mom every day like she’d asked me to do. When I’d called on Wednesday, it was eleven at night, which would have been eight at night for her, thinking she and dad would just be finishing up dinner, and I could talk to the both of them. Apparently, I caught her and dad out at some symphony thing. I found that odd because my dad wasn’t much of a music enthusiast, especially classical music. I asked Mom for Mr. Stevens’ email or phone number so I could get in touch with him and thank him for his assistance with the internship, and maybe dig around a little to find out if I had gotten the position from that connection or on my own. Mom said she’d message me his contact info, but I was still waiting. She said she’d pass along my concerns to him, but I shouldn’t worry. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the distinct feeling that my mom was being very secretive.

Jenny and I met a couple times for dinner and I really liked her. We got along famously and I really enjoyed spending time with her. She had a wicked sense of humor and we easily matched wits.

I was surprised to learn that Jenny was actually
betrothed
to be married at the end of the summer. I couldn’t imagine such a situation. Her parents had arranged her marriage when she was just sixteen, a year before they left India. I thought about who I was dating when I was sixteen, and couldn’t imagine marrying him. Currently, her fiancé was a med student, studying to be a cardio thoracic surgeon. Jenny had a right of refusal to the arrangement, but she explained that she and Ankur had grown up together and she liked him very much. If her parents were happy with the traditionally arranged marriage, then so was she. Her parents’ marriage had been arranged, and they were an amazing couple. Ankur was graduating in the next couple of days and had been matched for a residency at the hospital his soon to be father-in-law worked at, with a little help from said future father-in-law. The wedding would be a three day affair, originally supposed to have been in southern India, but over the past year, had been relocated to Manhattan, because of Ankur’s residency, which made Jenny very happy.

Through the week, Kevin would knock on my door or text to see how things were going. My life seemed to be settling into a nice, professional normal. The long days usually wore me out and I was becoming one of those ‘early-to-bed’ people that I never understood. All in all, I was feeling completely successful.

On Thursday night, Ben, the cocky intern, organized us interns to go watch a Yankee’s game at a popular bar, Stan’s, “within spitting distance” to the ballpark. Pulling out my fake ID that I’d only used twice in Ohio, and taking a cab to the Bronx, I went, looking forward to getting to know the other interns, even if I was dog-tired. If it had been quiet enough to talk, I think I would have had fun getting to know Serena, Blake and Dan, the three Jenny and I hung close to. It was clear that Ben and Terri had already hooked up, and Matt was part of their little clique. The bar was packed, with everyone decked out in Yankees t-shirts, caps and temporary tattoos. It was a good game, only made better with a Yankee win. My dad would have been proud at my attending a baseball game. He was a die-hard fan of the San Francisco Giants.

The weekend came, but was not the same as the weekend before. No dinner date with Kevin. No jog in Central Park, but that was fine—I was totally worn out from the ten-hour days at work. I enjoyed that Saturday by sleeping in until two in the afternoon. Sunday I did some grocery shopping. Monday was Memorial Day.

Kevin invited me to go with him to one of his fellow teacher’s home in Westchester, but I’d also been invited to a couple of co-workers holiday barbecues, and he’d already admitted that I wasn’t the object of his attentions, other than a neighbor and daughter of a friend. I thought it would be best to take up a co-worker’s invitation and considered which invite to take: Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Chelsea. I took up the invitation to Brenda’s Memorial Day barbecue at her place in Chelsea, because I didn’t have to leave the ‘island.’

After a run in Central Park on the path Kevin taught me, I got ready for the party. Following Brenda’s instructions to get to her place, I took a downtown Six train to Grand Central Terminal, transferring to the Seven train over to Forty-second Street, then getting on a downtown One Train to Eighteenth Street. As I walked along Nineteenth Street, I was shocked to see so many gay couples, men and women, as well as men who were dressed like women and women who were dressed like men. Brenda’s apartment was amazing and had a fantastic view from the roof-top patio, reminding me that there was a roof-top patio on my building, but I had yet to make it up there. I made a mental note to check it out. There were a dozen or so people from work at Brenda’s, along with other neighbors of hers and other friends. The most interesting introduction Brenda made was to her wife, Marie, a chef at a well-known restaurant. Never in a million years would I have guessed that Brenda was a lesbian. She certainly didn’t fit the stereotype I had in my head.