Girls We Love (6 page)

“What?”

“You know that guy Jonathan, my brother's friend? The one with the beautiful, soft leather motorcycle jacket?”

“Yeah?”

“He's my ex.”

“Really?” Liv knew she was supposed to be sympathetic right now—Flan had just told her that she'd spent all night hanging around her ex and his new girlfriend—but she also found this news kind of exciting. “Wow … he's cute.”

“I know, but …
you
know.”

“I know,” Liv said. “But you know what? This gives us even more reason to go down and hang out. Because you know why? It will show that you weren't bothered by him having his new… friend there tonight.”

“You think?”

“Definitely,” Liv said, punctuating her words with a head bob. She walked over to the mirror on the back of Flan's door and fussed with her hair. “And then maybe he'll start wondering if that new friend is the right special friend in the first place.”

When they got downstairs, Liv and Flan saw that the guys had all been sitting on the oatmeal-colored couches and love seats in the living room. They were all semi-reclined, with their arms thrown back against the upholstery, and they had the appearance of people who had been many places and seen many things. They stood up as soon as they saw the girls, in an awkward show of gentlemanly behavior, and said hi in unison.

Liv felt her heart sink when she counted only four hot older guys in the room.

“Oh, hey Flan,” Patch said as he came through the door to the kitchen. He had a six-pack of tallboys dangling from his index finger, and Liv could see the broad curve of his shoulders under his rumpled oxford shirt. He nodded in Liv's direction, and said hi to her, too; when she heard him say her name it was like her whole body was on a roller coaster heading down. He
said her name like it was his favorite word in the English language.

Liv tried to sound nonchalant as she said, “So, where have you guys been?”

“Lotus,” David said, his eyes meeting Liv's.

“Yeah, wasn't much happening there tonight,” Jonathan said. He shrugged in this way that made Liv feel like she would have given pretty much anything to have been at Lotus that night. “Lots of people, but they were all kind of lame.”

Flan was just standing there awkwardly, so Liv smiled big and said, “Can we sit down?”

“Yeah, totally,” David said, rearranging himself on the love seat to make room. Flan went and sat next to him, and Liv waited until Patch had taken a seat, and then she went and sat on the floor leaning against the couch he was sitting on. Everybody else resumed their sprawled, post-party position on the couches, and after a moment of silence, the guys picked up their conversation as though nothing had changed.

“Yeah,” Mickey said, putting his white-clogged feet on the rusted metal-topped coffee table his father, the sculptor Ricardo Pardo, had given the Floods for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, “she's totally awesome. I mean, it's like somebody said let's re-create Mickey Pardo as a chick. That's pretty much what Sonya is like.”

Jonathan made a noise. “Is that a good thing?”

“You mean, dating the girl version of you?” Arno said. A contemplative look came over his face, and then he jerked upward and headed for the bathroom. Mickey watched Arno leave, and then chugged his beer.

“What about you, Jonathan?” Liv said. She winked at Flan, whose teeth were visibly clenched. “What's up with your girlfriend?'

Jonathan didn't say anything for a long moment, as though he were trying to determine the level of his drunkenness or who the word “girlfriend” referred to in this context. “Ava?” he said finally, but his eyebrows were still scrunched together. “Oh… yeah… she's making raw food soups to sell at her school Monday. She's going to donate the profits to some animal shelter in Brooklyn. I'm supposed to help. At nine.”

Everyone stared at him in silence.

“So, yeah, I guess I should be going,” Jonathan said, standing up and wrapping himself in his motorcycle jacket. He stumbled toward the door, looking a lot more drunk than he had when he was sitting down. When he reached the arched entryway to the foyer, he paused and said, “I never realized how early nine in the morning is.”

“I think our friend Jonathan has had one too many,” Mickey said, standing and stumbling into the coffee table, “which is a thing I know all about. I'm going to
go find him a cab.” And then Mickey disappeared in the direction Jonathan had gone, somehow making a lot more noise in the process.

“The pink champagne will do it.” Patch chuckled in David's direction. An adorable smile flashed across his face.

“I'm fine,” David said quickly.

“What? I know
you're
fine,” Patch said, twisting his head slightly and squinting at David. He paused, and then stood. “I think it's time for me to hit the hay.”

“Oh, okay,” David said. “Can I just finish my beer?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Patch said. “Good night.”

Liv stood up and yawned dramatically. “I think I've got to go to bed, too.” Flan looked like she might get up and follow her, so Liv made her eyes all saucerlike until her friend sat still. “Nighty-night.”

She winked at Flan and David, who were now sitting awkwardly on a love seat by themselves. Liv didn't really think they would kiss or anything, but if they did, maybe
that
would make Jonathan jealous. And Liv had already decided that her friend should totally go out with Jonathan. Or get back together with him, or whatever.

But she stopped thinking about that pretty quickly, because now she was following Patch Flood up the stairs toward all the bedrooms on the third floor. She let one of the straps of her camisole fall for good
measure. Maybe Flan wasn't going to get with her guy tonight, but Liv was pretty sure that she was.

When she got to the top of the stairs, she saw that Patch was standing there with one of his shoulders resting against the wall. Was he… waiting for her?

“Patch?” she whispered.

He turned around. “Oh, hi Liv,” he said.

His face was sort of moody, or something, so Liv said, “Are you okay?”

“Everybody always just rushes into these things, you know?” he said, his greenish eyes focused on the floor. “I can't believe David is being so flaky with SBB, who is sort of weird, I guess, but she just worships him. Everybody always has all these good intentions, and then their big love goes to shit so quickly.”

Liv couldn't believe it. She almost couldn't breathe. This was better then hooking up with Patch Flood—he had basically just told her he was
so
into her that he wanted to take it slow. She stepped forward and looked into his eyes. “I totally get where you're coming from,” she said simply, and then she kissed him on the cheek.

Patch looked surprised for a minute, and as Liv turned back toward Flan's room she wondered if she hadn't taken it too far. But by the time she was curled up in her half of the sleigh bed, reimagining all the
amazing things that had happened to her tonight, she had decided it was just the right gesture. It definitely said: “I also think we should take it slow, but I am so totally into you, too.”

Liv smiled to herself as she fell asleep.

“This is sort of my special little place,” Stella said, shrugging proudly at Philippa and Mickey and Sonya. She obviously thought Bar d'O, the drag queen place in the West Village that she took them to on Sunday night, was a very big deal. “Can we have that table near the window?” she asked the hostess, who was channeling Madonna in her nouveau-disco-queen phase. As the hostess led them to that table, Stella turned and said, “That's just my special little table.”

Philippa, who was wearing a black Prada cocktail dress that used to be her mother's and Converse, couldn't help but notice that Mickey and Sonya, with whom she and Stella were on their second double date, were eye-laughing with each other. Then she saw Sonya mouth
jackass
at Mickey.

When they sat down, Stella took out her wallet and said, “I'm buying. Mickey, you're Cuban, right? They
make great mojitos here. Four mojitos.” She turned and strode to the bar.

Mickey and Sonya couldn't help but giggle at all this, and Philippa felt herself joining in. “What a Jonathan, huh?” she said.

“Total Jonathan,” Mickey said, nodding.

“Who's Jonathan?” Sonya asked.

“One of my oldest friends,” Mickey said. “He's really into knowing what's hot and, you know, being able to get in hot places. And then, once he's in there, knowing what's hot to drink.”

Philippa nodded and smiled in agreement. It was weird how good it felt, having someone she and Mickey knew in common who Sonya was clueless about. Besides, Philippa had always liked Jonathan, and she had faith that he would keep Mickey in line now that she wasn't around to do it anymore. Then she remembered that this had all started because Mickey and Sonya were making fun of her girlfriend. “I just think Stella felt sort of out of her element last night,” Philippa said defensively, “you know, with the sweet sixteen and everything. So she wants to show us her spots tonight. I guess that's why she's acting … like a jackass. Kind of.”

Sonya nodded like she still thought it was pretty funny, and then she leaned over to whisper something
in Mickey's ear. Sonya was wearing a sparkly halter top and skinny-ankle jeans.

“So,” Philippa said, trying to get back in the conversation, “what did you guys do all day?”

“Wow,” Sonya said, laughing and pushing her long hair back off her shoulder. “Just hung out, I guess. Breakfast at Veselka, we went to that Japanese place on Ninth Street that has all those vintage T-shirts and shit … ” Mickey pointed to the Mickey Mouse shirt he was wearing. “I don't know,” Sonya went on, “nothing much.”

“Um, nothing much?” Mickey said sarcastically.

“What? What am I forgetting?”

“Brooklyn Bridge?” Mickey was widening his big eyes at Sonya like a wounded boyfriend. “The orange Vespa?”

“Oh, right!” Sonya slapped her hand down on the table. “We went to the Vespa dealers on Crosby and test-drove a scooter.”

“Across the Brooklyn Bridge,” Mickey added excitedly in Philippa's direction.

“The pedestrian pathway of the Brooklyn Bridge, actually,” Sonya put in, “which was
hilarious.
”

“Everyone was screaming—”

“—jumping out of the way, ‘you morons!' You know, like that—”

Philippa found herself nodding along excitedly with
their story, even though they were totally wrapped up in each other. But how could she not nod along? This used to be her story.

“And eventually this cop pulls us over and is like threatening to arrest us… ” Mickey said, rolling his eyes.

“Oh no,” Philippa said, involuntarily putting her hands over her mouth. She hated when cops entered Mickey's stories.

“Don't be such a ninny,” Sonya said. “It all worked out fine, because I just suddenly really wanted to kiss Mickey, right there on the pedestrian walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, with, you know, those beautiful spans overhead and the sea breeze and all the people yelling at us and—”

“And the cop, don't forget the cop. He thought we were cute, so he let us go,” Mickey concluded.

“How romantic,” Stella said, coughing her hoarse smoker's cough. She was standing by their table with four green drinks.

“Oh, hi,” Philippa said, glad to see her girlfriend after listening to Sonya and Mickey's kissing story. She reached over to her for a kiss, but Stella didn't move any closer, and the whole thing came off awkwardly. There was a moment of silence, and then everyone slurped their mojitos.

“I just love drag, and how it, like, turns gender on
its head … ” Stella was saying. The night had progressed considerably, and it was now late enough that she was smoking in the bar. Out in the middle of the floor, a heavy and diaphanous drag queen was telling raunchy jokes.

Mickey was several mojitos in, and slumped against the back of the booth, but he still managed to look bored by this latest pseudo-academic nugget from his ex-girlfriend's new girlfriend.

“I mean, you think about how this challenges all of our socially constructed preconceptions about—”

“Yawn,” Mickey said. “Hey, where's Sonya?”

Philippa put her arm around Stella, to reassure her that
she
didn't think the lecture was boring, but Stella hadn't seemed to take offense anyway. “I don't know,” she said. “Maybe she realized she was a lesbian after all, and ran off with a—”

“Oh, there she is,” Mickey interrupted. They all looked up and saw Sonya bellied up to the glowing orange bar. Next to her was the disco Madonna, and they appeared to be in the middle of a tequila shooting competition. The bartender would pour them a shot, and they would knock it back. Rinse, repeat.

“Holy cow,” Mickey said, his face filling up with admiration.

“I'm not sure this is a good thing,” Philippa said.

“Definitely not a good thing,” Stella put in.

“Come on! You drink like a little boy!” Sonya yelled at the Madonna, who was looking a little queasy and pulling at his wig.

“Oh dear,” Stella said.

The Madonna looked around the room to see if anyone was watching. Several regulars were.

“If you can't handle the heat, why don't you just crown
me
queen,” Sonya yelled tauntingly. The little group that had formed around them thought that was pretty funny, and clapped, so the Madonna reluctantly nodded at the bartender to pour them two more shots.

Philippa watched in horror as Sonya lifted her shot glass, said, “Who's the big queen now?!” and knocked hers back. The Madonna shot his as well, and immediately fell backward onto the floor. Upon impact, he projectile vomited.