Hot Mess (14 page)

“It has been way too long since I’ve hooked up,” I confessed again to my label maker. Going from making out with Brian every day to nada for the past few weeks was affecting me big-time. “Sparkles and man-thongs should not be turning me on.”

I shuffled the files in my lap and suddenly all I could think about was Colin.

I sat there, gaga-eyed, totally stalled in my alphabetizing for fifteen minutes before deciding to get some fresh air.

And by “fresh air” I meant “chocolate.”

I had pretty much given up on seeing Colin and I was bummed that I’d wasted my cutest outfit on Monday. I could possibly wear it again later in the week, but I’d already spilled raspberry vinaigrette on my dress at lunch, and let’s be honest, “dry clean only” means “dry clean never” in my world. The dress wasn’t going to see the light of day again until I got back to B-field and Mama Freeman threw down the $7.50 to have it professionally cleaned.

I headed to my cubicle, grabbed a fistful of change from my wallet, and trudged over to the elevators for a trip to the vending machine, hoping chocolate would fulfill my need for male attention, excitement, and intellectual stimulation all at once. I knew it was a lot to ask from the Mars Candy Corporation, but dammit, it was worth a shot.

As I stood in front of the machine, pondering my junk food selection, I could hear someone walking up behind me. Not wanting to force a fellow three o’clock snacker to wait for his or her fix, I quickly decided and punched in the numbers for my lard-maker of choice.

“Well, hello, Miss Freeman,” an easy voice said behind me.

“Wha?” I spun around, caught off guard. Colin! What was he doing on this floor? I turned four shades of purple, none of which went with my yellow dress. “Oh, I, um, hi! Hi, Mr. Christensen—I mean Colin—how are you?”

“Well”—he leaned in like we were sharing a secret—“I’m really glad we met Saturday. Cool people are hard to find around this place.” I caught a whiff of his cologne—he smelled like pure, uncut man—and my knees almost gave out. Just then my king-sized peanut M&M’s bounced out of the candy machine. Why couldn’t he have seen me buying veggie chips or something? I should have pretended they were for someone else. As I bent down to pick up my four hundred candy-coated calories, he pulled out a pen and paper.

“Look, some friends and I are having a barbecue at my loft this weekend, you should come. Here’s the address. Eightish.”

I managed to stutter out that I’d be there. But I think I also muttered something about bringing enough moistynaps for everyone. God, I’m such a waste of A cups. We both headed over to the elevators.

“Going up?” he asked as he pressed the up button for himself.

I think I would have combusted from the pressure of my crush if I had to ride in an elevator with him. “Um, no. I’m going down. Some people take cigarette breaks outside, I take chocolate breaks,” I said, holding up my bag of M&M’s.

“That’s totally my kind of break,” he said. As he pushed the down button for me, an elevator going up binged open. He hopped in and gave me a wink. A wink that was effortless and cute and flirty. Definitely flirty. So much for Rachel’s theory about him not being into me. A party invite and a wink? One more into-me thing and he’d practically be asking me to marry him. I held his stare until the doors closed in front of his chiseled face.

As soon as I was sure his ’vator was gone, I pushed the up button. I flew back to my desk to text Rach about the encounter. As I was thumb-typing, Derek came around the corner.

“Emma, here’s a question for you. How come you wear the same thing every day?” I looked down at my brand-spanking-new dress and then back up at him, not saying a word. “I feel like most women pay more attention to how they look. Just a thought. You better get back to those files, okay, missy?”

I watched his fat ass lumber off back to his office. Sweet shit, I hated that man. I hit Send on my text to Rachel and then—just as I was told to—lumbered my own smaller butt back to the conference room for more filing.

Fourteen

“W
hat?” Jayla said with pure disgust as she popped out from behind the fridge door with her Diet Coke.

Why was she acting like I’d just announced that I was going to camp out to be first in line for the new Taylor Hicks album? “What’s wrong? I just said I’m going to the barbecue tonight. That one that I’ve been sweating about all effing week! With Colin, the Humbert Humbert to my Lolita.” I was joking, but I still felt way guilty about lying to him.

“Nuh-uh,” Jayla said, shuffling for more stuff in the fridge. “That’s not what you just said. You said that you’re going to the barbecue with Jake.”

“Oh yeah. I invited Jake. What’s the big whoop?” Had I just said “whoop”? I was turning into my mother. Someone needed to kill me before I started wearing reading glasses as jewelry.

Jayla backed out of the fridge and slammed some food down on the counter. “But don’t you like Colin? He’s the one you described as a Chad Michael Murray look-alike?” I nodded. He was so Chad Michael Murray, except for not an obvious asshole.

“Well then, what the hell are you doing bringing Jake?” she asked, dumping some lettuce into a bowl. She spoke with that don’t-be-such-an-imbecile tone my math teacher had whenever I forgot that the quadratic formula was all over 2a. “He’s going to be a ginormous cockblock.”

Inviting Jacob was part of my strategy for getting Colin. I leaned on the counter and explained my logic: “I invited him because he’ll help me blend in. He actually is twenty-three and has a job as a junior something or other. Hanging with him is going to make me seem older.”

Jayla had finished preparing our snack of lettuce and spray butter and we moved into the common area. “Hanging with him is going to make you seem like you have a boyfriend.”

I immediately lost my appetite. “Crap, Jay. He’s my cousin!” The memories of his bacne from our family Fourth of July bash a few years ago were enough to make me barf up my lunch.

“But Colin’s not going to know that.” She stuffed down a calorie-less mouthful. “Showing up with another guy, crustacean cousin or not, is bad form, Em.”

Shit. She was right. My mind raced. I seriously couldn’t face the barbecue alone. There was no way. And I couldn’t
un
invite my cousin. Suddenly and tragically, my adult plans were collapsing in on themselves.

“Well, what am I going to do?” I sputtered. “I can’t find thirty-four Leonard Street by myself. I can only do numbered streets alone—TriBeCa is like a labyrinth.”

Jayla’s eyes widened, which, combined with her already enhancing liner, made her blue eyes look like Hope diamonds. Choking on a spray-buttered bite, she said, “Thirty-four Leonard? That’s where the barbecue is?”

I fished around in the clutch borrowed from Jayla for the piece of paper Colin had given me on Monday. I uncrumpled it and flattened it on the coffee table.

“Yeah, Thirty-four Leonard. That’s it.”

“I’ll come,” she volunteered suddenly. “If I’m there, it won’t look like you’re dating Jacob. Just like a group of friends are coming to a party together. It’ll be better for you.”

Wow. That was fast and extremely nice of her.

“Really?” I asked hesitantly, but was already flooding with relief. “You’re going to ditch your plans with Chloe tonight?” Though I wasn’t sure I should really point out her other options. I really wanted her to come and be sure no one thought I was couplized with my own cousin. Gross.

With a transfatlessly greased smile she answered, “For you? Of course.”

This totally wasn’t very Jayla of her to be putting my social special needs before her own Saturday night plans. Maybe I’d judged her too quickly—just because she was a social butterfly didn’t mean she couldn’t also be a really good friend when she needed to, right? Whatever, I didn’t care if she was only in it for the free veggie burgers, I was just psyched not to be doomed to lurk around the party as a total untouchable.

“This still look good?” Rachel interrupted before I could start blubbering with gratitude and promising to do Jayla’s laundry for the next month. Rachel waltzed out of her room wearing the same mini-and-cowl-neck outfit that she’d worn on her JDate two weeks earlier. “I’ve got another one tonight.” She twirled for us to take in the ensemble.

I cooed like a third-grade class when their teacher got flowers delivered. “Another date with a bird! A plane! No, it’s SuperJew!”

“Uh,
no
. He was like a hundred years ago.” He was like barely two weeks ago, actually. I wanted to roll my eyes but kept them under control. “This is some guy who’s interning at Goldman this summer.” She paused expectantly for us to ooh and ahh at what a catch he was.

“It still looks cute, but you can’t,” Jayla said firmly.

“What?” Rachel and I said in sync, throwing puzzled looks at each other before turning to Jayla.

“I mean, a D&G skirt is always going to look cute. But you just can’t wear that outfit again. It’s been tainted.”

This elicited another tag-team response of confused scrunched faces.

“Rachel, didn’t you have an awful first date the last time you wore that outfit?”

“Well,” she said defensively, crossing her arms and avoiding eye contact, “I wouldn’t call it
awful
.”

“You said that he took you to an Indian buffet and made you split the bill.” Jayla sprayed some faux butter on her fingertip and licked it off as Rachel stuck her chin out indignantly.

“Maybe.”

Jayla rolled her eyes. “Honey, a date that won’t throw down the six ninety-five to pay for your food poisoning? That’s bad.”

I nodded reluctantly. Even Brian paid for me on our first dinner date.

“And so,” Jayla continued, “that outfit’s been on one bad date. It’s tainted. Jinxed. You need to wear something fresh or there’s no hope that tonight’s going to go any better.”

“Tonight
has
to go better,” Rachel whined. “We’re going to Union Square Cafe. I looked up the menu online and my summer stipend from Sirlie won’t even cover the bread basket there.”

Jayla sighed in mock exasperation. “Well, lucky for you, that’s what fabulous, generous, almost-too-hot-to-look-at roommates are for! I am sure my black hole of a closet has something guaranteed to get you through dinner and”—she licked the last of the butter off her finger suggestively—“
way
past dessert!”

“Jayla!” Rachel laughed, blushing slightly. “Come on, I don’t want to look like a ho!”

“Who you callin’ a ho?” Jayla said in her sassiest Lil’ Kim voice. “Are you trying to tell me that I look like some hoochie-ass when I go out?”

“No, no, no.” Rachel realized her foot-in-mouth gaffe and tried to backpedal. “I just mean that, you know. Well, I’m not trying to dress like I’m easy or anything.”

“Being easy isn’t an outfit, it’s a state of mind.” Jayla got up and headed toward her room, motioning for us to follow. “Now come on, follow me into my office.”

We dutifully shuffled into the master bedroom to sift through a closet of jinx-free ensembles.

If I bought into Jayla’s outfit karma theory, I’d have to buy a new outfit for every single day of work. A day in that cubicle was way worse than paying for my own tandoori chicken. And Derek had either never heard of this contaminated-outfit theory or genuinely loved every second at work, because that dude had worn the same karmically polluted Dockers every single day since I started.

I lounged on Jayla’s bed and watched Rachel try on outfit after outfit.

“Well, what kind of look are you going for here?” Jayla asked, studying her closet and glancing back at Rachel. We’d already been through three rejects.

“Uh, I don’t know. Pretty?” Rachel looked at me for help but I just shrugged. I usually just shoot for the “No, my bra is in
no way
padded” look.

Jayla sighed and rolled her eyes. “No. No! Pretty isn’t a look—it’s what you naturally are, Rachel.”

She blushed a little at the compliment. “Okay, then how about ‘supersophisto Manhattan socialite girl’?”

Clearly, Rachel wasn’t even inventing a persona, she was just describing Jayla. Clever.

Jayla immediately brightened. “I know
exactly
the outfit!” She rifled through the turquoise section of her closet until she found a silky Ella Moss dress with white piping and a plunging neckline.

“This is perfecto,” Jayla announced, handing it to Rachel and then turning to her armoire and rifling through her accessories. “It’ll bring out your eyes and your boobs, but it’s long enough so that you won’t look tacky. And with this heat, it won’t get you all swampy and gross.”

“Jam Master Jay has done it again!” I said, totally impressed. She was like a younger, slightly less hot, not-consta-pregnant version of Heidi Klum.

Under an hour later, all three of us sauntered out of our lobby wearing our new gold alias-name necklaces. Jayla and I turned to head off to our evening of barbecue and boys, while Rachel blew us kisses and sashayed across Union Square in the borrowed Ella dress, borrowed Gustto bag, and borrowed Marc Jacobs slingbacks to meet the guy who could be buying her a Tiffany’s ring in a few years. We waved back and headed down into the subway.

“I cannot believe we’re taking the subway,” Jayla said, clopping down the stairs and sneering at the entire station.

I knew my bank account balance and had to draw the line on charging things on my parental credit card somewhere.

“I just spent about a million and a half dollars of my parents’ money on this dress.” I struck a little model pose, displaying the overpriced but too-perfect-to-pass-up pink and green number from Intermix. I was trying to be as nonchalant as I could about the money situation—Jayla had absolutely no concept of my world and I didn’t want to come off too poor. “I can’t ask them to borrow any more money. I’m living the budget life—well, the budget-fabulous life—the rest of the summer, okay?”

“Fine. Fine. Fine.” She crossed her arms and scowled. “But I am not touching anything down here.”

A short subway ride later, we hit Canal Street. It might sound like a quaint little part of town, full of waterways and Venetian architecture, but all it was full of was the smell of sewers and garbage. The stifling heat of the subway gave way to the choking aroma of the Chinatown fish markets wafting into the subway station, and we held our noses as we climbed up the stairs and onto the street.

Canal was busy, stinky, and packed to the gills with all sorts of designer knockoffs. I thought I was going to have to shoot Jayla with a tranquilizer dart to keep her from freaking.

“Sweet Christ. Is this hell?” she said, glaring at the fake Pradas and Louis Vuittons as I pulled out my STREETWISE map.

“No,” I answered. Although this probably
was
Jayla’s version of hell. “Only a few more blocks west and we’ll be at the corner where I said I’d meet Jacob.” I took her by the arm and started tugging her down the street.

“Wait, after that odyssey”—she pointed down to the 6 train—“we still have to walk? This feels more like ‘budget boot camp’ than ‘budget-fabulous.’”

“Come on, you drama mama. If you’d just stop bitching, we can get out of Fish Town and into civilized society, okay?” I had to drag her like a stubborn puppy the next few blocks. I prayed we were walking in the right direction. I had a feeling that dealing with a Jayla-style meltdown was not going to leave me with enough energy to woo Colin.

I saw Jake waiting for us at the corner of Church and Canal and breathed a sigh of relief that I had steered us the right way.

“Yo!” he greeted me. And then he saw Little Miss Stiletto limping behind me. “Oh, hiya, Jayla. I didn’t know you’d be coming. I mean, it’s fine that you are. No, I mean it’s
great
that you’re here, way better than fine. So, this should be fun hanging out with you. Well, not just the two of us. Emma too. The three of us hanging out, all night, together. Fun.” He sighed sharply. “So, um, never mind all that. I just meant ‘Hi, Jayla.’”

God, I hope I didn’t sound that spazzy when I talked to Colin. But I had a feeling it ran in the family.

Jayla didn’t seem to notice his nervous yapping, or actually notice Jake at all. She pressed on in her Manolo marathon. Jake and I followed behind her royal queen of complaints, actually hustling a bit to keep up. Even though her heels could probably be used as ice picks come winter, she was totally outpacing us in our flip-flops. With all the rushing, I didn’t have much time to take in TriBeCa—not like there was much to take in. The neighborhood mostly seemed like a weird mix of swanky lofts and stores that exclusively sold futons.

Finally, at the door to 34 Leonard, Jayla rang the buzzer and sighed, “Thank God that death march is over. Cab’s on me on the way home.”

A staticky sound came from the speaker and we pushed our way through the fingerprinted glass door and walked into the small lobby. Jake pressed the elevator up button and the doors opened immediately. We piled into the tiny cabin—it felt like we were in a shoebox on a pulley. I tried my hardest to will my pits to stop sweating as we rode up.

“Actually,” Jayla added to her previous rant, smoothing her dress and running her fingers through her perfectly straightened hair, “cabs are on me for the rest of the summer. Never again.” She was still grumbling about why the MTA should put sanitizing gel in each subway car as a tall, sunburned guy with red hair and a white V-neck T-shirt opened the door. He looked like a candy cane.

Jayla, Jake, and Mr. Minty looked at me expectantly.

“Oh! Uh, hi, I’m Emma. Freeman. Emma Freeman,” I sputtered nervously, turning red enough to match the guy in the doorway. “Colin Christensen invited me.”

“Oh, solid,” he said with a stoner head nod. He took a sip of his beer and meandered back into the party, motioning vaguely toward the bar.

We stood in the doorway, surveying the scene. Exposed-brick wall to exposed-brick wall, the place was packed with beautiful young people. And even though everyone was obviously older than I was and, even more obviously, way cooler, I still felt a lot more comfortable at this party than at Plumm last week. It kind of reminded me of the few times I got invited to the A-List Only parties back home. So maybe I could dial down the awkward a notch or two when I talked to Colin tonight. Maybe.