Love and Chaos (33 page)

Coco is one tough broad when she wants to be.

Just as we reach the curtain, Julia stops, turns around, walks back to Stef, and slaps him, once, very hard across the face.

“Hey—”

“That’s for everything you did to my friend. She’s a good person. She didn’t deserve it.”

When we get up to the street, I feel a heady euphoria. Victory! But before I can celebrate, I need to do one thing.

With shaking hands, I find the latch and open the camera, slip my finger into the film, and pull it all out by hand. Ribbons upon ribbons of film come out, quickly spooling in a huge pile at my feet. I start jumping and stamping on it, and then all the girls join in, laughing with the sort of relieved hysteria that you get when you’ve just escaped a scary, ridiculous, weird situation.

“We’re throwing this film off the Brooklyn Bridge,” says Julia. “And then we’re going home. I need a drink.”

“We really shouldn’t litter,” says Coco. “We’ll cut it into tiny pieces at home instead.”

“Let’s get pizza,” says Pia. “My treat.”

I know what she’s thinking. It’s confession time. Pia and I are leaving Rookhaven.

As I’m getting into Toto the food truck, I spot Stef’s car parked just down the street. His red Ferrari 308 GTS. The thing that means the most to him in the entire world.

I have an idea.

Without pausing, I stride into the deli next to the café, buy a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, walk over to the car, open the gas cap, open the Coke bottle, and pour every last drop of sugary, engine-frying Coca-Cola into the gas tank. Glug, glug, glug.

“What the fuck are you doing?” shouts Pia from the truck.

I don’t reply. When every last drop is in the tank, I turn around and walk back to the truck, smiling to myself. Stef’s precious car is fried.

Revenge. Is. Awesome.

Then we drive back to Rookhaven, sit down at the kitchen table, order pizza from Bartolo’s, open a bottle of wine, and attack the film with scissors.

“No vodka tonight, Angie?” Madeleine teases me, as she slices up frame after frame. “No cucumber, no sea salt? No cigarette tucked between your lips?”

I smirk at her. I finally understand Madeleine. She’s trying to be funny. It just comes out as bitchy sometimes. “Not tonight. Tonight, I want to toast to you guys. Thank you. I could not have survived that without you.”

We all raise our glasses and clink, with all the obligatory intense-eye-contact-or-seven-years-bad-sex stuff.

Then the pizza arrives, and after we all take our first bite, Pia and I exchange a glance. It’s time to tell everyone.

“I’m moving to San Francisco to be with Aidan,” she says.

“I’m moving to L.A. to be with myself.” I raise an eyebrow. “God, that’s depressing.”

“What?” Julia, Madeleine, and Coco exclaim in unison.

“Why?” Coco is distraught. “You’re leaving? Both of you?”

“I just … I’m miserable without him,” says Pia. “If you love someone, you want to be with them. Right?”

“What about your job?” asks Julia. “They’re letting you work from San Francisco?”

“Um, no,” says Pia. She looks up guiltily. “I asked my boss today. She said that she needed me here in New York, with the rest of the company.”

“So you quit working at Carus?” Julia is horrified. “That’s it?”

I’m stunned, too. Pia didn’t tell me that her boss said no to the proposed San Francisco move. She’d walk away from her perfect career—when it’s so impossible to find a job right now? Let alone one as amazing as hers?

“Not yet,” Pia admits. “I couldn’t bring myself to actually resign. After she said no to the move, I said, oh of course, I was just wondering if it was an option, yada yada.… But I will. Tomorrow.”

“
How
could you quit the job that you worked so hard to get?” I slam my palm on the table so hard that everyone jumps. “You
earned
that job, Pia. You went through hell to get it.”

“And we went through hell with you!” points out Madeleine.

“Oh man, I know, I know…” Pia looks at the ceiling in anguish. “I love my job. I mean, I
really
love it, and I’ve only just begun to realize my potential.… And I’m good at it! Finally, for once, I’m actually good at something. It’s where I’m supposed to be, I’m sure of it … but I also feel like I’m supposed to be with Aidan. I love him.”

“I guess you have to choose,” says Madeleine. “Work or love?”

“I hate that!” says Pia. “Why should I be the one making sacrifices? Why can’t he give up his stupid job to stay with me? What fucking decade are we living in?” She takes a slug of wine and sighs dramatically.

“And what about you, Angie?” Julia turns to me. “You’re just going to fill Rookhaven with flowers and leave?”

“Just when we were finally getting to know you?” adds Madeleine.

“Come on, you guys,” I say, looking at them uncomfortably. “You know I’m never going to make a life here. A real life. I can’t get a job. And I can’t keep working at places like the goddamn Gap or be a personal slave to rich bitches like Cornelia or that psycho bitch photographer, you know? I need to feel like I’m on the right track, like my life has direction, a purpose. And I don’t.”

There’s silence. No one seems able to argue with me. This makes me crumble a little bit inside. I sort of hoped—half hoped, maybe—that one of them would tell me she didn’t want me to go, that they simply wouldn’t allow it. But why would they try to argue me out of anything? It’s never worked before.

“What about Sam?” asks Julia.

“Sam is a liar.” I stare at my plate. Talking about my emotions makes me feel so fucking awkward. “I have no feelings for him. I thought I did, and I was wrong, he’s a liar. I was, you know, projecting.” Yeah. That’s a good word. I’m just not completely sure what it means.

“He’s crazy about you, you know,” says Julia.

I look up. “What?”

“On our date he kept mentioning you, or asking if I knew where you were, because he hadn’t been able to get in touch with you.… I swear we only turned up at the bar because I said you were there and he insisted we go. Our date wasn’t a real date; it was just dinner with a guy who happened to be into one of my friends.”

“Oh,” I say in a tiny voice, trying to process all this. “Well, he should have been up-front with you. Why did he go out with you, if he wasn’t interested? He’s still a bastard.”

“He’s not. I saw him when I got home from work tonight. He’s been cleaning up Vic’s place. He said he was sorry, that he thought we were on the same page with being more friends than anything else. He said he thought he’d be able to get you and his brother Pete to come to dinner, too. Make a happy little foursome. He was about to tell you all about his family stuff. He never liked me like that.”

“Ouch,” says Pia. “Jules, that bites.”

“No, it’s fine,” says Julia, rubbing her temples and frowning. “He was so honest, I couldn’t even be upset.… I don’t even know if I liked him all that much, either. I just wanted to like
someone
so badly.…” She sighs. “I would really like a boyfriend. That’s all.”

There’s a long pause.

“So, Sam has a brother?” Pia says finally. “Do they look alike?”

Jules cracks up. “I know! That was the first thing I thought, too!”

We all eat in thoughtful silence for a while. I’m thinking about Sam, trying to figure out how I feel and what I should do, but there are just too many emotions jumbled inside me. Too much has happened in the past twenty-four hours. I feel like I could get into bed and sleep for a week. And I still need a job. I need a real life, a life that’s heading somewhere. That’s the bottom line.

“God, I love Bartolo’s,” says Julia, when the pizza is all gone. “But it always leaves me in the mood for something sweet, you know?”

“I know!” says Madeleine. I frown at her. Madeleine practically never eats sugar. “I could really do with, hmm, let me think, something pink and white, with icing, and candles.…”

Suddenly I notice Coco is at the fridge, pulling out a cake. “Ta-da! For Pia and Angie! Birthday cake!”

“I thought I wouldn’t get a cake this year!” Pia is delighted. “Happy twenty-third birthday to us!”

Coco lights the candles, everyone sings “Happy Birthday,” and then Pia and I take deep breaths, close our eyes, and blow out the candles.

“Don’t forget to make a wish!” shouts Julia.

I wish to create a life that will make me happy.

The wish comes, unbidden, into my head. If I’d had time to think about it, I would have wished for something more specific, like a job that pays $150,000 a year and a house with a private chef and a rooftop goddamn swimming pool.

Or even just a job. But that’ll never happen in New York. So I guess my wish will take me to L.A.

Then I open my eyes and look around at the girls. They’re my family now. I don’t want to say good-bye to them.

This is what it all boils down to: I don’t want to leave, but I feel like I have to.

What the hell am I going to do?

CHAPTER
42

I barely slept last night.

Again.

I have that dull exhaustion faceache behind my eye sockets, you know the kind I mean? The kind that can only be relieved by about twenty-four hours of sleep and then a gallon of espresso. But it won’t be happening here. Every time I closed my eyes last night, a kaleidoscope of images rushed through my brain. Everything that’s happened, everything I wish I could erase, everything I wish I could ask Sam, everything …

A few things have become clear, in the restless thinkfest that was my night.

First, I was wrong.

(Again.)

Yes, Sam lied about who he was and where he was from.

But he obviously had reasons. His father, his mother … I don’t know the full story. But I should have stuck around to find out. I should have given him the benefit of the doubt. Just like I should have stuck around with my mom that day she told me about the divorce, and I should have stuck around Rookhaven the night that Julia and I had the fight in the kitchen. But I didn’t. My instincts said run.

So I ran.

I’m always led by instinct. Ruled by it, really. I always thought it was just who I was, I thought it was part of my personality. Unpredictable. Mercurial. Sometimes it’s not such a bad idea, like getting away from the yacht in Turks. But sometimes—more often—it is.

So is it a bad idea, leaving Brooklyn, when I can’t get a real job in New York? Or is it logical? I honestly can’t tell what’s rational and what’s crazy anymore, or what’s smart and what’s stupid. There are too many choices. It’s all too confusing, and I have this terrible fear, deep down inside, that I’ll make the wrong choice and always regret it.

And now, it’s Wednesday morning. Everyone else in the world is getting up, going to their jobs, earning money, having a life that’s worth living.

Except me.

I need some air.

So I get out of bed, take a very quick shower, and pull on jeans, my studded Converse, and a white blouse. I got up at 3:00
A.M.
and finished altering the neckline. It’s so pretty. Maybe it’ll bring me luck.

Then I grab my old Zara leather jacket, and throw my keys, money, phone, and lip balm in the pocket, since Cornelia still has my damn gold clutch, and leave Rookhaven without running into anyone else. I walk slowly down Union Street as the sun rises, getting that quiet buzz you feel when you’re the only person awake and the world feels like your secret. Brooklyn seems fresh and clean and full of promise.

I walk down Smith Street and end up back on the corner of Smith and Atlantic Avenue, in the New Apollo Diner, the same diner I went to the morning after Pijiu, when I thought Julia and Sam had … well, you know.

That day I stared at my menu, thinking about Sam. I thought about the time we spent together, about bursting into tears in front of him after watching
Kramer vs.
goddamn
Kramer,
about him helping me hand out CVs and lattes. About how I was sure, totally sure, that we were about to kiss that time on my bed.

And I just kept telling myself,
No, he’s just your friend
.

What would have happened if I had kissed him that night he slept over? Why did I decide that he had to be my friend and there was no alternative?

But I don’t want to go.

There. I said it. (In my head, anyway.)

The events at Angie’s Secret last night made me realize the girls are my family now. We’re all in this together.

But if I don’t go to L.A. and stay here, I’m right back where I started. No job, no career, no money, no options.

No Sam.

I have a huge urge to call Sam and ask him to forgive me for flipping out and charging into the storm like King Lear with tits. I want to ask him to explain his situation to me, why he didn’t want to be honest about who he was and where he was from. I’m sure he had good reasons for lying. But I just can’t. He hasn’t even tried to contact me. And even though he lied, I can’t judge him. I don’t know his backstory, I don’t know what it’s like to be him. Just like no one knows what it’s like to be me.

When did life get so complicated?

Though, when you think about it, has life ever been simple?

Finally my pancakes arrive, and I can’t eat
and
think about life-changing decisions, so I pour maple syrup all over my plate, grab the
New York Post
that someone left on the table next to me, and stare at the cover as I stuff the first sweet bite into my mouth.

Oh, my God.

CHAPTER
43

It’s Cornelia. A mug shot. On the cover of the
New York Post.

She was arrested. She’s wearing The Angel dress and staring into the camera, looking spoiled and sullen.

Next to it, another shot of Cornelia in the dress, jumping on the back of an NYPD police officer, I guess just before she was arrested. She looks stunning. Crazy, obviously, but stunning. That dress rocks.

“CORN ON THE COP!” says the headline.

And then I see it. Down low, in the bottom corner of the front page, is a close-up photo of my clutch! My gold clutch! The one I made from the secondhand scarves I picked up months ago down at Brownstone Treasures. What the? I quickly read the story.