Hot Mess (26 page)

Twenty-four

“S
o, are we doing Broadway tonight or what?” Rachel asked. She had just stepped out of the bathroom and was footprinting water all over the apartment.

Even though this was our last weekend in New York and Rachel was so gung-ho on packing as much in as possible, I was beyond exhausted. The combo of Colin, Coney Island, and my dad had totally worn me down. “I don’t know.” I started my attempt to bail. “I feel like I have to prep for my talk with Colin tomorrow.”

“What’s there to prep for?”

“Hello! A ton of stuff,” Jayla hollered from her room. “What do you want to say? How do you want to say it? What’s your theme? What are you going to wear? There’s tons of prepping.” She peaked out of her doorway and threw me a serious look. “So like, what do you want your theme to be?”

Theme? She was making this sound more like a costume party than an apology. “I don’t know. How about ‘I’m an asshole.’ I hear it’s
the
hot look for fall…”

Sensing my need for prep, Jayla came all the way out of her room, also sopping from a shower. “So okay, ‘I’m sorry,’ then what? ‘I’m sorry, take me back’? ‘I’m sorry, and you can’t have me’? ‘I’m sorry and I’m so upset I’m going to eat until I look like a postdivorce Jessica Simpson’?”

I bit my nails, totally unsure how to handle things, and waited for Jayla to tell me exactly what to do.

“Okay, I vote for ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll want me when I’m old enough,’” Jayla offered.

“What does that even mean?” Rachel asked from across the room.

“You know, like later he’s going to regret that he dumped you for something as little as—”

“As lying about my age, education, and job?” I cut in.

“Yeah, like, so what? He’s upset that you’re not twenty-two? He wants you to be older? Let’s show him what you’ll look like when you’re mature and twenty-two and then he’ll know what he’s missing.”

The words coming out of Jayla’s mouth made absolutely no sense to me, but Rachel was nodding from her side of the room.

“We’ll need to start with the wardrobe.” Jayla readjusted her towel and got up, heading back to her room and walk-in closet. She emerged with a pile of designer black. “Here, try all of this on.” She tossed everything at me.

I slipped out of my “Hot Mess” tee and put on all of Jayla’s gear. The dress was a black merino wool number, the shoes, while round-toed, were dangerously high, and patterned tights completed the ensemble.

“I don’t know,” I said as I tugged at the turtleneck.

“Are you kidding me? That’s Dolce & Gabbana, honey. This is the outfit I bought for my great-aunt’s funeral last February. Really, you’re not going to get more sensible chic than this.”

“Very sensible chic,” Rachel parroted.

“And I’ll give you a cute little chignon updo tomorrow and makeup. I’m thinking a dramatic look.” Jayla nodded, agreeing to her own plan.

With my hair, clothes, makeup, and script for the next day’s encounter set, Rachel moved the convo back to Camp New York.

“Okay, so seriously, are we doing Broadway or not?” Rachel whined.

“Uck”—Jayla rolled her eyes—“musicals are so…bourgeois. And now they’re, like, where
American Idol
losers go to die.”

“Jayla St. Clare, come on,” Rachel huffed. “Have you ever even seen a musical?”

“Yes!” she said indignantly. “I saw
Into the Woods
in high school and it was terrible.”

“Okay, that is not the same as Broadway,” I laughed.

Jay rolled her eyes again, this time in defeat. “Fine, fine, fine.”

As well-intentioned as Jayla’s makeover for the Colin confrontation was, I needed more than just an ensemble and a tagline. I really just wanted some time to be alone with my thoughts. “You guys go. I don’t feel up to it. Plus, Daddio has totally cut me off for the time being. I have no way to pay for the cab ride up there, let alone the tickets.”

After several rounds of “Emma, are you sure…like really sure?” I convinced my two roomies that I wouldn’t implode with nerves and self-pity if they left me alone for three hours. As the door slammed behind them, I nestled myself into the couch, relaxing comfortably into my nightly spot from my first weeks in the city.

“Oh, good. You still remember my butt imprint,” I said out loud, patting the cushions and sinking in.

The next morning, I teetered on four inches of Christian Louboutin as I made my way out of the subway station on Spring Street. Barring a burlap sack or wetsuit, there was no other outfit in which I would have been less comfortable. I felt like a casserole baking inside the black wool, and the shoes had already blistered my feet on the walk from my apartment door to the elevator. Between the tight bun and the caked-on/sweated-off “dramatic look,” my head looked like Dali had painted on a New Jersey facelift. And as a finishing touch, Jayla had let me borrow her very emo glasses, so I could barely see.

I wobbled into the restaurant at exactly eleven a.m. and up to Colin, who was talking to the hostess. Then, in a move that may have been too personal considering our frosty situation, I put my hand on his back and, as warmly as I could, alerted him to my presence. “I’m here.”

“Emma, what are you doing?” came Colin’s voice from behind me.

The Colin at the hostess stand turned around. I took off my glasses to see a fifty-year-old face staring back at me and whipped my head the other way to see the real Colin.

Feeling like a total moron, I folded up the glasses and shoved them in my purse, hoping that this wasn’t a sign of how the rest of the Colin talk would go. I apologized to the older gentleman and then followed the real Colin as we were led to a booth. A waitress came immediately.

“Just coffee,” Colin answered for the two of us. His idea of a talk was really just a talk, not the love reconnection over western omelets I had envisioned.

“So,” I started, not sure where to take it from there.

“So,” he said back to me, also not willing to be the first to delve into the real conversation.

Before I could even begin to figure out how to start, I was already wading in the middle of it. “Colin. I’m sorry. I am really, really sorry. I’m sorry that I deceived you. And I know that this sounds impossible, but it really wasn’t intentional. I told you I was older at that club because you were just a stranger. And then when you became more than just a stranger, there was never a good way to fix it. And I know, any way I could’ve told you would have been better than how you found out. I know. I should have said something, but I didn’t because I’m a coward and I’m selfish and I just wanted to keep seeing your face.”

I realized that for the first time with him, I was being totally, 100 percent honest. I knew that at this point, honesty probably wouldn’t be enough, but it was all I could do.

I pressed on in a steady and determined voice, “I wish I could undo the lies, but I can’t. So, I’m sorry.”

He nodded the whole time I spoke, stirring sugar into his coffee. He took a sip, leaving silence between us. When the mug was back on the table, he said, “Emma, I guess that’s all I can ask of you, an apology. I wish it could all be undone, too, but it can’t.”

“Then can I ask you one more question?”

He sipped and nodded.

“Does it matter? So I’m in high school and so I’m eighteen, but we really connected. And even though you didn’t know it, you connected with an eighteen-year-old high school almost-senior. If we got over the trust issues, could we make it work?”

He laughed. “Jesus Christ, Emma. You’re eighteen! We’re at totally different points in our life. I mean, I’m working here in New York and you’re in high school in…you know, I don’t even know where your high school is.”

“Bridgefield,” I answered, facilitating his rant on how not meant for each other we were.

“Upstate! You want long distance on top of all this bullshit? Come on. When I was in college, you were in middle school. I mean, do you even know who Nirvana is?”

“Of course I do.” I looked down into my coffee, hoping he wouldn’t push me for the facts on that one. He waited for more of an answer, definitely pushing. I lifted my chin in feigned confidence. “They did a commercial for Teen Spirit.”

“Ugh,” he sighed disappointedly. “Exactly my point. We’re not on the same page at all.” Why was nineties music the bane of my summer?

“Fine, whatever.” I was actually getting a little bit pissed off. If he hadn’t wanted to even entertain the idea of us getting back together, why the hell had he agreed to meet me? Pure humiliation? Spite? Screw that!

“So you and I don’t work because I don’t know enough about has-been rock bands, is that it? That makes a lot of sense. Maybe you can end your next relationship because your girlfriend never played Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo system. Sound good?” My head was starting to ache. Was it the mega-tight bun slowly ripping my hair out or the stress of my heart being crushed all over again?

“Em”—he reached across the table and grabbed my hand—“I’m not saying any of that to devalue the past month and a half. That did mean a lot to me, you know that.”

I shook my head and blinked back tears. “It
did
mean a lot to you. Past tense.”

He squeezed my hand. “It hurts me to see you upset, Emma. But realistically, where would this go? Am I even allowed to go to your prom? I mean, think of how ridiculous that is. You need to be with someone who really understands you, and honestly, I don’t. I don’t get who you are or where you are or any of that. This is how it is when you grow up. Things don’t always turn out with kisses and sunshine and puppy dogs. It’s not an episode of
Dawson’s Creek.
”

“You mean
One Tree Hill,
you decrepit old man.” I meant it to sound harsh. He was being so superpatronizing, I wanted to strike back. But differentiating between angsty teen television shows was just plain ridiculous, and we both realized it. Giggles escaped our lips and loosened the knots in my chest.

It was then that I realized there was nothing else to say. As angry as I was when he’d said it, I knew that Colin was right about this never working out. Some things just aren’t meant to be, and if you force them, they get ugly. Kind of like Britney being a mother.

So, with a big sigh, I gave up. I tried to buy his forgiveness by picking up the five-dollar coffee tab and we walked outside. On the street, we made vague promises about keeping in touch that I think we meant. But even High School McGee here isn’t naive enough to believe we really would. I knew that the early fall e-mailing and MySpace messages would fade. And the only connection I’d have to him would be whatever popped up when I got bored enough working on my personal statement to Google him. I knew, in the deepest part of my crushed heart, it was over.

Twenty-five

O
n the ride home from the coffee date/breakup, I hung my head out the window like a cocker spaniel as the cab zoomed up Broadway. I didn’t care that the taxi was going to put me another five bucks in the hole to my parents—I was going to be a chore workhorse for them until college to make up for the summer Visa bill anyway—or that my chic updo was going to end up looking like a frizzy cone.

When I got home, Jayla was helping Rachel stuff her belongings back into her body-sized rolling luggage.

“Did my clothes mate in the closet or something?” Rachel asked, not noticing me standing in the doorway. “I feel like there’s so much more going back than when I arrived.”

“Well, if you had stopped buying tacky-ass shoes at Strawberry all damn summer, you wouldn’t need—” Jayla looked up from punching Rachel’s tank top collection into the suitcase and saw me in all of my sweaty, windblown glory. “Emma! Whoa, your hair looks like…”

“I know, like I’m a unicorn. I don’t care.” I kicked off the Louboutins of torture and flopped onto Rachel’s stripped bed to tell them my final Colin story ever. Jayla joined me on the bed and Rachel stayed sitting on her suitcase, trying to smush her belongings into fitting.

After I’d finished, Rachel came over to give me a hug. “I’m sorry, babe. I know you were hoping for more than just ‘KIT.’”

“Yeah, I guess.” I sat up and hugged her back. “But you know, I think it’s okay the way it turned out. I mean, I would’ve had to tell him eventually and I guess any way it happened, it wouldn’t have been less painful for me. Now I can go back home, focus on senior year and college apps, and not have to worry about faking out some long-distance boyfriend.”

“Have you heard from Brian?” Rachel asked.

“Kinda. He texted me a while ago. But I’m really not even going to think about him when I get back to Bridgefield. And as awful as this whole Colin explosion turned out to be, at least I know that there are boys besides The Hombres.”

“Um, excuse me? Colin taught you that?” Jayla looked jilted. “Come on, lady. You learned that from me. There are many, many, many boys aside from your high school Hombres. Many,” she added one last time.

“Hey, Mrs. Monogamous. You’re not allowed to talk like that anymore,” Rachel teased as she finally zipped the last two inches of her bag closed.

“Reminiscing is not cheating,” came Jayla’s retort. “Now go get packing, Em. We’ve got a busy night tonight.” She bounced out of Rachel’s room.

“Why?” I imagined another long ride out to Coney Island or someplace just as sleeveless and sweaty.

“Her dad is coming,” Rachel explained as we heard Jayla fumbling with the vacuum in the living room. “He’s taking us to dinner and taking stock of how Princess did on her own all summer.”

“I’m freaking,” Jayla yelled over the buzz of the Hoover.

I went out in the living room to witness the extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of Jayla cleaning. I should have taken a picture, but instead I peeled off the wool bodysuit, dropped it on Jayla’s bed, and helped clean the place.

“Where’s he taking us?” I whispered to Rachel as I arranged the magazines on the coffee table in a neat fan. Tonight’s meal would be my last act as New York Glamma Freeman—at least until next summer—and I was pretty sure that if Jayla picked the place, it was going to be memorable.

“Mr. Chow’s!” she gushed back. “It’s so nice, they don’t even give you menus. They just bring food, Jay says.”

I clapped my hands and let out an “Eek” of excitement. This was totally what I needed to counter my post-Colin numbness.

I spent the afternoon shoving my new Anthropologie wardrobe into my luggage and 409-ing every surface of the apartment with Rachel and Jayla until it sparkled and we were all high on cleaning chemicals.

“Ahhh! Yes!” Rachel yelped and fist-pumped from behind her laptop.

“You’re so not backing out of dinner for a JDate,” Jayla said, Windexing the hallway mirror one last time.

“Ugh. Boy crazy is
so
last-week-Rachel-Wolfe,” she said. “I’m totally focused on my career now. Duh! And my big career gal news is that Jamie’s letting me edit…drumroll, please, ladies.”

Jayla and I were silent, confused, and drumroll-less.

“Fine. Whatever.” Rachel threw up her hands in frustration. “Jamie wants Emma to be one of our regular contributors! You know, take their feminist message to where it really matters—young people. And how better than to give a young person a real voice on the site? So she wants a high school feminista blog thing from you. And I’m going to be allowed to freelance-edit it! Like your journal but with the possibility of Internet fame! Awesome, right, Em?”

“No way!” As I got up to hug my best friend-slash-editor, I wasn’t really sure if the “No way” meant that I was pumped for this or “No way in hell.” Putting myself out on the Internet like that?
So
not my usual style. But maxing out my dad’s Visa, dating a twenty-three-year-old, not having a curfew, learning to walk in five-inch heels—what part of this summer
was
my usual style? I hadn’t intended to roll out of New York a totally different person, but breaking the typical straight-As-and-sensible-shoes Emma Freeman mold was kind of liberating, even with the ups and downs. Maybe the summer wild streak could live on. I could be Bridgefield’s own Carrie Bradshaw—blogging about my everyday happs—but with less boys and more college applications. Maybe Summer Emma could actually hang around all year long.

Jake showed up at our place around seven in an outfit I was certain Jayla had picked out.

“Oh, baby, you look great!” Jayla said, kissing him lightly on the mouth and getting some Dior gloss on him. She fussed with his Kenneth Cole button-down and made sure his cuff links were on properly.

“I’ve never even seen cuff links,” he complained. “I had to have the guy at Bloomingdale’s show me how to use them.”

“Well, Daddy is going to love you!” she said, smoothing his emo bangs into a more presentable look. “Just don’t bring up socialized health care or green-friendly industry, okay? They’re sore subjects.”

My cousin looked blankly at Jayla. “Um…those weren’t high on my list of light dinner conversation, but all right.”

At seven-thirty we headed down to the street to meet Mr. Alistair St. Clare. Waiting for us was a black stretch limo, and as soon as we hit the sidewalk, a tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man in a three-piece suit stepped out and into Jayla’s waiting embrace.

“Daddy!” she squealed.

“My little girl!” he said. “Could it be that you’ve gotten more beautiful since the last time I saw you?”

Rachel, Jake, and I waited nervously for Jayla to introduce us. She started with Rachel and me, each of us offering our hands for a hearty shake and thanking him like crazy for letting us live in his apartment all summer.

“This is Jacob Patrick Freeman.” She held her breath while her father, worth more than some countries, shook Jake’s hand and looked at him closely.

“Jacob,” he said slowly, “how is it that you know my daughter?”

“Umm…biblic—” I ground my heel in his foot to stop him from ruining dinner before we even got to the restaurant. The Freeman nervous babble was a family curse worse than Kennedy drinking. “I mean, we’re dating, sir,” Jake said with a sudden air of confidence.

Jayla blushed, turning away to hide her puppy-love smile. Mr. St. Clare furrowed his brow, as if deciding what to do with this information. “Well, you’d better treat her like the princess she is.” Then he broke into a friendly grin. “And from what she’s told me, you already do.” He slapped Jake on the back as we all sighed with relief and headed upstairs to give Jayla’s dad the grand tour.

“Button,” he said to Jayla after examining the spotlessness of 30B. “You mean to tell me that not one of your utilities was shut off this summer?”

“Nope. Not one!”

“And those curtains? You hung them yourself?”

Jake coughed, hoping to get some brownie points for his handiwork, but Jayla was Daddy’s Little Girl, full throttle.

“Yes, of course. And that wasn’t even part of the deal. I went above and beyond just maintaining the apartment, I made it even better. Doesn’t that mean that I’m responsible enough to go abroad with my full credit card privileges?” She gave her father her best Precious Moments eyes.

He chuckled softly. “St. Clare, you’re going to be a tough businesswoman one day.” I smiled to myself at the thought of Jayla actually working. Her five-hour-a-week volunteer job would probably wear her out by next Friday. “Fine, Princess. Your credit card is your companion once again. And Emma and Rachel, because you clearly were responsible and courteous tenants, I would love to extend this apartment to you girls again next summer.”

I cracked a huge smile at the news, and even though it wasn’t even Labor Day yet, I was already getting pumped for next June. The three of us jumped up and down and couldn’t help hugging him.

“All right, all right,” he said after enough embarrassing embraces and kisses on the cheek, “Mr. Chow’s is waiting!”

Dinner was an eight-hundred-dollar extravaganza of the finest food I had ever tasted. Jake and Mr. St. Clare were actually rather quiet for most of the meal, leaving the gabbing to the three of us until Mr. St. Clare asked, “So, Jacob, where do you see fuels going in the next few years?” We three were silenced at the other end of the table.

I waited to see what info Jake would regurgitate from CNN.com. But it seems that I gave my cousin too much credit to think that he actually read any form of news besides ColdPizza.com.

“Uh…,” he stalled, fiddling with his tempura, “into cars?” He sensed Mr. St. Clare was waiting for more. “And lighters?”

A little too late to avoid the conversation train wreck, Jayla jumped in.

“Daddy, Jake is a big football fan. He loves the Jets almost as much as you do.”

“Really?” Her father brightened and the boys broke off into talk of stats and drafts and foul balls or whatever football entails.

By the time dessert arrived, Jayla’s dad had offered Jake an open invitation to their cabin in Aspen. And then, full of champagne and truffles, we shuffled drowsily back into the limo and headed home.

After dropping Jake off, we pulled up to our building and Jayla scooted next to her dad to give him a goodbye hug. “Thank you, Daddy. I promise I’ll make you proud of me again.”

“Darling,” he said, kissing her on the forehead, “you always do.”

We climbed out of the limo and I’d never felt more glamorous. I’d only been in a limo once before, for Brian’s prom, but it was so much cooler to not be wearing a pastel formal dress. I looked like I was in and out of limos all the time.

Upstairs in the apartment, I felt far less glamorous as Rachel and I finished packing the last of our things and took our “Panic! At the Disco” posters off the wall. Jayla iTuned up some old-school Destiny’s Child and we busted our dance moves.

“Emma, can you handle this?”
Jayla sang into her hairbrush.
“Rachel, can you handle this? I don’t think you can handle this.”

We danced around to “Bootylicious,” total middle-school-sleepover-style.

“I don’t think ya ready for this Jayla, my body’s too bootylicious for ya babbaaaay
. I’m so Beyoncé!” She slapped her size 26 AG jeans.

“I call Kelly!” I yelled over the music.

“I cannot be Michelle!” Rachel whined as I bumped her with my hips. “She’s all gospel now. Hello! I’m Jewish!”

We funked our way through the entire
Survivor
album until we collapsed on our bare mattresses.

The next morning, we had our final bagel breakfast and Jayla helped us drag our body-bag suitcases to the street corner.

Jayla pulled me in for a tight hug. “Domino! I’m going to miss you! Who am I going to gross out when I talk about getting hot and heavy with your cousin?”

“For as much as I love you, I want you to know that I pretty much hate you when you bring that crap up.” I laughed and gave her another big hug.

“Bitsy, you know who to call when you want to relaunch your JDate profile.”

“Are you kidding me, Jay? I’m going to iPhone your ear off, girl!” Rachel gave her a kiss on the cheek as I hailed a cab. I hated long goodbyes, and of course, we’d see Jayla again. I’d already secretly started planning New Year’s Eve in the city. Hello, Times Square!

We heaved our stuff into the trunk and squeezed into the backseat. As the car started down Fourteenth Street, Rachel turned to me. “Ready?” she asked. I gave her my biggest grin and nodded. We both swiveled around to face the back window. “One, two, three!”

We peeled up our T-shirts to “flash” Jayla the “Hot Mess” tees we were wearing underneath.

She burst into laughter and, in true Jayla fashion, lifted her tank to reveal that she’d lost yet another La Perla bra.

“Ah, I’m gonna miss that girl,” Rachel sighed.

“Don’t worry,” I said, patting her on the knee. “There are plenty of promiscuous girls you can get dating tips from back in Bridgefield. Maybe you could start hanging with Skylar Dichter.”

I gave her an Indian burn on her arm and we giggled the rest of the way to Penn Station.