She's So Money (22 page)

Physically, I wasn’t so sure.

“So we’re golden, dude,” Camden said with a smile. “Look how many deep pockets are on that list. Kelly’s parents are both partners at law firms, Joe Bicher’s mom is a plastic surgeon, Dave Malley’s got like, old school foundry money, whatever that means. . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, their bank accounts are golden, and so are we,” I said glumly. “As long as my employees and I just don’t sleep for the next two weeks.” I kept staring at the list of names, already beginning to feel sick to my stomach at the prospect.

“What’s more important, sleep or
not
getting us ratted out and expelled?” Camden asked, stopping at a red light.

“Put it that way, why don’t you,” I muttered.

“It’s the truth,” he said.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to be so blasé about it, especially when you know it’s me and my friends who are gonna be writing our butts off, not you,” I snapped, my relief at knowing we’d gotten the extra work completely obliterated by the realization that now I’d actually have to
do
the extra work. “If you dealt cocaine, I would totally ask you for some right now,” I added. Red Bull was probably not going to cut it any longer.

“Ask me anyway.” Camden shrugged. “I can get some.”

“Great,” I said sarcastically. I looked at the client list again, the rows of names in Camden’s blocky hand writing swimming before my eyes, and sighed. Time to buckle down. “So do you have assignments for these people, or what?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Camden. “Which is why we’re nowhere near your restaurant right now, if you’ve noticed.” I looked out the window, shaking off my dizziness from having been reading the papers in my lap for the last several minutes. We were actually in his neighborhood, where we stopped in front of a house even bigger than his. There was a tall, curvy blonde in a white tank top and peach yoga pants doing Sun Salutations on the large wraparound porch. She waved as we pulled up.

“Hey, Kel,” Camden called through my window at her.

“That it?”

Kelly nodded happily, walking around to Camden’s side of the car and handing him a backpack, which he passed to me. I noticed the perfect caramel lowlights in her perfect ponytail, and the perfect eyeliner around her perfect big green eyes, and fought my paranoia down again; they dated freshman year, which was ages ago. The only reason they were even talking now was because Camden was saving us. “Kel,” Camden said, nodding at me, “this is Maya. Maya, Kelly.”

“Nice to meet you.” I smiled and gave what I hoped looked like a perky wave.

“Hi!” chirped Kelly, waving back. “I think we might have met at Derek’s party a few weeks ago?”

“Oh, right, totally,” I said, trying to think back to that night and completely failing to remember; Camden had introduced me to
sooo
many people at Derek’s house, a lot of whom had been girls . . . a lot of whom had been hot blond girls. Oh my God. How many of those girls had been girls he’d hooked up with? Great. I felt a sudden urge to take off my seat belt and jump out of the car, and I had to press my back against the seat in order to fight it.

“Thanks, Kel, we’re out,” Camden said, taking his foot off of the brake. “I’ll text you when we’re finished on our end.” We drove off, Kelly waving over her shoulder as she went back to doing yoga on her porch. I opened the backpack, which was Louis Vuitton, for chrissakes, and started sifting through the assignment sheets from Greenbrook that she had just given us. The problem sets were pretty standard; some of them were even the same as the ones we were already doing for Weston kids, so that was a nice break. I started looking through the book list for English term papers, and all of them seemed pretty standard as well—people needed stuff on
Oliver Twist
,
Romeo and Juliet
,
Native Son
,
Crime and Punishment
,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
. . .

“Dude,
Lady Chatterley
?” I asked, glancing at Camden.

“A little racy, no?”

He shrugged. “Private school.”
Lucky them,
I thought. Yet another way the rich kids were having more fun. I continued scanning the contents of Kelly’s backpack. The American and European history papers looked like they would be pretty easy to tackle as well, at least in terms of subject matter; most of them were open ended, “Pick your own thesis and prove it”–type assignments rather than ones with specific questions. Sweet. At any rate, that would make it easier to apply any knowledge we already had. I hate history but Cat loves it, and Bella and Lucas were experts as well. I gave Camden a quick kiss as he pulled up around the corner of the restaurant, then steeled myself for the work ahead and hopped out of the car. It was time to start farming these assignments out.

The next week—how shall I put this—blew. I spent what little free time I had doling out assignments, then collecting them, organizing them—hell, I felt like a teacher—and then handing them off to Camden. With six full-time “employees” besides me and a sliding price scale, payroll now necessitated an Excel spreadsheet; I tried the one my mom used for the restaurant, and even though I didn’t have to deal with taxes, it was still way more complicated than I’d ever thought it was going to be. Plus, my emergence from retirement meant that I had to do work on top of all the organizing—I needed to come up with at least semi-plausible thesis sentences for papers on books I hadn’t read since sophomore year, and then back them up with crappy arguments that at least looked like the person was trying. Hell, I even finally lost my SparkNotes virginity—I’d never used them before, and the nerd in me felt a little bad doing it, but I’d done so many shady things in the past few days (mostly in the form of approaching some of the junior tutors who seemed cool and clandestinely offering them money to write some history papers, on the condition that they didn’t ask any questions), and the past few weeks, frankly, that throwing another thing onto the pile wasn’t any big deal. I was pretty sure that if someone got caught cheating, they didn’t get any
more
expelled for cheating with Internet help.

That Friday night, I was alone in the restaurant; my parents and Nat had already gone home, leaving me with the car (awesome) and the responsibility of closing up by myself (not as awesome; with the fine due in only a week, I needed all the free time I could get). It was a warm evening, and I had changed out of my Pailin shirt and back into a gray ribbed tank top. I was clearing the last table in preparation to start vacuuming when I almost dropped a serving dish—at the window, through a crack between the gauzy curtains, Camden’s face was doing a blowfish type move on the glass. He grinned at my momentarily shocked face and came over to the door, drumming his fingers on the metal handle.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked as I let him in.

“What? You said you were running the show by yourself tonight.” He glanced at my tank top with approval.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Ironically, since my parents don’t know about the fine, and think I did such a great job while they were away, they’re like, a lot more blasé about going home early and leaving me and Nat to deal with closing nowadays.” I reached back and turned my ponytail into a loose bun.

“So where’s Nat?” Camden asked, looking past me and around the dining room.

“Movie,” I answered.

“With Star?” He smirked.

“Of course.”

“Well,” Camden said, grinning. “How interesting.” He stepped forward into the restaurant and bent his head to kiss me. After a moment, I realized something.

“Your mouth was just fully on the outside of that window like, thirty seconds ago.”
Ew
.

“Yep, and now whatever was on the glass is on you,” he said with a laugh. “Whaddaya got to eat around here?” He made his way behind the bar and started poking around.

“Nothing, kitchen’s closed. Well, ice cream. Or drinks.” I followed him back there, grabbing a washrag to start wiping down the counter.

“Sweet.” Camden grabbed a Singha beer out of the bar fridge.

“Yeah, nice try,” I said, taking it out of his hand and putting it back. My mom only counts the bottles every once in a while, but leave it to her to have done it today.

“What about the wine?” Camden asked, pointing to two nearly empty bottles of red something or other that were sitting on the counter by the espresso machine.

I looked at the bottles. “Yeah, go nuts,” I said. The handwritten “Opened On” dates on the labels were from last week—we were just going to throw them out anyway.

Camden grinned, grabbed them, and swigged directly from one of the bottles, then the other. “All right. You ready for more assignments?” he asked. “These are all due Monday.”

“Lay ’em on me,” I said wearily, continuing to tidy up. Camden pulled a list out of his pocket and handed it to me, then hoisted himself onto the counter, swinging his legs back and forth for a moment. “So, what’re you doing after this?” He took another swig of wine and looked at me expectantly.

“Finishing closing up here, looking at the list you gave me, taking first dibs on whatever I think is the easiest, and then handing off the rest of the stuff to my friends,” I answered mechanically. I threw the washrag I’d been holding into the sink and took my apron off, folding it and putting it in the cabinet by the cash register.

“Wanna come out?” Camden asked. “Dani’s thinking bowling, or possibly just driving to bowling and getting drunk in the parking lot.”

“Can’t. My parents are expecting me home, and even if they weren’t, see previous comment about having to write a paper on”—I glanced at the list—“I’m gonna go with
Song of Solomon
.”

“Come on,” wheedled Camden. “Work hard, play hard. Right?”

I glared at him.

“Work hard, play flaccid?” he offered, then shrugged. “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. And there she is.” Camden hopped off the counter and pointed out the front window, where Dani’s car, a cute little red and white Mini, had just pulled up. She left it running and dashed breathlessly through the front door, wearing a gunmetal gray babydoll dress and open toed silver heels. What the hell kind of a bowling outfit was that?

“What up, kids?” she said, wrapping her arms easily around Camden’s waist for a quick hug. Nothing new there; they were always pretty touchy feely, but it suddenly bothered me more than it usually did.
Sarah’s paranoia strikes again,
I told myself
. Just ignore it or you’ll drive yourself crazy.

“Maya, you coming out?” Dani asked. I shook my head no and she made a pouty face, the expression magnified by the shininess factor of her sheer pink lip gloss. “Dammit!” she said. “Woman, you need to work less. Like, I still can’t believe you’re not going to the Fling. Thanks for giving this one up, though,” she added, poking Camden in the ribs. As if I needed a reminder that the guy I was—dating? hooking up with?—was taking his ex to a dance that my parents wouldn’t let me go to.

“Ah, but my after party . . . my after party doesn’t start until your restaurant shift is over,” Camden said, grinning at me. He kissed me good-bye on both the hand and the lips, ignoring Dani’s good natured “Get a room,” and the two of them went out the door and got in her car, leaving his parked around the corner. I waved at them and they waved back, peeling away as Camden took out a bottle of Southern Comfort that Dani apparently kept in her glove compartment. He took a swig, then offered it to Dani, who shook her head. How responsible.

Great
, I thought to myself, staring out the window as their car disappeared from view.
Just great
. Undoubtedly, they were going to party all weekend, and even though Camden was a champion at texting cute little messages every half hour or so whenever he was out without me—which was a majority of the time, given my evening shifts—it wasn’t exactly the most reassuring situation. I mean, I was so busy doing other people’s homework that I didn’t even have time to hang with my own boyfriend, if I could even call him that. And because of this, I was hypersensitive any time he was hanging out with someone else. Or someone elses. Especially girl versions of the same, and especially sexy, hot, and super cool ex-girlfriend versions of the same. Hell,
I
thought hanging with Dani was fun, which just made everything worse.

I kept telling myself not to be paranoid, but it was pointless. Sarah’s words echoed in my head as I started walking around the dining room, checking out the table candles to see if any needed to be replaced, and they bumped up against my own thoughts that had been rattling around in my skull from even earlier: A tiger can’t change its stripes. Once a player, always a player. Who in school
hadn’t
Camden already hooked up with? I had a feeling the list was short indeed . . . mostly because, if I bothered to think about any of the stories I’d heard about him since sophomore year, I could start listing off the girls myself. Dani and Stacey, both of whom he was still friends with. Lara O’Connor. Hayden Ford. Aubrey Stern. Allison Scaney-Gray. All four Kolardie sisters. (Okay, that one was
probably
a rumor. As far as anybody knew, he’d only dated one of them, but they all looked weirdly the same despite their different ages, and they liked to joke about switching places.) Still, it made my stomach hurt just thinking about it, and when I saw the list of assignments from Greenbrook that Camden had brought over, and remembered that I wouldn’t be going to sleep for at least another six hours, my head started hurting too.