I jump up, off my bed, and punch the air a few times.
Yes!
“Well, that is good news,” I say, trying to sound as cool as I can.
“What are you doing right now?”
“I … can’t think of a cute thing to say.” My brain is empty, and I can’t stop smiling.
“You live on Union Street, right? Just up from Smith? I’m taking my dog Ziggy for an evening stroll. I could call by in say … seven minutes.”
“I’ll be on the stoop waiting for you,” I say.
We hang up.
I immediately scream at the top of my lungs, knowing I’ll get everyone’s attention. Within seconds, they’re all in my doorway.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Aidan. I called him. Coming. Here. Seven minutes. Help.”
Thank God for girls: within moments, Coco is back with my toothbrush with some toothpaste on it, Angie is standing at my wardrobe throwing clothes and shoes around my room, and Madeleine is brushing my hair.
“I’m not good at the preening stuff.” Julia is sitting calmly on the bed, still holding her wine. “I’ll give you moral support.”
“Keep watch over the street! Look for a guy with a dog.”
“Guy with dog, check,” she says, bouncing over my bed to the window.
I apply bronzer and deodorant as I’m brushing my teeth, carefully rinse and spit into a glass of water also offered by Coco, and throw off my business meeting clothes and put on my favorite sexy-casual jeans and top, jacket, and big scarf.
“Where is my Kiehl’s Original Musk?”
“In my room!” gasps Coco. “You brought it up last weekend, remember?”
I sprint up the stairs to the attic, bound into Coco’s room, and glance around for the bottle. I find it sitting on her nightstand and pick it up, then glance into her trash can, and see an empty pregnancy test box. Huh? That makes no sense. Why would Coco need a pregnancy test? We got her the Plan B.… But if she had missed a period, she’d say something to us, right? She’s probably just paranoid.
Making a mental note to talk to her about it tomorrow, I bound back down the stairs two at a time to my room.
“Do I look okay?” I’m breathless.
“Perfect,” says Angie.
“Guy with dog! Guy with dog!” shouts Julia from the window. “This is not a drill! We are a go!”
I gasp, take a quick look at myself in the mirror as the girls dab my lips with gloss and fluff my hair completely unnecessarily, and then run out the door.
“I love you guys!” I shout as I run down the stairs.
“We love you, too!” shouts Madeleine.
I land with a thump in the front hallway and take a moment to compose myself and catch my breath.
Then I open the front door and casually step out, just as Aidan and his dog—a gorgeous Irish setter, carrying that huge rubber bone toy in his mouth—are walking past our stoop.
“Hey,” I say casually.
He glances up and smiles, his face lighting up. “Why, hello.”
The street is completely empty, no passersby, no cars, but every window is lit, giving it a cozy, calm, homey feel.
Smiling down at him, I’m suddenly filled with a warm feeling of … I don’t know quite how to describe it.
Certainty.
I feel like I recognize him, like when you see a person you knew when you were very young and then see them again years later, and their face is just how you remember it.
I walk down the stoop slowly, smiling wider and wider with every step.
Aidan is smiling, too, and we don’t break eye contact, not once.
And by the time I get to the bottom, I know what I’m going to do.
I stand directly in front of him, lift my face up to his. He’s still smiling, too, and leans toward me … and then we kiss.
“Wooo!” I hear cheers from the house. I look up to see Julia, Coco, Madeleine, and Angie all cheering from my open bedroom window. “Yeah! Woo!”
I look back at Aidan and grin. “My roommates.”
“I figured.” He smiles back. “And this is Ziggy.”
I look down at Ziggy, who is patiently sitting and smiling up at us in that happy doggy way. I offer my hand for him to smell, and he immediately starts licking it affectionately.
“He likes you,” says Aidan.
“I like you,” I say, without thinking about it.
“I like you, too,” he says. “Can I interest you in a walk around Brooklyn this evening?”
“I’d love that.”
We start walking up Union Street, automatically falling into step together. My hands are in my pockets, but within a couple of steps, he nudges my arm out and places his hand against mine.
Here’s the strangest thing, and I cringe to admit it: holding Aidan’s hand feels … perfect.
I’ve found home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Firstly, thank you for reading this book. I hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you to Jill Grinberg, for loving this idea and making it happen. You are my fairy godmother. Thank you to Laura Longrigg, for believing in me from the start. You are my fairy godmother, too. (I really hit the jackpot on the fairy godmother front.)
Huge, huge, huge thank you to Dan Weiss, for taking a chance on me when I said, “I want to write a series about twentysomethings that’s like a cross between
The Group, The Best of Everything,
and The Baby-sitters Club, um, details to come,” and for his constant encouragement and inspiration.
Thank you to Vicki Lame, editor extraordinaire, for her brilliance, humor, enthusiasm, and friendship, and for making the book sharper, smarter, and better in every way, and to Sarah Jae-Jones, for her help and support.
Thank you to Lucy Stille, for loving this manuscript, which made me fall in love with it again.
Thank you to Katelyn Detweiler, Kat Maher, and Fiona Barrows, for being emotionally insightful, honest, brilliant readers. (And the future leaders of the publishing industry in New York and London, if anyone is wondering.)
Thank you to Kirsty Richardson, for being the only thing between me and chaos after Errol was born; to Riikka Pirjala, for her amazing support and friendship when we moved to New York; and to Steve Clark, the best visa lawyer in the world, ever.
Thanks also to Jim and Tim, the bee guys; to the food truck people who patiently (and not so patiently) answered my questions and requested to remain anonymous (they’re so mysterious!); and to Val, for helping me figure out how to get Pia arrested.
Thanks to Sasha Wagstaff for her friendship, counsel, and cheerleading. You are my kindred e-spirit.
Thanks to my wise, loving, funny parents for truly believing that I am, in fact, the next Jane Austen.
Thanks to all the readers who e-mail me and tell me that they’re just like me. I hope so, because you guys rock.
Thanks to my friends who inspire me, particularly the ones who helped me survive the treacherous age of twenty-two: Bec, Sarah, Alex, Amy, Caroline, Vicky, Ali, Penny, Sass, Kate, Catherine, Devi, Bennery, Lorraine, Laura, Lydia, Victoria, Susan, Daisy, Mariana, Tanya, Andrea, and my sister Anika. You are all my homegirls. And to Conor, Matt, Mike, Max, Chris, Hawk, and Tim. You’re my homegirls, too.
And most of all thanks to Fox, my love, and Errol, our baby. In the words of Bryan Adams: Everything I do, I do it for you.
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF
LOVE AND CHAOS
A BROOKLYN GIRLS NOVEL
AVAILABLE WINTER 2014
CHAPTER
1
I was really going to be somebody by the time I was twenty-three.
Have a career. Be good at something. Be happy.
But here I am, less than two months before my twenty-third birthday, in a tiny café with my mother, Annabel, “catching up” over waffles and fruit juice, because I am unemployed and have nothing better to do on a random Tuesday morning.
The waffles are organic, by the way, and the juice is organic lingonberry, a ridiculous Scandinavian fruit famed for its antioxidants. This is Brooklyn, where the greater the obscurity, the higher the cred. Personally, I haven’t got a problem with SunnyD or good old full-fat Coca-Cola, but whatever fries your burger, right?
And of course, the waiter—who Annabel has already quasi-yelled at twice—rushes up with the jug for a refill, trips, and
boom
. Lingonberry juice all over me. So now I’m soaked. The punch line to an already (not so) delightful morning.
He’s mortified. “Oh my! I am so sorry, let me clean that up—”
“You can forget about the tip!” My mother is furious.
“Don’t overreact,” I interrupt her. “It was an accident.”
“But your top is ruined!”
“I was sick of it anyway.”
“I don’t know why you insist on coming to these ridiculous places.” God, she’s in a bad mood. Her phone rings. “Bethany!… No, darling, I’m still with Angelique. Somewhere in Brooklyn. I know, I know—”
The waiter has tears in his eyes, blotting and whispering frantically, “I’m so sorry. I keep spilling things because I’m so nervous. This is my first waiter job.”
“Dude, it’s not a problem,” I whisper back. “Never cry over anything that won’t cry over you.”
He brightens. “That is such a good life philosophy! Can I take that?”
“It’s yours. Get some T-shirts printed. Or a bumper sticker. Knock yourself out.”
He starts giggling. “You are hilarious, girl! I’m Adrian.”
“Angie.”
Annabel hangs up, and blinks at me till Adrian leaves. She blinks when she’s annoyed. Making friends with the waiter is just the kind of thing that would irritate her. “Well. I have some news. Your father and I are divorcing.”
What?
That’s
why she came all the way from Boston to see me? I’m so shocked that I can’t actually say anything. I just stare at her, a half-chewed bite of waffle in my mouth.
“It’s all arranged.” She examines her wineglass for kiss marks. “The papers are signed, everything is done.”
I finally swallow. “You’re … divorcing?”
“It’s not a huge surprise, is it? Given what he’s been up to over the years? And you’re too old to be Daddy’s little girl anymore, so I don’t see why you’d be upset.”
“Right on.” I take out a cigarette and place it, unlit, in the corner of my mouth. I find cigarettes comforting. (Yes, I know, they’re bad for you.) “You’re divorcing. Gnarly.”
My mother blinks at me again. Princess Diana had a formative influence on her maquillage philosophy: heavy on the navy eyeliner.
They’re divorcing
is playing on a loop in my head. Why didn’t my father tell me?
Annabel clears her throat. “You’re single again, I take it? You broke up with Mani, did you?”
I don’t answer. I told her about the guy I thought I was in love with in an unguarded moment of total fucking stupidity last year. Just before he dumped me.
“Unlucky in love, that’s you and me,” she continues blithely. “Perhaps we can go on the prowl, hmm? How’s darling Pia? Why don’t we get together and have a girls’ night out?”
I stare at her for several long seconds. She’s out of her fucking mind.
The minute she goes to the bathroom I make eye contact with Adrian and mime the international pen-scribble sign for “Check, please.”
He hurries over. “I am so sorry again! It’s on me, I really—”
“Don’t be crazy,” I say, handing over a fifty-dollar bill as I stand up and put my coat on. “No change. The tip is all for you.”
“Oh, Angie, thank you!” Adrian looks like he’s about to cry again, but then stares at me in concern. “Wait, are you okay?”
I nod, but I can’t even look at him, or I swear to God I’ll lose it. I need to be alone.
While my mother is still in the bathroom, I leave. She’ll find her way back to her hotel in Manhattan, somehow. My mother is British, she lives Boston most of the time, and her only experience of New York was the year they lived here, on the Upper East Side, when she gave birth to me. She got so fat during pregnancy that she wouldn’t leave the apartment after I was born in case she saw someone she knew. So apparently I didn’t see the sun till I was five months old and she’d lost the weight. And that, my friends, sums up Annabel’s whole approach to motherhood.
The moment I get outside, I light my cigarette. That’s better. It’s late February, and goddamn cold outside, but I’m toasty. I’m wearing my dead grandmother’s fur coat that I turned inside out and hand-sewed into an old army surplus jacket when I was sixteen.
They’re divorcing.
Well, finally, I guess, right? Dad hasn’t exactly been the best husband. Not that she knows about any of that stuff. I wonder if he’ll tell her now. Probably not. Why rock a boat that’s already sinking, or whatever that saying is. For a second, I consider calling him. But what will I say? Congratulations? Commiserations? Better to wait for him to call me.
But how does this work? Like, where will we spend Christmas next year? How does divorce work when your kid is an adult? It’s not like we can have visitation rights or custody battles or whatever, right? Will we simply cease to exist as a family?
When I was little, we’d go to my grandmother’s house in Boston. I always emptied my Christmas stocking on my parents’ bed, and sat in between them while they had coffee and I had hot chocolate and we shared bites of buttery raisin toast. I’d take each present out of my stocking, one by one, and they’d get all excited with me and we’d wonder how Santa knew exactly what I wanted and how he got to every house in the world in just one night.
A warmth washes over me as I think about it. I can still remember what it feels like, that sense of security and togetherness.
I just can’t imagine feeling it ever again. There’s a big hollowness in my stomach where that feeling used to belong.
Maybe I should grow the hell up. Our family hasn’t felt like that for a long time. And I’m nearly twenty-three, the age that, to me at least, has always been the marker of true adulthood. It’s the end of the carefree-unbrushed-hair-I’m-a-grad-winging-it early twenties, and the start of the matching-lingerie-health-insurance-real-career-serious-boyfriend mid-twenties. And I’m nowhere near any of those things.
They’re divorcing.
I take out my phone and call Stef. He’s this guy I know, a trust-fund baby with a lot of bad friends and nice drugs. And he’s always doing something fun. But today he’s not answering.