Wicked Jealous: A Love Story (16 page)

One of the first secrets I learned about guys was that as much as they may have rolled their eyes in front of their friends in order to seem all cool and save face, they actually
liked
to be told what to do. Especially if the order came with the threat that if they didn’t do it, the house Xbox/DVD/Roku player/insert other high-end-electronic device here would be placed for sale on Craigslist. According to Doc—who had taken a few psychology classes at UCLA in case he decided to become a shrink instead of a plastic surgeon (“There are just as many crazy people as shallow and vain ones in this city,” he explained)—much like children, guys liked structure and boundaries. They
said
they didn’t, but it made them feel safe.

On Monday, at the first official meeting of what Noob officially dubbed
Castillo de chicos y una chica
—Spanish for the “Castle of guys and one girl” (“That Google translator thing
rocks
!” he cried, before then going on to spend the next half hour translating stuff like “Dude, the Wi-Fi connection in this country blows!” into Latvian), when Doc first unveiled the combination graph/pie chart he had put together detailing everyone’s chores there were a bunch of groans and moans. Once I gave them the sales pitch Doc and I had rehearsed about how much happier they would be living with order and organization rather than swimming in chaos, they began to relax. By Wednesday, although I was still triple-checking the lock on the bathroom door before I took a shower, I had gotten to the point where I was starting to relax and not feel so nervous around the guys. And also I wasn’t getting random bruises on my body from tripping over stuff that wasn’t put away.

Very quickly, I got into a nice routine. Thanks to a mention in the new hot blog “Pink Is the New Lavender, Which Is Now the New Black” (which had just been optioned as the basis for a TV show by ABC Family a few months earlier), One Person’s Garbage had gotten really busy, which meant that Brad needed help at the store. Which meant part-time jobs for Nicola and me. (I knew Hillary had been pushing Dad’s agent to try to get him the gig executive producing the show because she thought it would be good for his career to be more involved with the Millennials, but because he had been pegged as “the talking-animal guy,” the network passed.) So ever since school ended, for a few hours a day I pasted on a smile and told customers that oh yeah, of
course
that dress made them look like Sandra Bullock’s best friend in that movie she did toward the beginning of her career. And I was able to monitor my robin’s-egg blue dress and make sure no one bought it.

My 30 percent employee discount was going a long way in helping me assemble a wardrobe that, according to Brad, if I were walking around the Marais in Paris (apparently, the hippest neighborhood) would get me approving nods from French women instead of pained looks. Still, I didn’t forget my roots. Hence, the addition of a few vintage tees, but in mediums instead of extra larges. It took some getting used to wearing shirts that actually advertised my boobage (not to mention the stares from guys—some cute, some just plain gross—that went along with it), but I did my best.

But then on Thursday afternoon, as I waited for a woman named Marge from Pasadena to try on a Halston-esque one-armed silver lamé evening dress that had been owned and “gently worn” (actually, from the faint stains that even the dry cleaner couldn’t get out,
not
so gently worn) by her favorite soap actress, I realized that my why-do-today-what-you-can-keep-putting-off-for-tomorrow? attitude had to change. Because as I half listened to Marge yammer on proudly about how she had every single episode of the soap
Nights of Our Existences
either DVR’d, on DVD, or—going back to the eighties—on VHS, I discovered that my dress—the dress that I kind-of-sort-of-maybe thought I was ready to try on—was gone. It wasn’t on the Smashing Sixties rack, or the Sizzling Seventies one. And not on the Egregious Eighties one, either. (“Bradley, it’s really great that you know a lot of fifty-cent SAT words,” Nicola kept saying, “but you might want to try using words that your customers don’t have to look up on dictionary.com in order to see how witty you are.”) When I couldn’t find it on the Nostalgic Nineties, either, I freaked.

“My dress! It’s not here!” I cried.

Nicola looked up from lacing on a pair of thigh-high red suede boots that had just come in. According to Brad, they had belonged to some old-school disco diva who had been forced to sell them in order to pay for her most recent rehab stay. “How is it
your
dress if you refuse to even try it on?” she asked. “I think the proper way of saying that is, ‘
The
dress! It’s not here.’” She looked over at Brad, who was skimming the photos of guys on some new dating Web site called Every Pot Has A Lid. “Don’t you think, Bradley?”

“I do believe you’re right, Nicola.”

“Thank you, Mr. and Ms. Grammatically Correct,” I said. “But that’s not the point! The point is the blue dress is gone! Brad, when did you sell it?”

“Let’s see . . . I think it was . . .” He squinted at the computer screen. “
Someone
could benefit from an appointment with a bottle of Nair.” He sighed. “I love the tall, dark, and handsome look, but does ‘hairy’ always have to be part of it?”

“Brad. Focus,” I said. “The dress. Who bought it?”

He put his fingers to his temples like one of those cheesy psychics. “Let me see if I can remember.”

Even with the blog mention, it wasn’t like this was H&M or Urban Outfitters, with tons of customers. (Although thanks to Brad’s ability to get hold of size 24 Tall evening dresses, Lady GaGantuan from the hair salon came by on a pretty regular basis.)

“Oh right. It was Tuesday,” Brad said. “Or maybe it was Monday.” He cocked his head. “No, I distinctly remember it was Tuesday, because it was the same day I got the e-mail from the guy on eHarmony who used to be a priest before becoming a trapeze artist. Did I tell you about him?”

“Off point, Brad,” I said.

“Sorry. It was Tuesday, and it was bought by . . . some girl.”

I waited for him to go on.

He shrugged. “That’s all I remember—that it was a girl.”

I sighed. That part wasn’t surprising. Brad didn’t have any male customers other than Lady GaGantuan. “Well, I guess it’s my own fault, right?” I asked. I glanced over at Nicola. “That was a rhetorical question, by the way.” I don’t know why I was so upset. It was so . . .
girly
of me. It was only a dress. That probably would’ve looked stupid on me anyway.

But I was.

I tried to let the dress thing go. I really did. But I just couldn’t shake it. Which, when you’re living with people who don’t spend all their time typing on their iPhones or gazing at themselves in mirrors, is a problem, because apparently, moping makes people uncomfortable. Especially if those people happen to be guys.

I very quickly learned that guys like to fix things. Even guys like Noob, who, in the process of fixing things, ends up breaking other things. (I didn’t know a lot about tools, but breaking a wrench seemed like a very difficult thing to do.)

“Simone? Is everything okay?” Wheezer asked nervously as I stood at the kitchen counter stir-frying veggies and tofu for our Friday night family dinner (the “family” thing was Max’s idea).

I sighed. “Yeah. Why?”

“Because you’re staring into space and about to burn the vegetables,” he said, pointing at the wok.

I looked down to see that he was right. “Thanks,” I sighed as I shook the veggies around a bit before going back to staring into space.

“You
sure
you’re okay?”

“Not really,” I shrugged. “But it’s okay. I’m sure it’ll pass. Eventually. Hopefully.”

From the look on Wheezer’s face, guys also didn’t like such open-ended statements. In fact, it made Wheezer so uncomfortable, he sneezed.

“God bless you,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said, honking into a tissue. He held out a clean one. “Would a tissue make you feel better?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, can you at least try to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’m not really sure,” I admitted. “It’s just . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”

“But how can we try and fix it if you can’t explain it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just one of those things that have to clear up by themselves. You know, like how antibiotics don’t kill viruses, and you just have to wait for it to go away by itself.”

He looked even more alarmed. “They don’t? That’s horrible.” He sneezed and honked again. “Maybe Doc can devote his medical career to trying to come up with one that works. I mean, the idea of not being able to fix something is just . . .
wrong
.”

It was? I guess when you become so used to living with something—like, say, the lack of a social life, or being ignored by a parent, or being invisible—you just get used to it after a while.

“Well, listen, if you figure out what it is that’s bothering you and you want to talk about it, I’d be more than happy to listen.”

I smiled. “Wow. Thanks, Wheezer. That’s really sweet of you.”

He turned red. “Just so you know, my last girlfriend—okay, my
only
girlfriend—accused me of being a really bad communicator, so I’m not sure how much help I’d actually be, but I’m a really good listener.”

“I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks.” I followed his eyeline toward the den, where I could see him gazing at
Bikini Bloodbath
, the group’s second favorite horror movie after the Sorority Girl Slasher series. “Wheezer,” I said, waving my hand in front of his face.

“Huh? Sorry. What were you saying?”

I laughed. “I said thanks.”

He dug some crumpled tissues out of his back pocket and handed them to me. “I know you said they won’t help, but why don’t you take them anyway? They’re a little linty, but they’re clean. I promise. Some people are multiple blowers, but I’m not. It’s unsanitary.”

I smiled as I took them, touched. That may have been one of the nicest things a guy had ever done for me.

People usually think it’s girls who are all gossipy, but it’s not, as I found out the next day. When Doc sent out an e-mail to the Google user group
Castillo de chicos y una chica,
calling an official house meeting (Noob complained that the name was too long until Narc reminded him it had been his idea), I knew I was in trouble.

“Okay, having the Queen of Mean living in your house has rubbed off on you because someone has become a little self-centered and is making this all about her,” Nicola sniffed as we walked the aisles of Barbarella’s Beauty Supplies for a Bodacious You. Now that I had kind-of-sort-of gotten the wardrobe thing down, Nicola had insisted we tackle hair and makeup, which, from the pile of stuff in my basket, seemed to include things like bobby pins with little rhinestone palm trees on the ends (“For the days and nights you’re feeling tropical,” it said on the package) and a giant roll-on tube of glittery bronze highlighter. (“Yes, on most paler-than-pale people like you, it might look kind of dumb, but that’s because they don’t have the attitude to pull it off like you do!” Nicola exclaimed.)

I plucked a package of false eyelashes out of her hands and put them back on the shelf before turning to her. “Nicola, the subject line said, ‘To figure out how to get Simone to stop moping and make her happy again.’”

“Oh. Huh. Then I guess it is about you,” she agreed. “But look at how
nice
that is! They’re such sensitive guys.” She sighed. “Your brother has such great taste in friends. I can’t wait until he and I are dating. I bet he’ll be a total prince when I’m PMS-ing.”

Not like he’d be able to get a word in. Every time Nicola was near him, it was as if all the words she had stored up
not
talking to him were released. It would have been one thing if what came out were her typically witty observations on life (also available in the “Witty Observations on Life” part of her blog), but it wasn’t. It was just chatter. Like the kind that gives girls a bad name.

“Yeah, it is nice,” I agreed. “But still. It’s embarrassing.”

“How come?”

“Because I feel
stupid
.”