Wicked Jealous: A Love Story (17 page)

She shrugged. “Well, that’s the thing about friends. Sometimes you just have to feel stupid in front of them. So you can see that they’re not going to ditch you for being less than perfect. And after a while you get used to it, and it’s not so hard anymore.”

I sighed. Sure, I could do that with Nicola, but a group of guys was a whole other story.

Later on, after Noob had gathered everyone into the living room by blowing the bugle he had gotten earlier at the Salvation Army Thrift Store (“I asked them if they had one of those shofar things—you know, the ram’s horn thing they blow on Rosh Hashanah? But they said they were all out.”), he stood in front of the group—which, per a group vote via e-mail, also included Nicola and Herbert, even though they didn’t technically live in the house.

“Here ye, here ye!” he bellowed. “And now begins the official house meeting!” He gave a loud, long toot on the bugle.

“Will you stop with that thing already?” Narc cried, covering his ears.

“I’m just trying to make it official,” Noob said defensively. “And now, I’m going to . . .” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “Hold on—I need to check my notes.” After what seemed like an awful long time to unfold a piece of paper that was only folded into quarters, he squinted. “Man, I hate when I can’t read my own writing. Oh right—and now, I’m going to turn the meeting over to Thor! So please help me give him a very warm welcome.”

As Thor strode up to the front of the room, he looked at us. “You heard the man. A warm welcome!”

At that, a smattering of applause could be heard. While I had quickly learned that Thor’s bark was a lot worse than his bite, and that he, too, got misty-eyed at ASPCA commercials, you also didn’t want to risk making him mad. (“I’m an
artist
—if we can’t express our dissatisfaction about things, who can?”)

“I really like the way you clap,” I heard Nicola whisper to my brother. “It’s very rhythmic.” Most people, if they had received the kind of strange look my brother shot her, would’ve shut right up. But not Nicola. “Some people, when they clap, it’s all out of sync,” she babbled. “But yours isn’t. Plus, it’s got a very
happy
feel to it.”

“Uh, thanks,” he whispered back. “But I think we should pay attention.”

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Thor said. “We have a friend in need, people. And what do we do when we have a friend in need?”

“We make a donation via PayPal and receive a packet every month with an update on their progress?” Noob suggested before Narc flicked him in the head. “What? That’s the way they do it on that infomercial about the kids in Tanzania.”

“No! We don’t make a donation—we
help
them!”

“A donation is help,” Noob retorted.

Wheezer shoved some tissues toward him. “Noob, why don’t you stick these in your mouth and shut up for a while?”

Noob stood up. “You know what? I’m sick of being kicked around by you guys. I’m leaving. But you can forget about me telling you where I’m going.” He began to stomp off. “I’ll be in the kitchen if anyone needs me.”

Because I went to such a competitive high school, the teachers there had a way of making you feel that if you didn’t have a 3.99 average, you weren’t going to get into a decent college. But if Noob could get accepted to a school, I was pretty certain that there was a place for anyone.

“You have to give the guy credit for expressing his feelings and taking a stand,” Thor said. The sound of some pans crashing to the floor could be heard. “Even if it’s done in an uncoordinated fashion.” He turned to me. “So getting back to the subject at hand. Simone, we’ve been talking, and we’ve noticed that you haven’t been your usual sunny self the last few days—”

I looked at Nicola. “I have a sunny self?”

“
Anyone
has a sunny self compared to Thor,” Doc said.

He had a point.

“You know, if I wanted to, I could probably take that as some kind of insult,” Thor said, “but because I’m really working on not getting bent out of shape when someone slights me because they’re not able to see that my somewhat rough exterior is merely an armor to keep my sensitive interior from becoming wounded, I’m gonna let that one go.” He stomped over and stood by Doc. “But I wouldn’t try it again.”

“Okay,” Doc mumbled as he shrank back in his chair.

“Good.” Thor turned to me again. “So Simone, what’s going on?”

Even if it’s with what looks like genuine concern, having eight guys and Nicola stare at you as they wait for an answer (although he wouldn’t come back into the room, I could see Noob peeking through the crack of the kitchen door) is pretty painful.

“Oh man, I am so glad I’m not you right now,” I heard Nicola murmur.

“I . . . you know . . . I really . . .” I stammered.

“Guys, I think we should table this,” Blush said softly from his perch over on the window seat. Because he was so tall, he kind of had to scrunch his limbs up to fit in there, but he made it look like it wasn’t too uncomfortable. Maybe it came from handling the marionettes. “If she wants to talk about it, she knows that we’re more than happy to listen. Right?”

I nodded.

“But I thought girls loved to talk about their problems,” Wheezer said, confused.

“Yeah, like,
to death
,” Narc grumbled.

“Even I know that,” Herbert added. “And I’m only in junior high.”

Max turned to me. “You
sure
you don’t want to talk about it?”

“If you don’t want to talk about it in this big group, maybe just the three of us could talk about it,” Nicola blurted out. “You know—me, you, and Max. Or maybe Max and I could just talk about it alone.”

Maybe Doc could devote his medical career to coming up with a cure for DIBD—Disclosure of Inappropriate Blurting Disease. “Thanks. But, yes, I’m sure.”

Max nodded. “Okay.” He turned to the group. “She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Can we just stop talking about the fact that I don’t want to talk about it?” I pleaded.

“Next order of business, then,” Thor announced. “Wait—scratch that. We don’t have any other orders of business. Meeting adjorned.”

As everyone got up to leave, Noob’s muffled voice could be heard from the crack of the kitchen door. “Wait—I have another order of business.
Ow
. You just hit me in the face!” he cried as Narc pushed the door open.

I looked over at Blush, still hanging out on the window seat, and gave him a grateful smile. It was nice to be friends with someone who knew that sometimes the best way of communicating was done without talking.

Not talking was something that Blush and I did a lot. Although it was very clear on the color-coded Excel chart that Doc had made that all housemates were supposed to take turns doing the grocery shopping (“It’s an excellent way for everyone to deepen their knowledge of food additives,” he explained to the group), whenever it was time to go (which, when you’re living with a bunch of guys, turns out to be pretty much every other day), the job seemed to fall on my shoulders (“You’re just so good at it,” Narc said. “Probably some sort of female intuition thing”). And Blush—because he was a nice guy and could carry at least three grocery bags in each hand in addition to his cart—always offered to accompany me.

The day after the official house meeting, which was a Sunday, we decided we’d go to the farmers market in Santa Monica on Main Street. I was still feeling kind of blue and would have rather stayed holed up in my room in the attic all day watching
The 400 Blows
on Netflix. But because I knew that Blush wouldn’t ask me what was wrong every five seconds, when he knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to go, I said yes.

“So are you feeling better?” he asked as we walked down Main Street with bags full of peaches, plums, blueberries, and cotton candy (a special request via text from Noob).

Why couldn’t these guys just be
guys
and be totally clueless? How come I got stuck with some who were actually thoughtful? I opened my mouth, ready to give my stock “Me? Oh yeah—I’m fine. Everything’s great” answer; the one I used with my dad on the rare occasions when he looked up from his iPhone.

But that’s not what happened. Maybe because it’s hard to be intimidated by a six-foot-two basketball player who has admitted to you that his dream is to work with puppets, but instead of lying, what came out during our walk back to the house was my life story. About never knowing my mom. About how, up until recently, my main hobby was eating. About Zumba. About how, up until Operation Blackbird, or whatever it was called, I hadn’t worn a dress since I was eight and I was still very much getting used to this whole . . .
girly
thing.

“Really?” he asked. “That’s hard to believe. I mean, you’re so . . . I don’t know . . . put together.”

“Nicola pretty much picks out my outfits,” I admitted. While I had done well on my own at Kmart that one day, Nicola still did most of it for me.

“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean you seem so sure of yourself.”

I looked at him.
“Me?”

He nodded in his slow way, which, had someone else done it, would’ve driven me crazy, but because it was Blush it didn’t bother me.

“Yeah, well, I don’t feel that way,” I admitted. “I feel . . . I don’t know . . .
uncooked
. Kind of like instead of being medium well, I’m medium raw, and I’m scared that I’m going to get salmonella or one of those other food poisoning thingies now.” As a truck rumbled by, I held down the skirt part of my red-and-blue-striped sundress so it wouldn’t fly up. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to these things.”

He laughed. “I get you. When I got my scholarship and left South Central and started going to high school with all these rich kids, I kept feeling like they could literally see through me.”

I turned to him. “You mean, like you were invisible?” That would be too weird.

He laughed. “No. When you’re this tall and this black at a rich private school, that doesn’t happen. It was more like they could see inside me, and that when they did, they could see that everything inside me was different than their stuff. Like it was the cheap generic version of what they had. And that it was only a matter of time before someone told on me and I got kicked out.”

I sighed. “I know that feeling.” Maybe that’s part of why losing the weight had freaked me out so much. Because I no longer had something covering the fact that, at the end of the day, I wasn’t like them. I looked at him again. “Can I tell you something really stupid and you’ll promise not to laugh?”

“Sure.”

I could tell that Blush was the kind of guy who kept his word. “Okay. Well, see, the reason I’ve been so bummed actually has to do with a dress . . .” God, could I sound any more, I don’t know . . .
Hillaryish
? I glanced over expecting to see an eyebrow shoot up, but there was none of that. Instead, he was just waiting patiently for me to go on. “It was this dress that I had been stalking for months. And I was afraid to try it on. First, because I was afraid I’d rip it or something when I was zipping it up because it would be too tight. But then, even after I was sure it would fit, I still wouldn’t do it. Because I felt like . . . I don’t know . . . I didn’t deserve something so . . .
nice
.”

Someone else may have rolled his eyes or looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about, but not Blush. He nodded. “That sounds like me with the Nike Zoom Kobe Fours.” Okay, so maybe Blush was a little more guylike than I had originally thought. Still, the important thing was that not only did he understand what I meant, but he made me feel as if I wasn’t completely stupid for feeling like that. “So have you changed your mind? Are you going to get the dress?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “The other day, when I thought that maybe I was finally ready to try it on, it turned out it was gone. Someone else bought it. But when I realized that, I was less upset that the dress was gone and more upset with myself, you know? That I had let being scared get in the way of something I wanted.” What was I doing vomiting my deepest darkest secrets to this guy I barely knew? I was barely able to talk like this with Nicola.