Wicked Jealous: A Love Story (21 page)

I got home to find the guys in the same position they could usually be found—lounging around watching yet another
Sorority House Slasher
movie. Except for Blush, who was sketching, and Doc, who was reading.

“So what time is the party actually at?” I asked as I grabbed a napkin and picked up something peeking out from under the couch that at one point might have been the top of a hamburger bun before it dried into something that now resembled a fossil.

“I don’t know. Nine?” Max asked, without looking away from the TV.

Doc looked up from his book. “Oh. I told people eight.”

“These girls I met over on the boardwalk might come by at seven thirty,” Noob said. “I hope I told him them it was tonight and not tomorrow.”

I was like Martha Stewart–level organized compared to these guys. Yesterday, I had presented them with a list I had put together for the party—things like “straighten up,” “make a party mix iPod playlist,” “buy hors d’oeuvres”—but everyone other than Doc had looked at me like I was suggesting we all run a marathon before building a house in Haiti through Habitat for Humanity. The only part they got excited about was the hors d’oeuvres part, but even then, they were more interested in Noob’s idea of peanut M&M’s rather than mine about the baby shrimp wrapped with prosciutto that I had seen on the Food Network. (Max—who believed that people could easily survive solely on pizza and sushi—said that he remembered our dad once saying that our mom had been a real foodie, so my newfound interest in food must have come from her.) Because of the lack of enthusiasm about the list, I didn’t even bother bringing up “go to farmers market for flowers.”

I turned to my brother. “Max, did you go buy the hors d’ouevres?” I asked.

“You mean the peanut M&M’s and the chips and salsa?”

“Yes. Those,” I replied. So much for pretending to act as if this was nothing more than a college rager.

“Um, no,” he said. “I was going to, because, you know, you had assigned me that job on the little graph that you and Doc are always updating. But I forgot.” He cringed. “Actually, that’s a lie. I didn’t forget. What happened was on my way to the mini-mart to get the stuff, I came across this old rusted bathtub in the street? You know, those old-fashioned clawfoot ones? And it was just so cool looking, I stopped and took a bunch of pictures of it with my Hipstamatic and I got so into it that by the time I was done, I had totally forgotten that I was on my way to the store.”

This wasn’t the first time that my brother had been sidetracked by some impromptu photo shoot. But usually they involved pretty girls whom he then ended up asking out rather than old bathtubs.

“I
love
when the artistic impulse overtakes you to the point where you lose track of all space and time!” Thor bellowed. “That’s what it’s about, man—that’s true Art-with-a-capital-A. When you don’t know where the creative process ends and you begin. Plus, it’s a good excuse if you’re the kind of person who tends to be late to things.”

“Wow. You can actually
see
the creative process?” Noob asked. “I wonder if I can.” He squinted and stared into space. “Nope. Nothing.”

I sighed. “I guess I’ll go do it then.”

“I’ll go with you if you want,” Blush offered.

“Okay,” I said nervously. But why was I nervous? Blush and I always went to the store together. So what if this time I was all dressed up and my hair was straight and I had makeup on? That didn’t matter.

With the twenty-five dollars and sixty-eight cents that I collected in my brother’s UCLA Bruins hat—most of it in crumpled-up dollar bills, dimes, and nickels—along with the fifty I had taken from the Emergency House Fund (if snacks for a party wasn’t an emergency, what was?), we set off for the market.

Because I was dressed up, this time we drove in my Saab. “So you excited for the party?” he asked as we loaded up on all sorts of non-Food-Network-approved hors d’oeuvres like candy and chips at Ralph’s.

“Oh yeah. Sure. Can’t wait,” I said, in what I hoped was a very chipper-sounding voice. The problem was, because I did chipper about as much as I did giggling (which was to say, nearly never), instead I sounded like I was exhaling helium.

He glanced away from the M&M’s and over at me. “You sure?”

That was one of the things I liked best about Blush. Instead of saying something like, “Okay, it’s completely obvious you’re lying,” therefore making you feel even more stupid, he was gentle about that stuff. He didn’t judge; he didn’t tell you how you were feeling—he just put things out there . . . like a question you might want to ponder at some point while lying on a hammock on a perfect spring day as a light breeze went by.

I picked up a bag of peanut M&M’s and stared at it intently. “Yes,” I said, as all the letters of the ingredients blended together so it looked like one long chemistry compound.

“Okay,” he shrugged as he began to push the cart.

That was another thing I liked about him. He didn’t push. And because he didn’t push, it made me want to be honest. “Fine. No. I’m not excited,” I admitted. “In fact, if there was an earthquake right about now and we couldn’t have the party, it wouldn’t suck.”

“How come?”

“Because Nicola invited this guy from our school.” The minute the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. It was one thing to feel comfortable talking to a guy, but it was a whole other thing to bring up another guy—and your complete lack of social skills about the matter—to him. My only hope was that because Blush was so tall, the words had disintegrated during their climb up to his ears and he hadn’t heard them. Even though his ears were sort of big and stuck out a little.

He nodded slowly. “So you got a guy coming to the party, huh?”

I shrugged. “Well, he’s not really a
guy
guy,” I said. “He’s just . . . okay, fine. He’s a
guy
guy.” My face felt like it did the time that Nicola convinced me to put Crisco on because it would make me tan faster. Which, when you’re as pale as I am, is like throwing a lit match on dried leaves. “But I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

We pushed the cart toward the check-out lanes. “But just so you know, I didn’t invite him. Nicola did. Without even discussing it with me first.”

“Got it.”

We started unloading the stuff on the belt. “Okay, fine. We can talk about it. But just a little bit.” It was a good thing that, unlike girls, guys didn’t spend their time gossiping. Because if they did, and Blush and Narc compared notes, I’d get a reputation for being one of those people who said “I don’t want to talk about it,” only to then talk about it.

I took a deep breath and told him about Jason. I explained how he was a twit (“Not a tweeting twit,” I clarified, “but a Testosterone Twit”) but that, based on the few times we had actually spoken, he actually wasn’t twittish at all. And how I wasn’t saying I liked him or anything, because how could you like someone you had only spoken to a few times—especially someone who sat on the Ramp in the cafeteria when you sat in the way corner—but that if he ended up coming to the party that night, which, even though he said he would, probably wasn’t going to happen, especially if the ballerina clown fell on him and severed his spinal cord—I wasn’t completely opposed to maybe getting to know him a little better.

“Even though, ultimately, that would be a total waste of time,” I said, “because it’s not like he and I could ever
really
be friends let alone, you know . . .”

“What?”

“What what?”

“You couldn’t really be friends or what?”

I turned red again. “Okay, now I
really
don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said, practically throwing the money at the cashier so I could get out of there.

He shrugged and started to follow me into the parking lot. “Okay, so we won’t talk about it,” he said over his shoulder. Because of his long legs, within a few strides he had already passed me.

“Well, maybe we can talk about it a little bit longer,” I said. I had asked all these people for advice, but they were all middle-aged women, drag queens, or gay men. Or Narc, who was his own category. “Like, say, as long as it takes for you to explain what it is a girl should do when talking to a guy who she’s not saying she likes, but definitely does not
dis
like.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. You just . . . be yourself.”

I rolled my eyes. “Narc pretty much said the same thing. But what else?”

He shrugged again. “I have no idea. That’s the only way I’ve ever done it.”

“Yeah, but in your case, being yourself works. I mean, you’re
interesting
. You deal with
puppets
. But what if yourself . . . just isn’t good enough?” I asked softly. “I mean, you know, for someone like this guy.”

He looked confused. “What if yourself isn’t good enough for a twit?”

“Like I said, he’s a twit, but not a
twit
twit. He’s just . . . you know what? Forget it.”

“But yourself has to be enough,” he said. “It’s not like you have another choice as to who to be.”

Maybe in a world made up of puppets that was true, but we were talking
high school.
In
Lost Angeles
. You couldn’t get more cutthroat than that.

“Let’s try this another way,” Blush said as we got into the car. “Why don’t you start with ‘hi’ and then go from there?”

I glanced at him. “Just ‘hi’?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“But what do I do after that? If, you know, he says hi back?”

“Just start with hi. And then see what happens.”

I nodded. “Okay. I can do that,” I agreed as I started the ignition. “I think.”

Not only was it only one word, but it was just one syllable.

But there was one more thing I couldn’t shake: Why did it feel weird talking to Blush about another boy?

seven

“So
this
is what we’ve been missing all these years?” yelled Nicola later over the thump of reggae music as she munched away on tortilla chips while spilling salsa on her
I’M NOT BARBIE—I JUST LOOK LIKE HER
T-shirt. In honor of the party, she was wearing her best Doc Marten boots with her shortest denim mini.

I yawned as I popped open another Red Bull (Did people end up going to rehab for this stuff? Because I had a feeling I was seriously on my way) and looked out at the crowd. The guys were on one side of the room, either playing video games or talking about surfing or skateboarding or photography or video installations, while the girls—a mostly artsy, beachy, boho-looking group (except for one scowling girl with a Mohawk, invited by Thor)—were on the other, chatting about lip gloss and comparing tattoos on their lower backs (“You should have Cookie add ‘tramp stamp’ to her dictionary,” Nicola said). “I guess so,” I yelled back. “It’s just like Staci Kenner’s boy-girl party in sixth grade, but everyone’s taller and has bigger boobs.” Because it was a college party, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Guys drinking beer while upside down in a headstand? Girls having smackdowns like on
Jersey Shore
? Definitely something more interesting than this. It was a good thing the music was so loud or else I might have fallen asleep.

As I looked around the room, I saw Blush sitting alone on the stairs, doing what I was doing—taking in the crowd and not really talking to anyone. Almost as if he knew I was staring at him, he looked up and smiled.

I waved and motioned him over. Because of the crowd, it took him a while to get there. As I scooted over on the couch to make room for him, there was a tap on my shoulder and I turned to see Jason.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said back.

There was a tap on my other shoulder. I turned to see Blush. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I replied. For someone who planned on majoring in English, I really hoped my vocabulary improved by the time I got to college.

Now what? “Um, Jason, this is Blush.”

“Hey,” Jason nodded. Okay, his vocabulary wasn’t any better than mine. That made me feel a little better.

“What’s up?” Blush replied with a nod.

Nicola stood up. “And now that everyone knows each other, I’m going to go try to find something to eat other than chips!” She turned to Blush. “Blush, will you come with me? I think I saw some Mallomars on the top shelf in the kitchen, and I can’t reach them.”

As she dragged him away, Jason pointed at the couch. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

I shrugged. “Sure.” I left out the second half of my answer, which was “. . . but you’re going to have to excuse me because I have this sudden urge to take that bowl of peanut M&M’s away from Noob and go lock myself in the attic and eat myself into a sugar coma because I have no idea how I’m going to get through this conversation.”

As he settled himself in the couch, which, because it was so old and lumpy and lived in a house with seven guys, had this bad habit of making everything on it kind of fall in toward the middle, the two of us were soon sitting way too close together. Every time I tried to scooch away, I slid back.

Finally, I grasped onto the cushions as if they were life preservers. “So you should try the chips,” I said. Leave it to me to talk about food. “And the salsa. They’re really good.”

He nodded but didn’t reach for them. Now what? Usually, the idea of having Nicola around made me nervous because of the no-filter thing, but at least she never ran out of things to talk about. Unfortunately, Mallomars now in hand, she had her back to me as she yakked Blush’s ear off. He, however, saw me, and mouthed,
What’s wrong?

While Jason leaned over the chips, I motioned to my mouth as if trying to pull something out of it and shrugged. To most people, it probably would’ve looked like I was saying I was going to throw up, but Blush somehow understood me and pointed to the iPod that was docked in some speakers.

I nodded and turned to Jason. “So, uh, do you like iPods?”

He looked at me, confused.

Shoot. I had already screwed it up. “What I meant to say was do you like
music
.” I cringed. Uh-oh. We had already covered this subject in 7-Eleven. And the outcome was not good.

“Oh yeah.” He started bobbing his head. “Like her,” he said as Adele sang “Rolling in the Deep.” “I love her.”

“
You
like Adele?” I asked.

He nodded, starting to sway back and forth a little bit. I looked around to see if anyone was watching. Thankfully, they weren’t. “Don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“But what?”

But Adele was so . . .
not
varsity-team high school boyish. Teenage girl, yes. Gay man, totally. But Testosterone Twit? I think not. Luckily, the song ended and morphed into Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.” “—but unfortunately it’s over,” I continued. “But hey, now it’s Jay-Z. This is a good song. Don’t you like this song?”

He stopped swaying. “Not really. I’m not really into 50 Cent.”

Had he really pronounced it “fifty” instead of “fiddy”? Even Cookie had gotten that right a few weeks ago. “Um, this is Jay-Z,” I replied.

“Oh. I’m not into him, either,” he replied, without the slightest bit of embarrassment.

It wasn’t like I had actually spent any of my hard-earned money downloading Jay-Z and 50 Cent songs, or even downloading them for free on Spotify, but even I knew the difference between the two. That being said, something told me that he probably knew all the words to more than a few Beyonce and Rihanna songs. Before we could discover we had even less in common, Noob walked over. “Hey, Simone. You having fun?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “A blast.”

“You know what I was just thinking?” he asked.

This was going to be good. “No, Noob. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that that movie
Son-in-Law
with Pauly Shore that they play all the time on that cable channel CMT? It doesn’t get nearly as many props as it deserves. ‘Cause it’s
really
good. We’re talking classic.”

I turned to Jason, who, like most people the first time they encountered Noob, had a confused look on his face. “He does that sometimes,” I explained. “Just goes off on weird tangents like that.”

“Hey, did I ever tell you the story about why I had to get the tip of my finger amputated?” Noob asked.

“He’s also big on lack of segues,” I said. I turned to Noob. “Nope. Don’t think you did.” This was good. This could possibly eat up approximately ten minutes, during which I wouldn’t have to worry about making conversation.

“Okay, so this is the deal,” he said as he settled in on the arm of the couch and went on to tell some long story about how, when he was seven, he got his arm caught in the window of the backseat of his mom’s car (obviously, he had been shoving his limbs into small spaces from a very early age). But because the radio was on so loud, she didn’t hear him yelling and she wasn’t a great driver, which was why, when she parked, she brushed against a rosebush, and a few of the thorns cut his pointer finger really deep, and that’s why they had to amputate the very tip of it. What was great was that every time he screwed up one of the facts (which, because Noob was Noob, happened a lot) he’d start the entire story over from the beginning. By the time he was done, the party was breaking up, and all I wanted was for everyone to leave so I could change into sweats, roast myself some sweet potatoes, and analyze my entire conversation with Jason word by word with Nicola.

“Well, I guess I’m gonna go,” Jason said as everyone began to shuffle out and Nicola stood behind him pretending to be very, very interested in the leftover guacamole when what she was really doing was eavesdropping.

“Simone will walk you out,” Nicola said, pushing me toward him.

I gave her a look.

“You’re the hostess. And you know how confusing it can be to find the front door in this place.”

I led him to the door, and we stood on the front porch. I examined a crumpled red plastic cup as if I were on an archeological dig in Egypt. “So I was wondering . . . do you want to hang out?” he asked suddenly.

“Now?” I thought I saw something in my peripheral vision, and suddenly I jumped. Because when I turned my head, I saw that Nicola and the guys were all standing in the shadows behind the door watching us.

“No. Sometime next week.”

“Okay,” I shrugged.

I could see Nicola shake her head back and forth in frustration.

“Hey, Nicola, are you okay?” I heard Noob ask with concern. “You look like you have water in your ear.”

I needed to get Jason out of here before all eight of them ended up seriously embarrassing me. “That would be nice,” I said, quickly pushing him toward the stairs so fast he almost went flying. “See you!” I called over my shoulder as I turned and ran toward the door.

When I got inside they were all staring at me.

“What?” I asked, nonchalantly.

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Nicola cried. “You’ve got a date! With Jason Frank.”

I found myself glancing over in Blush’s direction, but he was busy picking up empty soda and Red Bull cans from the floor. “It’s not a date. It’s . . . a hangout session,” I said uncomfortably. “It’s a whole different thing.”

“It is? How so?” Noob asked.

“I don’t know. It just is,” I replied.

Regardless, the idea of either of them made my stomach hurt.

“You’re judging again,” Nicola warned the next day as we helped Brad set up for his Fifty Percent Off Just Because Sale. (He had originally wanted to call it Fifty Percent Off So I Can Surprise Luca with a Cruise to Mexico in an Attempt to Save Our Relationship, but we had talked him out of it because it felt a little TMIish.)

“Oh please.
Adele
?” I demanded.

Brad looked up from his computer, where he was checking out the cruise ship instead of helping us unpack. “Ooh, I love Adele.”

I looked at Nicola. “I rest my case.” But she was right. I
was
judging him. So he had horrible taste in music, or at the least, atypical taste in music. I could live with that. (Could I? Really? I wasn’t sure.) The truth was I was just scared. Maybe “scared” wasn’t the right word. It was more like . . . terrified. Not so much about the date part of the date, where you talked (even though from our time together on the couch, that was going to be tough, especially without Blush across the room to give me cues that I then misunderstood and screwed up). But what about at the
end
of the date? If he tried to kiss me?

It was embarrassing to admit, but at almost seventeen years old, the closest I had come to kissing a guy was when, in the privacy of my room with the lights out and the door locked, I would take out the dog-eared copy of
People
magazine that I kept shoved under my mattress and open it up to page 72, to the “in-depth, exclusive look of one of Hollywood’s rising stars,” and hold it up to my face while I practiced. But unlike most girls in my school who, if they did this, would have chosen someone like Robert Pattison or Justin Timberlake, my kissing partner was Jesse Eisenberg, the star of
The Social Network.
Because all my practicing had gotten the page somewhat wet, the picture was pretty smeared (with a hole where one of his eyes should have been because it had ripped), so it was hard to see the cuteness that made me pick him, but it was there.

Like Michael Cera (who could have played his younger brother in a movie), Jesse was more
nerd
cute than
cute
cute. Unlike Jason, who was definitely
cute
cute. And had probably kissed tons of girls and would therefore immediately realize I had not. Kissed guys. Or girls. Or anyone.

“Would it be really wrong if I told Jason that there’s a slight chance I have mono?” I asked them.

Before they could answer, the bell on the door jingled and Hillary came floating in, looking as unwrinkled as ever but with a tan. “Hello, hello!” she cried, giving me air kisses on two cheeks. “Your brother said you’d probably be here.”

“Hillary. What are you doing here?” I asked. “You guys weren’t supposed to be back for another two weeks. Is everything all right? Is my dad okay?” I panicked. What if something had happened to him?

“Oh, he’s fine,” she said. “A few pounds heavier because of all the pasta, but I already booked some appointments for him with my trainer. Can’t have him looking flabby at the wedding.” She flashed a smile at Nicola. “Oh, Nicole. How are you? I didn’t recognize you under all that eyeliner. How retro of you.” She looked around the store and cringed. “Which I guess makes sense in a place like this.”

“You weren’t kidding,” Brad said under his breath.

“What wedding?” I asked.

She smiled. “
My
wedding! I mean, mine and your father’s.” She held out her left ring finger, which had one of those ponytail holders with a marble wrapped around it. “We’re engaged!”

Little dots of light started to flash in front of my eyes, like the time I fell on the balance beam. I couldn’t believe my father had asked Hillary to marry him without discussing it with Max and me first. The lights flashed faster. Actually, who was I kidding? I actually
could
believe that he had done that—which hurt more than the news itself. I rubbed my eyes. “My father gave you a ponytail holder as an engagement ring?” I asked, confused.