The One I'm With

by Jamie Bennett

  “Hello, Brooks.” My voice was a seductive purr.

  “Lanie?” He was shocked. “Could this stunning woman actually be you?”

  “Oh, I’m Lanie.” I ran one of my long (unbitten), red-painted nails down his tan cheek, below the sexy eyepatch that he now wore for some reason. “How about we go upstairs, big boy?” I asked, hand on my hip and wiggling my shoulders.

  Wait, there was no reason for me to do a Mae West impression, although a little flavor of her wouldn’t be bad, and I wondered if I could pull it off. But the suggestion of going upstairs with Brooks reminded me of when we actually had done that, when I had begged him into going into his sister’s room at his house and we had lain on the twin bed together. Then he had kissed me, a pity kiss, a very drunken pity kiss, I realized now, and right before he passed out. My first kiss. At the time, I had been on cloud nine. Until I went downstairs and ran into Coco.

  Never mind that. I thought more about lying on a bed of roses…no, you had to consider thorns. Lying on a bed of sweet-smelling violets and making out with Brooks, me with bigger breasts and him now without the eyepatch because it could get in the way. Also, he had the most beautiful, bright blue eyes, it would have been a shame to cover one of them. My fantasy continued as Brooks and I really did it this time, and afterwards he turned to me in awe because I had been so good at it, and the night sky lit up with fireworks above us.

  The car behind me honked and I realized that the light had probably been green for a while. I waved sorry and drove off, nodding a little. We would have sex on a bed of flowers that did not have any thorns or spiders and then fireworks would go off. I thought I could make it happen on Saturday night.

  Chapter 2

  “You didn’t have time to get it straightened? Or work on the color?”

  “They couldn’t fit me in,” I told my mom, which was a lie. I hadn’t tried to get in for an appointment because I liked my hair the color it was, brown with a little red left over from the summer sun. And since I had gotten older and better at taming it, I didn’t mind my curls anymore. Not as much as I had as a kid, anyway, when at one point I had wanted to shave my head and had sold lemonade and other items from our refrigerator to get enough money to buy a wig. My mom had been too busy to mess much with my hair; she had sent me to her stylist, but on the days when there wasn’t a professional around to handle it, my nanny had pretty much thrown in the towel on all issues regarding my head.

  My mom nodded, now clearly disappointed, and twisted my hair into a knot, securing it with pins. “There, now we won’t have to see it as much.”

  “Thanks.” My voice sounded dull. I had thought it was fine but now I guessed that she was right, it hadn’t looked very nice the way I’d styled it myself.

  She tilted her head. “You know, you have my neck.” She looked at herself in the mirror in front of us and tapped under her chin with her fingers.

  “Really?” I smiled. My mom had such a graceful, long neck, like a queen. I turned my head and looked at myself in the mirror to check to see if I did, too.

  “Everything else from your father, though.” She bent and put her face next to mine, and it was true. We looked nothing alike, because she was pretty much the feminine ideal of beauty and I was…not. There was nothing wrong, exactly, but I wasn’t my mom. Even our expressions were different: a big smile on her face and a sulky frown on mine which I turned into a neutral stare back at her. My mom’s eyes flicked down. “Lanie, did you stuff your bra?” she asked.

  “It’s just padded,” I answered defensively. “A little, subtle padding.”

  “Subtle? It looks like you have pillows in there. Very unnatural.”

  Which was kind of ironic, given the amount of injections, surgeries, peels, creams, and other aids my mom used to look “natural.”

  “This looks grotesque. They have to come out,” she instructed me, and I reached down my dress and pulled the pads—ok fine, I pulled the pillows out. The dress kind of clung, and the effect just wasn’t the same without them. I frowned down at my deflated chest.

  “Much better,” my mom approved. “Natural is better. I remember when I was modeling and all the girls were having breast enhancement surgery but I wouldn’t do it.”

  Why would she have needed to? She was a size two and her bra was a D-cup. Her pillows were real.

  “They told me that I wouldn’t get on MTV without having it, but I did.” She nodded, satisfied. “And I was always glad, later, that I didn’t have to deal with some of the problems from those old implants. Not that surgery is always a mistake,” she added quickly, and I saw her studying my face. She had never pushed me into getting anything done, but I knew that she wouldn’t have objected if I had come up with the idea on my own.

  “Thanks for helping me with my hair, Mom.” She had come to my house to check on me and after a while had taken the brush to step in. I knew that she really wanted to help, and I was grateful for that. I just always wished that her assistance didn’t make me feel so bad.

  “I can do your makeup,” she suggested hopefully.

  “I’m done with my face,” I answered and I could read in her expression what she thought of my work. “Don’t you need to get back with your own hair and makeup people?”

  She gave herself one last look in the mirror. “You’re right. I know Ava is busy, if you want to come up to the house a little early to give her a hand.” She kissed me on the head, careful not to disturb her handiwork with my hair.

  “Maybe.” No way in hell. But then I did find myself wandering up a little early for the party, not to help Ava but to check things out. My mom really did it up for her parties, even the minor ones like this, which was just to introduce an artist newly arrived from Russia to people in the art scene. It was close to Christmas, so everything had a vaguely holiday feel, but nothing too overt because she hated Christmas parties and thought they were tacky. She had a long list of things that she considered in poor taste and part of Ava’s job was to make sure none of them appeared in my mom’s eyeline.

  Ava looked as frazzled as I’d ever seen her, which meant that there was a tiny line on her forehead between her eyebrows and that was all the sign of worry on her face. She looked beautiful in a red sheath dress (nod to Christmas) with a flower on the shoulder that no one, including my mom, would have called tacky. I hid behind some of the potted trees that had been brought in for décor and watched her supervise the servers, the florists, the valets, everyone. She didn’t need my help.

  Finally she spotted me, despite my best efforts at camouflage. “Guests will start to arrive in about ten minutes,” she greeted me, while checking her phone. “You have just enough time to go change.”

  I looked down at my dark green cocktail dress (nod to Christmas), which I had liked, until this moment. “I already changed.”

  “Oh.” She looked me up and down and then shrugged. “I guess being comfortable is the most important thing.” Her eyes returned to her phone.

  “It’s not like I’m wearing yoga pants…”

  Ava held up her finger as she read something on the little screen. “I’m going to lose my mind,” she said, her voice perfectly even. “The caterer left two cases of champagne unrefrigerated. Nightmare scenario.” The tiny line reappeared: her worried face. “Talk to you later, Lanie.”

  I went back behind the trees, then, as the guests came, emerged to talk to the people I knew. I managed to get out of attending most of my mom’s parties so I hadn’t seen most of them for a while. My mom’s new husband, Kristian, came downstairs finally, wearing a scarf in a way that made me want to vomit a little when I thought of how long it had taken him to achieve the specific drape of it. He caught me sneering and shot me a look of death. We did best when we ignored each other.

  My mom was in her element so I watched her for a while. I had done that when I was younger, then gone up to my room and stood in front of my mirror to imitate her. I had held up a flute of orange juice and practiced her laugh, how she t
hrew her head back and shook her hair, and the habit she had of putting her hand on the arm of the person she was talking to, widening her eyes and kind of pursing her lips so that she looked absolutely fascinated by what she was hearing. I had watched myself do it in the mirror, but I always looked like I was smelling something bad, rather than that I was interested.

  I talked and talked to people, and listened a lot, and had a cocktail, and some of the canapés, and waited. The Wolfes were notoriously late to parties. I saw my mom’s husband, Kristian, lead the new artist around, introducing her, their arms interlocked. I studied Ava, standing with a man in a suit the same color as her dress. I watched as she leaned forward, putting her hand on his arm, then threw back her head and laughed, shaking her hair. She really did it well.

  I waited.

  They all entered the room together. Scarlett with her new fiancé, a San Francisco guy who was always on his phone, both of them already looking bored and Scarlett very sullen, too. The oldest Wolfe child, Zara, wearing heels that added four inches to her height, clinging to her husband as if she needed the support. And Mrs. Wolfe, Pamela. She was walking with her son and smiling at something he was saying to her.

  Brooks. It was Brooks—I inhaled a bit of canapé and it lodged in my throat. I coughed but the hard piece of bread stuck there. I kept coughing until tears streamed down my face, blinding me. I held up a napkin and tried to return to my spot behind the trees, hacking away. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, as if I was spreading consumption or French pox or something and not being asphyxiated by a bread crumb.

  “Lanie? Lanie, are you ok?” Brooks appeared in my face, concerned. “Here.” He grabbed a drink off a passing tray. “Take a sip of this.”

  It was not how I had planned our reunion. There was no cooing like Mae West, no running one of my long, painted nails down his cheek. They were still all bitten, and anyway, who could talk like Mae West when she was bringing up a lung? I coughed again and took a gulp of liquid from the cold glass Brooks handed to me. It burned fire down my throat. In honor of the Russian artist, my mom was serving icy-cold vodka, straight, and I had taken in at least half the glass. I spat it out, right onto Brooks.

  Oh. Holy. Shit.

  He licked his lips. “Vodka. Tasty.”

  “Brooks…”

  He started to laugh.

  I mopped at his face with the napkin I had been coughing into but then realized how disgusting that was. “I’m so sorry!”

  He used his sleeve and wiped off the rest of the liquid. “It’s fine. I should have expected it. I remember wearing your ice cream cone at one point, a hot dog you shot out of a bun, and a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles that landed in my hair. I prefer the vodka, actually. You ok?”

  I gave one last, halfhearted cough. “Yes. Part of the canape got…never mind. How are you, Brooks?” I used the napkin to wipe under my eyes.

  “A little wet, and smelling like a distillery, but other than that, I’m great.”

  “Oh, shit. I’m really sorry.”

  Brooks laughed again. “No, I am great. I’m happy to be home. California in December is a much more friendly place than New York is.”

  “I’m glad you’re back.” I sounded ridiculously fervent, like I was saying “amen” in church.

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Lanie!” Pamela Wolfe hugged me and pulled me over to talk to her daughters. Zara had always been fairly friendly to me, but as she was 10 years older, we had never had much in common. Now both of Zara’s kids attended Starhurst Academy so we had that as a mutual topic of interest, and she gave me a few updates about the annual fund, and told me how she was in charge of the Spring Gala fundraiser and asked if I had any ideas about themes. I referred her to my mom and Ava for that one.

  Scarlett reluctantly said hello to me. She seemed highly uninterested in the party in general, me in particular, so I just stood stiffly as she re-introduced me to her fiancé and said that it was always so fun to see me. I felt pretty uncomfortable around Scarlett. We were only a year apart, and our moms had always expected us to be best friends, like they were. It was not going to happen, and it was always a mystery to my mom as to why. Why didn’t I like Scarlett, why would I push away such a sweet, pretty girl?

  Scarlett was exactly the kind of kid my mom liked, always on point with fashion and trends, always stylish. For example, Scarlett had instinctively known the best Glimmer Girl doll to have but also knew, even back then, that it was just wrong to wear an outfit that matched your doll, no matter how much you really loved her. Really, only someone under two feet and made of plastic could have carried off most of those looks. I hadn’t recognized it at the time and there were some very unfortunate pictures.

  In other words, Scarlett was cool, just naturally. She had gone to Starhurst, too, a year ahead of me but both of us from kindergarten through 12th grade. At school, she had completely ignored me, even though most of the time we had gotten along pretty well while our families hung out. We had all vacationed together a lot, skiing and going to Hawaii, and Scarlett and I’d had a lot of fun. However, along with knowing how to dress, she had intuitively known that hanging out with “Lame” March at school was social suicide. She had barely acknowledged my presence there. Scarlett had also been a witness to (and really, a part of) my high school humiliation. So now, we were frosty, at best.

  My mom came over to say hello, hugging everyone, asking about Scarlett’s job, pushing on my back to make me stand up straight. “Mats and I are really busy planning the engagement party,” Scarlett told us in a bored voice. “I mean, his mom is throwing it, but we’re helping. Some. Right, babe?” Mats was downing vodka and didn’t respond.

  “What did you decide to serve?” my mom asked, immediately fascinated. They talked about various details of the party, and my mom had a lot of suggestions. At the same time Zara started telling stories about her kids and how smart they were, with her own mother chiming in to agree. By the time my mom turned to start questioning Brooks, he had edged away and had disappeared into the crowd. I had watched him for a while, because even the back of his head was unusually handsome and sexy, but he had managed to really hide.

  “What is your son up to?” my mom asked Pamela, and got more of the scoop about Brooks’ proposed business venture.

  “I’m not sure that Verity will give him the funding,” Pamela said, and shrugged. “I’m hoping she does, because if not, he’ll go back to New York to try to raise it there. He has resources of his own, but of course…” She shook her head. “It’s just so crass to always go on about money, but that’s Verity for you. She loves to hold the reigns, give us all little tugs now and then so we know who’s in charge. And the trusts for the children are just so ridiculous.” Zara looked smug, but Scarlett was nodding vigorously. All the money that their father had left them was tied up until they turned 30 or got married, whichever happened first—so Zara had her share, but Scarlett was still waiting. Not that she was hurting, because I knew how generous their grandmother was, and Scarlett had some kind of high-profile job in fashion, too. But an extra couple of million couldn’t have hurt anyone.

  After a while, I managed to extricate myself, mostly because my mom and Pamela got so involved in talking that they forgot me, and Zara and Scarlett were never that interested. I wandered through the party and outside to the back patio. Lights sparkled around the valley and the stars shone overhead. It was a lovely night.

  “Hey, Lanie.”

  I heard the clink of glass as I turned around. Brooks was stretched out on a lounge chair in a dark corner, one of the frozen tumblers of vodka next to him. “Hi. Are you hiding?” I asked. Wow, that had come out well! Good job playing it cool, I congratulated myself.

  “Pretty much hiding,” he agreed. “I haven’t seen most of the people in there for quite a while. I got tired of talking about myself.”

  “Really? Most of those people never get tired of that. They can go on for hours.”

  He smiled, wh
ite teeth gleaming in the night. “You always were funny, Peanut.”

  “Was I?” I asked, surprised.

  “Maybe it was just funny that you said what I was thinking.”

  That was even more astonishing. He thought the same things as I did? I had imagined his mind to be on a higher plane. “If you’re tired of telling people things about yourself, you should think of a new story. Something totally outlandish and weird so they’re not sure if you’re lying or not, like how you’ve become interested in alien life forms and are moving to Nevada to be closer to Area 51.”

  “I went the other way. I told them the truth, like how I spent a while last weekend figuring out the price per cubic inch of my apartment, floor to ceiling. Down to four decimal places.”

  “Really? That was what you really did?” It sounded a little like my usual weekends, at the same thrill level.

  Brooks shrugged, then sat up and patted the lounge chair. “New York isn’t as exciting as some people like to think, particularly in a blizzard, with the power out.”

  I crossed the patio and sat where he had indicated. “My mom thinks it’s the most exciting place in the world. She lived there while she was modeling and it was the best time of her life.”

  “Until you.”

  “What?”

  “Until she had you, her only child,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. Until me. Why aren’t you having fun in New York?”

  “I work all the time,” he said, and his words sounded like a sigh. “I’m tired of pulling all-nighters at a job I don’t care about, working with people who would just as soon stab me in the heart as help me out.”

  I was horrified. “When you put it that way…”