The Wild One

by Gemma Burgess

  “Joe is hot,” says Angie. “I would totally tap that.”

  “Can we please talk about my crisis again?” asks Pia pleadingly.

  By the time I get back upstairs, it’s nearly noon. I creep into my dark little bedroom, carrying toast and tea for Joe—as he requested when I left hours ago (sorry, Joe)—and am hit by the salty smell of, um, sex.

  “Coco?” asks a voice from the bed. “Is that you? Do you have sustenance? Please say yes. I’m wasting away here. It’s my own little Irish famine, right here in Brooklyn.”

  Joe sits up, his wild hair flopping everywhere, his lanky arms and legs splaying out over the edge of my bed. I can’t help laughing at almost everything Joe says. Sometimes I swear it’s not even what he’s saying, it’s just the accent. Even though I know he’d probably rather be here with someone beautiful like Angie, even though I know he’s way out of my league, it’s just so damn easy to be with him.

  Joe devours the toast with almost obscene glee, then grabs me again.

  I’m actually a little sore down there, you know, like when you haven’t ridden a bike in ages and then you start again and your body gets a little … achey. Yet somehow, the combination of crumbs and tiredness and giggling just makes it even hotter.

  I don’t know why I’m not more embarrassed to admit all this so openly.

  I guess I just really want him.

  “Wow. Sex is awesome,” I say afterward.

  “Yeah. More people should know about it,” says Joe, reaching for me. “Kiss me again … Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Do you have any cake?”

  “What, like, on me? Right now? No. What are you, some kind of cake fiend?”

  Joe grins. “Yes. I am a cake fiend. I like to roll up cake and snort it through a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill.”

  “Ew.”

  He stretches. “I have to open the bar in a half hour. If only I could get from here to there without having to actually, you know, move.” He pauses, taking a moment to kiss me thoughtfully on the neck. “Fuck it, what’s the point? It’s closing, anyway. Gary is on his way to Nantucket. He’ll never find out if I open an hour late.”

  “I think you should go open up,” I say.

  “Aw, really? Are you the responsible type? That’s the last thing I want in a bar employee.”

  “Also, I’ve had an idea,” I say.

  “Is it something to do with sex in the shower? Because in that case, you read my mind, and—”

  “No,” I say, laughing. “Double ew. My roommates have to shower in there too.”

  “Kinky…” Joe waggles his eyebrows at me.

  “Hush up and listen,” I say sternly. “My idea is about how you can save Potstill.”

  “Go on.”

  “Throw a Potstill Prom party.”

  “A what?”

  “A prom-themed party. You know? Spector will play, people can dress up in prom gear, like tuxedos and stuff, and we can have punch and snacks. Don’t you wish you could go to prom all over again? I do!”

  “I am from Ireland, Coco, we don’t have prom. We have debs, which is like prom, but from the sounds of it, a lot less effort.”

  But I won’t be dissuaded. “You could do it at the end of the summer, before Gary gets back. And we could put up flyers and sell tickets in advance at the bar. We can even do publicity online!”

  “Sell tickets?” Joe is finally interested. “If we sell tickets, we could hire extra people to help out at the bar and with setting up … That might work.”

  “It will work,” I say.

  “Prom. Coco, you’re a goddamn genius.” Joe scrambles out of bed, reaches for his jeans, and puts them on so fast he loses his balance and falls over. “Can you work tonight? Come in at five. We can start planning. I’ll text the Spector guys now and nail down a date for the end of August. This is going to be huge.”

  “Yes, boss,” I say playfully.

  “Thanks for a great night, tiger.”

  Joe opens my door, then stops and glances back at me and makes a tiger roar sound. I roar back. We grin dorkily at each other.

  And a second later he’s gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  The strangest thing about not going to work on a weekday is, well, being at home on a weekday.

  On my first Monday morning after quitting the preschool and starting my job at Potstill, life starts just like normal. I’m a light sleeper, so as always I stir when I hear Julia’s alarm. She leaves before six these days. Then I drift back to sleep only to hear—like clockwork—Madeleine, around seven, Pia, about half an hour later, and finally Angie, another hour after that.

  Since I don’t have any reason to get up, and for once in my damn life I’m not hungry, I happily stay in bed and do a little Facebook and Instagram and Twitter admin. Is it weird that I end up deleting more than half my social media posts? I get post-post anxiety.

  This house is really badly soundproofed. I can hear Angie singing along to some angry girl music while she finishes getting ready.

  Oh, God. Do you think that means everyone heard Joe and me having sex the other night? Because, ewww.

  My phone beeps: a text from my dad to Julia and me: Are you two available for lunch today? Unexpected meeting in the city. I’ll be free at noon.

  That’s unusual. He rarely flies all the way here from Rochester just for a meeting.

  I reply right away: Of course!

  Then Julia replies: Can we meet near my office? Totally slammed today. But can’t wait!

  I head downstairs to make some toast and then shuffle into the living room. I turn on the TV, but there’s nothing to watch. The daytime soaps haven’t started yet, and I’m not in the mood for the shouty chatter of a talk show. To top it off, I can’t watch any good Netflix or Hulu shows because I have a complicated watching agreement with the girls, whereby we can’t watch ahead without each other, unless one girl has opted out (Angie opts out of most teen shows, and Pia and I opt out of the violent stuff). Which is fine when we’re all working days and watching TV at night but otherwise, lame.

  I head over to our bookshelves. I decide to pick out a book at random rather than choosing a childhood favorite that I know will comfort me.

  Choosing a book you don’t know is risky. Pick something stupid, or nasty, or depressing, and it’s guaranteed to ruin your mood, maybe even your day. And forget about scary books. I read two pages of American Psycho once and thought I was going to throw up. Don’t read it. Really, don’t, it’ll make you want to sleep with the light on forever.

  Standing right up against the bookshelf, I close my eyes, exhale the breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding, and let my fingers brush against the books until I find one that feels right. I pull it out and open my eyes.

  Anna Karenina.

  Tolstoy? It sounds way too serious. But why not, right? How hard can it be? It’s not like it’s still in the original Russian, for Pete’s sake. So I take my toast and Anna Karenina and head out to the deck.

  Two hours later, my toast is cold, I’m starving, and I need to pee so badly that I’m jiggling both knees.

  But I can’t put the book down.

  Reading Anna Karenina feels like a friend is whispering in my brain—someone who understands life, and people, and, most of all, me. I won’t tell you what happens in the book, I don’t want to spoil it, except that it’s about how people really feel, underneath everything.

  I’ve never read anything like this. I feel like I really know the characters, know them like I know Julia and Pia and Angie and Madeleine, even though these people are imaginary and lived in Russia hundreds of years ago … It’s that true and sharp and immediate.

  In the book, one line is underlined in blue pen.

  “I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”

  The words so true are scrawled next to it. I recognize my mother’s handwritin
g immediately, and for a moment, it’s like she’s still alive.

  When you lose someone you love and know so very, very dearly, sometimes it’s like you can close your eyes and feel her. Even though she’s gone.

  I lay my cheek flat against the smooth page, smelling that good dry bookish smell. My mother held this page, this book. She read this, and it touched her so much that she wrote in it.

  People should always write in books, should mark them so that when they’re gone, their loved ones can feel a connection to them.

  People die. But books are immortal.

  I read the underlined section again.

  I want to love someone just as I am. And I want him to love me, the whole of me. But he’d have to know me first. My mother always told Julia and me that anyone who truly knew us couldn’t help but love us … but I can’t imagine any guy ever getting to know me, not really. I can’t even imagine being so completely myself with a guy. Being comfortable with Joe physically is one thing, but being comfortable emotionally, being open and honest so someone can really get to know you—that’s another thing altogether.

  How will anyone love me when nobody really knows me?

  At that moment, my phone rings. It’s Joe.

  “Coco. How are you on this fine morning?”

  Joe’s Irish accent sounds much stronger over the phone, so I reply in my worst imitation: “I’m grand, thank you, Joe.”

  “Grand? Is it my accent you’re making fun of now?”

  “No, your syntax. It’s a mess.”

  “I’ll leave that, since I don’t know what syntax is. Now! Can you please come to the bar early today?”

  “Um, sure! No, wait, I forgot. I’m so sorry, I have to meet my dad for lunch.”

  “Oh, say hi to him for me.”

  I giggle. Even when Joe makes lame jokes like that, I laugh.

  “Have fun, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and that includes heroin and karaoke, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I’m still laughing while I’m getting dressed. I find a white T-shirt that I haven’t worn in ages in the back of a drawer and pair it with skinny jeans and my brown satchel.

  Then I hurry downstairs. Just as I’m about to go out the front door, however, I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. And, unlike usual, I don’t immediately look away.

  Instead I look closer. And I see myself, really see myself, for the first time in a long time. Possibly ever.

  I’m not disgusting. I’m not fat. I look kind of okay.

  But I look young. Boring. Like I’m on my way to high school.

  And I’m tired of looking that way.

  So I run back upstairs, burst into Angie’s room, and sit down at the desk she’s fashioned into a sewing table. In the top drawer is her makeup bag.

  I quickly look through her eyeliners—I know she won’t mind, seriously, she is very relaxed about that sort of thing and anyway she has, like, fifteen of them—but I’m not sure I’m the eyeliner type. And I’m definitely not good at applying it.

  Then I see, at the very bottom, that Chanel lipstick she put on me the night we all went to Potstill. It’s red. Bright red, movie star red, Hollywood red. I’ve never really worn lipstick, only lip gloss, and as I put it on I start feeling weird. In a good way.

  Because of the lipstick, I’m holding my mouth, and therefore my whole face, differently, and somehow, that makes me feel confident and self-assured. Don’t laugh, but I feel like, well, a woman, not a girl.

  Then I spy a tiny sample of perfume in the bottom of the bag, one of those little spritzers they give you when you buy a bunch of makeup from Saks or whatever. I take a quick sniff. It’s Narciso Rodriguez’s For Her. It smells sort of warm and sexy and nice. I spritz it on my wrists and under my ears, like my mom always used to, and then aim a spray above my head, just for good measure.

  As I skip out of the house and down the stoop, a guy walking his dog down Union Street glances up at me and does the biggest double take I’ve ever seen. A double take at me. And for once, I don’t assume it’s because I have food on my face. It’s because I look good. And yes, I know I shouldn’t look for external validation and all that crap, but I don’t care. I like it.

  CHAPTER 13

  I’m meeting Dad and Julia at a French bistro near Central Park, but naturally, as I get there, I get a text from my father: Meeting running over. Reschedule for 2 pm.

  I can always tell when he’s busy: he texts like we’re colleagues instead of his daughters.

  Julia replies: No prob am slammed see you then x

  So I text Pia. She works somewhere in Midtown. Are you having lunch? Want to hang out? xxx

  The reply comes straightaway: Come to 41st and Fifth—look for the Italian Stallion!

  The Italian Stallion. That’s the name of her new food truck. It sells, you guessed it, Italian food. Something different every day—like Mondays it’s lasagne or minestrone, Tuesdays it’s baked ziti or spaghetti pomodoro, and so on. But it’s always hot and always delicious (sometimes she brings the leftovers home). A lot of meat, cheese, and carbs—very different from Skinny Wheels, her salad empire, but just as popular.

  By the time I get to the steps of the New York Public Library, right across from the Italian Stallion, the lunch rush is dwindling, though of course, in New York City, someone’s always hungry. I wait until the crowd is down to just a few people, and I come up to the window. Pia looks calm, but intensely focused, the way she never does at home.

  “It’s asparagus risotto or pasta with broccoli and sausage,” she’s saying patiently to a guy frowning at the menu. “No, we don’t have anything else. Nope, no smoothies.”

  Pia glances up and sees me. I read, in the flick of her eyebrow, a message: Can you believe this guy?

  “Nope, no hot dogs,” she says. “No pretzels. See that guy over there with the dirty silver cart? He has hot dogs. We are an Italian food truck. We only have—thank you, have a nice day!” she calls after him cheerfully.

  The guy is walking angrily away.

  Pia and I meet eyes again and burst out laughing. She turns to the guy in the truck with her—one of her assistants. “Reggie, take over? I’m taking a tiny break.” She turns back to me. “Are you hungry?”

  I shrug. “A bit. But I have to eat with my dad later.”

  In a moment, Pia comes out of the truck, carrying a bowl of risotto and two spoons. We walk over to the New York Public Library steps and take a seat about halfway up.

  “Are you happy to share a bowl? I’m not superhungry either. I was testing some new mozzarella suppliers all morning,” Pia says. “Man, I love my job.”

  “Did you know you’d love it before you started it?” I ask.

  Pia takes a bite of risotto, thinking. “I don’t know … but as soon as I realized I could make a living doing this, I just felt a click. You know?”

  I take a bite of risotto, trying to look like I understand what she means. A click?

  “It was like I discovered food trucks, and I met Aidan, and the world just fell into place.” Pia shudders a little laugh out, as though it’s funny. But I can tell she’s closer to crying.

  “Have you spoken to him?” I ask softly.

  “Nope,” she whispers. “I just … I can’t bear it. I’ve been texting. But he knows something is up, he must know…”

  I nod. “I guess so.”

  “Do you think I should tell him that I cheated on him?” Pia turns to me. “Really. If you were me, would you tell him?”

  If I was in love with someone who loved me back? And then I cheated on him?

  I can’t even imagine that ever happening.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What if it were the other way around? If Aidan cheated on you? Would you want him to tell you?”

  “That’s what I keep asking myself. Yes, I guess? But if it didn’t mean anything, and it didn’t, Coco, it really didn’t mean anything, then … maybe not? I mean, it happened once. It’ll never happen agai
n. It’s just … it’s in the past now. I’m still me. You know? So what’s the difference?”

  I think for a second. I do know. That’s what I was thinking the other day about my one-night stand with Eric. About my abortion.

  But somehow … now that I really think about it, I know it can’t be true.

  “Maybe everything we do changes us,” I say. “Just a little. Maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen. It’s how we grow up. It’s not bad, or good, it’s just … it’s what happens.”

  “Look at you, being all mature and shit.” Pia is smiling, but her eyes are so sad. “So now that I know what it’s like to make a giant fucking mistake, I’m a grown-up? But I’m also going to regret it forever? Is that all adulthood is? Remorse for the mistakes you made getting there?”

  “No … that can’t be right either,” I say. “I don’t know, Pia.”

  “I have to tell him,” she says. “I do. I know I do.”

  I nod. “I think maybe you do.”

  She looks up at her truck. A sudden influx of tourists has boosted the line at the Italian Stallion. Her assistant looks stressed.

  “I have to go back,” Pia says, wiping her eyes. “My God, I cry a lot.”

  I grin. “Me too.”

  Pia gives me a big hug. “Thank you for helping me, Coco. You’re a really good friend.”

  It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

  CHAPTER 14

  I still have time to kill before I meet my dad.

  So I get the subway back up to Central Park and take a stroll.

  The smell of grass in the hot sun is so distinctive, isn’t it? It reminds me of my childhood summers, of drying off on scratchy grass after swimming, of birthday parties where everyone else was on the bouncy castle and I was too scared to join in because some of the boys were really rough. (Julia was really rough too.)

  I’ve probably been in Central Park only four or five times in my entire life. That is pretty lazy of me given I live here now, but somehow it’s easy to just stay in your own little area of New York City, even though everything else is just a subway ride away.

  My first time coming to Central Park was with my mom.