Girls We Love

by J. Minter

  And even though it took a minute of adjusting to my old friend Liv’s whole new I’m-sexy-so-stare-at-me vibe, I soon realized that it was actually a purely good thing. Because, you know what? A friend who’s confident and gorgeous is way more fun to get out on the dance floor with and just be a little crazy with and go around talking to random guys you think are cute with. Liv, as I found out, is very down for this kind of thing. Who knew?

  Still, after a bunch of hours of partying, seeing Jonathan all wrapped up in that Ava chick started getting to me. I mean, they have every right to snuggle, but I just got sort of tired of watching it. So I decided to head off for the bathroom and splash some water on my face and remind myself that I was here to have a super-duper silly hot Saturday night.

  Which is how I ended up in this epic bathroom line.

  So I was feeling a little low, you know, standing in this line, looking out at all these people having fun and in couples and stuff, when—oh my God!—the most amazing thing happened.

  I met Sara-Beth Benny. From TV.

  This is how it happened: I am standing in this line, trying really hard not to look in Jonathan’s direction. Even though I am not looking in his direction, I know exactly where he is and for some reason I’m not exactly sure of, this is making me feel very strangely nervous. And as I’m busy not looking in this one certain direction, somebody comes and taps me on my arm.

  I look over and there is this very small girl with a black wig and big sunglasses on and a dress made out of a material I wouldn’t want to have touching my skin. I have sensitive skin, but still. So I’m confused at first, and then I remember that Liv saw this girl in big shades earlier who she was convinced was SBB. Before I can say anything, the girl in the wig hooks our elbows together, and she leans in to say something in my ear.

  “I am Sara … Beth … Benny,” she said in this slow, dramatic voice. “And I need to cut into line with you.”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked back, and saw that the line had gotten really long behind me. A couple people looked annoyed by the line-cutter, but no one was going to say anything.

  “Thank you so much,” Sara-Beth went on emphatically, like she really meant it. She was tiny, like she had been magically shrunken, and her skin had this supernatural perfection to it, like it was almost translucent or something. “You are a sweet thing. I knew it just from looking at you.”

  “Are you okay?” I said, because it was all a little weird.

  “Oh, I am so good, you don’t even know, I mean just fantastic, just super,” she said in a big rush of words. Then she paused, and said, “Except that I have to, you know, be in disguise all the time.”

  “I was wondering why you were dressed like that,” I said, trying not to sound shy, which of course I did anyway.

  Sara-Beth sighed, and leaned on me with all of her weight, which didn’t even feel like that much. “I’m undercover,” she said in a stage whisper.

  “Why?”

  “Because I got a part in this film, and it’s the role of a lifetime, but they’re worried about my reputation.”

  “What reputation?” I said, like that was shocking to me, even though of course I knew exactly what she had a reputation for. Celeb Lives runs a story like every week about how she’s always going out and getting in trouble for being so wild.

  “Oh, they think I’m like this off-her-nut party girl. Whatever.” She sighed again, this time like she’d heard it all before. “Anyway, so in my contract it says I can’t be photographed or reported ‘partying.’”

  “That’s awful,” I said, like she’d just told me her puppy had been kidnapped.

  “I know, and the worst part is that … ” She paused, and looked around to make sure that nobody was listening. “The worst part is that this basically separates me from my soul mate, who I am so desperately in love with.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Don’t worry,” Sara-Beth said, stroking my hand. “I found him.” Then she smiled happily, like that explained it all. “So … what’s your name?”

  “Flannery Flood,” I said, “but everybody just calls me Flan.”

  “Flood … ” SBB put a finger to her temple, signaling thought. “Are you Patch Flood’s little sister?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh, that must be why you’re so pretty,” she said sweetly. “I’ve met your brother. He’s been nice to me.”

  I just nodded, because I’m basically deaf to compliments about my brother at this point, even if they are coming from a huge star.

  “And, he’s friends with my soul mate,” SBB continued enthusiastically.

  “Really?” I said. I had been picturing a tall, dark, swaggering self-made hotelier or something. And I would definitely know if my brother knew such a person.

  “Uh-huh. And he’s soooo cute. Maybe you know him?” She grabbed my hand, and smiled at me like we’d been bff since second grade. “His name’s David.”

  “David Grobart?” I said, squinting my eyes at her before I could make myself stop. It isn’t that David isn’t cute or anything—he is, and really tall—but he’s sort of dopey. And he kind of had a crush on me at the same time Jonathan and I were going out, which means that Sara-Beth Benny and I have love life history in common. Which is the weirdest. “Really?” was all I could say.

  “Really,” Sara-Beth said, and her face was all bright and sunshiny. Then all of a sudden, it wasn’t. “Why isn’t this line moving?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. It was odd, now that she mentioned it—we hadn’t moved at all since SBB had cut in with me—but for some reason I was struck by this need to keep her from getting upset. So I said: “But isn’t this sort of nice? I feel like now we’ve had all this time to get to know each other. “

  And just like that SBB’s mood changed again. She seemed to be agreeing with me, but she also seemed to be glowing from within with this molten core of vulnerability. “Yes,” she said, grabbing my shoulder. “It is so nice to just girl-talk like this, even if it is in a bathroom line, it is just so really very nice.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding my head furiously. “Totally so nice … ”

  “Oh my God, you have no idea. Since I signed this contract it’s like I’ve been in hiding and I haven’t seen any of my girlfriends.”

  “That’s awful. But can’t they come over to your house?” I said.

  “I’ve grown very afraid of my apartment,” SBB nearly wailed. “And all my friends are mean, mean, mean girls.”

  “Oh,” I said, because there’s really no way to make a thing like that okay, right?

  “Yeah.”

  “Well … you can come over and hang at my place if you want,” I said, before I could realize that I was inviting a celebrity over to my house. “I mean, my friend Liv just got into town, and she’s basically living there, so I mean, there are two of us. And it will be fun. Like a big sleepover or something!”

  SBB’s face was sunny again, like it had been when she was talking about David. “Really?” she said. “I can really come over for a sleepover? With you?”

  “Of course,” I told her.

  SBB threw her arms around me and squeezed. “I knew I liked you!”

  Over her head, I saw my brother’s friend Arno walk out of the bathroom, wearing the face he probably usually reserves for when it’s six a.m. and he’s trying to leave an NYU dorm without the security guard seeing him. Wonder what he’d been up to …

  where do those boys disappear to?

  “This is Jonathan, leave a message with your number, the best time to reach you, and the latest news after the beep.” BEEP

  “J., hey, it’s David, sorry I disappeared from the party. I just dropped SBB off at my apartment ’cuz she was really beat, but the whole thing is just weird and kind of freaking me out. I mean, she’s back, she thinks she’s living here again, she wants me to be in a movie or some crazy shit … Um, can I come meet you? Where’d you guys end up? Call me back.”

  “You’ve reache
d the number of Liesel Reid. Ciao ciao.” BEEP

  “Hey Liesel, it’s Philippa. It’s been too long and I wanted to catch up and your party was great and it would be so cool if you got to meet my girlfriend, Stella, but she didn’t feel all that well tonight, so we had to go home early. Sorry about that. But happy birthday! And let’s talk. Mua!”

  “Hi, uh, this is David, leave me a um … ” BEEP

  “David, where are you? What are you doing? It’s Jonathan. We’re at Lotus. Get your ass over here.”

  it’s all about the girlie after party

  “I still cannot believe you met SBB,” Liv, who was lying on her back on the big, soft flokati in the middle of Flan’s bedroom floor, said. She had been saying this all night—basically since Jonathan had put them in a cab when Liesel Reid’s party started winding down—but she’d quieted a bit over the last hour. It seemed like a good time to restate her position. Even in the middle of the night it was hot, and all the windows in the house were thrown open. Liv’s hair was spread out all around her, and she had on the matching Cosabella camisole and boy shorts she had bought online just before she left boarding school. They made her feel very grown-up. “I can’t believe you met her without me,” she clarified.

  “I know, I know,” Flan said. Her light brown hair was in a half pulled-through ponytail on the top of her head, and she had washed her makeup off, so she was looking very shiny and fresh-faced sitting on the wicker sleigh bed that was just big enough to sleep the both of them. She was wearing this huge white sack of a nightgown. “I’m sorry! But you’ll get to meet her tomorrow, when—”

  “What!?” Liv twisted up off the floor and looked directly at her friend. “Shut up and tell me!”

  “When SBB… comes to my house… for a sleep-over … ”

  “No!” Liv’s mouth hung open. She tried to shut it and couldn’t.

  “Yup,” Flan said. She had one of those big smiles on her face that you can’t get rid of, no matter how hard you try, because what you’re saying is so big and exciting. “She needs friends, because she’s undercover, and she wants us to be those friends.”

  “Oh. My. Freakin’. Lord.” Liv admitted to herself that she was impressed by Flan. At first, she hadn’t really thought she’d changed all that much, but inviting a movie star over, that took moxie.

  “You want to see her number?” Flan said, passing Liv her cell phone so that Liv could key through and see what the cell number of a TV star and notorious party girl really looked like.

  “This is too exciting,” Liv said. “Do you think she’ll bring clothes?”

  Flan shrugged kind of seriously, and said, “I don’t think so. I think she’s trying to be un-starletlike, you know what I mean?”

  “Mmmm… ” Liv thought about this for a minute. It was sort of disappointing. But after the fun New York night she’d had, she wasn’t about to let it bring her down. “You know what this means, right?”

  “What?” Flan said.

  “What it means is, tonight was only the beginning,” Liv said, smiling knowingly at her friend.

  “Beginning of what?”

  “Of our summer. Of partying. I mean, I’m here one night, and already we’re gonna be hanging with a real celebrity?” Liv shook her head, like it had all been told. “We’re taking this town by storm.”

  “You think so?” Flan said.

  “Oh, hon, I know so,” Liv replied. They both fell silent for a minute, while Liv pictured all the parties she was going to go to and all the people who would want to talk to her. She could almost physically feel herself transforming into the kind of girl Patch Flood couldn’t keep from falling in love with if he tried. Or even if a small army of angry parents was against it.

  That was when they heard the noisy hooting of male voices from the first floor. The guys had gone to some other party after the Boat House, supposedly to look for Patch, which Liv was all for because she didn’t like his whole disappearing act. How could she impress him with how hot she was now if they weren’t even in the same room? But the guys were back now, and they were so loud that there pretty much had to be five of them. Liv and Flan looked at each other; somebody on the first floor was being teased. Liv couldn’t help but wonder if that person was Patch, and if he was being teased about some gigantic crush… which he had just admitted to having… on her?

  “Flan,” Liv said, crawling toward her innocently on her elbows, “let’s go down there. And party with them.”

  “I dunno,” Flan said slowly.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s just… ”

  “C’mon, you get to hang out with those guys all the time,” Liv said, her voice rising. She could feel an opportunity to flirt with Patch slipping away from her, and she didn’t like it. “Don’t be selfish.”

  “I’m not being selfish,” Flan said defensively, “and it’s not like I hang out with those guys all the time. And… there’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “You know that guy Jonathan, my brother’s friend? The one with the beautiful, soft leather motorcycle jacket?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s my ex.”

  “Really?” Liv knew she was supposed to be sympathetic right now—Flan had just told her that she’d spent all night hanging around her ex and his new girlfriend—but she also found this news kind of exciting. “Wow … he’s cute.”

  “I know, but … you know.”

  “I know,” Liv said. “But you know what? This gives us even more reason to go down and hang out. Because you know why? It will show that you weren’t bothered by him having his new… friend there tonight.”

  “You think?”

  “Definitely,” Liv said, punctuating her words with a head bob. She walked over to the mirror on the back of Flan’s door and fussed with her hair. “And then maybe he’ll start wondering if that new friend is the right special friend in the first place.”

  it’s so not about straining to hang out with oblivious older dudes … or is it?

  When they got downstairs, Liv and Flan saw that the guys had all been sitting on the oatmeal-colored couches and love seats in the living room. They were all semi-reclined, with their arms thrown back against the upholstery, and they had the appearance of people who had been many places and seen many things. They stood up as soon as they saw the girls, in an awkward show of gentlemanly behavior, and said hi in unison.

  Liv felt her heart sink when she counted only four hot older guys in the room.

  “Oh, hey Flan,” Patch said as he came through the door to the kitchen. He had a six-pack of tallboys dangling from his index finger, and Liv could see the broad curve of his shoulders under his rumpled oxford shirt. He nodded in Liv’s direction, and said hi to her, too; when she heard him say her name it was like her whole body was on a roller coaster heading down. He said her name like it was his favorite word in the English language.

  Liv tried to sound nonchalant as she said, “So, where have you guys been?”

  “Lotus,” David said, his eyes meeting Liv’s.

  “Yeah, wasn’t much happening there tonight,” Jonathan said. He shrugged in this way that made Liv feel like she would have given pretty much anything to have been at Lotus that night. “Lots of people, but they were all kind of lame.”

  Flan was just standing there awkwardly, so Liv smiled big and said, “Can we sit down?”

  “Yeah, totally,” David said, rearranging himself on the love seat to make room. Flan went and sat next to him, and Liv waited until Patch had taken a seat, and then she went and sat on the floor leaning against the couch he was sitting on. Everybody else resumed their sprawled, post-party position on the couches, and after a moment of silence, the guys picked up their conversation as though nothing had changed.

  “Yeah,” Mickey said, putting his white-clogged feet on the rusted metal-topped coffee table his father, the sculptor Ricardo Pardo, had given the Floods for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, “she’s totally awesom
e. I mean, it’s like somebody said let’s re-create Mickey Pardo as a chick. That’s pretty much what Sonya is like.”

  Jonathan made a noise. “Is that a good thing?”

  “You mean, dating the girl version of you?” Arno said. A contemplative look came over his face, and then he jerked upward and headed for the bathroom. Mickey watched Arno leave, and then chugged his beer.

  “What about you, Jonathan?” Liv said. She winked at Flan, whose teeth were visibly clenched. “What’s up with your girlfriend?’

  Jonathan didn’t say anything for a long moment, as though he were trying to determine the level of his drunkenness or who the word “girlfriend” referred to in this context. “Ava?” he said finally, but his eyebrows were still scrunched together. “Oh… yeah… she’s making raw food soups to sell at her school Monday. She’s going to donate the profits to some animal shelter in Brooklyn. I’m supposed to help. At nine.”

  Everyone stared at him in silence.

  “So, yeah, I guess I should be going,” Jonathan said, standing up and wrapping himself in his motorcycle jacket. He stumbled toward the door, looking a lot more drunk than he had when he was sitting down. When he reached the arched entryway to the foyer, he paused and said, “I never realized how early nine in the morning is.”

  “I think our friend Jonathan has had one too many,” Mickey said, standing and stumbling into the coffee table, “which is a thing I know all about. I’m going to go find him a cab.” And then Mickey disappeared in the direction Jonathan had gone, somehow making a lot more noise in the process.

  “The pink champagne will do it.” Patch chuckled in David’s direction. An adorable smile flashed across his face.

  “I’m fine,” David said quickly.