by Zoey Dean
"She's joking," Ben put in quickly.
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"You two seem perfect for each other," Anna said, her voice going frosty.
"You guys, too," Ben forced himself to say.
Adam shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "So, when are you going back to Princeton, Ben?"
"He can't," Alexis replied before Ben could. "He just keeps dragging me off to bed."
"Well, in that case you're definitely his type," Anna said. She threaded her arm through Adam's again. "We'd better go get the Streetheart tickets before they're sold out," she told Adam.
"They're doing a sunset show on the pier," Adam explained to Ben. "Killer blues band. You know 'em?"
"I've heard of them," Ben said vaguely. "So, have fun. Nice running into you guys," he added, hoping it sounded genuine.
"Same here," Adam said, putting an arm around Anna's shoulders.
Ben grabbed Alexis's waist. "Yeah. See you." Ben and Alexis continued down the promenade. Only when they reached the corner did he remove his hand from his cousin's waist.
"I get it. You wanted to make that girl jealous, right?" Alexis asked.
"Something like that."
"She's gorgeous."
Ben sighed. "I know."
"So was she your girlfriend or something?" Alexis prompted.
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"I went out with her once."
"But now she's with that guy, Adam, huh? That sucks. I mean, it's totally obvious from the look on your face that you're madly in love with her."
"Yeah, well, seeing is believing," Ben stated. "She's with Adam now. The end."
"If you want her back, you should fight for her," Alexis decided. "That's what would happen in the movies."
"Except that this is real life."
"Nuh-uh," Alexis said. "This is Los Angeles. Nothing here is real. You're the one who told me that. So buy me a triple-dip ice cream cone and I'll tell you how to get your girlfriend back."
Ben swerved back toward the ice cream parlor they'd just passed. "Yes on the ice cream, no on the advice."
"But--"
"But nothing," Ben insisted, holding the door open for his cousin. They wove through the crowd and got in line. "You can't beat a dead horse, and this pony has gone to pony heaven."
"Speak English," Alexis demanded.
"I mean it's over." Ben had to force himself to say it. "When it comes to Anna Percy, I blew it. And I have no one to blame but myself."
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The Same Boring Preppie Types
Anna trod the now-familiar path to Susan's bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The only sound was the thwack-th wack-thwack of rackets on balls as people played tennis on the lighted hotel courts. Why, why, why did she have to run into Ben and his new girlfriend? The images were seared into Anna's brain. Shimmering auburn hair, deep tan, convex stomach-- she was Anna's physical opposite. She shouldn't care. She knew she shouldn't. So why did she feel so awful? What streak of masochism made her want a boy who was bad for her? She should be thinking about Adam. They'd had such a great day together.
Anna wanted to scream. To think that Ben had tried to get her back when he already had a new girlfriend! What a jerk! She clenched her eyes shut for a moment, as if to will away the Ben thoughts. She'd think about Susan. It was so much easier to worry about her sister's problems than to obsess about her own.
Susan was such an enigma these days. She was smart, probably even smarter than Anna was. Susan graduated
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fourth in her class. She'd been accepted by every college to which she'd applied, including Harvard. But she'd chosen Bowdoin College, in Maine, so that she could study with a certain famous historian who taught there.
At first she did great. Then things changed. She'd suddenly stopped going to class and started hanging out with the kids who majored in drugs and alcohol. She transferred to NYU, fell in love with a rock-and-roll guitarist from Ireland, and dropped out of school to follow the guy's band on a low-rent East Coast tour. And then the relationship ended. After that, Susan went back to Avenue D, in the East Village.
To this day, Anna had no idea what had happened at Bowdoin that had made Susan change. It made Anna sad. In a family where everyone was notoriously distant from everyone else, there had been a time when Anna and Susan had shared secrets and been each other's refuge. But that felt like a long, long time ago.
As Anna approached Susan's bungalow, she could hear the Wallflowers--one of the few rock bands she could identify--blaring through the windows, a sure sign that Susan had returned from wherever she'd been. She knocked discreetly on the door.
"Coming!" she heard Susan's muffled shout through the door. A moment later the door swung open--Susan was wearing the plush, monogrammed white terry robe the hotel provided every guest; her wet hair was wrapped in a towel. "Anna! I thought you were room service."
"No. Just me."
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"Come in, I ordered enough for two. Have you eaten?"
"Hot dogs with a friend."
"My little sister, slumming it," Susan teased. "I'm impressed. Come on in."
Anna winced as she stepped into the bungalow. It looked so much like Noah Monahan's, she couldn't shake the image of him trying to seduce her feet. The bungalow featured a fully equipped kitchen, spacious living and dining rooms, and a bedroom with a four-poster bed. Through the open door to the bedroom Anna could see shopping bags of many sizes on the floor. "You went shopping?" she asked.
"With Cammie Sheppard," Susan said. "It was fun, in a mindless kind of way. I don't know why you don't like her, Anna. She's a hoot."
"Just be careful around her."
Susan shrugged, took the towel off her head, and went to the bathroom to blow-dry her hair. "You think too much and you worry too much," Susan decreed.
Was that true? Anna wondered. Probably. It was like she couldn't cut off the running monologue in her head. Sometimes she envied people who could just be .
There were three discreet knocks at the door.
"Now, that's gotta be room service," Susan said, reversing course. A check through the peephole confirmed her guess, and Susan opened the door for the waiter, who wheeled in a dining cart featuring a centerpiece of lavender and white orchids.
"Crab cake appetizer, lobster bisque, club sandwich
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with extra bacon, fries, avocado-and-mango salad, hazelnut cheesecake, and a Coke," he enumerated, lifting silver covers off various dishes and setting them down on the dining room table. "Can I get you anything else, miss?"
"No, that's fine, thanks." Susan scribbled her signature on the check, added a generous tip, and let the waiter out. She turned to Anna, red-faced. "Like I said, you caught me in a major pig-out. So now you have to help me eat."
"I'm not hungry," Anna protested.
"Come on. Save me from humiliation."
Anna laughed. "Okay, sure. I'll call it dessert."
They sat down together. The waiter had assumed the order was for two people, so extra plates had been provided. Anna took a plate and a section of the club sandwich and bit into it. "Delicious. So, what did you do besides go shopping?"
"Nothing." Susan cut into the crab cakes. "Cammie wanted to go club-hopping tonight, but I'm still kind of jet-lagged, so I bowed out."
"That was smart."
"I'm okay around alcohol, Anna."
"I never said you weren't."
"It's the tone. You sound just like Mom." She licked some mayonnaise from her pinkie.
"Do I?" Anna felt stricken.
"No, I'm sorry." Susan reached over to squeeze Anna's hand. "God, why do I do that? I get so defensive around you sometimes."
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"Maybe that's how I make you feel," Anna said guiltily.
Susan shrugged and cut another bite of crab cake. "What can I tell you? You've got it. Mom's got it. And I don't. Guys love it. It's one of the reasons Dad fell in love with her."
Anna rea
ched for Susan's Coke. "Speaking of. I was supposed to ask you to call him."
"I told you, Anna, I don't want to see him. Or speak to him."
"Okay, fine, you don't like him, I got that. But he's trying to change. Why can't you give him a chance?"
"Because."
"'Because'? What kind of answer is 'because'?"
"Did it ever occur to you, little sister, that I might know some things you don't know about Daddy dearest? And that for once I might be protecting you instead of the other way around?"
No, such a thing had never occurred to her. "What things?"
Susan waved her hand dismissively. "Forget it. Eat. Then come look at the cute clothes Cammie talked me into buying. We have to go wild this weekend so I can show 'em off. In fact, come see them now."
Susan led Anna into the bedroom and showed off her purchases--a sleeveless mauve Prada blouse with ruffles, an orange Marc Jacobs jacket with oversized buttons, a Diane von Furstenberg wraparound dress in a tiger print, and an Ann Demeulemeester skirt that
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Anna couldn't quite figure out. It gathered at the waist and was cut at an extreme angle at the hem--where could anyone wear such a thing? Her sister's style was suddenly all over the map.
"I've turned into a fashion schizoid," Susan confessed. "But you have to admit, these black pants are hot." She slipped into them to show Anna. "What do you think?"
They were lacy and partially sheer. Anna could never wear a garment remotely like them. Well, not never. She'd worn much cheesier pants on New Year's Eve, when she'd been with Ben and purchased the world's sleaziest faux-leopard pants at the Hustler sex emporium on Sunset Boulevard, then worn them to the back-lot party at Warner Brothers. The memory made her wince.
"What's wrong?" Susan asked. "Are they that bad?"
"No, they're great," she told her sister, trying to sound enthusiastic.
Susan laughed. She went to her nightstand for her cigarettes. "You're full of crap, Anna. You hate these pants. You're such a little prep girl."
"You used to be, too."
Susan torched her cigarette and took a long drag. "The difference is, it never really suited me." She regarded Anna thoughtfully. "Don't you ever do anything wrong, Anna? Don't you ever just want to break out and get crazy?"
"Does ten minutes in Noah's bungalow count?"
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"Saving his sole, so to speak?" Susan grinned, replying with a rhetorical question. "Cammie filled me in on his, er, predilection. Anyway, that doesn't count."
" Very ick," Anna said, laughing. "And he seemed so normal!"
"You want normal, Anna, go out with the same boring preppie types you went out with back in New York. It's okay to go a little nuts, you know."
I did on New Year's Eve, Anna thought . With Ben. And all I got for it was a broken heart.
Anna tried to make light of Susan's remark. "So you think I should have let Noah slime my toes?"
"Hardly. You know what I mean."
Suddenly Anna wanted to tell Susan about Ben--she remembered a time when the two sisters had had no secrets from each other. Besides, hadn't Susan done many stupid and crazy things in her life? She'd be the first one to admit that. Why was it better to keep silent and let Susan believe that it was only the older sister who'd use bad judgment? They went back to the table to eat, and Anna took the plunge: she told Susan all about Ben.
"Wow. Who woulda thunk it?" Susan said. She lit another cigarette and tossed the match onto an uneaten crab cake. "That sucks, sweetie."
"Live and learn, I guess."
"Guys can be such shits."
Anna sighed. "Yeah."
Susan pulled her legs up and sat Indian-style at the table--a habit that Anna remembered from when they
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were kids.
"Mom hated it when you sat like that," Anna recalled. "She said it wasn't ladylike."
"Mom's seven thousand miles away; I think it's unlikely she's gonna find out. That is, unless you tell her."
"I don't tell her anything."
"Good. Anyway, Anna, how do you know this guy Ben isn't telling the truth? About why he split that night, I mean?"
"Sooz, come on. He abandoned me at three in the morning because he had to go save the life of some mystery celebrity girl. Does that strike you as plausible?"
Susan reached for a glass of ice water and drained it before she spoke. "No. Which is exactly what makes me think he could be telling the truth. I mean, from what you said, the guy is smart, right? Smart, smooth, hot. A guy like that could definitely make up a better lie."
Anna shook her head. "I sincerely doubt it."
"Take it from me. Ben could be telling you the truth."
Anna went to the open window, though there was nothing to see outside except a few lights along the walkway through the bungalows. She could smell jasmine and orange blossoms, flowers that bloomed year-round in Los Angeles, and inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself down. Why, why, why did it always come back to Ben? The image of him and his new girlfriend flooded her brain again. She so desperately wanted not to care!
"It doesn't matter anymore," she finally said, then turned back to her sister. "I'm over him. He's seeing
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someone else. And so am I."
Susan laughed. "Liar."
"I am! I was just with him, in fact. All afternoon. His name is Adam. He's the anti-Ben."
"I didn't mean that you're lying about seeing someone else, sweetie," Susan explained. "I meant that you're lying about being over Ben."
Anna felt her neck flush; she hoped that Susan couldn't see. "No, I'm not."
"Bull. I can smell the sexual tension clear across the room. You seriously need to get laid. I'm telling you, we should go partying with Cammie and Dee this weekend. Your assignment is to pick the hottest guy you meet and jump his bones."
When Susan got like this, it made Anna crazy. "First of all, that is terrible advice," Anna snapped. "Second of all, I told you, I'm going to a spa with Sam this weekend. I'm working on a screenplay for a short film, remember? And you were going with me--unless you've changed your mind. Third of all, Cammie and Dee are not high on my people-I-want-to-spend-my-precious-time-on-earth-with list. And fourth of all, meaningless sex is just so ... so meaningless!"
"How would you know?" Susan asked laconically. "You've never had it."
"I don't need to have it to know."
"There's only one reason you'd say that, Anna. Because you already know the one guy it would be meaningful with."
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Okay, now Susan was making her really nuts.
"If you mean Ben, you're wrong," Anna insisted. "Did your new best friend Cammie happen to mention that he used to be her boyfriend?"
"No." Susan seemed to falter a beat, which Anna found satisfying. "Really?"
"And did your other new best friend Dee Young happen to mention that she had a one-night stand with him?"
Susan's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"What an asshole. I take back everything I said. The boy is a player."
"Thank you."
"But this other guy ... what's his name?"
"Adam."
"Adam," Susan repeated. "What do you like about him?"
Anna thought long and hard. "He's nice," she said finally.
"Nice?" Susan hooted. "Nice? A new kitten is nice. Your third-grade teacher was nice. That guy you went to the ninth-grade prom with? Paul Brody, the one who looked like an albino, whose parents own half of the Upper East Side? He was nice. But you told me he drooled when he kissed. Anna, you're almost eighteen years old. You don't need nice!"
"Please, that's such a cliché," Anna insisted. "A guy can be hot without being a bad boy. Adam is terrific. He's smart. He's honest--"
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"He'd make an excellent social worker, then," Susan opined. "Maybe there's an opening for him at Hazelden. But as a boyfriend? You'll be bored to death within three
months. And that's why you came out here, isn't it? You don't need to be bored to death anymore!"
"Fine," Anna shot back. "And you don't need to go club hopping with Ben's former flames."
Susan looked defiant. "What do you expect me to do, Anna, never party again?"
"It's not like eating and sleeping, Susan. It's not something you have to do."
"Sorry. Once again your older sister is going to disappoint you."
Anna sighed. Sometimes Susan simply exhausted her. "Fine. Do whatever you want."
"You say it, but you don't mean it," Susan said.
"That's right. Because I love you. And I'd prefer it if you stuck around for the next fifty or sixty years."
Susan looked away. She was quiet for a long time. "Okay," she finally said. "You win. Forget Cammie and Dee. I'll come to Palm Springs with you."
"Great." Anna could feel her shoulders unhinging from her earlobes. At least she wouldn't have to worry about Susan for a few more days. She went to her sister and gave her a quick hug. "We'll have fun. You'll see."
Susan tugged on a lock of Anna's hair. "Probably not. But I know you're just looking out for me. Can I tell you something, though?"
"Sure."
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"Think about what I said. You can't talk yourself into lusting after someone. And that quiet, steady kind of love--that can wait until middle-age spread sets in."
All the way home Anna did think about what Susan had said. Was she choosing safety over passion, and was she doing it because Ben had hurt her so badly?
She liked Adam. A lot. And she was attracted to him. But Susan was right: Anna didn't dream about ripping Adam's clothes off. Little people didn't bungee jump in her stomach when she thought of him. And no amount of liking him was going to make that happen. Whether it was because she was afraid or just because the chemistry wasn't there, she didn't know. But she did know this: it wasn't fair to Adam.
The question was, What the hell was she going to do about it?
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But .
"L imerence is the early state of love or lust where
one person sees another as perfect," Mrs. Breckner explained. "Basically, we're talking about lust. Gatsby lusted after Daisy but called it love. The difference between the two is--"
Mrs. Breckner's lecture was cut short by the bell. Anna sighed. Actually, she would have been interested in hearing what her teacher thought the difference between those two things was. She'd been up all night, tossing and turning, trying to figure out what, if anything, she should say to Adam. Maybe all she felt for Ben was lust, and it was coloring her judgment.
