The problem being, even with all those options, I still couldn’t find anything to wear for my second date with Jason.
“Simone, I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I really think you should go with a Jackie look,” Brad said the following Thursday, the morning of my second date with Jason. “I’m not talking her White House days when she was First Lady. I’m talking when she was married to the Greek billionaire.” He pulled out a very colorful, very flowy maxi dress. “Can’t you just see her wearing this on that giant yacht he owned? Kicking back with a martini? Actually, I think Jackie was more a champagne kind of woman—”
“Uh, that’s very nice, Brad, but I kind of think it might make me look like a couch,” I said.
“Fine. If you want to be like that,” he sniffed, all put out.
I flopped down on a pink velvet chaise lounge. “I’ll just grab something out of my closet when I get home. It’ll be fine.”
“Okay, (a) you don’t have a closet,” Nicola said, “you live in an attic, remember? And (b) don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t have enough experience doing this to just grab something on the fly. If you were the Stuck-Up Popular Girl in a rom-com, who was about to get her comeuppance when the Cool Indie Girl showed her up at the prom, then, yeah, maybe, but you’re not.”
It was great to have a best friend who had no problem telling it like it was. Sometimes. This, however, did not feel like one of those times. “Fine, but seeing that I’ve tried on every single dress in this store, I don’t really have any other options.”
As Nicola and Brad looked at each other, she gave a slight nod.
“Not every dress in the store,” he said. He walked back to his office-slash-closet and came out holding the robin’s-egg-blue dress.
“What?! Where’d that come from? I thought someone bought it!” I cried.
“Someone did buy it,” Nicola said. “Me.”
“Okay, I’m confused.”
She took it from Brad and held it out toward me. “I bought it for you,” she said. “I was going to hold on to it and give it to you for your birthday, but I think you could use it now.”
I looked at her. My multicolored-hair, multipierced, tell-it-like-it-is BFF. Sure, she could be annoying sometimes—like, say, when, because she knew me better than anyone, she called me out on stuff that I thought I was doing a decent job of hiding. But underneath her sarcasm and dry humor was a ginormous heart. One that, if you looked at it up close, was probably striped and polka-dotted. I felt my eyes fill up. “You are—”
“I know, I know,” she interrupted, waving her hand. “You don’t have to say it. I get it.”
A ginormous heart, and a phobia of any sort of mushiness. I was assuming it was the English part of her.
“But if you’re not willing to try it on now, I’m going to have to break up with you,” she said. “Because I had to fight Lady GaGantuan for this. He wanted to buy it for some drag queen who dresses up like Kim Kardashian.” She shuddered. “Which, seeing that Kim Kardashian already looks like a drag queen, must be a very scary sight.”
I took it from her. “I’m putting it on. I’m ready,” I said with a smile.
Brad clapped. “Omigod—this is just so ‘movie moment’!”
As I stepped out of my clothes in the dressing room, this time I didn’t avert my eyes. Not only that, but I actually smiled at myself, which, had there been security cameras in there, would have probably looked pretty stupid. Chances were I was never going to be a size 2 or 4. Maybe not even a size 6. But I didn’t care. I’d rather be a healthy size 8 or 10 with a booty and boobs any day of the week than some hungry-looking skinny chick. As I stepped into the dress and began to zip it up, I waited for it to stop but it didn’t. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room, but it definitely fit. When it was zipped, I stood back. The blue of the dress against my pale skin and dark bob totally worked. Did I look French? I had no idea. All I knew was that I looked like . . . me.
“There’s no reason to be nervous,” I whispered to myself as I sat on the couch later, waiting for Max to get ready so we could leave for the gallery. After Jason’s “hey” text, I had planned on waiting a decent amount of time before texting him back—about an hour—but broke down after four and a half minutes. After that, I hunkered down with my The Man Who Loved Women DVD and a bag of baby carrots (the only thing that was in danger of happening to me with that, if I binged and ate the entire bag, was turning orange—a much better fate than breaking out on my chin from sugar) to wait for him to make the next move.
I was only five minutes into the movie when my phone rang. I was so surprised Jason had gotten back to me so quickly—and not just with a text!—that I forgot to be nervous and ended up having a perfectly natural conversation with him, during which not only did I manage to avoid any sort of awkward silences, but I also made him laugh. Four times. Actually, it was more like four and a half, but the last one was kind of a laugh/cough combination, so I decided not to count it fully. When he finally asked me—fifteen minutes and twenty-three seconds into the call (not like I was paying attention)—if I wanted to do something, I was glad that I was able to at least wait until the entire sentence had left his mouth before saying yes.
“Cool. So any ideas about what you might want to do?” he asked.
“Well, there’s an opening at this gallery where my brother works on Thursday night,” I said nonchalantly. “This famous photographer named Zooey Woodston. Maybe you know her? Kinda supermodelish? Takes pictures of her own butt? Anyway, it should be pretty good. There’s a reception from six to eight,” I rambled. “Over in Culver City on Venice Boulevard. There’s parking on the side streets.” I cringed. “Not that I’ve done a lot of research about it or anything.”
“That sounds cool.”
“I thought it could be good ‘cause it’s . . . cultural.” Actually, that wasn’t true. The reason it had seemed good was because Nicola and my roommates would be there, and then she could watch me with him and give me pointers afterward.
“Pictures of butts are cultural?” Jason asked.
“The way she does them? Oh yeah. Absolutely,” I said. “Her photos make very strong sociological and political statements.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Despite the fact that I had discovered that kissing most definitely did not suck, I still wasn’t sure I was ready for the PDDH (“Post-Date Drive Home,” explained Nicola), where I’d spend the time freaking out about what I’d do if he tried to do more than kiss me—i.e., put his hands in places that no one put their hands other than the woman at Macy’s who was fitting me for a bra. I didn’t even want to think about what Max would do if he knew about that possibility.
Because I was so late to the game with the kissing, sometimes I felt like I was in the remedial class of Male/Female Stuff. There was a part of me that wanted to make up for lost time now that I had kind of a tutor, and get up to speed on the stuff that most girls my age were doing. If only so that I wouldn’t feel like a total idiot when I was eavesdropping on their conversations from various bathroom stalls around school. I didn’t want to be AP-level advanced, like Erika Sandler, who, rumor had it, knew in a very close, personal way members of more than a few Castle Heights varsity sports teams. I just wanted to be . . . normal. Whatever that meant. But that being said, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for all the stuff that seemed to make up “normal” at my school.
Which is why, when Jason asked me if I wanted him to pick me up—even though him going from Santa Monica to Venice would be out of the way—I told him not to worry about it and that I’d get a ride with my brother. And then I went on about how, in this day and age, I felt it was imperative that we all do our part to conserve oil whenever we could and that if Los Angeles ever got their act together and got a decent public-transportation system up and running, it would be a much better place to live.
Going separately but not bringing my own car was perfect. If the date seemed to be going well, then, when the opening was over, I could tell my friends that I’d just catch a ride home with Jason (although I could already tell that my brother would probably come up with at least five reasons why that wasn’t a good idea). And if it wasn’t going well, I could go back with Max—having to listen the whole time about how, while he wasn’t religious or anything, it was better this way and that I should strongly consider taking an abstinence pledge.
“He’s just a guy,” I continued whispering as I sat on the couch. “Two arms. Two legs. A penis.” I cringed. “Backspace on that last part. Just make sure not to look at his lips, and you’ll be fine—”
“Who are you talking to?” a voice asked from behind me.
I whipped around to see Blush standing in the doorway. “No one,” I said quickly. “I was just . . . reciting a poem. It’s my form of meditation.”
He gave me a look. Without even saying anything, he got right to the heart of it. How did he do that?
“Okay, fine,” I admitted as I slunk down. “I was talking to myself.”
He nodded. “That’s cool. I do that all the time,” he said as he walked over and sat in the chair across from me. “What were you talking about?”
“I was telling myself that there’s no reason to be nervous. You know, on my date.”
He shrugged. “That’s good. ‘Cause there’s not. But like we talked about, just stay away from the what-are-you-thinking-about-right-now? question.”
I nodded. Blush had turned into my go-to guy in terms of all the everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-guys-but-were-afraid-to-ask-for-fear-of-sounding-stupid questions I had. “Right, right.” I wished I had a notebook like Cookie.
Through him I had learned that asking a guy, “What are you thinking about right now?” was like holding a stake in front of a vampire; that the reason they left the toilet seat up is because of their short attention spans; and that being able to sit in one position on the couch and play the same video game for five hours had to do with that same cavemanlike save-the-world-and-win-at-all-costs thing as wanting to be the one to contact the girl. And also through him I had learned that it was possible to be friends with a guy and not freak out and worry that you had committed a crime punishable by death if you mistakenly burped or—on one occasion that I kept trying very hard to push out of my head—farted in front of them (thank you, brussels sprouts).
Although his shyness was still a problem in large groups, when you got Blush one on one and he trusted you, he was really funny. The kind of quick wit that you see on the best TV shows—mostly cable. If my dad’s show was actually funny, and if they hired writers who were actually talented, I totally would’ve pushed Blush to write a sample episode to see if he could get a job. And his puppets were amazing. Completely lifelike and detailed. When he put on a show for me up in the attic one afternoon, he was so good with the voices that I was fully transported from the house in Venice to South Central L.A. I was so into it, I stopped hearing the shrieks of the sorority girls on the TV in the living room. At least until Noob started shouting, “Amber! No! Don’t go in there! The killer is waiting for you!”
I never really saw Blush get all weird and defensive and clam up unless I said things like, “I can’t believe you don’t have a girlfriend.” I understood where he was coming from, though, because I did the same thing when people said that kind of stuff to me. Technically, it was meant to be a compliment (the unsaid part of the sentence being “. . . because you’re so awesome”), but I always took it as a criticism and made the unsaid part be “. . . there must be something seriously wrong with you that I can’t see at this moment but must come out when you’re around a guy.”
But with Blush, it was true—I couldn’t believe he didn’t have a girlfriend. Not only was he hot, sweet, and funny, but he was also great at anything electronic-related, like how to fix the volume control on an iPhone which, for some reason, I continually managed to screw up and then forgot how to fix even though he showed me over and over.
Blush deserved an awesome girlfriend. That was a tall order to fill. Not just figuratively, because he was so awesome, but literally as well. Because if he ended up with someone short—like under five-two—it would look very strange.
“You’ll be fine,” he went on. “But in case you start to freak out, just come find me and I’ll talk you down.”
“You’re going to the opening?” I asked.
He nodded.
“With the guys?”
“No. With . . . Aleka.”
I sat up. “Aleka as in that gorgeous Hawaiian girl who works at Coffee Culture on Abbot Kinney? That Aleka?”
He blushed as he nodded.
“The one who’s pre-med at UC Berkeley and who plans on devoting her life to discovering a cure for autism? And is a better surfer than Narc?”
He nodded again.
I couldn’t believe it. Blush had a date. With a girl. A very pretty girl. Who he had never mentioned to me before. “Oh. That’s nice,” I said. “So it’s a date.”
He blushed deeper. “I didn’t say it was a date. We’re just . . . going together.”
“Are you going in the same car?”
He shrugged.
“Then it’s a date.”
“Why does that make it a date? You and Jason are going in separate cars, and it’s a date. If you and I were going in the same car to the opening, would that make it a date?”
Now I was the one who blushed. “We’re not talking about me and you. We’re talking about you and Aleka. Your date.” Okay, why was I getting so upset about this? Had I not just been thinking about the fact that, because he was so cool, Blush didn’t just deserve a date, but a girlfriend?
“Why are you getting all upset?”
“I’m not getting upset,” I replied. Not only was I getting upset, I was lying about it. “I’m just being clear. Clarity is very important.”
“You’re right. It is.”
“Plus, why would I be upset? I have no reason to be upset. It’s a free country. You can go to a gallery opening with whoever you want,” I continued.
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“But what’s making me upset is the fact that you think I’m upset,” I went on. “Because I’m not.”
“Yeah. We’ve established that.”
“Good,” I said as I stood up and marched out of the room, as fast as my heels would allow me.
“Okay, so let’s go over this again,” Max shouted as we drove down Venice Boulevard in his Volvo later toward the gallery, making it so the little bit of maintenance I had put into my hair was completely whipped out by the wind coming from his open windows. “What do you do if he offers to get you a soda?”
I turned to him. “Huh?” As much as I was trying to put it out of my head, I couldn’t stop thinking about Blush and Aleka. She wasn’t even tall. She was my height.
“A soda, Simone. What do you do if he offers to get you a soda? We’ve been over this.”
I rolled my eyes. “I thank him and tell him that while that’s very generous, I’ll get my own, so that way he doesn’t have a chance to slip some sort of weird drug into it.”
He nodded. “Very good. And what else are you going to drop into the conversation?”
“That I have a black belt in karate and recently completed a forty-hour self-defense course. Even though that’s not the truth.” Kind of like saying that if you were a guy and you were going with a girl to a gallery opening in the same car but it wasn’t a date wasn’t the truth, either.
He nodded. “Excellent. And if he—”
“Okay, you know what? You need to stop,” I interrupted.
“Okay, okay.” We drove in silence for a bit. “Did you bring a whistle by any chance? I meant
to stop at CVS and get you one—”
“Max, I’m serious. You need to stop this,” I said. “You saw his Facebook page. He’s a totally normal high school junior. Not a serial killer.”
“Do you know how many serial killers look totally normal?” he demanded. “Two words for you: Patrick Bateman from that movie American Psycho.”
“That’s seven words.”
“Whatever.” He sighed. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“How could I? You’re probably not going to let Jason get near me.”
“That’s not what I mean. It’s just that . . . he’s, you know, a . . . guy.”
“And the point that goes along with that would be . . . ?”
“I just don’t want him to pressure you into doing anything you’re not ready to do. Because it’s the ones who look the most normal who are the best at doing that.”
I looked at him.
“Not like I have any experience doing that,” he added nervously.
“You better not.”
“All I’m saying is that if he’s a good guy, he’ll be okay with going slow.”
While I was grateful to have a brother who cared so much about me (and my virginity), this was getting uncomfortable. “Max, I love you, and I totally get what you’re saying, but can this please be the end of the Very Special PSA?” I asked. “’Cause you’re kind of starting to creep me out.”
“Okay. Yes. Probably a good idea we stop here,” he said, swiping at his red face with his hand. “But you hear what I’m saying.”
“I do.”
We went back to being quiet.
“It’s just that sometimes guys lose the ability to think with their heads, and they—” he blurted.
“Max!”
“Okay, okay.”
Turning on the radio helped stop the conversation. As did the sight of the paparazzi when we arrived at the gallery. (“I guess the fact that Ashton Kutcher tweeted about the fact that he just bought a bunch of her prints gave it a boost,” Max said.)
Wicked Jealous: A Love Story Page 22
