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Alyssa gave me a cursory glance, then decided I wasn’t worth acknowledging. I’ve had this experience plenty of times with my mother, when press people or fans assume I’m just her assistant, and don’t bother shaking my hand or even making eye contact with me. I end up being invisible. Not that it really bothers me, but it does tell you something about a person. Alyssa Goldberg had quickly achieved “not a nice person” status in my book.
Jacinta was too kind to let me dangle there in silence for too long, so she quickly said, “And this is my dear friend Naomi Rye.”
“Hi,” Alyssa said with as little effort as possible. “Jacinta, it’s so fabulous to see you out here. Do you think you’ll come to the city soon?”
“Well,” Jacinta said, “I’ve finally got a September coming up with a clear schedule. For once, I won’t be traveling everywhere. I can actually go to Fashion Week. I suppose you’ll be there, too?”
“I always am,” Alyssa said. “We really should talk—I could use a good guest correspondent with a really fresh, young approach.” She handed Jacinta her card. Jacinta accepted it almost reverently, handling it like a precious jewel.
After Alyssa bid us farewell—in other words, air-kissed Jacinta and ignored me—Jacinta looked at me gleefully.
“Vogue magazine!” she whispered. “Can you believe it?”
“You’re really getting influential,” I said.
“Oh, I’ve only just begun,” she replied. I believed her. I didn’t know how much of Jacinta Trimalchio was real and how much was fake, but she was clearly a force to be reckoned with. I’ll admit it—I was impressed at how snooty-snoots like Alyssa Goldberg and Ainsley Devereaux fell to pieces when they met her. A little over-the-top, but that’s part of what made her so fun to be around. As if she were reading my mind, Jacinta said, “About last night. . .”
“Yes?”
“Remember when I asked if you could have Delilah Fairweather over so that I could meet her?”
“Of course.”
“Did you mean it when you said that was all right, love?”
“Sure. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, goodie!” Jacinta clapped her hands together like a little girl and let out an excited mini-shriek. I laughed at her childlike enthusiasm. It was kind of adorable.
“Jeez,” I said. “You must really be a Delilah Fairweather fan.”
“Oh,” Jacinta said. “You have no idea.”
As we drove home, I asked Jacinta if she had a boyfriend. “No time for a boyfriend,” she said.
“No time for anything, really, but my work. I guess you could say I’ve been waiting for the right one for a long time.”
I thought of Jeff, wondering if he could be the right one. Then I told myself I should calm down. We’d only kissed a few times.
Jacinta pulled into her driveway, worriedly pointing out the divots in the grass where drunk girls’ high heels had sunk into the sod.
“I’ll have to get a lawn man over to fix that before I meet Delilah,” she said.
“I thought we were having her over to my house,” I said. “Oh, to start. But of course I’ll want to bring her over to see my house, too.”
“Of course.”
“I hope she likes it,” Jacinta said wistfully. “Do you think she’ll like it?”
“I don’t know her well enough to say,” I said. “But I can’t imagine anyone not being impressed by this house. And by you.”
She gave me one of her signature big, tight hugs. “Thank you, love. I am so glad we’re friends.”
“Me too,” I said, and I meant it. My summers in East Hampton were usually awfully lonely. But this year, within the space of a couple days, I had acquired two friends and a maybe-possibly-not-to-be-a-dork-but-it-could-happen boyfriend guy.
Jacinta and I put each other’s numbers in our phones. Then I walked home in the afternoon sunshine, leaving Jacinta behind to poke around in her rented lawn, a look of concern on her pretty face. I wondered why she cared so much.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
CHAPTER SIX
After I left Jacinta examining her lawn, I went into the house and sequestered myself in my room, curling up with a Noam Chomsky book my Honors US History II teacher had recommended the previous year. I finished it in two hours and moved on to an old favorite, Anne of Green Gables. After that, I went through another old favorite, the L. M. Montgomery book Emily of New Moon. I fell asleep with an almost-finished Emily of New Moon clutched in my hand, my clothes still on.
I woke up the next morning to the buzz of a text from my mother. It read, “Emergency meeting at HQ—tell no one.”
I rolled my eyes and texted back, “Oh, so I shouldn’t post it on Facebook?”
“That’s not funny,” came the response.
My mother and I have slightly different senses of humor.
I put the phone down and rolled over to go back to sleep. I was drifting off quickly when my phone buzzed again. I was prepared to fire off a bitchy retort to my mother, when I saw that the text was from Jacinta. It was an 813 number. I wondered where 813 was, anyway.
Have you called Delilah yet? the text read.
Not yet, I texted back. But I will soon.
I’ll call her now, I texted. For some reason, I didn’t want to do anything to make Jacinta unhappy—even if what would make her unhappy was waiting a completely reasonable amount of time to meet Delilah Fairweather.
T H A N K Y O U T H A N K Y O U T H A N K Y O U XOXOXOXOXO <3, came the response.
I’m not the biggest fan of talking on the phone, unless it’s to Skags, because my phone voice gets kind of high-pitched and weird. I’m sure there’s some complex, deep-seated psychological reason for this phenomenon, but as yet, I can only attribute it to performance anxiety. I hate saying the wrong thing, because then I revisit it in my head over and over again for days after. I don’t know where I get it from, because my dad seems to have no trouble barking orders on or off the basketball court, and my mother has probably never wasted a single moment of time feeling embarrassed over anything she’s said, no matter how dumb.
I called Delilah’s cell. It rang a few times and she picked up, sounding kind of out of it.
“Helllllooooo?” she said lazily.
“Hey, Delilah, it’s Naomi,” I said in my high-pitched phone squeak. “Naomi Rye.”
“Well, of coooourse it is,” she said in her breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “You’re the only Naomi I know. The number one Naomi!” She giggled through a yawn. “Sorry. I get a little loopy when I sleep late.”
“I was wondering if you’d like to come by today,” I said. “My mother’s gone to the city, and I thought you could meet my neighbor, Jacinta Trimalchio. She threw this amazing party the other night.”
“Ooh,” Delilah said. “Oooooooooh. Jacinta Trimalchio. I would love to meet her. Was her party as fabulous as everyone said?”
“It was really fun,” I said, thinking of Jeff and the Ferris wheel.
“Well, of course for you it was, you naughty thing,” Delilah said. “By the way, have you talked to Jeff?”
“Not since the night before last,” I said.
“That’s no way for a gentleman to act!” she said, sounding playfully indignant. “You don’t make out with a girl and then not at least text her the next day. I must speak to him about this immediately.”
“No, no—it’s no big deal,” I said quickly. And at that exact moment, my phone buzzed with an incoming text from Jeff.
Want to come to the beach? it read. No Ferris wheels, but I’ll buy you a lobster roll. They sold lobster rolls at the beach snack shack in East Hampton for, like, sixteen dollars a pop, but it was at the public beach. I guessed Jeff’s rented house didn’t come with access to a private stretch of beach. “You’ll never guess who just texted me,” I told Delilah.
“Maybe he’s . . . magical,” I said dramatically. We giggled together, just like Skags and I did when something cracked us up. Well, almost like that.
“So it’s what, ten?” I said. “You want to come over for lunch at, like, one o’clock?”
“That should give me enough time to pick out something fabulous to wear,” Delilah said. “And to get myself together.”
After we hung up, I texted Jeff that I couldn’t do the beach but might be able to hang out later in the day.
I demand to know why you shall not be accompanying me on a sunbathing excursion, he wrote.
I shall be otherwise occupied with a ladies’ lunch, I texted back.
Which ladies, Madame?
Madame Jacinta and Madame Delilah, sir.
Well, should your schedule permit, please do contact me later, dear lady.
Perhaps I shall. Perhaps I shall.
Despite the good looks and the money, he was really kind of a dork. I liked that about him. I don’t feel comfortable with guys who aren’t at least a little bit weird.
Not even two minutes after I stopped texting Jeff, which was not even three minutes after I stopped talking with Delilah, which was not even ten minutes after I got off the phone with Jacinta, the doorbell rang. Even though I was still wearing my dress from the previous day and obviously hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth, I decided to answer the door. I figured there was probably only a 1 percent chance it was Jeff, anyway.
Outside my mother’s front door, I found a very jittery Jacinta standing and shifting her weight from one leg to the other, like a little kid waiting in line to see Santa. She was wearing some kind of old-fashioned white peignoir with a long white silk nightgown underneath, and her white-blond bob was all messy and unkempt. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed in 1962 or something. I opened the door and grinned at her.
“She’s coming over at one,” I said.
Jacinta let out a whoop and actually danced a little jig. I laughed out loud—she was so unself-conscious in her delight. I mean, the girl was wearing white fluffy bunny slippers on someone’s front lawn in the Hamptons in the blazing midmorning sun, and she clearly couldn’t have cared less if anyone saw her.
Then Jacinta rushed past me into the house and started going over everything with a critical eye, as if she were investigating a murder scene.
“Mm-hmm,” she’d say while examining a set of family photographs hanging on the wall. Or “ah” when glancing over the decor in the dining room.
“Uh, Jacinta,” I said tentatively. “What are you doing?”
“Just getting a feel for the place, love,” she said distractedly. “You won’t mind if I have flowers brought over, will you?”
“No, I mean, flowers are always nice,” I said, confused. “Are they for my mom or something?”
“Oh no,” Jacinta said, as if the very idea were unimaginable. “Oh no, they’re for Delilah. She loves red and white roses.”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course.” I didn’t ask how Jacinta knew what kind of flowers a total stranger loved. I assumed she’d seen it on Facebook or something.
She whipped her cell phone out from the pocket of her peignoir and called up a florist to order six dozen roses—three dozen white, three dozen red. There was a feverish look in her eye.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m perfectly fine!” she said unconvincingly. “Just want to make sure everything’s right. You wouldn’t mind if I had my housekeeper bring over cookies, would you? She’s over today, and she usually cooks a few days’ worth of meals for me. . . . It wouldn’t be any trouble to have her bake cookies—I ask for them all the time anyway.”
“Just as long as she doesn’t bake them in my mother’s kitchen,” I said. “Anne Rye is a territorial animal when it comes to anyone else touching her stove, unless she’s hired them herself.”
“She’ll do them at my house,” Jacinta said. “I’ll have her run them over just as soon as they’re done. You said Delilah’s coming at one, yes? I suppose I ought to have the housekeeper bake them so that they’re out of the oven at twelve thirty, and they’ll be just the right temperature at one. But what if Delilah is early? If it’s twelve forty-five, the cookies might still be too hot. And if she’s late, they might start to cool off too much.”
She was pacing, talking to herself almost as if I weren’t even there. I had never seen a girl so nervous about meeting another girl.
“I have to go home and get ready,” she said suddenly. “Oh, Naomi, thank you so much!” She threw her arms around me and hugged me close. I hoped I didn’t smell too bad, pre-shower.
“Hey, Jacinta?” I asked before she could leave.
“Yes?”
“Where’s 813?”
She cocked her head and looked at me curiously. “Why do you ask?”
I was a little taken aback. “Um, I don’t know, I was just wondering when I saw your phone number.”
“Oh, my phone number,” she said, chuckling. “When I was fourteen, my parents thought I should get a dose of real American living. So they sent me to boarding school in Florida. It was awful. I was back with them in Europe after three months! But I kept the cell phone, and I use it whenever I’m in the States.”
“Oh,” I said, thinking that I’d never heard of anyone being sent to boarding school in Florida.
And then, as quickly as she’d come over, she was gone. I watched her dash across the lawn, practically accosting a woman who was carrying cleaning supplies from a humble-looking car into the house.
I showered and put on another one of the dresses Mom had gotten me at Marc Jacobs. This one was a simple black shift, and my mother probably would have told me it was too dark and sophisticated for daytime entertaining, but thankfully she was still stuck in New York having her company emergency. I went into the kitchen and put on one of the prototype aprons my mother’s company was considering releasing after “evaluating the success of our inaugural product line launch” or something similar my mother had babbled at me when showing me the aprons. It was made of some kind of super-fabulous organic white cotton and had a line drawing of my mother’s smiling face emblazoned on the front.
I may not be Anne Rye, but I’m still her daughter and I’ve picked up a few things in the kitchen over the years. I sort of had to—she used to tote me around to her catering gigs like a combination personal assistant/trophy, dressing me in clothes that matched her own and teaching me about all the cooking and prep work. People thought it was so cute when the caterer’s eight-year-old daughter stood behind a warming tray, spooning out apple compote or mashed potatoes or whatever was on the menu. When Mom opened the cupcake bakery in New York, sometimes I’d help out in the kitchen. That was in the early days, back when my mother did all her own handiwork, before she became a Brand Name™ and could hire loads of people to do things for her.
Still, I’m no slouch in the kitchen. And I make a mean mac and cheese—not that boxed Kraft stuff, but the real deal. As in, I use three kinds of cheese: Pecorino Romano, Gruyère, and sharp white cheddar cheese. And my mother taught me long ago that fresh pasta is almost always better than dried, boxed, or bagged pasta, so she either makes her own for dinner parties or keeps some fresh pasta from a specialty store on hand. She happened to have fresh elbow macaroni from Citarella in the fridge, so I was in luck. Throw in some nutmeg, pepper, milk, flour, bits of bread (yes, bread—makes it soooo good), salt and butter, and boom! I had whipped up a truly kickass version of a classic American treat. At the last minute, I decided to take some bacon my mother had bought from the butcher, fry it up, slice it into little pieces, and add it to the mixture. I did this for two reasons: one, bacon makes everything better; and two, my mother is disdainful of the trend in which people add bacon to things that don’t require bacon (like ice cream, milk shakes, salads, you name it—people are nuts for bacon these days). Then I cut up some
watermelon into cubes and tossed it with some balsamic vinaigrette, arugula, and feta.
The doorbell rang at eleven thirty, and the florist and her assistants marched in with three big vases of red roses and three big vases of white roses. I didn’t know what to do with them, so I just kind of spread them around the first floor. I even put one vase in the bathroom, because why not? The bell rang again at noon, while the macaroni was gently bubbling in the oven. I took off my apron and went to the door to find Jacinta wringing her hands on the front steps.
“Jesus,” I said when I opened the door. “You look amazing.”
She was wearing purple eye makeup that set off her enormous green eyes, and a beautiful mint-green sleeveless dress that consisted of finely wrought lace over a satiny sheath. Little, slouchy green leather elf boots and lavender fishnets completed the look. It was delicate and sweet and sexy and hip.
“She’s not here yet,” Jacinta said, looking at me with mournful eyes. “She’s not coming, is she?”
“It’s only noon,” I reminded her, ushering her into the house. “She’s coming at one. Did you decide about the cookies?”
She looked at me blankly. Then something seemed to register.
“Oh, the snickerdoodles,” she said. “Delilah’s favorites. They’re coming at twelve forty-five.”
I put a hand on each of her arms and looked up at her. I’m not the type of girl who touches people a lot, but this girl was a serial hugger, and I figured I wasn’t crossing any boundaries. “Jacinta,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m freaking out,” she whispered.
I steered her over to the couch. “Lay down,” I ordered. “Or lie down. I never know which one it is.”
“I don’t know, either,” she said faintly, obeying me.
I made a mental note to check my SAT book. That was exactly the kind of trick they’d probably use to make you lose points.