It took only a moment for Jeff to follow her back in, and even less time for Ilana to accost him. But Jamie remained confident her magnetism would eventually sway his hesitance, especially when she saw him intermittently watching her (prompting her to dance that much more charismatically). Like metal to a magnet, she honestly thought she had him hooked—had him following each toss of her hair, shake of her hips, desirous stare from other interested parties. She thought this—expected this—yet didn’t turn around to confirm this. Rather than acknowledge him, Jamie believed flirtation was a cat-chase-mouse game. To get him, you had to ignore him. The only way to get something was to give nothing.
And just when she thought she’d won him over, the darnedest thing happened. She didn’t.
But someone else did.
When Jamie finally looked his way, what she saw stung her like a whip to her face. Like everything she knew in life all at once pulled out from under her. For, in the quintessential act of betrayal, she saw Jeff and Ilana. Kissing. Embracing. Making a drunken public spectacle of themselves (and certainly not watching her moves on the platform). Repulsed, enraged, and most of all confused (Jamie was prettier, sexier, bubblier! Who chose a burger over steak?), she stood in disbelief. She simply couldn’t believe her eyes and, unfortunately, wasn’t watching her feet.
For in that moment, Jamie could hear it. The entire club could hear it.
The sound of the bench going flip.
The whole thing happened extremely quickly—the unsturdy rocking back and forth, Jamie’s bending her knees in an attempt to steady it, and finally that scary unsalvageable falling. A falling that culminated with a scene-stoppingly loud crash, bringing Jamie from her high suspension in the air all the way down to the floor, taking everything (the table, the glasses, the alcohol bottles) along with her. There was the distinct shattering of glass (which summoned dramatic screams and gasps, yet fortunately landed nowhere near her) followed by a deafening silence—leaving Jamie frozen on the floor, unable to budge.
As if she were a gunshot victim, a huge crowd quickly gathered (in addition to the thirty or so housemates who’d had the privilege of witnessing her acrobatics up close). Jamie imagined she’d be a laughingstock, though rather than burst out in hysterics, the stares of the horde encircling her seemed to be inquiring, Is that girl okay?
Which was actually a pretty good question—one whose answer even Jamie didn’t know for sure. For, despite her instant tears (triggered less by her fall than emotional distress), she was strangely impervious to the physical pain. She simply lay there on the ground, wishing she could just about die of embarrassment—wishing this night were just a really bad dream. And wishing most of all that people would just stop looking at her.
The club’s cleaning crew appeared then, swiftly moving in to disperse the crowd. Jamie noticed Jeff among them, appearing earnestly concerned, but then retreating a bit too willingly per the crew’s gruff instructions. It was actually Mark who offered his assistance.
“She’s okay, everyone just step back,” he called out with assumed authority. When they obliged, he knelt down beside her. “Are you hurt?” he asked, scanning her body for cuts.
In truth, her ankle was a bit sore and she feared her new Louboutins had taken an irreversible beating, but Jamie merely shook her head—because the kind of hurt she was, no doctor would detect.
“Well, do you want to get out of here?”
Nodding, Jamie took the hand Mark offered out to her, and hobbled around the upturned bench.
I thought you’d never ask, she said to herself.
Chapter Twenty-two
Allison Stern had brought far too much baggage.
Not only that, she’d barely worn half of it.
But sometimes, in life as in luggage, you didn’t end up needing everything you thought you would.
You couldn’t have possibly known at the time—heck, having it along perhaps provided a trivial comfort—yet you could recognize all too well the moment you stopped needing it anymore.
Thus it was with newfound independence that Allison knocked on Brian’s door that final morning—ready to get rid of her deadweight.
“Do you think we can talk?” she asked, entering his dark room and discovering him cramming everything (that had lived all weekend on the floor) into a small duffel bag.
Pausing, clothing in hand, he merely raised an eyebrow.
“Somewhere else maybe?” she added, noting his frustrated expression (no doubt exacerbated by his raging hangover) and wondering if now was really the best time for this. But in actuality, when was there a good time for this kind of conversation? (She’d learned that the where of the equation was certainly not in a confined vehicle.)
Abandoning the duffel without further question, Brian rose to his feet and followed her, attempting to read her body language like someone’s cards in a poker match.
He halted when they’d made it up the steps to an empty living room, though Allison continued to lead him out the door and away from the windows.
“Where are you taking me?” he whined, rubbing his eyes with his fists and squinting away the morning sunlight, whose cheerful intensity Allison suddenly resented.
She didn’t answer, only dragged him on till she was satisfied they were no longer within earshot of anyone. Then she knew she was expected to start talking. But she just looked up at him, inhaling that familiar amalgamation of his cologne with last night’s Patrón—which she’d imagined might repulse her, yet instead served to trigger her sympathy. The silence that followed then seemed to extend indefinitely. Despite being a phenomenal poker player, Brian had absolutely no idea what she was going to say. Allison took a deep breath.
“I feel like, lately, things between us haven’t been...the same,” she began, fiddling with her fingernails. She failed to say the same as what, yet this seemed to suffice in getting her point across.
“Are you serious?” Brian asked, her blunt declaration immediately sobering him. Struck by disbelief, he stared at her hard, as if searching her face for some sign that she was joking (a sign she was this close to giving him), before turning on the defensive. “I thought things were going great.”
“Well...not exactly.” She scrunched her nose as if she were telling him his shirt didn’t work with his pants, rather than that they didn’t work as a couple anymore.
“How so?” he challenged, kicking the driveway’s pebbles as he said this, perhaps to defuse the emotion behind it.
Um...Allison racked her brain for an eloquent way to express that he was immature, insensitive, and the kind of person she could never be with...
“I just think we’re two very different people,” she said instead, wishing he weren’t staring at her so intently, or hanging on her every word like it contained some hidden meaning. “And as much as I hate to admit it, we kind of did rush into this. I mean, the summer was amazing, and I don’t regret anything—”
“But you want to slow things down?” he said, pronouncing the clichéd phrase with the kind of sarcastic smile people use when they really mean the exact opposite.
Growing frustratingly inarticulate, Allison glanced away.
“To be honest, I just came out of a relationship,” she said, aware this trite explanation left much to be desired. But also supposing that, when it’s not what you want to hear, any explanation might have. She gazed at him with an earnestness she hoped could compensate. “I think I should try being single.”
In the manner she knew it would, in the manner she’d expected it to, that word rattled her every nerve. For in her head, it’d sounded right. In theory, it’d sounded necessary. But now, coming from her lips that morning, it sounded frightening. It sounded hasty. It sounded irreversibly wrong.
But unlike the last time, it sounded remarkably better than maintaining an ill-suited relationship for the mere sake of avoiding it. In comparison with what she’d been through, single wasn’t so scary a label anymore.
“So this is it?” Brian
asked, his heartfelt hazel eyes revealing a pain his words never would. And long after his voice had given up, they continued to plead his case.
Lingering there, Allison avoided his gaze. For in it she no longer saw traces of immaturity or jealousy or cruelty; she saw only softness. She saw the guy who had waited around with them at the share house for Jamie’s mom to arrive, who lent Jim a pair of jeans when no one else was willing to, who escorted her home from the club when Josh was trying to make her jealous. In a dopey, desperate trance, his eyes channeled these things: maybe if they engaged her hard enough, long enough, deep enough, they could somehow change her mind. But—with a resolve she hadn’t felt even at the start of their conversation—Allison’s mind was made up.
“This is it,” she echoed with certainty. And they remained there, motionless, until Mark’s car pulled into the driveway. Jamie’s SUV swerved in seconds later (simultaneously swiping the bushes).
“We hit so much traffic!” Jamie squealed, hopping out of the driver’s seat, seemingly oblivious to the fact she was interrupting something. Then—realizing that a lot had happened since they’d gone to get Jamie’s car at the train station—she and Rachel grew silent.
Brian, in a valiant effort to appear casual, raised his arm to Mark in greeting, looked Allison in the eye one final time, and walked away. Out of the driveway, out of her life.
But that was how it had to be.
When her friends requested details, Allison candidly relayed what had happened.
“Wow. Are you okay?” Jamie asked, looking at her like she shouldn’t have been.
Allison nodded. In fact, she was surprised by how okay she felt. Much more okay, even, than when she’d done this the last time. Maybe it was because she’d never loved Brian the way she had Josh (who’d cowardly slipped out of the house this morning without so much as a good-bye). Maybe Brian was merely an ephemeral replacement. Or maybe Allison was just getting stronger.
“I think I will be,” she said, turning around to retrieve her luggage.
As she started for her room and headed up the front steps—those same steps she’d so cautiously ascended months earlier—Allison thought about how far she’d come since the summer. How naive she’d been walking into it. How she never wanted to be that shy, sheltered, dependent girl again. And yet she highly doubted she would be.
There was no being “shy” in a Hamptons share house. When you lived alongside forty-odd other people, you had to get used to being seen at all times, speaking before a large group more often than not, watching indecent behavior happening right in front of you. Throughout the summer, Allison had been forced to get behind the wheel (literally), to handle uncomfortable situations, to exercise her own opinions, to make her voice heard. As a result, her tolerance for randomness had grown considerably stronger, and things didn’t seem to shock her anymore. Life didn’t seem to shock her anymore.
Still, hardened buffer or not, she dreaded the thought of being back there. Doing that: soliciting dates, commanding introductions, buying “going-out clothes” (more realistically, borrowing Jamie’s), and conducting endless small talk with people she hardly knew. Allison hated being back there—she might always hate being back there—but she’d done it before, and she was nearly certain she could do it again.
Trudging back through the common room, she passed by two guys she’d never before seen stretched out on the sofa. Witnessing her futile attempt to transport her trusty rolling suitcase along with pillows and blankets and multiple shopping bags out the front door, they politely rose to their feet.
“Need a hand?” asked one, whose confident demeanor seemed highly contrary to his tall, lanky body.
“Thanks,” Allison said after a momentary pause. She wasn’t sure if his words were pronounced with an outer-borough accent or an international one, but either way she was willing to let them relieve her of her stuff. Then, feeling strangely uninhibited—both physically and emotionally—she paced behind them.
“That’s my friend’s car, over there.” She pointed to Jamie’s abandoned vehicle. “But you can just put that down anywhere.”
Gentlemen that they were, they insisted on negotiating everything into the back (a bit of a struggle, given the full-length mirror and million other oddities already crammed in there). Once successful, the taller, more gregarious one turned to her.
“That’s a lot of stuff for one weekend,” he said, in what Allison was now able to identify as an Australian accent.
She immediately blushed. “Oh, no. That’s all the stuff we stored here in the closets. We had a share,” she explained. Eager to change the subject, she added, “What about you?”
“Same. But we didn’t make it out that much. Like, ever.” He shot a reprimanding glance to his friend—a shorter guy with light, spiky hair. Neither of the two said anything further, yet both continued to stand there.
“Well, thanks for your help,” Allison said finally, hoping she wouldn’t offend them after their benevolent deed. “What are your names again?”
“I’m Mike,” said the taller one, in that accent that made anything sound fascinating. “And this is John.”
Feeling a surge of recognition, Allison turned to him. “John what?” she pried.
“John...Hiscock?” he said, clearly confused by her extreme interest.
Allison could barely contain her delight. “Hiscock?” she cried, studying him as if some TV star had just jumped off her screen into real life. “You’re Hiscock?”
Color rushing to his face, John grew even more uncomfortable. “Uh, yes?” he stammered—like she’d accidentally mistaken him for someone else, and was any minute going to realize it.
Unable to banish her giddy grin, Allison whipped around, wishing there were someone else here to share in her amusement. Too bad Hiscock wasn’t discovered even half an hour earlier! And what was the sense in his coming now? It was the last weekend of the summer! He’d taken absolutely no part in the share house at all!
But the more Allison thought about it, the more she realized that—even in his absence—Hiscock was actually a pretty big part. Some might even say huge.
For, as the unofficial icebreaker, he’d been there when he was needed the most. In the face of distress and uncertainty, he had facilitated an uncomfortable transition. He’d served more of a purpose than he’d ever know.
And so had Brian.
Maybe down the line, Allison would reunite with him, or Josh, or even Steve, say. Maybe she wouldn’t. Or maybe, without a guy, she’d always feel somewhat naked.
But Allison left the share house that day taking all her baggage with her, yet finally (finally) leaving much of her baggage behind.
And long after she’d finished (her share, that is), she was happy she came.
Epilogue
It starts with a party, unlike any they’ve been to before.
The time of choice: happy hour on a weeknight. The location of choice: a local bar in a neighborhood like Murray Hill, where 99 percent of the participants already coexist in adjacent doorman buildings. The crowd of choice: anyone willing to fork over upward of two (point five) grand for a single bed in a five-person bedroom on alternating summer weekends.
And newcomers will learn: anything they say, do, drink, dance on, or go home with will forever be held against them. Worse yet, it will define them.
Now swap one sampling of overworked, sun-deprived twentysomethings for the next, their hard-earned dough for an entrapment that is both finite (three months) and grandly paid for, and...
“Welcome to our Hamptons meet-and-greet party,” boomed an authoritative voice from across the room. “Don’t worry, I’ll make this brief,” it continued, when a collective murmur of booing ensued. “I’m Mark, the one running the house this summer. And this is my co-house-manager”—he turned and pointed—“my girlfriend, Jamie.”
As nearly fifty heads whirled to face her all at once, Jamie glanced up at Mark and flashed the smile that title always seemed to precipitat
e. Funny, even though it’d been almost nine months since they’d gotten together, Jamie doubted she’d ever be able to hear that word attached to her name without considering it an oxymoron. Still, she had to admit she liked it.
Having captured the crowd’s full attention, Mark continued. “Now, I know some of you signed on months ago, and others of you are here just to see what this is all about. But I have to caution you, there are only a limited number of spots left...”
“Yeah, right,” whispered a snooty girl in front of Jamie, to her friends next to her.
“...so if you brought your checkbooks, a deposit is the safest way to ensure your spot in the house.” Stifling her laughter, Jamie gazed around at the solemn, apprehensive faces, ingesting Mark’s words the way you would a professor’s on the first day of school. To think that her face had ever been one of them! “Anyway, that’s it—go drink, mingle. Jamie and I are going to be walking around handing things out, if you have any questions.”
Taking this cue, Jamie jumped down from her bar stool and grabbed the pile of stapled Xeroxes they’d assembled pretty much ten minutes earlier (a comprehensive listing of directions, regulations, and emergency information—updated marginally from year to year). Flipping to the rules portion, it was with particular pride that Jamie’s eyes glanced over her own contributions to the list:
• In case of emergency, please bring (not one but) two sets of car keys.
• Stray from the house at night at your own risk!
• Before going to sleep, it is advisable—and for girls, imperative—to lock your bedroom door.
• Commitments to the house are final and nontransferable: no refunds, no weekend swapping, and (absolutely) no substitutes!
• Guests are a privilege, especially on holidays, and must be approved in advance.
• Parking spots are a privilege, especially on holidays, and allotted on a first-come, first-served basis (nothing personal).
• Baked goods are best confined to the kitchen.
• If you buy bottles at nightclubs, you’re on your own to collect. (See Bottle-Service Etiquette, attached).
How the Other Half Hamptons Page 27
