Upper East Side #5

by Ashley Valentine

  If Bree had been thinking properly, she would have thought this was just about the best thing anyone had ever said. First of all, how cool was it that she and Damien were both into art and museums? Second of all, how cool was it that he knew about these funky nighttime art happenings and that he wanted to take her to one? But all Bree could think was, He's not taking me home! What's wrong with me? What's wrong with him? What's his story?

  “Do you have any pets?” she demanded suspiciously as they crossed Second Avenue and headed east toward Fifth.

  “Pets? No. Why?” Damien wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Brrr. You warm enough? Do you want my scarf?”

  Another heart-meltingly romantic gesture, but did she notice?

  No pets? Bree brooded, too distracted to be bothered by the cold. But why would he lie? And how come he's trying to change the subject so quickly?

  “Well, here we are.”

  The ghostlike structure that was the Guggenheim Museum hovered above them in the dark. “Kiss, Kiss,” a banner proclaimed, flapping over the museum's entrance. Damien blushed when he noticed Bree looking at it. “Come on, let's go in.”

  Bree opened her purse to pay for her half of the admission, but Damien motioned for her to put her wallet away. “That's okay. I'm a member. We can get in free.”

  A member? Well, well, well. And hadn't Elise said that Damien had been seen at that big Frick Museum benefit on Thursday night? His family probably owned the Guggenheim.

  They wound their way up the graded halls of the museum, stopping at the first painting on exhibit. It was Marc Chagall's Birthday, a painting of a woman holding a bouquet of flowers, kissing a man who is flying in the air above her head. The woman looked as if she had just been doing something boring, like setting the table, when the man swooped down and caught her lips with his.

  “I love the blue,” Damien said, studying it. “You would think blue would make it cold, but it doesn't. It warms it up.”

  “Mmm.” Bree wasn't listening to a word he said. She was studying his profile, his hair, his clothes, his shoes, his fingernails, looking for a clue, some sort of explanation.

  Damien glanced at her, blushing again. He took her hand. “Can I kiss you? I mean, before we look at the next one?”

  If she hadn't been paying attention before, she was now.

  “Oh! Um. Sure.” Bree took a step backward and almost lost her balance.

  Damien held her hand even tighter. “I've got you.”

  Bree let him pull her toward him, and she lifted up her face to meet his. What they did next was no mystery at all, although she kind of wondered where he'd learned to kiss so well.

  If only she could stop thinking so much.

  20

  “You know he must really like you if he came all the way out here on a night like this,” Ruby whispered in Yasmine's ear just before her regular Monday night gig with her band, SugarDaddy, was about to begin.

  “He's just here for the music,” Yasmine replied sarcastically.

  Jordan Rosenfeld was standing in the doorway of the dark crowded club, unzipping his green Columbia jacket. His weirdly long nose was dripping from the cold, and his bright yellow turtleneck and khaki pants stood out like strobe lights amongst the black-clad native Williamsburgers.

  Normally the sight of a guy like him might have made her cringe, but at this point Yasmine didn't care how yellow his turtleneck was. And his nose was actually kind of sexy and distinguished, if you looked at it from a certain angle. She stood up and waved him over.

  “Hello, Mrs. Richards,” Jordan greeted Gabriela. “How are you, Mr. Richards?”

  Yasmine's parents were wearing matching Greenpeace T-shirts, tight black leggings, and Birkenstocks with white tube socks. They could have been a piece in one of their art shows.

  Still-life of hippie freaks.

  Gabriela shot her daughter a look of confused surprise. “Hello, Jordan. Yasmine didn't tell us you were coming tonight.”

  “That's because I wanted to keep it a secret.” Yasmine flashed Jordan her version of a come-hither smile, which was actually just a normal looking smile, since Yasmine didn't smile much.

  Jordan unzipped his jacket and sat down next to her. “I got my paper done.”

  “Then you deserve a drink,” Yasmine told him. She motioned to the bartender, tapping on her nose and pulling her ears in a series of pretend signals. SugarDaddy played so regularly at the Five and Dime, it was practically their second home. Yasmine had even had a fling with the old bartender, who now guided Whitewater rafting trips in New Zealand.

  The bartender came over to see what Yasmine's new friend wanted.

  “Do you have Baileys Irish Cream?” Jordan asked.

  Arlo was watching the band as they went through their sound check. SugarDaddy was made up of four guys with far-away looking eyes, and Ruby, who yelled and shook her ass a lot, even though she wasn't the lead singer.

  “Eating goober peas,” Ruby said quietly into her mike, testing the sound. Arlo grinned, looking extremely proud.

  Gabriela got up to go the bathroom. “I hope they start soon. Arlo and I promised these nice people we met on the subway we'd do a chanting session with them at midnight.”

  The bartender brought over the glass of milky beige stuff on ice, and Jordan took a sip. “I like it,” he said simply.

  Gabriela came back from the bathroom, her long gray hair rebraided and pinned Heidi-style on top of her head. She'd put on ChapStick—her version of makeup—and taken off her tube socks.

  The lights dimmed, and Ruby began to growl into the microphone and slap her bass. Then the band broke into one of their signature tunes, “Canada Is the Future.”

  Jordan glanced around the crowded bar, his huge narrow nostrils flaring. Yasmine noticed the tag was sticking out of the neck of his yellow turtleneck. Made in China, it said.

  Gabriela pointed at it. “Did you know that most of the textiles made in China are produced by prisoners from Thailand who are tortured and starved?”

  Jordan stared at her.

  “Your shirt was made by victims of mass trade,” Gabriela lectured.

  Yasmine was sure there was some validity to what her mother was saying, but Jordan's shirt was already ugly enough—they didn't have to talk about where it was made.

  SugarDaddy broke into one of their famously long drum riffs. Ruby yelled along with the drummer's noise, something about assholes in minivans.

  “You don't know how disappointed I was to hear your mother say she doesn't recycle,” Gabriela droned on. “I was thinking you and your parents should maybe come up to Vermont for a little retreat. It's very pure up there. It might help remind them what's sacred.”

  Jordan smiled politely. “I'll mention it to them. But really, the only reason my parents don't recycle is because their apartment building has an incinerator, and it's just easier to chuck everything down the chute. I basically live on shrimp-flavored ramen noodles and coffee, so I don't have anything to recycle, anyway.”

  Gabriela stared at him in frightened alarm.

  Yasmine grinned. Yes, Jordan was the Antichrist, and he was getting cuter and cuter by the second. She inched her chair a little closer to his as SugarDaddy struck up one of their weird, bouncy dance tunes.

  She leaned over and whispered in Jordan's ear, “Any second now I'm going to kiss you." The corners of his lips turned up, and he took another sip of Baileys.

  Gabriela nudged Arlo's leg with her bare toe. “Come on and dance, darling. I need to blow off some steam.”

  But Arlo was so transfixed by the musicians, drool was collecting in the corners of his mouth. Yasmine thought he looked like a baby watching the circus for the first time. She inched even closer to Jordan and held up her face, angling it a little to avoid running into his nose.

  “I'm going to kiss you now,” she whispered before her mother could drag Arlo out of his seat. Then she pressed her lips against his, tasting the Baileys and the difference between kissing him
and kissing Mekhi. And it was kind of…yummy.

  21

  “Are you sure you're not cold?” Chanel asked Porsha for the fourth time. Porsha was wearing only her pink bikini top underneath a white cable-knit cardigan and black leggings.

  Not exactly high-performance mountain gear—but that depends on your definition of performance.

  Porsha leaned against Cairo's shoulder as she made another attempt to jam her ski-boot heel down into her bindings. “Damn, it won't go in.” She grinned sheepishly as Cairo knelt at her feet to help. He was wearing a fuzzy fleece jacket over an adorable hand-knit sweater and black ski pants that showed off the definition of his long, sexy legs.

  No, she wasn't remotely cold, but thanks for asking.

  Chanel batted at the snow with her ski pole, eager to get out on the slopes and away from whatever was going on between her big brother and her best friend. It was kind of cute watching Cairo pretend he didn't know Porsha was flirting with him. But then again, it kind of wasn't.

  Chanel zipped her sensible-but-sexy one-piece ski suit up to her chin and pulled her gray flaphat down over her ears. If Kaliq didn't get there soon, she was going to hit the chairlift alone. There was a whole mountain full of cute boys just waiting to fall in love with the way she cut her turns. She just had to get out there.

  “Good.” Cairo stood up and pulled on his heavy-duty, black leather ski gloves. “How does that feel?”

  Porsha leaned on her poles and bounced her knees up and down like a go-go dancer. “Okay,” she ventured timidly. “But what if I fall?”

  Cairo shoved his mirrored sunglasses up on his nose. He looked as if he'd been skiing there all season, even though he'd only just arrived. “I won't let you fall,” he promised, with a grin that implied he'd be holding her hand all the way down the mountain.

  Chanel rolled her eyes and pulled her goggles down, ready to ditch them both and leave a note for Kaliq with the chairlift attendant, but then she saw Kaliq's wavy head bob up the snowy path from the road, his marijuana-leaf snowboard and skis propped effortlessly on his strong shoulders. Mercedes was at his side, her waist-length hair fanning out behind her like a cape. She was wearing a mink-lined dark denim jumpsuit that looked like it had been made especially for her by Fendi. Even her hat and her brown leather ski boots were trimmed with mink.

  “She's prettier than I remember,” Chanel said quietly, but Porsha was too busy pretending her stomach hadn't done a funny little dip at the sight of Kaliq and his new girlfriend even to hear her.

  When they were still a few hundred yards away, Kaliq heaved the skis off his shoulder, and he and Mercedes stepped into them effortlessly. Then they skied over, gliding gracefully across the snow like figure skaters.

  “Hey. Good to see you.” Kaliq had been up half the night watching Mercedes do naked shots in the hot tub with the Dutch snowboarding team, so he wasn't lying. Morning couldn't have come soon enough.

  “Wow!” Mercedes enthused when she saw Porsha. “You're brave.”

  Porsha gave Mercedes the once-over and unzipped her cardigan a few inches. “Thanks,” she replied, even though she wasn't exactly sure what Mercedes meant.

  “I've got the same one in white,” she said, pointing to Porsha's bikini top.

  Both Cairo and Kaliq stared at Porsha's small but nice chest, imagining how much better Mercedes's bigger and nicer chest would look like in a white version of the same top.

  Cairo held a ski pole out to Porsha. “Come on, I'll tow you.”

  Aw, how cute!

  They were just about to join the long line to the chairlift when Jaylen coasted by on his new snowboard. “Hey,” he greeted them. “I've been getting pointers on the half-pipe from the Dutch team. Those guys are the bomb!” All five of them watched Jaylen glide on into the ski school queue, which got to cut the rest of the line. “Come on!” he called over. “I've got a ski instructor pass!”

  None of them even wanted to know how Jaylen had finnessed a ski instructor pass. They didn't even mind skiing with him if it meant they got to cut the lines.

  Exactly the result he'd been going for.

  All the major lifts in the resort were high-speed quads, taking four people up the mountain at a time. Chanel and Mercedes were the first two in line, and although it pained Porsha to ride next to Mercedes, she couldn't exactly yell, “Stop!” when Cairo joined them

  Swoosh! The chairlift swooped under their bums and lifted them off their skis and into the air.

  “Whee!” Chanel and Mercedes cried in unison.

  “Whoa.” Porsha clutched Cairo's arm. Even after all these years of skiing, chairlifts still made her nervous.

  Kaliq and Jaylen were right behind them, their snowboards banging together as they sank into the chair.

  “Got any weed?” Jaylen unzipped the chest pocket of his shiny purple ski suit with its weird fur zip-on collar and pulled out a flask. He offered it to Kaliq. “Brandy?”

  “I don't get high anymore,” Kaliq insisted stubbornly. He squinted at Jaylen's boots. They were exactly the same as his, but Jaylen's snowboard was hot pink, with the words Chiquita Banana written across the top of it. It was definitely a girl's snowboard, and Kaliq sort of suspected Jaylen was wearing a woman's ski suit. That wasn't even gay, it was just plain weird.

  Ahead of them, smoke curled up into the air above Mercedes's mink hat. Kaliq could only hope that the others would be sensible enough not to let her do anything too illegal on the chairlift.

  Jaylen pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear and lit it. His jawline was shadowy with black stubble, and it looked like he might be growing some experimental facial hair. “I heard Porsha and your new girlfriend had a major catfight over you up at rehab in Greenwich.”

  Kaliq waved Jaylen's cigarette smoke away. He was kind of checking out the pointy tops of the pretty green pine trees growing out of the soft white blanket of snow below them. The smoke was ruining it.

  “I also heard Mercedes and Chanel went to boarding school up in New Hampshire together and got kicked out at the same time. They were caught doing it. Like this.” Jaylen grabbed his crotch and ground his pelvis into the chair, his tongue lolling disgustingly.

  “I doubt that,” Kaliq said, although he wasn't so sure. He'd never actually heard the whole story of why Chanel had gotten kicked out of Hanover Academy at the beginning of the school year, and he barely knew anything about Mercedes. The two girls hadn't given any hint of recognizing each other when they'd met just now, but then again, girls often played it cool until they had a chance to talk and figure things out.

  Apparently some people were saying a certain senior who got kicked out of Hanover Academy in October (Chanel) wasn't alone in the scandal. She had a partner: an infamous Hispanic girl from Connecticut (Mercedes). Well, people had done some research, and it did seem that said Connecticut girl was enrolled at Hanover for a brief time, although the date and circumstances of her departure were unclear. She'd been to six schools in four years, and since she was so busy at rehab, it didn't look like she was going to finish high school any time soon. But it's not like they were best friends or anything, since they'd never been seen together around town.

  For now, let's just say this deserves further investigation.

  Up ahead of them, Mercedes and Chanel themselves were lighting their cigarettes. “I only smoke these on the lift,” Mercedes explained with the air of someone who smokes something different at every altitude. “They taste better up here.”

  “Mmm,” Chanel inhaled. She turned around to check on Kaliq and Jaylen. Kaliq was staring straight ahead, while Jaylen smoked and gabbed. “What a cute couple,” she joked.

  Mercedes giggled. “See, even Jaylen thinks Kaliq is cute.”

  Porsha didn't say anything, but she secretly hoped Mercedes's fur hat would catch fire and she'd fall to the ground in a heap of burning fur.

  Chanel gave Kaliq the finger. Then she grinned and blew him a kiss. Mercedes turned around and did the same thing but in t
he opposite order.

  “You know you love us!” the two girls shouted.

  Porsha slid her arm through Cairo's as the chair headed toward the steep downhill ramp where they had to unload. Getting off the lift was even worse than getting on.

  “Keep your hips up, and hold on to me,” Cairo coached her gently.

  She did as she was told, keeping a steady grip on his arm as they glided down the ramp side by side. Then Cairo made a neat little turn and skidded to a stop. Porsha slammed into him and sat down hard on the backs of her skis.

  Oof!

  Cairo grabbed her and quickly pulled her to a standing position again, holding her in his strong, comforting arms. “Don't worry, nobody saw.”

  Porsha giggled. God, his eyes were beautiful. And he was so…capable. Then it dawned on her. I'm going to lose my virginity to Cairo on this trip! Why not? They'd known each other all their lives. It made perfect sense.

  Just like it makes perfect sense to wear a bikini top in the snow?

  22

  “I can't believe you're got your hands in there,” Bree cried, scrunching up her nose as Damien mashed raw eggs, butter, sugar, flour, and cocoa powder together with his bare hands. It had been his idea to make brownies, but of course they had to make them at her house, not his. Bree didn't know when she'd ever get to see his house.

  “My mom taught me this. It's the only way to get it really well mixed without using a beater.” Damien's shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and he was biting his lower lip in concentration—the utter picture of adorable—as his hands worked the contents of the large ceramic bowl.

  “Oh,” Bree replied, sifting in another cup of flour. “Does your mom like to cook?” Anyone who lived in that fancy apartment building on Park Avenue must have a full-time chef.

  “Kind of. Mostly she just likes making brownies.”

  Aha. See? Cooking was just another hobby, like dressing her dog in designer clothes and getting her face Botoxed.

  Damien removed his finger from the sweet batter and held it out to Bree. “Taste?”