Bad Idea- The Complete Collection

by Nicole French

Despite my father’s insistence that I am going to law school after I graduate, I haven’t even been able to pick a major yet.

  I unlock the door to find Shama and Jamie lounging on the couch, watching reruns of—you guessed it—Sex and the City with Vinny, a friend who lives down the hall. Vinny and I have been friends since discovering a mutual love of soccer. His real name is Mervin, but his freshman roommates declared that utterly too nerdy, christening him Vinny from that day forth. Those guys were assholes, but apparently Vinny never liked Mervin anyway, and his middle name, Eustace, isn’t much better. Like so many kids who come to college to reinvent themselves, Vinny took the moniker and ran with it.

  “Hey!” Vinny stands up from the couch to give me a high five. “There she is! Dude, I need some guy time. These chicks are too much for me.”

  Jamie and Shama throw chips at him from either side, keeping their eyes glued to the TV. They are both Sex and the City fanatics and couldn’t care less what a cliché that makes them. Thankfully, they agreed to watch only a few episodes per week when Quinn and I are in the apartment, considering how we quickly tire of Carrie Bradshaw’s constant “wondering.” Honestly, that chick never stops to answer any of her damn questions.

  “That show is nothing like New York,” I snark. How could a show claiming to represent this place be all about rich white people? Even from my sheltered, NYU-centric perspective, I know that’s incorrect.

  “Dude,” Vinny says. “Preaching to the choir. But I had no idea there was so much sex. Those chicks are doing it, like, all the time! Do you think women in New York come that fast too?”

  He pushes a gangly hand through his close-cut brown hair, clearly daydreaming about screwing his next date in a swing like the woman is currently doing on the screen. She moans in ecstasy.

  “I doubt it on both counts.” I hang my shoulder bag on the hook by the door, then put my parka over it.

  Vinny pouts. “That’s too bad, I could really use some lovin’. Those chicks are old, but they would be all right.”

  “They are not old!” Shama hurls another chip at Vinny’s face. “You just like girls who look like preteens. Tell him, Lay, so I don’t have to.”

  She sighs when Carrie kisses Mr. Big. Vinny picks the chip off the front of his shirt and pops it in his mouth.

  “These bitches be crazy,” he jokes.

  “Shut up, Vinny!” Several more chips catapult toward his head.

  From anyone else, calling my friends bitches would be enough to earn a lot more than a chip thrown at his head, but because Vinny is such a dork, not quite having grown out of his teenage-looking body and cracked voice, it just sounds funny. Shama’s right, though. He does tend to date really thin women, but I suspect it’s mostly because he’s nervous about his own less than muscular physique.

  Not like FedEx guy, I think to myself. And...damn. There’s that smile again, flashing like it did the entire ride home. And my knees start to feel weak. And my mouth starts to drop.

  I dodge the hailing finger foods and head into the kitchen to rustle up some food. It’s been a long time since that cheap coffee.

  “Come on, dude,” I say to Vinny. “Let’s have a drink and I’ll tell you all about my new job.”

  I grab a soda from the fridge. It’s a weekday so I’m not having any of the cheap beer we have stacked on one side. None of us drink during the week. I still have reading to do for my eight a.m. class, and I can’t study if I’m sloshed.

  Vinny, however, doesn’t have the apartment’s discipline. He doesn’t have the grades either. He pops open his beer with gusto and takes a long drink while I find some carrots and hummus in the fridge and sit down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

  “Thanks, man,” he says. “I’ve already had a couple. I’ll bring you guys a six pack tomorrow. Is that all you’re eating for dinner?”

  “You better, you lush!” Shama yells, allowing me to sidestep the question about my dietary habits.

  The truth is, it’s hard to eat well in such an expensive city. And unlike most of the kids I live with, I don’t get allowance checks from my parents every month. Sometimes it’s a choice between my social life and dinner. Okay, so it’s not the smartest thing in the world, but I can eat when I’m old. I’m only going to be young and in the center of the universe once. The upside of coming home ten pounds lighter at my first Christmas break was that my mother was thrilled. Her greatest fear was that her daughter would gain the dreaded Freshman Fifteen, and instead I managed to lose the baby fat she was always haranguing me about.

  “Cheers to your first day as a lackey, kid.” Vinny clinks his can to mine. “Did you meet Katie Derek?”

  “Not on the first day. But she did call a few times.”

  I take a long drink of my Diet Coke. I’ve got a decent night of studying ahead of me, so I need whatever help caffeine can give me. It’s not going to be easy going to school full time and working an additional twenty-five hours per week, but I need the money more than I need the spare time. I’ll just have to make it work.

  Vinny nods. “That’s really too bad. Anything else happen?”

  I hide behind my can. Vinny’s not exactly perceptive, but I doubt I can mask the heat rocketing up my neck.

  “Um, not really,” I lie. Hey, losing my power of speech because of a delivery guy’s smile isn’t really news, right? “They just taught me how to answer phones and stuff. My boss is kind of a bitch. She’d eat you alive, Vin.”

  Unfortunately, it doesn’t take more than another brief memory of Mr. FedEx Man’s gorgeous smile to make my face color all over again. Nico. The memory of his name makes me shiver.

  “You met a guy.”

  I find Quinn standing in the open doorway in her sweaty gym clothes, water bottle in hand. She stares at me with a cocked eyebrow that immediately makes me feel like I have done something dirty, and she knows it. And she would, too. That’s how tight Quinn and I are.

  “Hi, Quinny Winny,” I say in the baby voice I know she hates, but also can’t help but love. I raise my can in her direction. “My quintessential, quinniest Quinn. How was your day, darling?”

  “Hi, babe.” She gives me a quick air kiss before dropping her bottle in the sink. “You don’t want to touch me—I’m stank right now.”

  “You work too hard,” I counter.

  It’s a familiar, unspoken routine we go through almost daily. Quinn kills herself at the gym; I tell her she’s overworking. At this point she usually makes some derogatory comparison of herself to me or another roommate, which is my cue to offer lavish praise.

  Quinn arrived in New York about fifty pounds heavier than she is now and with an even bigger chip on her shoulder because of it. She was determined, like me, like all of us, to carve out a different spot for herself in this world than the one she grew up in. The first time we all tried out our fake IDs, she took one look at the scantily clad women in the club, said “Oh, hell no,” and went straight to the twenty-four-hour Student Athletic Center. There would be no more being “the chubby one” for Quinn Bishop. Since then she’s dropped that weight (sometimes more when she’s being obsessive) and enjoyed herself thoroughly at the clubs and bars we frequent, but there’s still a significant part of Quinn that will probably never be content with her body image.

  “Not all of us were blessed with an ass you can bounce quarters on, unlike someone else I know, Barros.”

  Right on cue.

  I glance down at said body part and shrug. “Eh, I’m pretty sure yours wins in a bikini contest these days, my love. I’ve seen you changing in the morning, and honey, let me tell you, meeeooowww.”

  I imitate an obnoxious purring noise, and she finally cracks a smile. I may not be able to catcall the hot FedEx guys I see, but I can do it to my roommates whenever I want.

  “So who’s the guy?” She opens a Diet Coke of her own and leans on the bar across from Vinny and me.

  Her Shirley Temple curls escape around her forehead, but the rest are still swept ba
ck in a knot. I catch Vinny sneaking a peek down her tight work-out shirt and shoo him a way before answering.

  “Get out of there, perv.” I bat my eyes at Quinn, who’s glaring at Vinny. “Only I get to check out the goods in this house. Oh, he’s no one.”

  “Bullshit.” Quinn takes a sip. “I saw that blush before I even opened the damn door. Out with it, Barros.”

  Vinny turns curiously, and Jamie and Shama’s heads pop over the back of the sofa like puppets. I blush again.

  “Okay, fine, you bitch. You win.” I take a deep breath and sigh, amazed at how quickly I turn into your average, flustered romance character. I might even start biting my lip. Ugh. “Guys, I think I’m in love.”

  “In love?”

  Jamie’s voice squeals as she and Shama join us at the table. The TV is off, and all eyes are on me. Now that I have an audience—am I sure about this?

  I close my eyes. There is that hundred-watt smile, those black, twinkling eyes, that deep, melodic voice. He’s like some big, sexy panther I want to hunt me. It’s not even about his body, which is pretty gorgeous as far as I can tell. It was something else, something that made every cell in my body seize up and shift toward his magnetic center. Oh yes, this is definitely love, or at least lust of the highest degree—how could anything else hit me this hard?

  “I met the most beautiful man today,” I proclaim and proceed to tell them all about Nico. It doesn’t take long. But I give as much detail as I can, sighing like an idiot in between sentences.

  “You are so going to marry him!” Jamie pronounces at the end of my story.

  Shama grins while Vinny does his best to appear embarrassed, even though he’s just as charmed as everyone else. It’s not every day that someone walks in and starts talking about love at first sight.

  I’m not an idiot. I know I’m young and that what I’m feeling could be nothing in the grand scheme of things. But I’ve never felt anything like that. There’s a reason people compare it to a lightning bolt. You’re hit all at once by that flash.

  “I’m happy for you, babe. I really am.” Quinn’s tone tells me she’s going to say something I don’t want to hear.

  I sigh, preparing myself for the inevitable. “But?”

  “Layla, really. A FedEx guy? And how old do you think he is?”

  I shrug, trying to play off her concerns like they don’t matter, even though I know they probably do. I have no idea how old Nico is. He has one of those faces that hides his age, and his hat blocked any potential bald spots. He could be twenty, or he could be forty. God, I can just imagine my parents’ faces—especially my dad’s—if I brought home a thirty-something FedEx man. The thought alone makes me turn bright red.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” I insist a little too loudly.

  Okay, so, the idea of dating a thirty-five-year-old does make my skin crawl a little bit. After all, I’m only nineteen. Someone that age would literally be old enough to be my father. But there’s no way Nico is that old. No one that gorgeous could be closer to my parents’ age than mine.

  “He’s probably just a few years older than us,” I say to Quinn. “And no, Miss Snob-and-a-half, I don’t care he’s a FedEx courier. You don’t know him any more than I do. He’s probably a starving artist or something, just doing it to pay his bills. We’ll all probably be there in two more years in this economy, you know.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me.” Vinny gets up and stretches. “I have my first internship interview next week with Goldman Sachs. Do you know only one out of thirty interviewees gets this position? I told my mom she should be proud I even made it past the five hundred applications.” He shakes his head. “You guys have it so easy in journalism. You can apply to marketing, newspapers, whatever. It’s, like, the world’s most universal degree.”

  Jamie and Shama clink water glasses.

  “Don’t we know it!” Shama cheers.

  Quinn just gives me the side eye while I sip my Coke. The deadline for choosing a major by the end of the semester has been ticking away like a bomb. My friends are all moving down their paths in life, sorting out real internships, not just receptionist jobs, and I’m still...in between. Like always.

  “Maybe he’ll be your valentine this year.” Jamie steers us back to Nico. “It’s only two weeks away.”

  Jamie’s our house romantic, even more than Shama. While it’s grating at times to have every major relationship in any of our lives compared to Carrie and Mr. Big, I’ll be honest—sometimes her brand of optimism is just what I’m feeling. It’s certainly what I’m feeling right now.

  Quinn snorts. “I doubt the FedEx workers are Valentine’s Day fanatics. I bet they get sick of it because of all the extra packages.”

  “God, Quinn, why do you have to be such a downer?” Shama looks at me and grins. “You should just ask him out if you like him that much.”

  “No way.”

  Vinny slams his beer on the counter behind us. The action causes the beer to overflow, and he cries out, jumping up and slurping noisily at his can. Quinn snatches a dishtowel from the counter and starts mopping up the liquid. She really hates a messy kitchen, even though it’s kind of a hopeless battle with four of us sharing it.

  “Thanks.” Vinny flops his gangly hands on the counter while Quinn cleans.

  “Goddamn klutz,” she mutters, chucking the towel at his head before settling back at the bar. “Finish it up, will you?”

  “What I was trying to say was, you want to play it cool, kid,” Vinny says as he wipes up his mess. “Dudes love a good chase. Tease him a bit, make him want you, but don’t dish it out on a silver platter, you know?”

  “I agree,” Shama chimes in. “Vinny’s actually right.”

  “Playa knows.”

  The rest of us to burst into laughter. Vinny is the absolute last thing from a player.

  “Considering the source, it’s not a bad idea,” I admit.

  “All right, how about this?” Shama continues. “Get him to ask you out.”

  “Hmmm,” I say. “You think?”

  Shama nods. “Do it.”

  I tap my finger on my lips, contemplating. “Quinn,” I say just as my friend opens her mouth to object, “I promise. If he’s over thirty-five—”

  “Twenty-five,” she counters with a look that means business.

  “Thirty.” I don’t wait for her approval because I already know I wouldn’t write him off because of age. “If he’s older than thirty, no-go.”

  Now I actually do bite my lip. I really hope he’s not thirty.

  “It’s on,” Jamie says. “Guys aren’t that hard to figure out. Drop a few hints, wear a low-cut shirt, and he’ll make you his valentine all on his own. You’ll see.”

  And with that, Operation FedEx Guy is officially in effect. But underneath the cheers and laughter of my roommates, the real question is, how in the hell am I going to get the best-looking man I’ve ever seen to ask me out when I can barely move around him in the first place?

  Chapter Four

  Layla

  I slide into a routine pretty quickly. Every day after my morning classes, I go to the gym, get changed into whatever sexy-yet-office-appropriate outfit I manage to scrounge up, and then take the train up to Fox and Lager. It’s harder than I thought getting a moment alone with Nico—it seems like the entire office is waiting for him to arrive. Karen tends to stay until just after six so she can flirt with him, and a lot of the assistants decide they need to “get coffee” right at that time.

  Give me a break. By six o’clock, the coffee is stale and ready to be thrown out. And as soon as Nico’s gone, the whole office practically empties.

  Luckily, even the preternaturally thirsty assistants don’t want to hang around late on a Friday, and even Karen leaves early to meet up with friends for Happy Hour. By five-thirty, I’m mostly alone, twiddling my thumbs at the desk. It’s casual Friday, so today I’m wearing my favorite dark blue jeans that pull attention to my ass, a clingy black sweater, and I
actually took the time to dry my hair so that it lays in loose, thick waves over my shoulders. I’m no Gisele Bündchen, but I think I look pretty good.

  I’m also getting impatient. Valentine’s Day is in a week, and I’ve made absolutely no inroads with my cute FedEx guy. If anything, my inability to speak is getting worse. He comes in, full of swagger that no delivery guy has any right to have. Winks at me, and my knees go weak. Chats it up with Karen or one of the other assistants, but overall hasn’t made any direct conversation with me other than a brief “Hey, NYU” or “How’s it going?”

  Not exactly the stuff of romance novels.

  “Well, hello there. You must be the new girl.”

  I turn from sending a fax to find a man I haven’t yet met leaning over my desk. His lavender striped tie hangs over the rounded wood edge, perilously close to my open cup of coffee.

  The man smiles, the kind of cocky smile that tells me he’s used to being adored.

  “Now that’s a nice face to see when you walk in the door,” he says with a wink.

  I give him a stiff smile back. “Better watch your tie.”

  The man stands up to shake my hand as I introduce myself.

  “I’m Layla, sir.”

  “Oh, don’t sir me, Layla, please. We’re too friendly around here for that. You can call me Alex.”

  April told me about Alexander Farrell, Esquire, last week. He isn’t a part of the firm, just a tenant who rents out office space with two other lawyers. Clean-shaven in a tailored, pinstriped suit, Alex is probably somewhere in his mid-to-late forties, but still looks good for his age, I have to admit. He has a full head of boyishly floppy hair, salt-and-peppered brown and casually mussed. He’s also clearly fit, with muscles that stretch against the fabric of his shirt.

  “Lovely to meet you, Layla.”

  He smiles again, revealing an impeccable set of white teeth that have to be capped. They look like my mom’s. His skin is also a little too tan for someone who works in an office for twelve hours a day. My literature professor would call him a dandy.

  His brown eyes twinkle as he leans on the desktop, as if gearing up for a good gab. “So, what’s your story? Why are you here? Who is Layla? Tell me everything, now.”