Sun-kissed (Au Pairs, The)

by Melissa de la Cruz

  "I've never felt so self-actualized," Tinker agreed. Mara raised a skeptical eyebrow. The most New Age she ever got was burning a stick of incense in an ashtray. Self-actualized? What the hell was Tinker talking about? It all sounded hokey to her. She found she enjoyed the surfers' company--they were all laid-back and mellow--but she couldn't stomach all the beach-side philosophy they espoused.

  Still, it was nice to sit next to Ryan. He was playing her favorite song on his guitar, "Wonderful Tonight." She knew it was a code for how happy he was that she had come to the beach.

  "We're going out tomorrow, killer waves off the point, get inside the pope's living room," a dreadlocked surfer enthused, meaning the swells were so huge, they would be able to surf inside the barrell of the waves.

  Mara smiled. "Maybe I'll go too."

  "You will?" Ryan asked, surprised. It was the first time Mara had offered to join him all summer. "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah." She nodded, reaching over to hold his hand.

  "Cool," he said, giving hers a warm squeeze. He went back to strumming on his guitar, a small smile playing on his lips, and she knew they were all right again. They might not see eye to eye

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  on how they were going to spend the summer (Ryan seemed to want to carry on his hard-core Dartmouth partying, while Mara wanted to jump-start her career), but there was one thing they agreed on: they were crazy for each other.

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  around and around they go

  THERE WAS A BRIGHT YELLOW SCHOOL BUS PARKED IN

  front of the Perry mansion the next morning. The driver of the bus honked the horn several times until Jacqui walked outside. She found Grant and Ben hanging out of the bus window. Duffy was sitting in the driver's seat. "Bom dia, Jacarei. Get in! We rented Great Adventure for the day," he said, bidding her a good morning. "Everyone on board!"

  "You what?" Jacqui asked.

  "You looked so down the other day, we thought we should try to make you feel better. And what's better than a day at an amusement park?" Ben asked.

  "Your chariot, madam." Grant smiled as Duffy opened the door.

  Jacqui helped the Perry kids aboard. As they pulled out of the driveway, she saw a dejected Anna Perry looking at them from her bedroom window.

  The drive out to New Jersey took several hours, but the guys kept the kids entertained by cracking jokes and telling them about their latest silly videos on their web site. "There's one

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  where these two dudes are doing a choreographed karaoke of *NSync. It's hilarious."

  True to their word, the company had rented out the entire amusement park for a staff "family day." They had the whole place to themselves, and the two-thousand-acre park had an almost ghost-town-like quality, since fewer than a hundred of them were in a place that could hold thousands. Jacqui couldn't even imagine how much this excursion had cost--the boys seemed to have no concerns in that area. It was all play money to them.

  "Hey, Jac, should we check out the Batman ride? The centrifugal force is excellent. It'll make your hair stand on end, a real rush!" Ben cajoled.

  "No way, we've got to check out the Haunted Tunnel. Don't worry, I'll keep you safe." Grant smiled. He had a high appreciation for campy pleasures, and Jacqui knew he was looking forward to snuggling on the small creaky boat.

  "It's bumper cars all the way!" Duffy urged, hopping up and down like a little boy.

  The three boys stood in front of her, eager faces aglow, each convinced that only he was the one who had kissed Jacqui the night before.

  "I--I. . ." she said, flustered. "Give me a minute," she pleaded. She sat down on a nearby bench and clutched her forehead.

  "Still worried about the divorce?" Ben whispered out of earshot of the Perry kids.

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  "Yeah, I'm sorry, guys. Can we just sit down for a moment?" she asked, Cody and Zoe at her side. Shannon had run after Madison and William, who were hell-bent on riding the upside-down roller coaster until they both puked.

  "Look, Jac, if you're really concerned, you have to do something about it. You can't just sit around letting it happen," Duffy declared.

  "What do you mean?" Jacqui asked, wondering if she should feel offended. Cody and Zoe stepped away to throw coins in a fountain.

  "Well, you know, we built a multimillion-dollar business from our dorm rooms. Surely we can help you keep one dinky marriage together," Ben said.

  "True dat, true dat." Grant nodded.

  In the end, since they had two kids under the height limit to entertain, the three boys and Jacqui ended up spending the day on the slow, pokey kids' rides, which Cody and Zoe enjoyed. As they went around and around the two-mile-an-hour choo-choo, long legs folded with knees pressed up against the seat in front of them, the boys looked longingly at the high-flying, technologically advanced roller coasters that thundered across the park. But not one of them would give up being by Jacqui's side.

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  out of the frying pan and into the fire

  ELIZA MOPPED UP THE COUNTER DEJECTEDLY. IT WAS HER

  first day of work at Lunch, and so far, it had been an unmitigated disaster. She was dressed in the uniform Lunch T-shirt with the screen-printed logo of the diner on the front (available at the gift shop for fifteen dollars) and white shorts with a jaunty red apron around her waist. During her brief stint as a waitress, she'd spilled a pitcher of iced tea on a customer as well as herself (although the customer had borne the brunt of it). Her T-shirt was splattered with grease from the kitchen, where she'd been posted even more briefly. She was quickly relieved of that duty after she accidentally upset a vat of clam chowder while attempting to place an angry lobster in a boiling pot. She'd lost control of the crustacean, and the lobster had hightailed it to freedom through the swinging doors into the restaurant, to the applause of all the patrons. And the kitchen floor was now wet and chunky with the creamy soup. Hence the cash register. Her employers thought she couldn't possibly do any harm there. So far, they had been correct. But Eliza spotted a threat to this balance out of the corner of her eye.

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  She kept mopping up, trying to look busy so that the customer would choose to be served by the other cashier. But no such luck.

  Paige was headed her way.

  The designer's assistant looked chic and polished in a black Lacoste shirt and colorful Sydney Minx capris. She rapped her fingernails on the table. "Eliza," she said, in that condescending tone.

  "Oh, hi, Paige," Eliza said, trying to look like manning the cash register at the lobster shack was the most normal thing in the world. "Did you enjoy your lunch?"

  "I did indeed." Paige smiled thinly, handing Eliza her corporate credit card. "Although I would have enjoyed it more if Sydney hadn't called me in the middle of it, screaming that none of the T-shirts that were supposed to go to the other stores had arrived."

  "What do you mean?"

  "All eight hundred T-shirts were sent to East Hampton. I told you to send half to the boutiques in Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles."

  "Oh," Eliza said. In the middle of the frenzy of that night, she had completely forgotten that only half the T-shirts were to be sent to the store opening. Damn! She handed Paige her card back and a pen to sign the receipt.

  "God, Eliza. I mean, seriously. You couldn't even fill out a T-shirt order correctly." Paige accepted her credit card receipt and checked it, her eyes narrowing. "Nor did you calculate the tax correctly on this bill."

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  "Jesus, I'm sorry," Eliza said, her fingers shaking as she punched in the numbers again. The credit card machine beeped angrily. "I just learned how to work this. . . ."

  Paige sighed loudly. "Can someone else help me? This girl here doesn't seem to know how to do anything."

  The other cashier walked over, took Paige's card, and helped Eliza void the earlier transaction. "Sorry about that, miss. She's a new trainee."

  "Maybe you should just give up. You're a pampered rich girl, and that's the only
thing you can do right," Paige hissed. "And by the way, next time you want to give out our clients' personal information to the media, you should think twice, because next time, we'll sue your ass."

  Eliza stood back, stung.

  "What do you mean?"

  Paige thrust the infamous issue of Hamptons toward Eliza. "This is what I mean." She sneered before stomping out of the restaurant.

  Eliza flipped through the magazine and found Mara's profile on the designer. Oops--she had completely forgotten about the write-around. The anonymous "sources" Eliza had given Mara had gleefully stuck their knives in Sydney's back. There were a lot of passive-aggressive comments from Sydney's "friends," and the story was an all-out bitch fest. His former assistants said that Sydney took all the credit for their designs or ripped off other designers' work, his partner said that Sydney had cheated on their

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  financial arrangement, and his clients complained of double-charging on their bills.

  She couldn't help but laugh when she read that "someone" had leaked to Mara that Sydney wore a toupee. (That would have been Eliza.) Paige could complain all she wanted, but the damage had already been done, and there was nothing to prove that Eliza had been the one to spill the beans. Eliza closed the magazine and resumed wiping down the counter, whistling a merry tune.

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  whoever said "practice makes perfect" is a liar

  JUST KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN AND THEN PULL YOURSELF UP, pull yourself up on the board! C'mon, now! You can do it, you can do it! One! Two! Three! And -- Mara flopped back into the water, hanging for dear life to the side of her surfboard.

  Ryan paddled up next to her, grimacing with concern. "Hey, babe, you all right there?"

  She sputtered up some salt water that had gone into her nose and managed a weak smile. Her swimsuit was giving her a painful wedgie. She should have worn a wet suit like Ryan had suggested, but with the image of Tinker in her minuscule bikini in mind, Mara had opted for sexy instead of sensible. Alas, when she'd arrived at the beach, she'd found Tinker looking trim and athletic in a full-body wet suit. Several times, the force of the waves had almost pulled off Mara's bikini top.

  Another large wave crashed into them, and Ryan dove into it, emerging from the crest, a tall, graceful figure on his surfboard. All around him, his friends were similarly positioned, including Tinker, who was a demon on the water (she rose elegantly from her board as if pulled by strings), but Mara couldn't even get her

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  body on her surfboard, let alone try to stand on it. Every time the waves rolled, she was buffeted by the crash, and she was pulled farther and farther back toward the shore.

  It wasn't enough that she had woken up at daybreak to do this. It wasn't enough that her eyes hurt, her joints hurt, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't even see, since one of her contacts had floated away, and her arms were red from scraping on the sand. To add insult to injury, Tinker had had the audacity to actually make fun of her surfboard.

  "Oh, that's so cute! You have a foamy!" Tinker cooed when she saw Mara's board as she and Ryan arrived at the beach.

  "No need for that," Ryan said good-naturedly. "It's Mara's first time."

  "What's a foamy?" Mara asked when Tinker was out of earshot. She was using one of Ryan's old boards, one he'd picked himself for Mara to use, so she didn't understand the mockery.

  "It's a beginner board. Most surfers use fiberglass, like mine," he said, motioning to his sleek Ferrari Challenge Stradale, a limited-edition five-thousand-dollar surfboard with the distinctive stallion logo.

  "Hey, who's the baby with the foamy?" another one of Ryan's surfer friends called, hooting at the sight of Mara's yellow surfboard.

  "Knock it off," Ryan called back. "Ignore them, they're just a bunch of Barneys," he told Mara.

  Ryan spent the better part of the morning trying to teach her

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  the fundamentals of surfing. Either he was a really bad teacher or Mara was just an awful student. The closest she had gotten to her surfboard was when it hit her on the head when the waves rolled in.

  She'd told Ryan to let her practice alone. She didn't mind, since it looked like he really wanted to hit the big waves that were breaking down the beach.

  "You sure?" he'd asked. "I can stay. I'm just glad you're here." He was sitting on top of his surfboard as naturally as if he were sitting on the couch, while Mara was barely clinging to the side of hers, frantically dog-paddling with her feet underneath the water.

  So much for her fantasy of re-creating that Justin-Cameron smooch--the two of them on their surfboards locking lips on the water. Not going to happen.

  Especially if she was half drowning.

  "No, go ahead--I'll get the hang of it sooner or later. I don't want to keep you," she urged him, feeling guilty.

  "Okay," Ryan said reluctantly. "I really don't mind. I want to stay."

  But Mara thought she'd rather he didn't see her fall flat on her face again while the surfboard whacked her on the head, especially since that bitch Tinker was cruising on her board doing her best imitation of Kate Bosworth in Blue Crush.

  "No, really. Go. I want you to go," she said.

  So he'd left her, and Mara had spent the rest of the morning

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  bobbing up and down beside her surfboard, trying not to choke on the ocean water.

  As she floated away from the rest of the surfers, she caught sight of Ryan on his board again, a striking, slim figure crouched in the peak position to get maximum speed, getting up on the plane above the waves. She loved him so much. ... If only she could share this with him . . .

  After a few minutes, Mara swam back to shore. She waved to Ryan from the beach and then walked away. She had to be at work in an hour.

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  jacqui springs a parent trap

  IN THE MOVIE, LINDSAY LOHAN WAS STILL A CUTE NINE-YEAR-

  old with freckles and a sunny smile, not a stick-thin lollipop-headed starlet notorious for her after-hours antics in a host of Hollywood nightspots. Jacqui grasped a handful of popcorn and stared reflectively at the screen. She had rented the Disney remake to pick up a few tips from the twin Lind says' attempts to get their parents back together. It was a bonus that Cody and Zoe loved the movie.

  The web site guys had suggested trying to talk Anna and Kevin into counseling, but nothing as practical as therapy would ever appeal to Anna. And it wasn't as if Jacqui could just give Kevin a call and suggest such a thing--they hardly spoke to each other, because things had been a bit awkward between them ever since Kevin had tried to hit on her the first summer she was working for the family.

  Anna's behavior was also becoming more erratic--the other day she'd asked Jacqui if she could tag along when Jacqui was going out after work to meet Mara and Eliza at Tavern. She had tried to talk Anna out of it, but Anna had insisted. Eliza and

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  Mara exchanged alarmed looks when they saw Anna, but Jacqui merely shrugged. Their former and Jacqui's present employer had quickly downed four shots of Jagermeister and spent the evening draped over the twenty-two-year-old DJ. "Your mom is hot!" several guys told Jacqui. "She's not my mom; she's my--oh, never mind," Jacqui had said.

  The next morning, Anna, still reeling from the effects of a brutal hangover, had asked Jacqui when they were going to do that again.

  Never, Jacqui had thought. Anna's partying like a teenager sure didn't seem like the actions of a woman desperate to save her marriage.

  But what if instead of making them figure out if they were still in love with each other, Jacqui could make them believe that they had never fallen out of love? After all, even though they hated each other's guts right now, like Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson in the movie, Anna and Kevin belonged together. Anna was the only woman who thought Kevin's law puns were funny (he liked to say that he had a "sunny deposition"), and Kevin was the only man who thought Anna looked hot in a billowing African muumuu.

  Jacqui knew that
Anna was still in love with her husband--her demand for a divorce had just been a way to make him notice her, and even though Kevin was a workaholic, he did love his wife; he just never tried to show it. So what if she, Jacqui, orchestrated a courtship of sorts--doing nice things for each of them in secret, which they would assume the other person had done for them?

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  Where would she start? First, she needed a recruit. She couldn't do this alone.

  "So, you want me to help you send Anna romantic gifts but pretend they're from Kevin even though they're not?" Shannon asked when the two of them were in the laundry room sorting through the children's dirty clothing. "I mean, I know divorce is a sad thing and all, but I guess I don't understand why you'd want to be so involved."

  Jacqui bit her lip. Could she really trust Shannon? She had no choice, really. She took a deep breath and told the younger girl the whole story--about the apartment in New York, the NYU rejection, how she needed the Perrys to stay together so she could finish her fifth year of high school and stay in New York.

  "But remember, you can't tell Madison, okay? Anna doesn't want the kids to know," Jacqui warned. She knew how close Shannon and Madison had become. The two girls were glued together at the hip, and Madison was really blossoming under the friendship, looking up to Shannon like the big sister she'd never had.

  "I guess I won't," Shannon said reluctantly, feeling bad about keeping something from a friend. She tossed a folded T-shirt into the laundry basket. "I'll help you, but."

  "But?"

  Shannon broke into a wide grin. "But you have to promise me you'll invite me to stay with you in the city at your apartment