Wicked Jealous: A Love Story

by Palmer, Robin

  “How’s it going in there?” I heard Hillary call out.

  “I don’t think it’s going to work,” I called back as I cringed at my back fat. As soon as I got back to my room, I was grabbing a T-shirt and some cargo pants.

  “Let’s see,” she said as she flung open the door.

  I was so startled that I slipped and landed butt-first in the tub. “Omigod—are you okay?!” Nicola panicked. “You didn’t break your butt, did you?”

  “Forget about her butt—you didn’t rip the dress, did you?!” asked Hillary.

  I stood up. Everything seemed to be in working order. “I think I’m okay.”

  “Good. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you should be on that Oh No They Did Not show,” said Nicola.

  “This is nothing,” Hillary said, marching over to me. “It’s just a little snug.”

  “A little?” I gasped as she yanked at the zipper. “If that thing goes up any higher, my intestines are going to shoot out my mouth.”

  “Oh please. I’ve wriggled my way into things way tighter than this,” she said. “If I can give you one piece of stepmotherly advice, let it be this: learn how to hold your breath for long periods of time. It will come in very handy.”

  “What an empowering thought,” said Nicola.

  Hillary yanked the zipper up even farther. “How’s that feel?”

  If I had any air left in my lungs to talk I would’ve said, “If you removed five of my ribs, it might be okay,” but I couldn’t because I didn’t. Instead, I just gasped.

  “I think she’s turning blue,” said Nicola.

  “Oh, she’s fine,” replied Hillary. “It’s just the bad lighting in here.”

  “I really think it’s too tight,” I managed to get out.

  “Simone,” she laughed as she zipped it up even higher, “I had no idea you were such a drama queen! How cute! You think this is uncomfortable? Just wait until you start getting Brazilian bikini waxes. Now that, my friend, is pain.”

  As she yanked the zipper up a little more, I felt like I was going to pass out. “I really can’t breathe,” I gasped.

  But Hillary just kept zipping.

  “Didn’t you hear her?” Nicola cried as she pushed her aside and began to unzip me.

  Hillary shrugged. “Okay. If you want to give up that easily,” she said. “But it’s called ‘slave to fashion’ for a reason, you know.”

  I shook my head. Nicola had gotten the zipper down enough that I could finally draw air back into my lungs. “Yeah, well, that’s never going to be me,” I said as the oxygen began to return to my brain. “Even if I become a size zero. Which, by the way, I have no interest in being. Plus, how are you supposed to eat if you can’t breathe?”

  Hillary patted my cheek. “Ohhh . . . how cute. You really are that naïve. I thought it was just an act. Women don’t actually eat on dates, silly. You order a salad and you pick at it and then you pig out when you get home!”

  Nicola’s eyes narrowed. “You know, I saw something like this on a TV movie once on Oxygen. Where a woman tried to kill another woman by suffocating her with a dress. I think it was called something like Murder in Milan.”

  “Another drama queen! How cute! No wonder why you guys are BFFs.” She shrugged. “If you’re going to give up so quickly, I guess you should give me the dress back so I can return it. You know, it wasn’t cheap.” Her iPhone rang. “It’s the caterer. I have to take this.”

  After she click-clacked out, Nicola turned to me as I changed back into my clothes. “If we were characters on one of those detective shows right now, I would be turning to you and taking off my sunglasses and saying, “Let’s get her in for questioning stat,” Nicola said.

  “I think they only say ‘stat’ on the hospital shows,” I said as I struggled to get my hair untangled from the hook on the back of the dress.

  “Whatever. But don’t you think all of this is a little weird?” Nicola asked as she untangled me.

  “What?”

  “Hmm . . . I don’t know . . . trying to suffocate you with a dress, for instance.”

  “Oh, so this, like the apples and the almost running into me in the parking lot, is yet another attempt to kill me?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “If the shoe fits. Or rather, if the dress doesn’t fit.”

  “Well, seeing that there’s a good chance I might not live through my date, she might not have to worry about that,” I sighed.

  While I definitely considered myself a feminist and had already decided that if and when I got married, my husband and I would definitely switch off when it came to taking out the garbage, my feeling about dates was that it was up to the date-asker to come up with a plan as to what he or she and the date-askee could do. Because when the date-askee has to call the date-asker at four o’clock on the day of the date to see what time and where said date will be taking place, and the date-askee says, “I don’t know. Got any ideas?” it’s a little . . . disappointing.

  “Well, there’s always the movies,” I said to Jason as Nicola and the guys crowded around me and leaned in to try to listen. Except for Noob, who had gotten his arm stuck in the stairway railing again. I was all for activities where we wouldn’t have to talk all that much.

  “Okay. You want to go see that new one about the FBI agent who goes up against the ex-CIA agent after he takes a group of elementary school kids hostage in a mall?” Jason asked.

  “Actually, I heard that was really lame,” Narc said in a loud voice.

  “Who was that?” Jason asked.

  I turned my back to the group. “No one. Just the TV.”

  “So does that sound okay?” he asked.

  According to one of the articles I had read in last month’s Cosmopolitan (Hillary had a subscription), number five of the ten things on the How-to-Drive-Him-Wild-and-Make-Him-Yours-Forever checklist was “Even when your man suggests a really dumb idea that you have no interest in doing, just say yes!” (Those magazines were very big on the term “your man” and on exclamation points.) “Actually, it sounds . . . kind of dumb,” I admitted. So much for following that rule.

  Thor ripped out a page from L.A. Weekly and thrust it toward me, I brightened. “Hey, they’re showing a marathon of Judd Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks at the New Beverly,” I said excitedly. “How about that?”

  “What’s Freaks and Geeks?” Jason asked.

  My heart sank. Sure, the series had been canceled after only twelve episodes, but that didn’t make it any less brilliant. In fact, Time magazine had called it one of the “100 Greatest Shows of All Time.” I had watched it so many times the DVDs skipped.

  “This TV show on NBC that Judd Apatow did set in a high school?” I said.

  “Who’s Judd Apatow?”

  Did this guy live under a rock? “The director of Knocked Up? Forty-Year-Old Virgin? Produced Superbad and Bridesmaids? Our generation’s John Hughes?”

  “Right. That guy. Now I know who he is. Just took me a second to put the name with the movie. So it’s a TV show set in high school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you want to watch something about school even though we’re on summer vacation?” he asked doubtfully.

  “It’s really good. I promise.”

  “Okay. So, uh, should I pick you up?” he asked.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said quickly. “You don’t need to pick me up. I’ll just meet you there. At, like, seven fifteen, okay?”

  “Okay, but I don’t mind—”

  “No. It’s easier this way. Because I have to go pick up some . . . medication at the drugstore first.” Oh God. What was I doing?! Not only did I lie, but now he was going to think I had some sort of weird disease. I’m sure the sound of Nicola slapping her forehead could be heard across the phone waves. “Okay. So
I’ll see you then. Bye,” I barely got out of my mouth before clicking the phone off.

  Thor shook his head. “Ouch. That was cold. Here he was, taking the risk to show you his courteous, feelings-oriented feminine side, and you shut him down.”

  “You really should’ve let him come pick you up,” Nicola agreed.

  “Yeah. Why didn’t you let him come over? Are you, like, embarrassed of us or something?” Noob asked, all hurt.

  “No. It’s—”

  Noob dropped his voice. “I mean, without naming names or anything, I know that some of the people who live here can be a little . . . strange,” he said, motioning with his head toward Thor, “but it’s not like we’d embarrass you or anything like that.” He tried to yank his arm out from the banister but failed. “Uh-oh.”

  “I’m not embarrassed by you guys,” I replied. “It’s just that I’ve never done this date thing before. I’m used to doing things for myself. I’m not used to letting people do things for me. But I’ll be more girl-like when I’m on the date. I swear.”

  In movies, when a girl gets ready for a date, it usually takes so long they have to do a whole montage with little snippets of each part of the getting-ready thing: showering; blow-drying the hair; shaving the legs; putting on makeup; gazing at her very full, very neat closet. According to the movies, it would appear that getting ready takes around an hour, an hour fifteen minutes. As for me, from the time I got in the shower until I walked downstairs, a whopping seventeen minutes had passed. And that included having to start all over with my eye makeup after I poked myself in the eye with the mascara wand and my eye got all teary and ruined my eyeliner.

  When I came downstairs, Blush was on the couch watching a documentary on PBS about the Harlem Renaissance. Even though they were all artists, the only way that the other guys in the house would’ve known what PBS was, was because of Sesame Street. But Blush watched it all the time. Which made him really good at Jeopardy!, a fact I had discovered a few nights earlier when we were hanging out and he trounced me in Double Jeopardy.

  “You look nice,” he said.

  I looked down at my READING IS SEXY T-shirt that I had paired with a denim miniskirt and red Worishofer slides. Nicola voted for the black sundress that I had bought that first day of Operation Robin Red Breast, or whatever, but when I greased Noob’s arm up with Crisco to free him from the banister, he said that I should go a little more casual. For once I thought he was onto something. Mostly because if I wore the sundress, I would have to wear a strapless bra, which I found very uncomfortable.

  “Thanks. It turns out that I’m not very high maintenance when it comes to getting ready.”

  He laughed. “You’re not high maintenance at all.”

  “Thanks. Wait—that’s a good thing, right?”

  He laughed again. “Yeah. That’s a very good thing.”

  I plopped down next to him on the couch, and I heard Nicola’s voice in my head, saying, “Legs! Legs!” I slammed mine together. I was still getting the hang of this skirt thing.

  Blush pointed to my feet. “Cool shoes.”

  “Thanks. They’re actually orthopedic shoes,” I said. “Like for old German women. But they’re super comfortable. Nicola tried to get me not to buy them, but I did anyway. And then we saw in an article that M.I.A. and Michelle Williams wear them, too. That’s the first time I’ve ever been cool without trying,” I babbled. I probably shouldn’t have chugged a Red Bull during the getting-ready part. “So can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, well, I noticed that during that whole date-tutorial thing, you didn’t really say anything.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, I just think that whole thing was kind of stupid.”

  “What part?” I asked. “I mean, personally, I think that all of it is stupid, but I’d be interested in knowing what part you think is stupid.”

  “It’s just that you throw two people who are both probably nervous together, and instead of one of them or both of them just saying that, which would break the ice, they both sit there trying to play by some rules.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I know what you mean.” I sighed. “And unfortunately for me, I’m really bad with the rules things. When I was in elementary school I always got ‘needs improvement’ in following directions.”

  “So are you excited about going out with this guy?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh what?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I got the sense from your reaction to his taste in movies and music and stuff that he’s not really your type.”

  I sighed. How could I explain to a guy—let alone a guy like Blush, who really couldn’t have cared less about these things—that when you spend your life on the outside of everything, you can’t turn down the chance to go out with someone who’s on the center of the inside. Jason Frank was like that part of a candy bar commercial when they show the creamy nougat center, and not taking that when offered is just wrong. “Because he’s the only guy who’s ever asked me out,” I blurted. I kind of hated that when it came to Blush I was so comfortable around him that my edit button was constantly broken. Wow. That was even more embarrassing than if I had tried to explain the first thing. I stood up. “And, now, I . . . I have to . . . go be a little more high maintenance,” I said as I stomped off.

  I had every intention of letting Jason buy the tickets, since he was the asker and I was the askee. But because I got there early, and because I didn’t have anything else to do other than try not to sweat through the armpits of my T-shirt, I just did it myself. And because I was hungry and got some popcorn, I bought him one as well. And a Coke. And an assortment of candy.

  “You didn’t have to get all this,” he said when he got there at seven twenty.

  “Oh, it’s okay.”

  He took out his wallet. “Let me give you—”

  “No! It’s fine,” I said quickly. “We should go in. I already got us seats.”

  He shrugged. When we got to the door, he opened it and stepped aside.

  “What?” I asked as I stood there.

  “I’m holding the door open for you,” he explained as he gave me an odd look.

  “Oh. Thanks,” I said as I walked in. Only five minutes into the date and I had already screwed it up.

  Luckily, for the two hours that followed I didn’t have to worry about making conversation. All I had to do was sit back and relax and laugh. And keep an ear open to see if he laughed at the right places. (He did. Well, at least a few times.) By the time we walked out I was a lot more relaxed. Like to the point where I let him open not just one door for me but two.

  “So . . . there’s that place Milk down the street,” Jason said as we got outside as a sea of Seth Rogen-esque guys walked by us. “Their blue velvet cake is awesome.”

  I waved to Josh Rosen, the guy who had hit me on the head that day in study hall when Jason first talked to me. “Blue velvet cake? I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “I’m sort of an expert on the dessert front, and I’ve never heard of that in my life.”

  “I’m telling you, not only does it exist, but it’s incredible.” He smiled. “Trust me.”

  I cocked my head and smiled back. “Okay.” Uh-oh. What was happening to me? What was this . . . girly feeling that was coming over me? So he smiled at me. So what? And so what if the smile made him even cuter? I wasn’t the kind of girl who could be won over by that. And even if that’s what it felt like at the moment, I couldn’t go there. I was not going to lose control and let my hormones kick in and get all moony over a boy. Especially when the boy in question listened to Justin Bieber. I needed to remember that. If I could, it would all be fine.

  A few minutes later we were seated at a table at Milk with a slice of blue velvet cake between us.

&n
bsp; “You know, I think you’re right,” I said as I tried to take a regular-sized forkful of the blue velvet instead of doing what I wanted to do, which was just dive headfirst into the thing. “This might quite possibly be what my friend Cookie would call ‘the grenade.’”

  “Huh?”

  “She means ‘the bomb.’”

  “Isn’t ‘the bomb’ like so late nineties?”

  “She’s fifty-five.” It was taking everything in me not to suggest we get a slice of the vanilla bean tres leches cake, too. And some oatmeal butterscotch cookies. Apparently, I didn’t feel the need to binge on baked goods only when I was sad or anxious, but when I was excited as well. Who knew?

  “I told you,” he said. “So you trust me now, huh?”

  Another smile. Okay, this was not good. Because those smiles—they were kind of dazzling. They had this way of rattling my brain a little so that I felt like I was having these mini-strokes and the world stopped for a second and I couldn’t think. And while I was pretty sure those were the reasons that people did drugs, I didn’t like that out-of-control feeling. I liked being in control. Even when I used to lock myself in my room with sheet cakes, I was controlling the out-of-control feeling I got from doing that.

  “Yes. I trust you,” I replied. Were we talking about the cake, or were we talking about something else?

  “Good. I’m glad.” Another smile.

  I stared at the cake as if it held all the secrets to the universe. Which, not so long ago, I had really thought it had. “Can I ask you something?” I asked quietly.

  “Sure.”

  I looked up at him. “Why’d you ask me out?” Ever since the night of the party, I had been wondering that. Jason Frank could’ve gone out with any girl. Well, any girl who liked dating boys instead of girls. Although rumor had it that Dakota Fincher, the president of the LGBT chapter, had a crush on him, too. And seeing him smile at me, I understood why.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I mean, it’s not like we’re really in the same orbit. We go to the same high school, but we’re in totally different crowds. You’re one of the popular crowd. And I, actually, I don’t even have a crowd.”