Lafayette is the social spot at NYU if you live on campus. Like many of the dorms for upperclassmen, it’s a repurposed apartment building with full kitchens so students don’t have to eat at the dining halls. The rooms also have incredibly high ceilings and large balcony spaces no one is supposed to use (though everyone does anyway). The top floor is a penthouse usually inhabited by seniors who throw monthly parties on their roof. In short, Lafayette is a party house, and my roommates and I have embraced the chaos of living there.
I share apartment 5E, a two-bedroom place, with my three best girlfriends I met last year as freshmen: Shama, Jamie, and Quinn. Shama and Jamie are both from inland New Jersey, both journalism majors, both hilarious. They share the first bedroom.
Quinn, my roommate, is a no-nonsense girl from Boston, extremely motivated, and the most serious of the four of us. She’s a little uptight––the only one of us still a virgin because of her “standards.” We tease her about it sometimes, but sometimes I envy her. Quinn knows exactly what she’s going to do for the next twenty years. She knows who she’s going to marry (although she hasn’t met him yet), what kind of medicine she’s going to practice, where she’s going to do her residency, how many kids she wants, and what sort of nanny she’ll hire to take care of them.
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 freshman year. 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.
New York is a city with so many different types of people. How could a show claiming to represent this place be all about rich white people? Even from my sheltered, NYU-centric perspective, I know the city is so much more than that.
“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 raise an eyebrow.
“I doubt it on both counts,” I say dryly as I hang my shoulder bag on the hook by the doorway and 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 in my mind 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, stepping backward toward 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 from the common room, 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 fat she was always haranguing me about.
“Cheers to your first day as a lackey, kid,” Vinny says, clinking his beer can against my soda. “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 sit back and hide my face behind my can while I take another drink. Vinny’s not exactly perceptive, but I doubt I can hide the heat rocketing up my neck.
“Um, not really,” I lie after I cool down a bit. 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 turn and 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 pulling away to drop 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, one 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 had all tried out our fake IDs, she had taken one look at the scantily clad women in the club and said “Oh, hell no,” and gone 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), 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 asks, popping open a Diet Coke of her own and leaning on the bar across from Vinny and me.
Her Shirley Temple curls escape around her forehead, but the rest are still swept back 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 calmly states before taking a sip of her drink. “I saw that blush before I even opened the damn door. Out with it, Barros.”
Vinny turns to me curiously, and Jamie and Shama’s heads pop over the back of the sofa like puppets. I blush again, as if on cue.
“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. It’s just like the office all over again. 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 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 say, 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 takes a long swig of beer, doing 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 feel you’re hit all at once by that flash.
“I’m happy for you, babe, I really am,” Quinn says, breaking up the reverie with that tone that 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 on some level they probably do. The truth is 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––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, I tell myself. 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 says as he gets up, clearly feeling stifled by all the females clamored around him. “I have my first internship interview on Friday 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 they get for these things.” 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 quarter 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 says, steering 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 asks. She 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 Vinny 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,” Vinny adds, causing the rest of us to burst into laughter. He 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 said. “You think?”
Shama nods. “Do it.”
I tap my finger on my lips, conte
mplating. “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 say, and don’t wait for her approval because there is no way I’m going to 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 amid the cheers and laughter of my roommates and my growing anticipation at seeing that wide smile and broad shoulders tomorrow. Because 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 in the office, twiddling my thumbs at the desk. The firm’s dress code is fairly relaxed, but clear: no jeans except on Fridays, no club wear. 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.
Bad Idea Page 3