Halfway Perfect

by Julie Cross

  “Good answer,” she says.

  Eve is wide-eyed, like she has no idea what to do with the potato peeler she’s just been handed along with the big sack of Idaho potatoes. Mrs. Larson laughs at her expression. “Go on. Just give it a whirl. No one’s grading you.”

  I have to snort back a laugh, and Eve rolls her eyes in my direction. Mrs. Larson sets up a pot of water on the stove to get it boiling and I begin chopping zucchini.

  A buzz comes through the kitchen intercom system, and our cohost rushes out to answer the door.

  “I feel like I’m doing this completely wrong,” Eve says from her spot over the garbage disposal. “I don’t think there'll be much potato left by the time I get done with it.”

  I smile at her and set down my knife. I take the mostly peeled potato from her hand and rinse off the gritty brown substance. “There. Now you can see what you actually need to shave off.”

  She stares at me and then takes the potato back. “That’s much better. Thanks.”

  “I take it you haven’t been subjected to eighteen years of family Thanksgiving dinners?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I think my grandmother cooked once when I was very young. Before she died. And another year, my dad took us to this diner in town and they had turkey and stuffing. And of course we did the First Thanksgiving lessons in grade school.”

  “Funny that you had to come to New York City to do this holiday the normal way,” I say, making light of, not for the first time, the obvious differences in our families. “I didn’t think there were actual New Yorkers who did the traditional kind of thing. I thought it’d be too trendy or something.”

  “Is that why you wanted to come with me?” she asks, flashing me a smile, then her grin fades and her eyes focus on the vegetable in her hand. “I forgot one…a few years ago I had Thanksgiving dinner with the designer working for Calvin Klein.”

  The knife almost slips in my hand. “Seriously?”

  Chapter 23: Eve

  Looking at Alex’s face right now, the openness, the acceptance, I almost want to tell him all the details of that incredibly stressful holiday. One that ended with me losing my virginity. I remember every detail like it happened hours ago.

  Wes had given me almost no advance notice about this party. I’d been looking forward to a few days off and maybe some quality time with my secret older boyfriend despite the gradual shakiness of our relationship.

  “Why are you dressed like a prostitute?” Wes had said the moment I opened the door to let him into the agency apartment. “I specifically said conservative attire.”

  “Hannah said to not wear any major labels. This is all I had.” I followed him as he rushed in and headed straight for my closet. Hannah was Wes’s assistant. She’d sent me an email with very basic instructions less than twelve hours earlier.

  Wes was fuming as he shifted clothes to one side of the rack in my closet. “Hannah obviously doesn’t know what happens when you’re allowed to think for yourself.”

  My insides recoiled at his hurtful words. They were coming more and more frequently and I was beginning to wonder if I really was clueless.

  “Lucky for everyone, you have me.” He removed a knee-length dress and a brown sweater. “Stockings, black heels, hair down, not too much makeup,” he rattled off. “You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  I stood there, biting my nails, waiting for him to leave the bedroom. He pulled my hand from my face, examining my nails before letting out a long sigh. “You have to stop that. And you want me to leave, I assume?”

  “No,” I said, even though I really wasn’t sure if I could handle stripping down in front of Wes. We hadn’t gotten that far yet. Underwear, sure, but I hadn’t been completely naked in front of him before.

  He rolled his eyes and moved toward the door. “Time to grow up, Evie.”

  I let out a huge breath and hurried to change my clothes. Ten minutes later Wes pronounced me decent looking, but the tension continued on the car ride to the party.

  “There are three girls in line for this CK campaign,” Wes said. “You’ve got at least five pounds on all of them. I’ve already promised the client that you would lose the weight—”

  I turned around in my seat to face him. “Wait…what? I have to lose five pounds?”

  Was this the reason for the knee-length dress and the long-sleeved sweater? He wanted to cover my trouble spots. I only weighed 120 pounds and at five eleven, that wasn’t much.

  Wes let out a frustrated breath. “God, it’s only five pounds, Evie. And it’s just for this job.”

  I stared straight ahead. “So you’re trying to tell me not to eat anything at the party?”

  “Lean protein, raw vegetables, and you can have all the vodka you can handle, got it?”

  “Got it.” I closed my eyes for a second, wishing for a few moments of calm to balance out this constant storm of tension.

  “This job is yours to screw up,” Wes said. “You have to show some maturity. And the nail-biting has to go. And do not fidget with your hands.”

  I didn’t say anything more, because it was easier to weather Wes’s mood swings with silence.

  At the party, I put plain turkey breast slices and carrot sticks on my plate and nothing else, even though my stomach growled the second I smelled the freshly baked rolls. When I sat down at the table, Wes sat beside me and discreetly moved half the turkey from my plate to his and placed what looked like vodka and a few ice cubes in front of me. I stiffened under the weight of his glare and cut my meat into tiny pieces before eating only a small portion of it.

  I was almost too nervous to answer the questions that the other guests happened to ask me. I’d have an answer ready and then panic, analyzing each word from Wes’s perspective, and end up with my mouth hanging open like an idiot. Then Wes would pinch me hard in the side, and I’d come up with something to say. I downed enough vodka in three hours to last me for the next five parties in an effort to ease my nerves.

  Eventually, the drinks and lack of sustenance caught up to me. When I stumbled into a middle-aged man who looked like he might be someone important, Wes grabbed me by the arm and said a quick good-bye, steering me out of there.

  He was quiet in the car, but the second we walked into my empty apartment, he shut the door and started shouting at me. “What the hell was wrong with you tonight? Have you lost the ability to answer simple questions?”

  My eyes could barely focus on the wall in front of me, let alone his storming face. “I don’t know. I was so nervous.”

  He swept his hand quickly over the coffee table, flinging papers and remote controls across the living room. “Do you want to blow this opportunity? Is that what you want, Eve? To go back to Indiana and live with your parents again?”

  I fought off the tears that threatened to fall. “No.”

  “Then why the fuck did you transform into some robot savant?” He moved in my direction, but before he could reach me, I ran for the bathroom and puked up gallons of vodka and carrot sticks.

  Wes found me minutes later, leaning over the sink, fumbling with my toothbrush. He released one of his famous frustrated sighs and spread a gob of toothpaste across my toothbrush.

  “I recall telling you to drink all the vodka you could handle.” The anger had dropped from his tone. Like maybe he’d figured out that at sixteen, I might not know how much I could handle. “Just so you know, this isn’t the method of weight loss I’d recommend.”

  I had finished brushing my teeth and felt about 20 percent less drunk, which basically meant I wasn’t wasted enough to pass out, but plenty drunk enough to start crying. “I can’t lose five pounds. It’s impossible. I know they’re going to pick someone else.”

  Wes led me into my room and began removing my party clothes and replacing them with a T-shirt and shorts. “I want you to get everything you deserve, and I’m
not sure that’s possible without me intervening. You’re so fucking hardheaded. If you’d just listen to me, we wouldn’t have these problems.”

  There was so much emptiness inside of me, so much rejection, I could hardly stand it. How many times had my own father called me fucking hardheaded? Too many to count. And then eventually he stopped calling me anything, which was even worse. “I should quit. Go to college a year early. I’m just going to disappoint you over and over again.”

  “Damn it, Eve!” Wes yelled, startling me out of my tears. “Cut that shit out right now. I swear you act like a five-year-old sometimes.” He gripped the top of my arms, squeezing so tight it brought tears to my eyes again.

  I tried to fight his grip and back away, but then he started shaking me, and dozens more tears tumbled down my cheeks. “Stop it. Please, Wes.”

  His eyes widened, and his face filled with alarm. And then he released me. I fell back on my bed and pressed my nose into the pillow, sobbing as quietly as possible. I’d expected to hear him storm out and slam the front door, but he didn’t.

  Thirty seconds later, Wes lay down beside me. He placed a hand onto my back and put his mouth close to my ear. “I’m sorry, Evie. I’m so sorry. Look at me, please?”

  On command, I turned my head and saw all the regret and vulnerability on his face, the kind of emotion that made me feel like maybe I wasn’t all alone in my world. Then he touched my cheek and said, “This is so hard sometimes because…because I love you.”

  My whole body was frozen for a long second. And then we were kissing. Like two people desperate for air, drowning underwater. Later, when he asked me if I wanted to stop, it was the first time I told him no. I was tired of the barriers between us, and him saying he loved me seemed to make this event more important somehow.

  • • •

  “Hey, you okay?”

  My heart is racing, just thinking about the intensity of that holiday with Wes. I shake my head and attempt to smile at Alex. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  At least I know Elana’s here with us and not being forced into some awkward meal with a designer. Not within Wes Danes’s grasp.

  Alex must have sensed something unpleasant going through my head because he looks concerned. He sets the knife down and places both hands on my shoulders and rubs them gently before planting a kiss on my cheek.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine these same hands squeezing my arms until they left tiny bruises. Bruises that shined black and blue and then eventually faded to yellow after several days. It doesn’t seem possible for Alex to do this. But how long will it be before I manage to piss Alex off to that point? Maybe I have grown up. Maybe back then, I’d been too young to handle Wes and the friction between us.

  Alex holds one of the five peeled potatoes up to the light above the sink. “It’s perfect. I’ve never seen such a smoothly peeled vegetable in my entire life.”

  “I so needed to hear that.” I turn my head to kiss him, but just as my lips touch his, the kitchen door swings open.

  And in walks Janessa Fields.

  Chapter 24: Alex

  Of course Janessa Fields is here. Of course my elation with the idea of spending a carefree day with Eve while fulfilling my duties to Elana would have some kind of glitch.

  Eve and I both freeze, staring at each other and still standing way too close to be just friends. From the corner of my eye, I see Janessa shaking her head and then she laughs.

  “I want nothing to do with this phony relationship story, do you understand?” Janessa’s gaze bounces from Eve to me.

  Eve nods and finally whispers, “Okay.”

  Janessa helps herself to a carrot stick from the veggie tray and dunks it in the dip before taking a big bite. “Does the French teen know?”

  Does Elana know? Good question. She has to know.

  Eve looks at me and I take a step back and clear my throat. “Yeah, I think she does.”

  “Good. Then consider this"—she waves her arms around as if drawing boundary lines on the apartment—"a safe space. But I want nothing to do with the story. I’ll deny ever knowing anything. I’m taking pictures, not selling my soul. Is that clear?”

  Relief washes over me. “Very clear.”

  Janessa smiles and snatches another carrot before heading out and calling over her shoulder, “Happy Thanksgiving, by the way.”

  “I had no idea she would be here,” Eve says.

  “She seems cool with it.” I pick up the knife again and resume cutting vegetables.

  After a couple of minutes, Eve starts laughing really hard, and I look over at her. “What’s the joke?”

  She shakes her head, still laughing. “I’m just trying to figure out how we ended up here. Having Thanksgiving with Elana and Janessa. Also, I’m cooking, which I pretty much have never done in my entire life.”

  “Correction, you’re peeling, not cooking.” I toss a slice of zucchini in my mouth and chew it quickly. “Holidays can get pretty fucked up. Probably why some of the best comedy movies take place on a holiday.”

  “We have odd dates, don’t we?” Eve says.

  “Very odd.”

  But this revelation only makes me more excited for future dates. I love that we have no plan and there’s always this possibility of crazy awesomeness around every corner. I wouldn’t mind if some of the craziness involved fewer people and possibly less clothing. I would totally be down with that. But for now, I’ll take whatever I can get of Eve Nowakowski.

  Chapter 25: Eve

  November 28, 9:30 a.m.

  I can feel the aches in my muscles and the chills and sneezing that come with the first signs of a cold.

  And yet I’m outside, in SoHo to be exact, jogging with Alex.

  My toes are numb inside my running shoes. The high-tech running tights I borrowed from a girl in my dorm are not keeping my legs as warm as they claim to.

  “I think I might have considered college if I knew there were teachers like Professor Larson,” Alex says. “He seems like the kind of dude who would be above giving grades or some liberal artistic move like that.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, right. He grades tough. I’ll be lucky to get an A in his class. Actually, I got an A minus in my independent study course.”

  “Well, I guess it is Ivy League. They’re all about grades.”

  We get to a street corner and have to wait at the crosswalk. I bend over to catch my breath and then spend thirty seconds coughing into my elbow, like a good citizen.

  “You caught that kid’s cold, didn’t you?” Alex says, eyeing me. “I saw the runny nose and knew we were in for some germ exposure.”

  “I’m in denial.” He’s talking about Olivia, Professor Larson’s three-year-old granddaughter who was at Thanksgiving dinner. I’d seen the runny nose too and I was worried about it. I probably mentally contracted the virus just from worrying about it. The only cold I got last winter turned into pneumonia. I don’t have time for pneumonia right now.

  We cross the street and Alex pauses again and touches my red nose. “We should stop. Let’s go have breakfast somewhere.”

  “We’ve only gone two miles.” My protest is weak, because my body is weak at the moment. Then it’s like the world is trying to stop us, or actually give me pneumonia, because the sky opens up and pours icy cold rain on top of us.

  Alex covers his head with both arms. “Shit!”

  It only takes about thirty seconds for my shoes to get soaked through and my teeth to start chattering. He looks over at me and points in a different direction than the one we were originally headed in. “Change of plans.”

  After running another four blocks with shoes that weigh an extra twenty pounds from water, Alex pulls me under the awning of a tall apartment building. His gaze darts around the street, then he removes a pair of sunglasses from his coat pocket and puts them on my face. He pulls the col
d, wet hood of my jacket over my head.

  “What are we doing?” I ask.

  “Going inside.” He’s still looking around as he leads me through a door, nudging me in front of him. He walks in the lobby and bypasses the elevators. “We’ll take the stairs, just to be on the safe side.”

  I stop at the first landing. “Is this where you live?”

  “No, I like to hang out in stairwells of random apartment buildings.” He’s already charging up the next flight.

  I have no choice but to plunge ahead after him. “I thought your place was off limits?”

  “Desperate times.” He glances over his shoulder and grins. “I didn’t see anyone outside, did you?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. What about your roommates?”

  “Gone.” He finally stops at the fifth floor. “They’re both in Brazil doing some summer catalog shoot. We can leave separately, later, after we dry off and regain feeling in our toes.”

  He’s right, I can’t feel my toes, but I can feel my heart speeding up when he unlocks the door and allows me to walk through first. It’s a good-sized place, not all that different from the agency apartment I used to live in. I move to take my shoes off at the door, but Alex nods for me to follow him.

  “Don’t bother,” he says. “Let’s leave all the wet stuff in the bathroom.”

  On the way to his room, I peek into the two roommates’ personal space. Both have unmade beds and clothes on the floor, but nothing too disgusting like I’d imagined there’d be from a trio of single guys.

  Alex’s queen-sized bed is made and the only thing on the floor is a laundry basket of neatly folded clothes sitting beside the desk. He’s also got a fancy-looking speaker system and a big flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. Throw in a microfridge and I could live in here for weeks.

  “You make your bed?” I shift around, trying to find a spot where I’m not going to drip on anything electronic.