• There will be no drugs (cough), no pets, and no parents!
Her eyes fixated on the page, Jamie didn’t even notice Mark had come up behind her until he draped his arm around her shoulder. “So, how do you like being on the other side of things?” he said, his dark eyes sparking with excitement.
“This is so weird,” she answered, handing him half her stack. “It’s like being on the other side of sorority rush sophomore year. Although I have to say, it kind of makes me miss everyone from last summer.”
“Well, last summer we had a very special group.” Holding her gaze, he then turned to survey the crowd. “But not bad, right? What do you think of this year’s prospects?”
Jamie glanced about the room, whose occupants were busy scoping one another out and responding in one of two ways: by either (a) keeping to themselves, as if they were incapable of interacting and might as well have been at home on their couch; or (b) racing to move in on any desirable (and hence, overlapping) romantic candidates.
“They seem really...young,” she said. “Well, except for that group over by the pool table,” she corrected, pointing to a trio of guys chugging beers and conversing rowdily—a telltale sign they were trying to knock at least a decade off their age. “Don’t they look too old?”
“Too old...to sign a check?” Mark joked, never one to discriminate when it came to maximizing his income. Though, upon hearing a loud shriek of laughter, their attention was simultaneously diverted to the bar, where a girl in a sequined tank top stood commanding a (mostly male) crowd. “That girl’s going to be trouble,” Mark predicted, shaking his head.
“Well, the guy she’s talking to, in the light blue Lacoste shirt, looks like a huge player,” Jamie countered. She peered around some more. “Although,” she added, beginning to get into this, “the one sitting at that booth there, with all the girls around him, might give him some competition. That’s Jay—he was on Season One of The Bachelorette.”
Mark looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “I hope you’re not planning on ditching me for one of these twenty-year-olds.”
“No way,” she said. “I mean, not unless he has prime real estate south of the highway.”
She winked and went about distributing the sheets, which most people accepted readily enough. Although apparently not everyone could appreciate all her efforts.
“Rules?” she overheard one guy exclaim moments after she’d handed him a copy. “They’ve got to be kidding me! This is supposed to be, like, our vacation.”
Jamie glanced back at the dissenter (who, even without his green corporate Merrill bag, seemed to scream investment banker). And in that fearless yet haphazard way she had perfected, she approached him.
“No, I hear you,” she said, with a toss of her hair. “But the thing is, if we didn’t have rules, the entire share house would fall apart. There wouldn’t even be a share house to do in the first place.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m doing it yet,” the guy said, shrugging and exchanging a supercilious look with his banker friend.
“Really?” Jamie exclaimed, like he’d just told her he’d forgotten to put on underwear this morning. “Have you seen the pictures from last year? Ten Eighty-eight Montauk is, hands-down, the sickest house!” Leaning in, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Also, I’m the one doing the schedule. If you guys end up doing it, I’ll make sure to put you on the good weekends.”
After some minor convincing (in the form of an extensive conversation detailing where they lived, what they did, and where in the tristate area they were from), Jamie emerged with two fresh checks. It’d been a tough sell at first, but—just as many guys had done before them—they’d conceded.
Though, as Jamie was about to run off and relay the good news to Mark, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning, she found herself face-to-face with three skeptical-looking girls, their tiny bodies decked out in designer jeans, wedge heels, and the exact same studded Kooba bag (in three different colors).
“You were in the house last year, right?” asked one, her intonation annoying yet not unkind. “I recognize your face from the pictures.”
But before Jamie could confirm or deny this, the girl went on. “So, we want you to tell us all the dirt. Like, what’s the house really like?”
“What do you mean?” Jamie asked, not sure where she was going with this.
The girls exchanged dubious glances, then all started talking at once. “I heard share houses are dirty and disgusting, and there’s beer and garbage everywhere,” the first attested.
“I heard there’s one shower for, like, twenty people,” her friend spoke up.
“Well, my older sister’s friend Ilana did this house last year, and she said it was an absolute nightmare,” said the snooty girl Jamie recognized from interrupting Mark’s introduction earlier. “How they’ll throw cake at you, and how this one guy used to climb into girls’ beds in their sleep.”
At once all three of them whipped around, reexamining the room for any overlooked bed-hoppers.
Jamie had to laugh. “What happens in the Hamptons, stays in the Hamptons,” she sang, with a suggestive gleam in her eye.
Although seeing as they were still unconvinced, Jamie tried her best to allay their fears. She knew any honest insight into how the other half Hamptons—all the drunken escapades, public nudity, hot tub hookups, hideous hangovers, explosive arguments, emotional bonding, and juvenile mischief—could send them running in the other direction. But she also knew that discovering this secret life—discovering you liked this secret life—was perhaps the best part.
“There’s no way words could ever describe it,” she told them, a reminiscent smile spreading across her face. “Just trust me—you’re in for the time of your life.”
About the Author
I’m pretty much a die-hard New Yorker who grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, always sure of two things: that I would always live in New York City and that someday I was going to become a novelist.
This isn’t to say I didn’t waver from this path. In high school I wrote for my school newspaper, but I was also cheerleading captain, danced in school productions, tutored math, conducted medical research, worked at the Gap on Eighth and Broadway, and was one of those “clipboard girls” at nightclubs.
I attended college at the University of Pennsylvania during a time when it was glamorous (not to mention lucrative) to go into finance. I spent summers working at Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch, respectively, then graduated in 2002 with a major in economics and a minor in mathematics. I worked for a few years as a financial analyst at Standard & Poor’s, still dreamed of becoming a writer, and made a decision to stop wavering.
I began doing some freelance nightlife reporting and, shortly after, landed a sixteen-week column in the New York Post. Each Sunday I documented my share house experiences in the Hamptons—which, to someone who was accustomed to things like pavement, taxicabs, twenty-four-hour everything, and, well, sleeping in beds, proved somewhat of a culture shock.
After resigning from finance, I now do celebrity and nightlife reporting alongside writing fiction. Sometimes it’s shocking to think I left the business world, and other times shocking to think I ever entered it. Still, there’s something to be said for the wisdom of my youth: I currently live in New York City, and am proud to say I am a novelist.
Five Signs You’re in a Summer Share House:
1. You’ve slept in a room with twice as many people as beds.
2. You’re impressed when a bathroom actually has toilet paper.
3. You’d sooner spend half the day stuck in traffic on 27 than attempt to learn the “back roads.”
4. Your entire weekend wardrobe ends up covered in dirt (though you don’t actually remember seeing any dirt).
5. You’ve forgotten what it feels like to be alone.
How the Other Half Hamptons Page 28