She spotted Kit in the crowd and raised her glass hello. He and Taylor had broken up the week before, and Eliza had been trying to cheer him up. As much as she was friends with Taylor, she always thought Kit deserved better. A lot of her old friends were at the party, but every time one of them waved her over, she just shook her head and smiled.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a voice called as she stepped out to check the driveway for Jeremy’s pickup again.
She spotted Charlie Borshok leaning on a pillar, completely wasted.
“Nowhere.”
Charlie took a few steps over and wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Liza, you smell so good. I missed you, baby.”
“That’s really nice, Charlie,” she said, twisting her body away.
It was what she had wanted to hear all summer. That he wanted her back. That they were the golden couple again. That she was still the same girl who had snagged the richest boy in New York. But now she was looking for Jeremy.
* * *
A half hour later, Jeremy’s pickup truck pulled into the driveway. He was still wearing his uniform T-shirt and apron. Eliza ran out and leapt into his embrace.
“Hey, baby.” He grinned at her.
“I MISSED YOU!”
She hugged her legs around his waist tighter and whispered, “Let’s go find somewhere we can be alone.”
jacqui has always been smarter than you’d think
NOW, THIS WAS A PARTY! JACQUI THOUGHT, WALKING into the Perry mansion, momentarily forgetting that she was employed there.
She’d been drinking all afternoon. She felt fantastic—except for the wooziness and the dizziness and the slight double vision, that is. But who cared? She snuggled up to Leo. Leo, nice, faithful Leo, who made her forget, well, almost everything.
So what if his lovemaking wasn’t earth-shattering? Not to mention that his parents’ three-bedroom shack in Bridgehampton was nothing compared to Luke’s corner wing on the Van Varick estate. And so what if he was slightly cross-eyed and had an irritating laugh? None of it mattered. He was Luke’s best friend. And as every girl knows, there’s nothing a guy hates more than sharing.
Jealousy was a terrible thing, and Jacqui knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted Luke to feel as bad as she did when she found out about his girlfriend. She wanted him to squirm. She wanted him to suffer. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to break his heart—but she could damn well try to shatter his ego. It was time for her to go public with her latest conquest.
“Where’s the bar?” Leo asked, yelling in her ear.
“Over there!” she screamed, pointing to where Ryan was mixing frozen daiquiris in a blender.
They picked their way past a group playing Twister and several clumps of people dancing on the sofa (Anna would die if they knew what they were doing to her Louis Quinze) and were stopped in their tracks by Poppy Perry, in a shredded Van Halen T-shirt and micro denim hot pants.
“I don’t remember inviting you,” she sneered, giving Leo a death’s-head stare.
“What’s up with the bruha?” Jacqui asked.
Leo looked sheepish. “She’s my ex-girlfriend.”
Poppy’s eyes followed them as they moved across the room, where another angry face met them.
“What’s the deal?” Luke said, coming up in Leo’s face close enough to spitting vicinity. “Are you here with her?” he demanded, giving his pal a hard shove.
“I’m here with him,” Jacqui said, pushing at Luke’s chest with a pointy fingernail. “Do you have a problema with that?”
“What’s going on, honey?” Karin asked, appearing by Luke’s side. “Oh, hi, Leo. And Jacqui, right?” she said pleasantly.
“Nothing—everything’s fine. Get me another beer,” Luke spat.
Karin walked away meekly as the three of them glowered at each other.
eliza teaches jeremy the o.c. drinking game
IN THE PERRYS’ PRIVATE SCREENING ROOM THE DIGITAL projection screen blazed a sixteen-foot-tall upset-looking Mischa Barton explaining to Benjamin Mackenzie why she couldn’t see him anymore. “They’re breaking up! You need to take a drink!” Eliza cheered.
Eliza had found the only room in the house that wasn’t already locked and in use by an amorous couple, or occupied by a group of kids passing a roach around. Not everyone knew about the basement screening room.
On-screen, Ben apologized for being from “a different county.”
“Chug?” Jeremy asked, holding his shot glass.
“No! Only when he actually says ‘Chino,’ ” Eliza said, explaining the rules of the game.
“Oh. Sorry. I don’t watch this show.”
“If you did, I’d worry. Oh, look, Summer’s going shopping. Double chug!”
“I say we do body shots instead,” Jeremy said, pouring another shot of Cuervo and handing her a wedge of lime. “Hmmm . . . where will I do mine?” he asked, lifting up Eliza’s shirt to expose her pierced belly button. She had gotten it in Greenport one afternoon when he told her he thought they were sexy. He pulled down her skirt a bit to expose her jutting hip bones and bent his head to lick her in the shallow of her stomach.
“That tickles!” Eliza giggled, ruffling his hair and squealing as he began biting her belly.
The door clicked open, and Eliza froze. In the darkness she saw a couple feverishly making out and groping their way to the pool table. A flurry of limbs began throwing items of clothing to the ground. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who knew about the room.
“We’re not alone!” she told Jeremy, putting a finger to her lips.
Jeremy smirked when he saw the other couple. “I guess someone else had the same idea,” he whispered. They giggled quietly.
“Let’s go,” she told him, zipping up her skirt and collecting the shot glasses and tequila bottle. They inched their way to the doorway, laughing as the couple began making lurid, disgustingly wet sloppy noises along with unintentionally comic expressions of discomfort. “Ow! Not there! Oops, I think I’m sitting on the remote control! Oh, that’s you!” “Honey, please, stop pinching . . .” “That’s better. Oh, wait, is that your leg or mine?”
The light suddenly switched on, filling the room in a blaze of light.
The two couples blinked. Taylor and Lindsay stood at the front of the room. They were roaming the house, trying to find the source of the music in order to change the CD. The speaker system was wired to the entire house, and you could only take so much vintage Puffy.
“I think they keep the Crestron in here,” Lindsay said, meaning the universal remote that controlled all the electricity in the house, including the lighting, stereo, televisions, burglar alarm, and even the microwave.
“Oh! Sorry!” Taylor said.
Eliza finally got a clear picture of the room’s other amorous inhabitants “Charlie! Sugar!”
Sugar, splayed out between two Barcaloungers, was topless in a Cosabella thong. She was, indeed, straddling the remote control. Charlie was dressed in his polka-dot boxers and nursing his foot. Talk about compromising positions.
Sugar sat up and shook out her hair, casually sliding her completely see-through cami back on. Eliza willed herself not to look and see if Jeremy was staring.
“Eliza, what are you doing here?” Sugar asked coolly. “And hey, aren’t you our pool boy or something?” she said, noticing Jeremy as she reached for her pack of cigarettes and patted out a stick.
Charlie grabbed at his pants on the floor and pulled out his lighter. He lit her cigarette and assessed the situation, observing Eliza’s crimson face and rumpled clothes and her partner’s stony expression and some kind of Pizza Hut uniform.
“Liza,” Charlie drawled, obviously still drunk. “I didn’t know you had it in you to go slumming.”
Eliza recoiled from Jeremy, shaking off his protective hand on her elbow. “I didn’t know you did either, Charlie,” she said, looking pointedly at Sugar. Let her whine to Anna and get her fired. Eliza didn’t care.
&nbs
p; Jeremy balked. “Eliza, my family is richer than yours.”
“Excuse me?” Charlie asked, not sure what he just heard. The dude was obviously some blue-collar trash. And Eliza Thompson was Park Avenue born and bred.
Eliza turned to Jeremy, completely horrified that he had just blown her cover. “You don’t even know me,” she spat.
Jeremy’s face hardened. He couldn’t believe keeping her status with her so-called friends was so important to her. “You’re right, I definitely don’t know you at all.” He pushed his way past them to the door without giving her a second glance.
Lindsay and Taylor were utterly speechless with shock and schadenfreude. Eliza? Poor? Could it get any better than this?
Sugar, dumb as she was, said matter-of-factly, “God, you guys didn’t know that? Eliza’s been working here as an au pair all summer. Her family’s totally bankrupt. Hey, don’t you have to go burp my brother or something?” she said snidely.
Tears in her eyes, Eliza mumbled something unintelligible and ran out the door as fast as her three-inch-heel Jimmy Choos could carry her.
luke and leo are rich white boys who think they’re straight outta compton
“MAN, THAT IS SO LOW,” LUKE SAID, SHAKING HIS HEAD and staring at Leo and Jacqui. “I can’t believe you would tap my bitch like this.”
“Dude, you have a girlfriend,” Leo said in his defense.
Bitch? Jacqui was no one’s bitch. What was this, some bad audition tape for a rap video? Who did these guys think they were? Eminem and Dr. Dre? More like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer.
“You! You lied to me!” she said to Luke. “You had girlfriend the whole time!”
“Listen, mamasita. What I do in the States is my business. I showed you a good time, didn’t I?” Luke said scornfully. He’d had Jacqui’s number since they met. All pretty girls had zero self-esteem. Jacqui was just like every Upper East Side ice princess who pretended to be all that, but melted at a well-phrased compliment.
Jacqui couldn’t believe she had ever fallen in love with such a cretin. Or that she had fallen for his whole aw-shucks, nice-guy act.
“Goddamn, Leo, I can’t believe you got on my bitch!” Luke said, scowling and folding his arms across his chest, assuming the confrontational pose he had seen Snoop throw down on the BET.
“I didn’t. The bitch wasn’t taken,” Leo said, stepping back and waving his arms.
“Bitch? What? Listen, you,” Jacqui said, turning to Leo. “I’m only with you to make him jealous.”
“See. You’re being played, man. That is cold. That’s cold,” Luke said, smirking.
Leo turned purple and turned to Jacqui. “What?!”
Jacqui shrugged. Jesus, what did he think he was, some kind of stud? Of course she was only with him to lick her wounds and get even with the so-called love of her life.
* * *
It was a whole sloppy-second mess, a complete emotional disaster. But somehow, by the end of the argument, Luke and Leo were slapping each other on the back, calling each other homie and laughing about the whole thing. Dating and dumping the same girl—it was something the two jerks could relate to. It was just like something out of a Bad Boy video, and they thought that was pretty cool. She just provided them with a summer’s worth of gross locker room anecdotes, and they couldn’t be happier.
But for once it looked like Jacqui was going to have to sleep in the au pairs’ cottage. Alone.
mara can’t keep her clothes on
2 A.M.
Almost everyone left for another party, and the only people in the house were Ryan and his close friends. In the back patio by the pool the remaining guests were having another kind of party altogether . . . a more intimate one, shall we say. The table held several empty bottles of liquor, dozens of cocktail glasses, and ashtrays filled to the brim with cigarette butts, and the group exuded a jovial camaraderie as if it were perfectly normal that they were more than half naked. They didn’t call it strip poker for nothing.
Mara peeked at her hand. A pair of queens. Not bad. Her dad had taught all three of his kids his favorite game, and Mara always thought of herself as a bit of a pro. No daughter of George “Texas No Limit Hold’Em” Waters was going to lose to a bunch of overprivileged softies from East Hampton.
Nonetheless, she was down to her pink Chantelle bra and matching low-rise underwear.
She looked across the table, where Ryan was busy examining his cards, frowning.
The dealer flipped the next card: an ace. “And that’s the river,” he crowed.
“Well, I’m out,” Ryan’s friend Corey decided, putting down his cards in disgust.
“Me too,” another friend agreed.
Around the table everyone took a pass, forfeiting an item of clothing in the process.
“I’m in,” Ryan declared.
Mara looked at the ace, looked at her high pair. She scanned the other four community cards—all trash. There was no way he could beat her. He had nothing! Nothing! He was totally bluffing! Ryan was the worst player of the night—he was the only one down to his boxer shorts. Well, besides her.
Mara smiled to herself. This was going to be fun.
“I’m in, too,” she said challengingly.
“The Scrabble Master should fold,” he advised.
“No way.”
“Not to be cliché, but read them and weep.” Ryan grinned, putting down a pair of aces. With the dealer’s ace, he had three of a kind.
Mara slumped in her seat.
“What have you got?”
She showed him.
“No big deal. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” Ryan told her, a sympathetic look on his face.
She shrugged. What the hell. It was just like the dressing room at Loehmann’s. Except outdoors. In public. In front of Ryan Perry.
“Rules are rules,” she said. All those daiquiris she’d drunk were making her pretty brave.
Taking a deep breath, she unhooked her bra and threw in her underwear as well. Naked as Aphrodite emerging from the sea, she streaked past the rest of the strip poker revelers, through the kitchen, across the porch, and through the yard and dove into the pool.
Far from shy, Ryan took the cue, doffed his boxers, and followed her in. After all, his mother had shipped him to a hippie summer camp in Vermont as a kid. This was all just fun and games.
“WATER FIGHT!” he yelled, splashing up to her.
Mara screamed mid-backstroke and tackled him in the water. She’d never had so much fun in her life. She was liberated, free. The old class secretary Mara would never be caught dead in the wee hours of the morning, completely nude with a guy she wasn’t even dating.
Ryan swam up and grabbed her by the waist. “GOTCHA!”
“Ryan! Let me go!” Mara squealed, loving every minute.
They treaded water for a while, laughing, and Mara suddenly realized she was like, oh, good God, totally naked in front of Ryan! And he was holding her . . . kind of close actually.
She looked into his eyes, which were laughing back at her.
He’s going to kiss me, Mara thought. It’s going to happen. Now. Here. She closed her eyes, but then she suddenly pulled away.
“Ryan, I can’t—this doesn’t feel right—not that I don’t want to—I really do—but I still have to work things out with Ji—JIM!”
And there, standing by the edge of the pool, was Jim Mizekowski, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him. With a look of absolute disgust on his face.
when arguing naked, be careful how emphatically you talk
MARA STRUGGLED OUT OF THE POOL, RUNNING AFTER JIM. She felt terrible for him—there was so much to explain—if he would just wait.
“Jim, please, listen to me,” she pleaded.
“So THIS is why you couldn’t come home this week. You had to ‘work.’ I get it.” He spat, so angry that a vein throbbed dangerously on his forehead. “Jesus, I can’t even look at you.”
“It’s not what you think. Ryan’s just
a friend. We were just playing a game, that’s all,” Mara said, knowing it sounded pretty weak.
“Calm down, buddy,” Ryan said, still laughing, giving Jim his usual disarming smile. “We’re just having fun. You want to join us in a little strip poker?”
Jim ignored him.
“NOTHING HAPPENED, Jim! I SWEAR!” Mara said, energized by the truth. After all, nothing had happened. Yet.
“You know why I came up here?” Jim asked. “My MOM saw your picture in the paper. She gets the Post, you know. And there was some picture of you from some polo match and some guy you were with—this guy!” he said, motioning to Ryan. “I didn’t even believe it. It’s just not like you. Not my Mara. But I saw the picture—you were dressed like a hooker.”
“I’m not a hooker!” Mara cried. Even though she was, technically, still naked. In public. Ahem.
“No, you’re worse. You’re a slut and a whore. You’re nothing better than a two-bit hooker on Worth Avenue.”
Mara gasped. She had never been called such awful names. And from her own boyfriend! She didn’t know how to react.
“Hey, dude, that’s enough,” Ryan said, coming up to shield Mara from Jim. His voice was quiet, and he was no longer amused. (He had thought the whole thing was kind of funny, really, since he and Mara were still naked, and hey, everything could easily be explained—it’s not as if there wasn’t a bunch of half-naked people on the porch.) But this guy was acting way out of line.
“I understand you’re angry, but you can’t talk to her that way,” Ryan said.
Mara couldn’t believe what was happening. It was all too much. And she’d had a lot to drink. It was surreal. A total nightmare.
Meanwhile, back on the patio, the music was still blasting and the game continued. Everyone else was totally clueless about the drama going on in the backyard.