Hon? Who’s hon?
“Five minutes, I promise.” She giggles. “Me, too. Bye.” She hangs up the phone and hugs me. “Jamie, how are you?” She pulls back and puts on her somber face. “You doing all right?”
“I’m all right. Who’s hon?”
She claps her hands. “It’s him! The essay guy, Bradley Green.” She mouths the word essay so no one in the hallway will hear. Not that there’s anyone in the hallway. “Come in. I’ll bring you up to speed.”
As usual, her room looks as though she’s spent all day organizing and fluffing it. I flop on her bed and make myself comfortable. Who knows? Maybe she’ll join me.
Nope. She sits on her desk chair. “First tell me about you. How’s your family doing?”
“They’ve been better.” They were better when more of them were alive. “It was all pretty sudden.”
“Poor you. How are you?”
I don’t feel like talking about me. “I want to know about Bradley. Nu?”
“He’s wonderful,” she gushes. “I met him when I did the prospective students tour. Then I met him in the City last weekend.”
Last weekend. When I called. “That’s where you were.”
“What do you mean?”
“I called you.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” Should have left a message. Should have told her how I felt two weeks ago, then maybe she would never have gone to meet this Bradley guy. Maybe she would have chosen me. “Never mind. So you went to visit him last weekend.”
“Yes, and he took me to a fabulous restaurant, and we had an incredible time.”
“Get some action?” I lift my eyebrows suggestively. My stomach falls simultaneously.
She smiles. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Bradley Green. Kermit had it wrong. It is easy being green. I feel an unmanly lump in the back of my throat. Oy. “What else is going on? Russ and Kimmy still on the sly?”
“No, that’s the other big news. He broke up with Sharon. And now he and Kimmy are all over each other in class. You’ll see tomorrow. And they both got offers at O’Donnel.”
Throat lump increases exponentially. “Am I the only one without a job?” I need to figure out what I want to do.
“No, I don’t think Lauren got one yet.”
“But she’ll take any job. She swings all ways.”
Layla giggles. “We’re all going to the Monsoon Bar on Johnson Street tonight to celebrate. And it’s Nick’s birthday. You’ll come, won’t you? We missed you. We miss our comedian.”
I fake smile. “Celebrate we shall.” What’s not to celebrate?
kimmy has a boyfriend
11:38 p.m.
I’m sitting next to Jamie along the bar. “What do you call a four-hundred-pound stripper?”
“What?
“Broke.” I laugh, waiting for him to join in. Instead, he sits with a dump-truck-just-ran-over-my-puppy look on his face. “You okay?”
My adorable boyfriend and Nick are playing darts and doing tequila shots, and Layla is on her cell phone, talking to Brad. I love my boyfriend. I started taking my pills again so my boyfriend and I can start having sex without a condom.
“Fine,” Jamie says. “What about you? You’ve hardly touched your beer, and we’ve been here two hours. You feeling okay?”
“Ha-ha, funny man. I can tell you’re masking your pain with jokes. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Glenda,” he says to the waitress, “can I have a beer?”
“What?” I say. “You’re drinking? You don’t drink.”
“I do now,” he says, staring at Layla.
Huh? “Do you…do you like Layla?”
He shrugs.
What? Since when? What about me? “But she’s seeing someone.”
“Thanks, Sherlock.”
“So that’s why you’re upset,” I say, and take a sip.
“You are quick.”
I could do without the attitude. “Stop being such an ass, Jamie. I’m trying to help.”
He shrugs. “What can I do? It’s not like someone like her would ever go for someone like me. I’m not quite her handsome knight in shining Armani, am I?”
Not quite. “You never know.”
He’s gazing at her with big cartoon puppy eyes, and it’s making me jealous.
Why is this making me jealous? I thought Jamie had a thing for me. When did he start having a thing for Layla? What does Layla have that I don’t? Besides blond hair and a smaller ass?
“What does Bradley III have that I don’t?” Jamie asks. “He must be hung like a donkey.”
I should hope so. Those vibrators were pretty well endowed. “She hasn’t told me.”
“You think she’s slept with him already?”
Um…yeah. “I don’t know, Jamie.”
My boyfriend gets a bull’s-eye and then does a little dance. Can’t he stay still for one second? He’s always moving. I thought that now that the cheating was over, I wouldn’t have to share him, but he’s still always running from club to club, basketball to real estate, friend to friend, me to the dartboard. Why can’t he stay still?
Jamie pings me on the leg. “Is he tall?”
“Who?”
“Is Prince Bradley tall?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him. Why?”
“Because tall men are usually well hung.”
I burst out laughing. “Are we still talking about Brad’s penis?”
“Yes,” Jamie says. “I can’t help but worry.”
“Why?”
“Because how am I going to compete with a man with a huge shlong? You know what I’m talking about. I look as if my last girlfriend was Lorena Bobbitt.”
Beer snorts from my nose, I’m laughing so hard. I thought all men think they’re Goliath. “You’re not that small,” I lie.
He dismisses me with his hand. “Yes, I am. I don’t care. There’s a lot of magic in that wand. Occasionally Cinderella’s coach turns back to a pumpkin before midnight, but normally she can party all night, you know?”
At this point, I’m screaming with laughter, and my boyfriend appears protectively by my side. “What’s so funny here?” he asks.
Jamie points his finger at Russ’s crotch. “We’re discussing shlongs. Care to join in?”
I weave my arm around Russ. “You can’t discuss shlongs with my boyfriend.” I monitor his facial reaction to my use of the word boyfriend. Neither his lips nor his eyebrows flinch. That’s a good sign, isn’t it? I’ll assume we’re officially dating unless advised otherwise.
Russ squeezes me back. He reeks of beer. “Why can’t he?” he asks.
I’m not sure he knows what a shlong is. “You want to discuss your genitals, go ahead.”
“That’s the problem with coed bathrooms,” Jamie says. “In the days of urinals I could check out the competition. Now I’m forced to battle blindly.”
“Do you pee blindly, too?” I ask. “Someone keeps hitting the floor in the third stall.”
Jamie shakes his head. “Not me, I have perfect aim.”
Russ nods. “So do I. I just kicked Nick’s ass in darts.”
Jamie wags a finger at me. “Maybe it’s you, Kimmy.”
“Me? Woman can’t have bad aim.”
“You leave the toothpaste all over the sink,” Jamie says.
“No, I don’t!”
“Yes, you do,” Jamie says. “I’ve used the sink after you do, and it’s no pretty sight.”
Great. Now Russ thinks I’m a slob who pees on the floor. “Jamie, do I make fun of you?”
“Yes,” he says. “All the time. We just spent the last twenty minutes making fun of my shmekel.”