“Shari! No! I mean, well… yes. But think about it. I mean, face it, you’re always going to be over at Chaz’s place anyway—”
“Spending the night at Chaz’s,” Shari says acidly, “isn’t the same as living with him.”
“But you know he’d love you to,” I say. “Think about it, Shari. If I move in with Luke, and you move in with Chaz, then we don’t have to waste time looking for apartments anymore… or waste money on a broker and first and last month’s rent. It will save us about five grand. Each!”
“Don’t do that,” Shari says sharply.
I blink at her. “Do what?”
“Make it about money,” she says. “It’s not about money. You know if you needed money, you could get money. Your parents would send you money.”
I feel a spurt of irritation with Shari. I love her to death. I really do. But my parents have three kids, all of whom need money all the time. Supervisors at the cyclotron, which is what my dad is, make a comfortable living. But not enough to support their adult children in perpetuity.
Shari, on the other hand, is the only child of a prominent Ann Arbor surgeon. All she ever has to do when she needs money is ask her parents for some, and they fork over however much she wants, no questions asked.I’m the one who’s been working in retail—and before that, babysitting every Friday and Saturday night throughout my teens, thus denying me anything resembling a proper social life—for the past seven years, scraping by on minimum wage, and denying myself life’s more expensive pleasures (movies, eating out, shampoo other than Suave, a car, et cetera) in order to save enough to one day escape to New York, and pursue my dream.
I’m not complaining. I know my parents did the best they could by me. But it’s annoying how Shari doesn’t understand that not everyone’s parents are as forthcoming with cash as hers are. Even though I’ve tried to explain it to her.
“We can’t let ourselves become slaves of New York,” Shari goes on. “We can’t make major life decisions—like moving in with a boyfriend—be about the cost of rent. If we start doing that, we’re lost.”
I just look at her. Seriously, I don’t know where she gets this stuff.
“If it’s just about money,” she says, “and you don’t want to go to your parents, Chaz will float you a loan. You know that.”
Chaz, who comes from a long line of fiscally thrifty lawyers, is loaded. Not just because his relatives keep dropping dead and leaving their financial assets to him, but because in addition to their cash, he’s also inherited their frugality, and invests conservatively while living quite modestly—at least in comparison to his net worth, which is allegedly even more than Luke’s. Not that Chaz has a château in France to show for it.
“Shari,” I say. “Chaz is YOUR boyfriend. I’m not taking money from YOUR boyfriend. How is that any different than moving in with Luke?”
“Because you aren’t having sex with Chaz,” Shari points out with her usual asperity. “It would be a business arrangement, strictly impersonal.”
But for some reason, the idea of asking Chaz for a loan—even though I know he’d think nothing of it, and say yes in an instant—isn’t working for me.
Besides, it’s not really about the money. It never was.
“The thing is,” I say slowly. “It’s not just about the money, Share.”
Shari lets out a moan, and drops her face into her hands.
“Oh, God,” she says to her lap. “I knew this was going to happen.”
“What?” I don’t understand what she’s so upset about. I mean, I know Chaz is no prince and all, with his turned-around Michigan baseball hats and perpetual razor stubble. But he’s really funny and sweet. When he isn’t going on about Kierkegaard or Roth IRAs. “I’m sorry. But can’t we make this work? I mean, what’s the problem, exactly? Is it the triple stabbing? You don’t want to live in Chaz’s place because of the neighborhood? But the police told you, it was a domestic dispute. That will never happen again. I mean, unless they let Julio’s dad out of Rikers—”
“It has nothing to do with that,” Shari snaps. In the glow from the neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign on the wall beside our booth, her wildly curling black hair has a bluish sheen. “Lizzie, you’ve known Luke a month. And you’re going to move in with him?”
“Two months,” I correct her, hurt. “And he’s Chaz’s best friend. And we’ve known Chaz for years.Lived with Chaz for years. Well, in the dorm, anyway. So it’s not like Luke’s this complete stranger, like Andrew was—”
“Exactly. What about Andrew?” Shari demands. “Lizzie, you just got out of a relationship. A completely fucked one, but a relationship, nonetheless. And look at Luke. Two months ago, he was living with someone else! And now he’s just going to rush right in to live with someone new? Don’t you think maybe you guys need to take it a little more slowly?”
“We’re not getting married, Share,” I say to her. “We’re just talking about living together.”
“Luke might be,” Shari says. “But Lizzie, I know you. You’re already secretly fantasizing about marrying Luke. Don’t deny it.”
“I am not!” I cry, wondering how she could possibly know the truth. And okay, she’s known me for my whole life, practically. But come on. That’s spooky.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Lizzie,” she says, in a warning voice.
“Oh, all right,” I say, slumping back against the blood-red vinyl booth. We’re at Honey’s, a seedy Midtown karaoke bar halfway between Chaz’s apartment, where Shari is staying on East Thirteenth between First and Second Avenues, and Luke’s mom’s place, on East Eighty-first and Fifth Avenue, so it’s equally difficult (or easy, depending on how you want to look at it) for us to get to.
Honey’s may be a dive, but at least it’s usually empty—at least before nine at night, when the serious karaoke practitioners show up—so we can talk, and the diet Cokes are only a dollar. Plus, the bartender—a punky Korean-American in her early twenties—doesn’t seem to care if we order something or not. She’s too busy fighting with her boyfriend over her cell phone.
“So I want to marry him,” I say dejectedly, as the bartender yells,“You know what? You know what? You suck,” into her pink Razor. “I love him.”
“It’s fine that you love him, Lizzie,” Shari says. “It’s perfectly natural. But I’m still not convinced moving in with him is the best idea.” Oh, great. Now she’s chewing her lower lip. “I just… ”
I look up from my diet Coke. “What?”
“Look, Lizzie.” Her dark eyes seem fathomless in the dim light of the bar. Even though outside it’s sunny, only being noon. “Luke’s great and all. And I think what you did—getting his parents back together, and convincing Luke to go after his dream of pursuing a medical career—was really cool of you. But as far as you two long-term—”
I blink at her, totally stunned. “What about it?”
“I just,” Shari says, “don’t see it.”
I can’t believe she’s saying this. My best friend—ALLEGEDLY.
“Why?” I demand, horrified to feel tears stinging my eyes. “Because he’s a prince—sort of? And I’m just a girl from Michigan who talks too much?”
“Well,” Shari says. “More or less. I mean, Lizzie… you like to watch The Real World marathons in bed with a pint of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and the latest issue of Sewing Today. You like to listen to Aerosmith at full volume while you hem fifties cocktail dresses on your Singer 5050. Can you imagine ever doing either of those things in front of Luke? I mean, do you really act like yourself around him? Or do you act like the kind of girl you think a guy like Luke would want?”
I glare at her. “I can’t believe you’re even asking me that.” I’m practically crying, but I’m trying to hide it. “Of course I act like myself around Luke.”
Although it’s true I’ve been wearing my control-top Spanx every day since I got to New York. And that they leave angry red lines along my waistline that I have to wait to fade before I let Luke see me naked after I’ve peeled them off.