Sarah Mlynowski - Monkey Business

“Do you want me to set the alarm?” I ask. What I’m really asking is, Do you still plan to sneak out?

“What time is class tomorrow?” he asks.

“Ten-thirty.”

“Why don’t we sleep in and get up at ten?”

I fall back asleep, smiling, my head nuzzled in his arms.

When the phone rings the next morning I’m still smiling. I reach across Russ for the phone. The call display says O’Donnel. Oh. My. God. “Hello?”

“Hello, may I please speak with Kimmy Nailer, please?”

Please be yes. Please be yes. Please don’t ruin this perfect morning. Damn you O’Donnel, give me good news. “Speaking,” I say, my voice shaking.

“Hi, Kimmy, this is Claire Moss from HR at O’Donnel. We’re pleased to be offering you a position of summer associate.”

Oh. My. God. Hurray!

“The summer program is ten weeks, beginning June first. Your salary has been set at fifteen hundred dollars a week.”

I can pay back some of my loans! “I accept!”

Russ’s eyes pop open. I give him a thumbs-up and mouth, O’Donnel.

“Wonderful,” Claire says. “The only provision is that you’ll need to maintain a B average in your classes.”

“That won’t be a problem.” Better not be.

“Let me confirm your address,” she says, “and we’ll send you all the necessary paperwork.”

When I hang up, Russ hugs me. “Congrats,” he says. “I’m proud of you.”

He must have gotten in, too, right? “Check your messages,” I urge.

He hesitates, then picks up the phone and dials his voice mail. Two minutes later he smiles.

“I got it, too,” he says, looking dazed.

“Wahoo!” I scream. I don’t believe it. How amazing is this day?

He scoops me up and whirls me like the twister ride at a fair. I bend my knees so they don’t hit the wall.

I can’t believe how good my life just got. He broke up with Sharon. For me. We both got jobs. In New York. Where we’ll be working together all summer. Maybe we can even live together… Maybe I should wait a day or two before bringing that up. Don’t want to push my luck.

We walk to the showers smiling, his arm tightly around me. Two people from another Block spot us. “Morning,” I sing.

“Morning,” they say, eyebrows raised.

I think we’re finally out of the closet.

Saturday, February 21, 7:40 p.m.

Iwalk up the stairs of the Zoo, feeling dazed. It’s only been a week and a half, but it feels like I’ve been gone for months. I hear laughing through the rooms, doors slamming, people walking from one room to another. I wonder if anyone even realized I was gone.

I drop my bags off in my room, and then try to snap out of it. My family will be fine. They don’t need me watching over them. I’ll be back in two weeks to make sure they’re okay.

At least I’m not behind on my assignments. I sent them all in by e-mail. Right now I have to get my life in order. I need to talk to Layla. I knock on her door. I’m not sure what I want to say to her, but I want to see her.

“One second!” she yells. I hear her laughing inside. She opens the door and hugs me. Tight. Maybe she feels the same? “Hi! You’re back! How are you?” The phone is cradled between her ear and neck. “Hon, let me call you back, okay?”

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?

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?