Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,5
god, the no-more-knee-socks thing?” Emily asks, plunking down on the stair below us with a can of spiked seltzer in one hand. “So dumb.”
“So dumb,” I agree. “Like, explain to me how these delicate, precious boys are supposedly going to be too distracted by our knees of all things to get any work done.” I stand up and grab Jacob’s arm over the banister, pulling him partway out of the scrum of lacrosse bros. “Can I ask you a question?” I say, lacing our fingers together. “How exactly is us wearing tights instead of knee socks going to help you idiots learn better?”
“It’s not,” Jacob says immediately, his grin wide and wicked. “What it is going to interfere with is Charlie Rinaldi’s robust side hustle of taking pictures up your skirts in the cafeteria and selling them online.”
Joey and Ahmed bust up laughing. Even Chloe cracks a grin.
“You’re disgusting,” I inform Jacob, smacking him gently on the elbow, but I can’t help but let out a laugh of my own.
The only one who isn’t laughing is Gray, who’s leaning his lanky body against the post at the bottom of the staircase. “Anybody need a beer?” he asks, holding up his empty bottle. He tips it at us in a salute before he turns and walks away.
“That dude is the fucking weirdest,” Jacob says once he’s gone, slinging a heavy arm around my shoulders. I watch Gray’s broad back disappear into the crowd.
The party breaks up early—turns out Emily Cerato’s parents didn’t know she was having one to begin with and weren’t super thrilled when they came home from dinner and a show down in the Theater District and found two dozen teenagers sprawled all over their furniture.
“How the hell did Emily not realize they were seeing a one-act play?” Chloe asks as we dash across the lawn to Jacob’s car, her scarf flapping behind her in the sharp autumn wind.
“Maybe we should have tried to convince them they were at the wrong house,” I shoot back. That cracks her up, which cracks me up; by the time we manage to get our seat belts buckled Jacob looks about ready to leave us both on the side of the road altogether. “Take a little pity on your sober driver, here.”
“Sorry, sorry,” I assure him, still giggling; I’m pretty sure he finds Chloe and me kind of annoying together, though he’s too nice to say so. “Let’s go.”
Turns out all three of us are starving, so we swing through the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s for fries and milk shakes before heading over to Chloe’s to drop her off.
“See you at work tomorrow?” I ask, turning around in the passenger seat to look at her. Usually the two of us are on the same Saturday schedule, but tonight she shakes her head.
“I’m off tomorrow,” she explains, prying her milk shake out of the cupholder and slinging her bag over one narrow shoulder. “I’m spending the weekend at Kyra’s.”
I frown. “Really?”
Kyra is her slightly younger cousin, who lives in Watertown and is super into her Greek Orthodox youth group. I know her from years of going to Chloe’s birthday parties, and she’s cool in a straightedge kind of way, but I definitely wouldn’t call them super close.
“Why?”
She shrugs. “My parents want us to be friends, I don’t know. They’re probably hoping she’ll teach me to pray in Greek.”
“Oh man,” I tease. “Good luck, Kyra.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Chloe rolls her eyes. “Thanks for the ride, Jacob. I’ll see you guys Monday.”
Once she’s inside, Jacob turns to me, his sharp face familiar in the light from the dashboard. “You need to get home right away?” he asks.
I glance at the clock, hesitating. I’ve got a little over an hour before my curfew, truthfully, but I also know what he’s actually asking, which is whether I want to go park under the copse of trees at the far end of the Bridgewater parking lot and mess around for a while. “Um.”
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, obviously,” Jacob says quickly.
“Gee, thanks.” I make a face.
“Oh, come on.” Jacob frowns, wounded. “You know what I mean. I’m not trying to be some, like, pressuring douchebag. I just meant—”
“No, I know.” I wave a hand to stop him, a little embarrassed. He’s right, actually—Jacob’s never given me a hard time about the fact that we haven’t had sex yet, even though I can tell he’s a tiny bit disappointed every time we’re getting up to something and