Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [69]
Stunned, I feel positive I must have misheard him. “What?” I ask.
“Say the word and we could be in my pool in a heartbeat,” he repeats, editing out the nude part, and I realize that Damian has, indeed, asked me—a girl he met under five minutes ago whose name I feel certain he hasn’t retained—to leave an alumni meeting on a sunny afternoon and go home with him, assuming that his celebrity—and, I guess, the fact that he has a pool—would be enough of a selling point.
“Thanks,” I say, “but I’m going to have to pass.”
“No one has to know,” he says. “I mean, don’t you want to just get out of here and away from all these people?” He lights another cigarette.
I look up and see Tommy walking over with Vera trailing behind. Then I glance back at Damian. “You know, I really don’t.” I gesture toward one of the all-female smoking groups. “But I’m sure you could find someone who would.”
Damian nods. “Cool,” he says, not looking even the slightest bit perturbed by my denial. I smile and start to walk away. “Hey, congratulations on your sixty days,” he adds as he waves. Is this really how things work? I wonder as I watch him walk up to the girls smoking. When I glance back and see a blonde girl with a scarf on her head nodding at him and smiling, I have to conclude that it is. Even in Culver City, we’re still in Hollywood.
18
I’m sitting at the Starbucks smack in the middle of the gayest part of West Hollywood staring at a blank screen and sipping the remains of my grande latte when Adam walks by. He doesn’t see me, just marches right by and goes to wait in line, and my first instinct is to duck and hide. I can’t really believe I’ve joined the ranks of people who sit in coffee shops with laptops—easily as established a Hollywood cliché as the casting couch—but when I had sat down to write my first column at home this morning, I panicked. I had spent so many nights in the same, cat hair–filled, stuffy apartment completely high on coke, and the four walls seemed like they were going to descend upon me as I stared at my computer screen. And then a thought came to me, as clear as if I were a cartoon character and it was printed in a thought bubble printed over my head:
I could call Alex.
Even though I’d deleted his number from my BlackBerry, I still knew it by heart. Would I ever forget it? And that’s when I started to panic. We’d talked a lot in rehab about how the obsession to use gets removed at a certain point and after a few days in Pledges that had basically happened to me. But there in my apartment, with a new lease on life and a fantastic dream job to do, the thought of doing cocaine popped into my head like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And that’s when I realized I had to get out. Grabbing my laptop and cigarettes, I drove over here, and even though I know it’s good that I’m out of my place, I can’t help but feel like one of those i Book to ting poseurs I always judged so harshly.
But then I remind myself of what Rachel always tells me, which is that what other people think of me is “none of my business” and that what they’re really thinking probably isn’t as bad as whatever it is I imagine they’re thinking, anyway. So when Adam walks by again and I know I could blend right into the marked-down coffee mugs if I don’t say anything, I call his name.
He turns around and looks surprised. “Amelia,” he says. He says it softly.
I haven’t seen him since he left my apartment the night we made out, and for a split second, I feel myself about to surrender to a shame spiral. But there’s a thought I’m having about Adam that is thoroughly distracting me from how ashamed I feel.
Roughly translated, the thought is that he’s adorable.
How come I never really noticed his olive skin and square jaw before? And why did I fail to note that he has the exact body type I’ve always been drawn to—tall, boyishly lean, and not overly muscular? I don’t have much time to ask myself these questions before words just start tumbling out of my mouth.
“Look, I’d really like to apologize for the last time we saw each other—the