Nicky didn’t even crack a smile. “You said that you had already dealt with enough crazy for one lifetime, and that you needed—no wait, you said that you deserved a boring relationship. And I left you alone after that, because I figured you had a point. But this thing you’re trying to do with James Farrell, that’s a whole lot of crazy.”
God, I felt like shit. Like hypocritical shit. “I know.”
He looked me in the eye, father to a child. “Do you really know? Because you ain’t acting like you know.”
I gave him a helpless look. “It’s James Farrell.”
Nicky’s jaw tightened. I didn’t think he even wanted me in that way anymore, but it was the principle of the matter. I had told him so much about how the Farrell family had hurt me, he probably found it hard to believe, not to mention insulting, that I would prefer James to him.
But all he said when he opened his mouth again was “Nice dress.”
I looked down at the Isabel Marant wrap dress that Mildred had delivered to the room along with Papinelle underwear and Louboutin heels about half an hour before I left James.
“Thanks,” I said. Then I carefully edged past him out of the coatroom.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I hoped this didn’t hurt us. I hoped that Nicky wasn’t my Duckie, and that he wouldn’t stop talking to me or being my friend because Andrew McCarthy had come around.
I didn’t even bother to also be scared that James would eventually reject me the way Andrew did Molly, because that was a given.
But I hoped to God that when this all went to shit, Nicky would still be my friend. I’d need somebody to help me pick up the pieces.
. . .
Despite the situation with James and despite the fight with Nicky, my set went really well that night. I wore my pink sequined gown and sang the hell out of four Shirley Bassey songs and six Peggy Lee standards. And after I finished “Fever” on the lap of a well-dressed man with frosted tips and hand-tooled Italian leather shoes, his equally well-dressed gay male friends came to their feet for a standing ovation.
All and all it was a good night. At least it was until I came into the dressing room to find a note taped to my door in Leon’s caveman handwriting. “Old Mercedes waiting outside for you.”
I got out of my dress and put back on my laundered Strokes T-shirt and some old jeans that I kept in my dressing room just in case I had to do a quick change and didn’t have time to go up to my apartment. Then I took off my stage makeup, all the while rehearsing the speech I would give Paul. Tell your boss that nobody puts Davie Jones in a corner. Tell him that he’s going to have to find some other girl to harass. Tell him I am my own damn grown woman.
I had gotten in a real fine pissed-off mood by the time I came out of the club, and I no longer cared that he was James Farrell. If he couldn’t respect my wishes, then he couldn’t— But James, not Paul, climbed out of the driver’s side of the Mercedes. His sparkling smile filled up the night, and he caught me up in a huge bear hug before I could even process his presence.
What had I been saying?
“I told you not to come,” I said, my face turned into his chest.
“You told Paul not to come,” he corrected.
James was a clever boy.
He let me out of the hug and looked down at me. He didn’t kiss me. Didn’t try to convince me that he wasn’t trying to crowd me. Just looked me straight in the eye and smiled, like there was no other place on earth that he’d rather be than here in this parking lot with me.
And I’m sorry, but I don’t care how strong you are or what’s happened in the past to prevent you from going down a certain road. When a boy looks at you like that, how can you resist?
Somewhere in the distant recesses of my mind, the opening strains of the Sixteen Candles song started up again. Doo-doo doo-doo-doooo . . .
“Hi,” I said, because what else would a girl who had somehow found herself in a Molly Ringwald movie say at a moment like this?
“Hi,” he said.
No doubt about it, James knew the script. He even bent down to kiss me at the perfect moment, right when I decided to give in and accept his Invitation to Crazy.
EIGHTEEN