Hold Me Now (A Totally '80s Romance Book 3) Read online

  “Ha!” Heather barks one of her ironic laughs as she layers on her poppy red lipstick. “She thinks she’s funny.” That’s what I like about Heather—she pretty much says it like it is. She walks me to the mirror and dumps my makeup bag over the desk, stroking my hair with a maniacal look in her eye. “I’ve always wanted one of those big Barbie heads to play with.” It takes less than a minute for Heather to apply a nuclear amount of bright pink blush to my cheeks, and enough blue eye shadow to qualify me as an honorary Smurf. She pulls out the electric blue eyeliner my mother gifted me from Lancôme and outlines my waterline. I give several blinks in the mirror and admire my new, somewhat scary, appearance.

  “It doesn’t look like me.” It’s true. It sort of reminds me of Scandal’s Warrior album cover where Patty Smyth has tribal paints striped all over her face. I look fierce, in control, expectant. Three things I’m definitely not.

  “It’s totally you.” Heather proceeds to tease my hair to the ceiling. She’s always been better than me at building height. “The reason you don’t recognize yourself is because it’s the wild side you never bother to unleash.”

  “The wild side?” I purse my lips as she paints them a day-glow Kissing Stick pink. “I’m not wild. I don’t do wild. Wild is unpredictable and dangerous.”

  Heather belts out a laugh, her own hair frames her face like a jagged tumbleweed. “If your senior year isn’t unpredictable and dangerous, you’ve wasted it. Try wild on for size, Jennifer. I think it’ll suit you.”

  “Like seriously? Wow.” Melissa pops next to me in the mirror like an apparition. “Chill out, Heather. And, by the way, Jen— wild really does suit you. You look like totally rad.”

  “I know she does.” Heather continues to rat my hair into a skyscraper.

  Heat fills my cheeks, and my entire face glows as I examine this streetwalker version of me. To hear these things from Heather and Melissa means a lot. We decided a long time ago that our friendship was to firmly remain in the no-shit zone.

  “I look wild all right. Let’s just hope my car doesn’t break down on Hollywood and Vine.”

  “Not to worry.” Heather dowses my hair with enough Aqua Net to burn a hole through the ozone right above my bedroom. She gives a little wink. “We’re staying local tonight.”

  * * *

  The upside about a party at Craig Amalfiano’s is that his parents provide a keg, and they don’t even charge. There are enough wine coolers, peach and peppermint Schnapps, and Bacardi rum to open a bona fide bar, let alone house almost all of Glen Heights High in this cavernous liquored-up backyard. Craig is notorious for his alcohol-laden ragers. I myself am not a big drinker. Heck, I don’t imbibe whether or not I’m driving. I just don’t really care to lose a grip on my sanity.

  I catch a glimpse of my makeup layered thick like the strata of a rock. On second thought, there’s plenty reason to question my sanity tonight.

  Heather insisted on driving, so Melissa and I squish into her Gonorrhea Ghia, one of her many pet names for her tiny blue car—Smurfmobile and I Think I Can have all been used at one point or another. She actually procured the funds to pay for this nice ride via an unorthodox but tried-and-true method for acquiring some quick cash—posing as a centerfold in Motor Grinder. There was a huge scandal, but Heather came out unscathed. Nevertheless, it’s something the three of us have decided to put behind us.

  Heather speeds us all the way to Glen Heights while blasting the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” at top volume. Glen Heights, or The Hill as it’s called, is a ritzy, yet distal, part of Los Angeles County located right above the port of San Ramos where the three of us live. San Ramos High had a huge shit flood a few years back where all of the plumbing knocked the school off-kilter, so bad that they had to shut down and dig up all the rooting from the willow trees that caused the damage.

  Glen Heights took in a majority of its student body, and that’s how Heather, Melissa, and I ended up at Snob Central. But I guess it’s for the best. Melissa found her way to Joel by way of getting run over by his truck—yes, that was the disastrous path that led to true love. And Heather found her way to Russell after much ado about nothing from his mother. And me? I guess true love isn’t meant to be—at least not during my stay at Glen Heights High. I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m in a hurry or anything. Life isn’t all about boys and chasing them down just hoping something in their boxers gets excited to see you. It’s about knowing yourself first, accepting yourself for who you are, falling for someone who’s just as sure about themselves, and then finding out that you have amazing chemistry together among other things.

  A tense knot builds in my gut. It’s becoming painfully clear I’ve read a toxic amount of my mother’s self-help books, and soon I’ll need an intervention. What’s the opposite of self-help? Self-who-doesn’t-give-a-shit, which in and of itself sounds tantamount to Heather’s suggestive wild side. Maybe it really is time I ventured on over.

  We park and follow a stream of partygoers to the backyard, which is teeming with bodies on this crisp final night of 1985, and I evict all logical thoughts of love and knowing myself, of the ridiculous notion of finding chemistry with someone equally anally self-involved right out of my head. I’ve actually donned my red “Jessie” dress, shining like a star-spangled firework for a boy who would no sooner notice me than he would one of those tree trunks eating up all the plumbing over at San Ramos High. Although my face is painted like a warrior princess, my heels are high, and my hair has enough hairspray to qualify as a hazard should I back up into an open flame. I suspect in relative terms I am a bit dangerous tonight, maybe a touch wild with my tribal war paint that screams Look out, boys. I know how to wield a mean lipstick. Maybe just this once, maybe tonight on the final night of the year, I can let loose, have a little fun, and maybe, God forbid, get a little wild.

  Devo’s “Whip It” thunders through the air, loud and obnoxious, like an airborne teenage rebellion, and my adrenaline kicks in, my feet begin to swim in my ill-fitting pumps.

  Melissa shrieks and waves wildly at Joel before diving into his arms. Their faces crash together as they share a rather violent, enthusiastic kiss that makes you wonder if Joel had just come back from war. Joel is a freshman at USC and comes home on weekends just to be with his “Mel.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m more than happy that my best friend, that both of my best friends, have found true love, and I think it’s beyond cute that they feel the need to suck face, so alarmingly often, but, confession—and I hate this foolish part of me—I’m more than a tiny bit jealous. There, I said it.

  A full breath plumes from me in a stream of white fog. It’s as if I’ve somehow harnessed all of those petty thoughts and jealousies and unleashed them into the world, far away from my heart where they truly don’t belong.

  Heather wraps an arm around my shoulder, her Vanderbilt perfume sweetening the air between us. “You don’t need anyone to make you whole,” she spits the words out as if they were some feminist battle cry, and knowing Heather, they just might be.

  “I like totally agree,” I hiss, ironically scanning this thicket of bodies for Jessie. I can’t help it. I’ve practically trained my DNA to scout that boy out in a crowd of thousands. Jessie Fox is a god among men, a beacon in the thick of this long, scholastic night. “Who the hell cares about finding someone at Glen Heights anyway?” I add as if I believed any part of this conversation.

  “Like, fer sure, right?” She sniffs, pulling me closer as we stride through the crowd. “It’s like Melissa and I totally mined this place for the gems. You’ll get yours in college. And trust me, he won’t be at all a womanizer who idolizes Dracula.” Dracula is Heather’s subtle nickname for the aforementioned god of Glen Heights High. I’ve got a vein or two I wouldn’t mind offering up to him, but honestly, that’s the irrational side of me—the ridiculous wild side that Heather keeps toting.

  A blonde gaggle of girls known as The Charms glides by in a perfumed mob as they fist pump their w
ay to the makeshift dance floor, and just as the red sea of their matching miniskirts parts, I see him. Dark hair, reddish blond highlights at the tips, day-glow hazel eyes like molasses running over the sunlight, and that body, all sheetrock and steel, carved granite—marble. The Bionic Man has nothing on Jessie Fox. He’s tall, like Empire State Building tall. Those demanding eyes shine like lasers, and that sinful grin of his reveals two rows of perfect pearly white picket fences.

  Jessie is hanging out with a couple of guys from school. He seems genuinely interested in whatever the one on the left is telling the group—probably tips on where to find more victims for their womanizing ways. Jessie glances this way and does a double take before nodding over at us. My stomach squeezes tight. My body spikes with heat as a sweat storm brews under each of my arms. My mouth falls open just as his grin widens. Then, just as fast as his attention turned our way, he laughs at something someone in his circle says.

  Heather goes on undaunted while the song dies out, and Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines” pumps over the speakers. The entire crowd goes wild as if this coke-inspired song somehow defined our generation.

  “I freaking love this song!” Heather kicks her hip into mine. She’s got her favorite blue suede boots on and a short black skirt with lace tights underneath it. Heather is a perfect punk princess—sort of a Madonna-Cyndi Lauper combo in the very best way.

  A pair of hands covers her eyes, and we turn to find Russell with a giant grin plastered to his face. Russell can’t seem to help but grin whenever he’s around Heather. Who can blame him? Heather is pretty awesome.

  She spins into him, and their tongues spear at one another until conjoining at the lips.

  “God,” I whisper, scuttling deeper into the crowd. As much as I like Heather and Russ, I don’t care to witness their spit swap, ambitious as it were. I spot Amy Brineman over by the keg with Danny, a tall, lanky boy with a loose grin and a red Solo cup secured in his hand as if it were the very thing that were anchoring him to the party.

  Amy’s ex-boyfriend, Peter, came back from New York last week with his skank model girlfriend. I tried to cheer Amy up by telling her I saw a big zit on that snot’s face, but I think Amy knew I wasn’t telling the truth. The girl was too gorgeous to exist, and that zit was actually a beauty mark that made half of the girls in the room wish we had one just like it. Anyway, Amy is revenge dating Danny Potter now, the boy with a serious Vans shoe addiction—also, he says “gnarly” like every third word. Hanging out with Danny all night would definitely not be gnarly. Amy hitches her short bob behind her ear and offers a rather forced, rather manufactured giggle.

  I’ve known Amy for ages, and, I know for a fact, she’s going to look back on this entire scene one day with cringe-worthy regret. A part of me wants to head over and accidentally spill the contents of her Solo cup onto her white sweater, essentially saving her from her own self-destructive devices. Amy confessed she’s still very much in love with Peter to me after we left him with his super model girlfriend at Joel’s last week. Her heart is broken. I venture to guess, touching her leg to Danny’s like that is an overall bad idea.

  I thread my way around countless bodies, picking up a pink can of Tab as I make my way to the back near the dogwood bushes lost in their own shadows. I do a quick scout of the premises for my favorite group of bimbos—the hickey harem. And there they are. Standing on the patio, each with a matching Solo sewn to her hand are Tess and Rachel, and, not shockingly, they’re cackling it up like witches with none other than Amanda Prescott, the girl who made Heather’s fall semester a complete and utter nightmare.

  Tess has her hair in a side ponytail, neon tights and a pair of denim pumps. She’s soft spoken, yet known to strike like a viper if she feels threatened. She has a slight country accent, but no one quite knows where it originated from since her family moved to Glen Heights from Orange County a few years back. Rachel has the build of a gorilla, not heavy, just extremely muscular for an estrogen carrying card member. She’s obsessed with the color purple, and is the only white girl who can actually breakdance. Rachel’s been known to pop and lock with the best of them at nutrition and lunch when she’s not dripping off Jessie like honey. If our school had a female wrestling team, she would lead us all the way to Olympic gold. And, if ever there came a day when Rachel decided she wanted to kick my ass, I would literally shit my pants.

  Melissa and Heather aren’t fans of either of them. Melissa thinks they’re more into each other than they are Jessie. And Heather thinks they’re snobs because they eschew our beloved magenta can of Aqua Net and use White Rain.

  “So, what do you think?” a warm, deep voice hums from over my shoulder. “Would you say they’re obnoxiously happy, or just downright spoiled?”

  I give a slight glance back expecting to find Joel with Melissa, or Russell with Heather, Stoner Jeff, or Gnarly Danny, but, oh my fucking gah!

  OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD!

  “Jessie?” I jump a little when I say it, my hand slaps over my chest so hard I think I just gave myself a heartstopper. “Jessie Fox!” I scream, pointing at him like I’ve just stumbled on an alien right here in the Amalfiano’s backyard. But it’s not an alien. It’s a Jessie sighting—just as rare and concerning to me.

  That killer grin of his widens, and my stomach drops in the cheesy, clichéd roller coaster way that would make the cover of my brand new diary beam with pride.

  “What?” I shriek so loud my heart rams up my throat like a psychotic runaway train.

  He glances over to the mob of girls in the distance, and his smile quickly dissipates. “Tess and Rachel. What do you think?”

  “What? I don’t, I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” God, he’s going to think I’m a freak! That I’m some freak that spends all her free time obsessing over him and his girl harem—and, oh my God, I so am a FREAK!

  “You were looking at ’em.” He frowns at the two of them as if the fact this entire conversation has suddenly gone sideways is their fault. It is, but still.

  “No, I swear I wasn’t looking at them.” I cross my heart like a Girl Scout. “I don’t even know Tess Nichols and Rachel Torres.” I shake my head, pleading, somehow unable to take my gaze off those intoxicating eyes of his—strong and magnetic, perhaps dangerously hypnotic, and every last part of me refuses to look away. Thank God Almighty I didn’t drive tonight because I would so be pulled over for driving under the influence of Jessie Fox’s amazing eyes. “In fact, I hardly know who you are—except I just like said your name, so like I guess, technically, I do know who you are. I mean, you’re Jessie Fox, voted Best Dressed and Best Looking of the class of ’86. Everybody voted for you. Heck, I voted for you.” My body slaps with hellfire. “I mean, I had to vote for you. It would be practically illegal not to. But I wanted to. I mean, nobody held a gun to my head and said ‘Vote for Jessie!’ Russell is pretty cute, too, but like, you totally had it in the bag.” Shitshitshit! For the love of God, somebody please sew my lips shut.

  His dark, thick brows narrow in. Jessie has always had the most expressive eyebrows. I’ve sketched them a time or two, only it didn’t go so well, and they just sort of looked like a pair of angry worms. His jaw clenches in that sexy way only his knows how to do, and every single sexual hotspot on my body quivers all at once. Virgins United be dammed. I’d impale myself on Jessie Fox if he let me.

  My entire body jolts as if waking abruptly from a dream, and I shake off the erotic thoughts. I belong in Virgins United and not with the wily Fox in front of me.

  “I wasn’t looking at them. I was actually checking out Danny Potter.” I try to swallow the boulder of a lie forming in my throat, but it’s no use. Squeeze’s “Tempted” starts up overhead, and my body breaks out into a cold sweat. I’m feeling tempted all right—to staple my mouth shut. “I was thinking about getting to know him better. You know, it’s like New Year’s Eve and everything. I was thinking about letting loose, getting a little wild.” WHAT THE HELL! I b
ite down on my lower lip so hard I half expect a spurt of blood to shower the two of us.

  Jessie opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, then closes it with a smile. “Danny? He’s on the basketball team with me. If you want, I can introduce you.”

  “No!” I bark so loud every person in a ten-foot vicinity cranes their head in my direction.

  God! People see me actually having a conversation with Jessie Fox! This is freaking amazing! This is way beyond awesome! This is fucking awesome!

  “I mean, I was sort of thinking of like surprising him.” Lie number two. “You know, like dancing with him—fast, not slow. You know, hot and sweaty.” I wonder how pissed my mother would get if I crazy glued my lips together? “Then, of course, kissing him at midnight.” Right before I bury myself alive in the Amalfiano’s backyard.

  “Hot and sweaty? Kisses?” he whispers, still tripping over all the stupid that vomited out of me a moment ago.

  “Yeah. Oh, yeah.” I nod like a frenetic bunny on acid. “You know what they say. Hot and sweaty kisses are the best!” Dear God. Kill me now. I totally blame that new diary and its ultra cheery euphemisms that my aunt cursed me with. I’ll be screaming Hot and sweaty kisses are the best as I stab it with a butcher knife at midnight.

  His brows rise, no smile. Jessie Fox looks simultaneously disgusted and deeply regretful to be standing in my general proximity. But then, that smile bounces back on his lips, and my stomach explodes with heat. Like I totally swear an entire burst of fireworks went off overhead just like on the TV show Love, American Style. This would be the part where a cartoon heart enwreathes us, and the audience would know that in less than thirty minutes we would fall madly, deeply, eternally in love.