Is Bridgeport big enough for Kae, Robyn, Alex and Jasmine? They're all beautiful, captivating, and a little bit crazy... but there can be only one It Girl.
[ Based on the It Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar ]
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Alex dropped the last of the beanbags from the upstairs lounge area onto Yara's dorm room floor and straightened, lightly massaging her shoulder with her hand. In preparation for the Women of Bridgeport meeting, they'd dragged a half-dozen of the lumpy things from the lounge and somehow squeezed them all into the now-tight space, so the room was a sea of huge, brightly colored vinyl balls. Yara flopped down into a dark blue beanbag chair. Alex had always hated the things—except now they seemed kind of, well, sexy. Hesitating only slightly, she sat down next to Yara, her body weight bobbling the two of them a bit, and making them giggle. Talking with Kae this afternoon had made Alex feel more comfortable about the whole thing. Not that she'd been feeling uncomfortable, exactly, but still.
"What are we going to talk about at the meeting tonight?" Alex asked, conscious of the fact that their arms were touching. She felt the filler in the beanbag shift a little, and she sank even closer to Yara so that their legs were touching too.
Yara twisted her silver chain necklace so that the clasp ended up back where it belonged. Her nails were painted a pale pink and chipped at the ends. She had on no other makeup, and she didn't need it. She had tiny freckles sprinkled across the tops of her cheeks, so faint you only noticed them when you were really close to her. Like Alex was now. "The theme is love, so maybe we could talk about different kinds of love?" Yara suggested, her eyebrows delicately arched.
"Um..." But Alex couldn't think about anything but kissing Yara again, and before saying anything else, she leaned in toward her. Yara obviously wasn't shocked, and her lips moved instinctively against Alex's, sending shivers down her spine. She tried not to compare kissing Yara to kissing Quincy, but she couldn't help it—it was like she'd been eating apples all her life, and now she'd tried brussel sprouts after a lifetime of thinking she hated them, only to find that they were sweeter than sugar. Yara's lips were just so soft. And she was an excellent kisser. Alex's hand rose to touch Yara's cheek.
"Ta-da!!!"
The girls pulled apart, surprised, and turned to find Dave standing in Yara's doorway, in...drag. He had on a long, dirty blond wig and enormous brown-tinted Gucci sunglasses, which he pulled off his face the second he saw the two girls entwined. "Holy fucking shit!"
Alex leapt to her feet first, her face on fire. "Close the door, asshole," she hissed at him but then sprang toward it and closed it herself. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Dave clasped his hands to his mouth. His eyes were all bugged out with excitement, and if the situation hadn't been so serious, Alex probably would have laughed at the fact that he kind of did look like a girl in that wig—a pretty one, even. He wasn't dressed like a girl, though, wearing a pair of beat-up khakis and a tight black T-shirt that clearly revealed his lack of breasts. But maybe at first glance, someone might take him for one.
"Don't let me interrupt you, please. That was, like, the sexiest thing I have ever seen!"
"Dave, you cannot tell anyone about this." Alex pressed her hands to her temples, meeting Yara's equally panicked eyes across the room. "I am serious. You have to swear, okay?" Crazily, even in her freaked-out state Alex couldn't help but notice how pretty Yara looked when she was scared.
Dave tucked the sunglasses absentmindedly into his shirt collar, an elated smile still spread across his face. He looked like he had just walked into the Playboy Mansion. "I promise—really, I swear to everything I have ever loved—I won't tell anyone about this. Ever." He looked at the two girls earnestly and then fumbled through his backpack for something, at last pulling out...a digital camera. "As long as I can have one picture?"
"What?" Alex pressed her lips together, annoyed. But as she looked at Dave's eager, kid-in-a-candy-store face, she began to sense that he didn't pose a real threat after all—at least, not as long as he was kept amused.
"No fucking way." Yara shook her head at Dave from her seat on the beanbag, leaning back. She smoothed out her short black skirt, and Alex could feel Dave watching her intently, to see if she was looking at Yara's legs. Boys.
"Come on, one little picture. That's all I'm asking, in exchange for keeping your secret." Dave glanced back and forth between the girls, absentmindedly tugging the hair of his blond wig. "Please? You guys are so fucking sexy together."
Alex finally caught Yara's eyes and tried to send her a message with her own. Just follow my lead, she tried to say. "Well..." Alex rubbed her chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Maybe just one." If that was all it took to keep Dave East's mouth shut, it really wasn't a high price to pay.
"Oh my God, I love you guys." Dave giddily turned on his tiny silver camera, his hair hanging crookedly off his head, and Alex gave Yara a wink.
Yara grinned and stood up, stretching her limbs. She strode over to where Alex was standing and touched her on the arm. "Ready?" she asked, her eyebrows raised. Are you sure? her eyes seemed to say.
"Yup," Alex giggled, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her left ear. And their faces moved toward each other slowly, as if they were in a movie, their lips meeting and opening softly against each other. It was kind of...sexy to have someone watch them. It wasn't like before, when they were alone, but it was exciting in a different way, almost like letting someone else in on their secret had made it that much more electrifying. She pulled away reluctantly.
"How was that?" Alex turned to Dave, her hand perched defiantly on her hip.
He ran his hand across his scalp, forgetting it wasn't his own. The wig slid to the left, so that the dirty blond hair was perched crookedly on his head. "Is this heaven? Because...someone up there really loves me." He stared at the tiny screen on his camera and clicked through the pictures.
"Let me see how they turned out." Yara grabbed the camera from his hands and held it out so Alex could see. Dave had taken about ten pictures of them in the five seconds they had been kissing, and Alex watched images of herself and Yara flick up on the tiny screen. She had to admit, they were kind of sexy together. After scrolling through them all once, Yara quickly started to delete them.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Dave grabbed for his camera. "You said I could have one!" He lunged after Yara, but Alex held him back until she could finish. Yara hopped onto her bed and stood there, deleting all the saved photos. "No!" he wailed, actually kind of sounding like a girl. Which was sort of fitting, considering that he looked like one.
Alex patted Dave's back. "Listen. How about this? Every day that you keep this a secret, we'll take a sexy photo together and e-mail it to you. Okay?" She glanced at Yara, who was still standing on top of her bed, barefoot in her tights.
"So for now," Yara continued, bouncing on her toes, framed by a black-and-white poster of a young Bob Marley above her bed, "the camera is ours."
"If you send me secret sexy pictures, just for myself"— Dave gulped, as if breathless at the thought —"I promise I will take your secret to my grave." He put a hand over his heart.
"Deal." Alex's heart-shaped lips curled into a grin, and she met Yara's eyes once again. "You understand, of course," she lowered her voice to her most threatening register possible, "that if this gets out, we'll have to kill you."
"Oh, I promise," Dave said, pressing his hands together as if he were praying. "I really, really promise. I swear on all that is holy." His normally lazy-looking eyes were flashing with—what? Was that sincerity?
