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Fourth Comings: A Jessica Darling Novel - Softcover

Buch 4 von 5: Jessica Darling

McCafferty, Megan

 
9780307346513: Fourth Comings: A Jessica Darling Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 030734651X ISBN 13: 9780307346513
Verlag: Broadway Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The New York Times Bestseller

“Acidly funny, imaginatively profane, and, above all, a sharp reflection of the what-to-do-now, post-college dilemma.­”
—Miami Herald

Is the real world ready for Jessica Darling?

At first it seems she’s living the New York City dream. She’s subletting an apartment with her best friend, working for a magazine that actually cares about her psychology degree, and still deeply in love with the charismatic Marcus Flutie.

But reality is more complicated than dreamy clichés.

When Marcus proposes—giving her only one week to answer—Jessica must decide if she’s ready to give up a world of late-night literary soirees, art openings, and downtown drunken karaoke to move back to New Jersey and be with the one man who’s gripped her heart for years. Jessica ponders this and other life choices with her signature snark and hyper-intense insight, making it the most tumultuous and memorable week of her twenty-something life.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MEGAN McCAFFERTY is the New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series. She lives in New Jersey.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

“ Waiting sucks.”

The voice was male and came from behind my right shoulder. I was so startled by the sound of another’s voice rising above the undemanding Top 40 soundtrack, I nearly spazzed myself off my barstool.

The voice tried again, this time with an awkward paraphrase.

“It sucks, you know, to wait.”

To have confirmed the source of the voice would have required me to turn away from the bar. I was the only one seated there, so I knew the voice was directed at me. And yet confirming this fact wasn’t something I was particularly inclined to do. There was a swift movement, followed by a fresh whiff of citrus, sweat, and testosterone. The voice had taken the empty stool to my right.

“I hate being the first to show up anywhere,” he continued, so sure of his hypothesis. “You feel like such a jackass.”

The shift from first to second person was reflexive and unintentional. This is how his kind talk. To confirm, I refocused my attention away from my drink to his face. I was unsurprised by what I saw: a white, early-twentysomething male with a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses resting on top of his head. His light brown hair was mussed in a calculated way that required far more product than neglect. He was broad-shouldered in his I’m-so-secure-about-my- masculinity-that-I-can-wear-pink Lacoste polo. A popped collar brushed against his ruddy rugby-player cheeks. Without looking down, I knew he had flip-flops on his feet.

Dude.

It could’ve been worse. Plenty of guys renounce Dude’s scruffy preppy aesthetic and take to the sidewalks of this town wearing gaudy madras shorts, striped button-downs, and pastel sweaters knotted around their shoulders, like illustrations straight out of the first edition of The Wasp Handbook. Earlier today on the way to the bar, I spotted a yachting, lockjawed specimen wearing green twill trousers (a corny word, but the only one that fits) with tiny ducks embroidered all over them. Tiny ducks. Unironically. I almost pointed and shrieked, which is something I hadn’t done since first grade when I got smacked in the back of the head for screeching at a man with a cantaloupe goiter in the frozen-foods aisle of the Pineville SuperFoodtown.

Dude wasn’t hot. He wasn’t not. As with most guys of his privileged station and prep school pedigree, Dude was put together well—blandsome —which is all he needs to get laid on a regular basis. He was inspecting me inspecting him, a bemused expression on his face. He lifted himself up ever-so-slightly on his faded denim haunches, a gesture that indicated that he’d give me only a few more seconds before writing me off as embittered, boyfriended, or otherwise impenetrable.

“Hmm,” I murmured. Then I sipped my drink and tried not to wince as the whiskey scarred my windpipe.

Dude settled back onto his stool. My indifference intrigued him, as all romantic impediments do. It’s been scientifically proven. The harder the conquest, the more you want it. It’s called frustration- attraction. (I don’t think it’s unfair for me to pipe in with this parenthetical: Frustration-attraction explains a lot when it comes to you and me.)

“So, you know, when we noticed you”—he thrust his carefully disheveled hairstyle toward a table in the corner, where three identically dressed dudes of varied races were pretending to drink beers instead of watching us—“we figured that one of us should come over and keep you company until your friends arrive.” The fact that his friends were still sitting over there, instead of cockblocking him over here, suggested that money had exchanged hands before Dude made his approach.

“Twenty says I’ll get her number.”

“I’m in.”

“Me too.”

“Dude, you are so owned.”

“Hmm,” I said again.

“So where are they?” he asked. “Your friends?”

It wasn’t an unreasonable question. I was, after all, a female sitting conspicuously alone in a college bar, drinking whiskey on a Saturday barely past one in the afternoon. Girls who look like me don’t drink whiskey by themselves in bars barely past one in the afternoon. Granted, it wasn’t the kind of dingy dive bar that ruins reputations, but a respectable Princeton institution that serves classic pub fare along with whatever is on tap. It’s proudly decorated with orange-and-black paraphernalia and even sells a poster- sized version of a mural depicting Brooke Shields sitting in a booth across from Einstein, Toni Morrison, and other less instantly recognizable local luminary. Parents still bursting with pride were dining in the back room with their sons and daughters— freshmen and freshmeat who also arrived early for the pre-Orientation programming— enjoying one last lunch as a family before leaving their children alone to embark on their miraculous college journeys.

“My friends aren’t here,” I said. “Just me.”

My first cryptic yet intelligibly human response made him break out into a smile. His teeth, it almost goes without saying, were thermonuclear white.

“I’m Dave,” he said, extending a gentlemanly hand. “And you are . . . ?”

“I’m Jenn,” I lied. “With two n’s.”

“Two n’s?” Dude was emboldened by two multisyllabic replies in

a row. “And how do you defend this blatant overuse of unnecessary consonants?”

Dude thought very highly of himself, and he considered this comment to be charming as all hell. As a female, I didn’t have to play along in the same way. Just sitting there, seemingly agog at his patrician charms and in possession of a functional vagina, really, was the only participation required on my end. And yet I couldn’t stop myself.

“I need two n’s,” Jenn-with-Two-N’s continued in this facetious, flirtatious vein. “Because one’s naughty and the other’s . . .”

“Nice?” he offered.

“Or not.”

Dude laughed really, really hard. He thought I was being ironic, which I was. But he was unaware of the full extent of this parody playing out before him. Ours was a multilayered mockery of a conversation, one occurring within a set of quotations within quotations within quotations. I was tired of having these types of conversations. I had a relationship with a philosophy major at Columbia that existed entirely within multiple sets of quotations.

“Why haven’t I seen you around here before?”

“I don’t go to Princeton,” said Jenn-with-Two-N’s.

“I didn’t think so,” Dude said. “By the time you’re a senior, you feel like you know everyone even if you don’t.”

“Maybe it’s because you all look alike,” I replied, gesturing my glass toward the corner table. “That is, in your racially diverse way.”

This also made him laugh. “I should be offended.”

“But you’re not.”

“No,” he said. “Because it’s true.”

I finished my drink in one long gulp. It was starting to burn less. Jessica Darling is a puker. But Jenn-with-Two-N’s could handle her liquor. Dude lifted his finger to alert the bartender that we’d like another round. He was drinking Stella Artois.

“So you don’t go here,” he said.

“No.”

“Work here? Live here?”

“No,” I said. “And...

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Verlag
Broadway Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
030734651X
ISBN 13 
9780307346513
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
336
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