As Seen on TV by Sarah Mlynowski Read Free Book Online Page B

“eventually we’ll get engaged” comment? Is he planning on proposing? How long are we supposed to live together before we get engaged? Are we pre-engaged? Do his parents not approve of me? “I don’t care. Honest.”
     
    Eden’s is loud, busy and green. The walls are covered in leaves. Pots of sunflowers stem up beside various tables. The waitresses are wearing skirts made of petals and sunflower-patterned bikini tops. My dad and Carrie are waiting at the bar. I can’t believe he made it. Hah! I told Dana he’d show.
    As I approach, Carrie waves her Fendi bag at me with one hand and a martini glass with the other. I know it’s a Fendi bag because it has the FF logo trampled all over it, as if one medium-sized FF isn’t obnoxious enough.
    My father’s arm is wrapped around her tanned, bare shoulders. “Hi,” I say, approaching them.
    “Sunny!” she shrieks, and covers her mouth with both her hands. “Look at you! You are so gorgeous. Look how gorgeous you are! You got so big!”
    She hasn’t seen me since I was twelve and she was my counselor, so I won’t be insulted. “Thanks,” I say. “I think.”
    “Last time I saw you, you had braces and hair down to your waist! Adam, isn’t she gorgeous?” She waves her hands at the word gorgeous as if she’s Moses thanking God for the Ten Commandments.
    My father nods. “Gorgeous, doll, gorgeous.” Am I the doll or is Carrie the doll? I haven’t seen him in about six months, since I met him for dinner at China Grill on South Beach when he was in Miami meeting a client. He only had the night free because he was meeting “a friend” in the Keys. It’s strange that I hadn’t seen him in so long, considering that lately I’d been coming to New York every few weeks. The last few times I was here, he wasn’t, which was fine with me, because it’s not like I came to NewYork to see him.
    “Stop making excuses for The Jackass,” Dana says inside my head.
    Two months ago he was supposed to meet Steve and me at Manna, but he didn’t show. “You surprised?” Dana asked later.
    My sister hasn’t spoken to my father in three years. “He’s like tobacco,” my sister once told me. “Toxic. You’ll feel better about yourself if you cut him out of your life.”
    Dana sees us as two orphans against the world. She’s either been reading too much Dave Eggers or watching too many reruns of Party of Five.
    Tomorrow, I’ll definitely call.
    You know how when you see someone daily, you don’t notice him getting older, but when you don’t see him for a few months, you’re shocked by the change? Like when you pick up People once a year and see a picture of Harrison Ford and you can’t believe how gray Han Solo got? Well, that doesn’t happen with my father. His looks never seem to change—he’s six feet, wide-shouldered, with a full head of chocolate-brown hair, wide blue eyes framed by dark spidery lashes, and a Tom Cruise smile that takes up half his face. Whenever he decided to show up on Parents’ Day at camp, all the female counselors would flock to him as if he were a free chocolate sampler at the supermarket. “Oh, Mr. Langstein. How are you? It’s wonderful to see you, Mr. Langstein.”
    “Call me Adam,” he’d say, resting his hands on their seventeen-year-old shoulders.
    I guess that’s when he first noticed Carrie.
    My ex-counselor continues to review my outfit. “I love that dress. Did you get it here?”
    I’m wearing Dana’s white V-neck cashmere sweater dress, one of the many items she bought but still had the tag attached when she handed it down to me. “Get good use of it, it’s Nicole Miller and cost three hundred dollars,” she told me. As if that would impress me. Tell me something, can anyone tell the difference between a three-hundred-dollar dress and a thirty-dollar dress? And would anyone who could tell the difference think less of me if I were wearing the thirty-dollar dress instead of the three-hundred-dollar dress?