The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page A

because he couldn’t really hear her).
    “How are you?” he asked Nicki when he was back in the car.
    “I’m having a sex change!” she shouted.
    “Glad to hear it!” he replied.
    Nanna shook her finger at Nicki, who stuck out her tongue in reply.
    “Your mother worked hard so that you girls can have a nice vacation,” Nanna said, undeterred. “I want you both on your best behavior.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t need to be told to behave myself, even if Nicki was another story.
    My sister adjusted her necklace, fluffed her curls, and pinched my thigh as she groped underneath me for her seat belt. “Cut it out!” I said.
    “You know you liked it,” she said.
    “What’s that?” asked Horace.
    “Nothing,” I yelled. I rolled down my window, yawning. I wasn’t very well rested, thanks to my roommate, who slept with neither a retainer nor a night-light but, rather, a rotating cast of our classmates, whose ranks had most recently swelled to include my crush from philosophy class freshman year. After two and a half years of staring, I’d finally worked up the courage to talk to him. Sadly, our first and last conversation had occurred in the quad in front of my dorm room. Sally, my roommate, had sauntered by, and that was the end of that. The three of us wentto dinner together where, over pork chops and green beans, the two of them had discovered a history class in common. They’d skipped dessert and gone to the library to study, leaving me alone in the room. At two in the morning, they came giggling through the door, clambered into the top bunk bed and noisily consummated their relationship, apparently unaware of, or untroubled by, my presence in the bottom bunk, three feet away. I’d given Sally a stern talking-to in the morning. She’d sniffily loaded up her purse with her toothbrush and a fistful of satin underwear and departed, presumably for the philosopher’s single across campus. Every night since then I’d barely slept at all, waking up once or twice every hour at the sound of laughter or a door slamming, thinking it was the two of them showing up for an encore.
    As we drove down the palm-tree-lined streets of Fort Lauderdale, Horace noted the passing attractions in a booming voice. “Heavenly Delights,” he read as we motored past a billboard. “Nude Oil Wrestling Nightly. Now Hiring.”
    “I could get a job!” said Nicki.
    Horace, who caught only the last word, nodded his approval. “Jobs are wonderful.” Nanna’s lips tightened.
    “Why I let your mother talk me into this,” she said. She glared at the two of us in the rearview mirror. “You’ll have to share the pullout couch, and I don’t want any complaints.”
    “Forget it,” said Nicki. “She could accidentally kick me in the kidney.”
    Nanna zoomed onto the freeway. “Too bad.”
    Our grandmother’s guest room hadn’t changed in the fifteen years she’d lived in Florida. It was decorated in shades of sea green and coral, with family pictures in frames on the bookshelves and crocheted samplers hanging on the walls, and there was a pullout couch against one wall and a tiny television seton a dresser against the other. I pulled out the bed and piled the pillows neatly in the corner. Nicki unzipped her duffel, stacked her clothes on Nanna’s card table on the screened-in porch, placed her cosmetics and a Walkman on the bedside table, and scooped up all three towels on her way to the bathroom. After some perfunctory bickering about whether this bed is really the most uncomfortable one we’ve ever slept on (I argued in the affirmative, my sister maintained that the ones at Camp Shalom were worse), I pulled the blinds shut and we fell asleep.
    •   •   •
    At three o’clock that morning, Nicki poked me in the side. “Josie?”
    I grunted and rolled over. She poked me again. “Josie, wake up!”
    I opened my eyes. “What?”
    “Can you die from a kidney infection?”
    I exhaled and flipped my pillow over.