Four Girls and a Guy - Suzanne Jenkins Page 0,1
away, you mean.”
“I just didn’t love Bentley,” Samantha said when it was her turn. “Bentley is actually a great guy.” She looked at Laura critically. “I don’t think he’s your type though. In the first place, I’d be jealous. You’re too cute and exactly what he’d like.”
“Yeah, why is Laura alone?” they chorused. “If Laura can’t get a decent date, none of us can.”
Laura was the true beauty of the four. The others were attractive with striking features, but Laura was gorgeous. And she was probably a genius, and although she had always scored highly in all the standardized tests she took, no one had ever taken the time to investigate that further. Since school bored her to tears, she just barely got by. She was possessed of an amazing egocentricity that drove her alternately from success to success.
“You’re all nuts,” Laura said that night in Pink Piggy’s, smirking. “I’m such a catch, which is why I haven’t had a decent date in weeks.”
“What about that guy from your psych lab?” Alison asked.
“You mean the one who farted in the Uber and then got out a bottle of Binaca breath spray? Yeah, he was a dream date.”
They screamed laughing for a full minute.
“You’re gorgeous and smart, you never have to watch what you eat,” Joan said. “And you just finished a criminal justice practicum. It was teeming with cop and lawyer wannabes. You could have a date with a different guy every night if you wanted it.”
Laura didn’t admit that she often did have a date with a different guy every night—the way she was able to pay her rent on a barista’s salary. It was one of her secrets.
“I never felt like I fit in that class,” she said, tossing her hair. “They didn’t take me seriously. Only the jerks asked me out.”
“It’s sexism,” Alison said. “That or they want to be your father.”
“Well, that would be okay with me since I didn’t have a father,” Laura said sadly. “I’d like to know what that’s like.”
“You have one, you just don’t know who he is,” Joan replied sympathetically.
“Laura has a touch of fatherless daughter syndrome,” Alison said. “It’s a good thing you didn’t go into medicine.”
“Oh, yeah. Paternalism. That’s rampant in medicine. I’m dreading it, to tell you the truth,” Samantha said. “Premed was bad enough.”
“I’ve heard that in some schools more than half the new class is females,” Alison said. “We should have held out for one of those schools.”
“Forget it. I’m not leaving Chicago. I love it here,” Samantha said. “I hope I get a residency here, too.”
“I’m not sure I’ll survive another winter in Chicago,” Alison said, shivering. “I want to go back to San Diego.”
“What do you mean?” they chorused. “You start school in less than a month.”
“After medical school, knuckleheads. I’m not giving that up after all I went through to get in! As a matter of fact, let’s do a toast to me. Not with that girly drink, Joan. I mean with tequila.”
“My liver can’t take more than one shot, Alison,” Laura said. “After last time, I’m not sure—”
“Come on, chicken, do a shot and see where it takes you.”
Where it took them was getting an Uber to go two blocks because Joan was so drunk she couldn’t walk.
“If lady pukes in my car, I call police,” the driver threatened.
“She won’t,” Laura snapped. “More action, less talk.”
In spite of her misery, Joan managed to wait until they got home to get sick.
“She’s sleeping on the kitchen floor,” Laura said. “She reeks and I have to get up at six to go to work.”
“That’s mean,” Alison said, slurring her words.
“No, it’s not, because she’s sleeping on your yoga mat. She’ll be fine.”
They got Joan undressed and into warm sweatpants and a T-shirt and on Alison’s yoga mat, with a wastepaper basket next to her just in case. The next morning, Laura tiptoed around her to fix her lunch and get an energy drink out of the fridge. Joan was still breathing, and that was all that mattered. But Alison would pay. She’d think of a way.
Chapter 1
Alison
At ten, Alison finally woke up. The smell of coffee wafting into the bedroom she shared with Samantha made her gorge rise. The window at the side of her bed was easy to open, and although the weather had changed overnight and she was cold, she raised the sash and breathed in the fresh air coming only a few blocks from Lake Michigan.
Perhaps from growing up so close