Just Perfect! (Persaud Girl) Read online

  “Now will you eat?” Jeremy asked her.

  “Understand one thing, Jeremy Malcolm,” Samantha snarled. “As far as both of us, and anyone else you choose to go bragging to, are concerned, last night never happened.”

  “Sam…”

  “We will forget about it. I will never speak to you again, and you will extend to me the same courtesies, got that? From now on, you are dead to me.”

  “C’mon, Samantha. You’re being ridiculous!” Jeremy said. “We drank too much and things went too far, but we can be adults about the whole thing. Sit down and have some breakfast. I promise you’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

  “You don’t get to tell me how I feel!” She found her purse checked for cab fare and her credit cards. She looked at Jeremy. He was shirtless, his black jeans hanging low on his hips, and another memory came to her -- the delicious, heart–stopping feeling of being skin to skin with the most beautiful male torso she’d ever had the pleasure of touching. She had not been able to resist running her hands over him—his chest, his shoulders, those flat, ridged abs. The Incredible Hunk indeed! She shook the abominable memory from her head and moved towards the door.

  “Samantha, please! You can’t just leave…” Jeremy followed her, still holding the breakfast bowl in his hands.

  “Watch me!” She said stiffly, as she opened the door. “Good bye, Jeremy. If I never see you again, it will be too soon.”

  “Samantha, wait! Samantha…”

  Samantha slammed the door behind her, and moved quickly to the elevator. She had pretended to be calm and in control when she came out of the shower, but she was nowhere there. There was a dull feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was one of them -- one of Jeremy’s conquests, taking the wretched walk of shame. He had a reputation at UWI for giving detailed reports to his friends of all the girls he had nailed. She could imagine him in Club Infierno next Friday night, taking shots and describing to Phillip's friends how weak and willing he had her the instant he touched her. Samantha hoped he would at least have enough respect for her not to say anything in front of Phillip.

  She got out of the elevator and stepped into the street trying to get her bearings. Jeremy lived on Spring Street. That was barely a ten minute walk to her apartment. She stood on the curb, trying to think. Her head was pounding from an alcohol/noise/sex induced migraine, but she had to rise above it. She should walk. The air would do her good. But the thought of walking a mile in Aunt Phoebe’s sky high Christian Louboutin sandals was not very appealing, so she flagged down a cab, got into the back seat and gave the driver her address. The clock in the taxi told her it was almost ten o’clock. She hoped neither Bridget nor Nikki would be home. She was not in the mood to see anyone. All she wanted to do was take off that awful violet dress and put on her softest pair of pyjamas, go to bed, and hopefully die in her sleep. But she couldn't die in her sleep. She had to go to Aunt Phoebe's place for her stupid birthday party. Not only did she have to be there, but she had to pretend that she had not gotten drunk and lost her virginity. Her family could read her like an open book, and one wrong move and they would instantly suspect that something – more than being broken hearted over Micah – was wrong.

  In no time, Samantha was home. She took off her shoes and wearily climbed the stairs, avoiding the elevator. As long as she lived she would never ride another elevator, she thought, considering how she and Jeremy had desecrated his earlier. She opened the door gingerly. There was a mellow Enya tune coming from Nikki’s bedroom, but the door was closed. Bridget’s bedroom door was open, but she was not around. Samantha was relieved. She quickly snuck into her room and closed the door. She pulled off her dress and stuffed it and her shoes into the back of her closets. Later, she would dump the dress and return the shoes to Aunt Phoebe. She put on a new pair of underwear and an oversized T-shirt and climbed into bed. She closed her eyes, and instantly felt Jeremy on her again. He was touching and kissing her... Sour bile rose into her throat. She bolted out of bed and threw up over the toilet. A nasty mixture of the tequila and what might have been some nuts and maybe her stomach wall came back up. Samantha remained crouched over the toilet, retching and hoping that neither Bridget nor Nikki would hear her and come in. Her prayers were answered. When she was sure she would not throw up again, she shakily returned to her room and got back into bed. She pulled the comforter over her head, and buried her face into her pillow. When she was mourning over Micah, Aunt Phoebe had told her that time would heal all wounds. Maybe time healed some wounds, she thought, but this one, she knew would be with her forever.

  ***

  Jeremy dumped the breakfast bowls into the bin. He could not eat anything. All he wanted to do was go back in time twenty-four hours. When Phillip had called him and asked him to join them at Club Infierno, he would have said no. He would have told Phillip that he needed to study. It would have been true, too, with final examinations just around the corner. Phillip would have understood. But, no. Phillip had said the magic word ‘Samantha’, and he could not resist. That misstep had led him to make the worst mistake of his life.

  Jeremy had learned from Phillip that Samantha was at NYU. It had been his last day as a Summer Associate at Persaud Financials, and Phillip had hosted a ‘Good luck in your last year of Business School’ party for him at his parents’ penthouse apartment. Jeremy had spotted Andrew Persaud’s family portrait among the number of frames on one of the Javars' fireplace mantles. Beautiful Samantha Persaud was standing between her mother and her little red-haired sister. He could not help but gaze, trying to decide whether she was prettier in pictures or in real life.

  “That’s my cousin,” Phillip told him. “She’s hot, huh?”

  “I know her,” Jeremy replied. “She was a year below me at UWI. I know Andie, too. Her boyfriend and I are – were – best friends…” Sometimes Jeremy could not believe that he and Nathan didn’t even speak anymore. “What’s Sam up to these days?”

  “Just starting NYU,” Phillip told him. “Doing her MA in Econ.”

  “Really?” Samantha was in New York. He wondered whether she was still dating Micah Elliot. “Does she live here?”

  “Nah,” Phillip told him. “She lives off Hudson. Why don’t I give you her number? You could call her up and the two of you could hang out sometime.”

  “That would be great!” Jeremy did not tell Phillip that although he knew Samantha, he was not her favourite person.

  He had saved her telephone number in his cell phone, but he had never had the courage to call. He hoped that maybe, unexpectedly, he would run into her one day. After all, Manhattan was not as large as non-New Yorkers made it out to be.

  He had not managed to run into Samantha. He had never been fortunate enough to be at the penthouse when she was there. He had even sat in on an Econ seminar at NYU on one of his rare free afternoons. Either Samantha had played truant that day, or she did not take that course. His time was running out, he realised. Soon he would graduate and go back to Jamaica, and he probably would never see her again. He actually considered asking Phillip to arrange for them to meet.

  That had changed last night. When Phillip had phoned him, he could not get to Infierno fast enough. Once there he found himself stuck between Chad, who he sometimes thought wasn’t smart enough for Investments at Persaud Financials, and Jen, who was so old and horny that she made his skin crawl. On his second day at Persaud Financials, Jen had made it pretty clear that she would ‘shag him before the summer was out’. Jeremy knew that if he did not get it over and done with, it would have been a very long summer, so one steamy night in June, he allowed her to lure him back to her Central Park West condo to scratch her itch. It was much better than he thought it would be, and although he certainly knew how to hold his own, Jen had taught him things, and done things to him that would make a hooker blush. They had hooked up a few times after that, but Jeremy was getting sick of being her boy toy. When she had started pawing him in the club, it took all his self-will not to t
ell her to buy a dildo and leave him alone.

  Then he saw Samantha making her way over to Phillip’s booth. Everything about her spelled perfection: the way her hair was falling out of its bun, the flimsy dress she wore that accentuated her figure, her lean, sexy legs gliding across the room in 5-inch designer heels. His mouth instantly went dry, and all the blood in his body ran south. Damn, she had gotten even more beautiful over the two years since he had last seen her. Unfortunately, Jeremy quickly realised that the two years had not made Samantha Persaud dislike him any less. And really, he could not blame her. She did not know him as the brilliant Summer Associate on the Investments floor at Persaud Financials. She only remembered an immature undergraduate who had led a cruel joke on her little sister.

  Growing up, Jeremy knew that most people thought he was a prick, but his obnoxious attitude was his only defence against his far from perfect life. His mother was the long suffering wife of Supreme Court Judge, Peter Malcolm. As far as anyone could tell, they were the ideal family: charismatic, handsome father, beautiful demure mother, super smart son destined for greatness and cutie pie younger daughter. They were like the royal family of Montego Bay and everyone wanted to be them. Judge Malcolm was handsome, brilliant and gregarious. He occasionally advised the Minister of Justice. It was even rumoured that he might run for Mayor of Montego Bay. But Jeremy faced a very different reality at home.

  Judge Malcolm ran his family with the same iron fist he displayed in court. His children lived in mortal fear of failing or angering him. Even their best efforts seemed in vain, because in the Judge's eyes perfection had no ceiling. Jeremy recalled when he had gotten his seventh grade report card. He ran to his father's office to report the good news of how he had done.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” He had screamed. “I got my report. I came second in the class!”

  His father had looked at him over his glasses. “Second?” He snarled. “The class start at second, you come in here boasting?”

  “But Daddy…”

  “Get out of my office you worthless idiot!” He roared. “You don’t have any goddamn ambition!”

  He had cried to his mother that night, hoping she would have stood up to the judge and insist that he be kinder to her and to the children. Unfortunately, his mother only told him that his father loved him, and only wanted what was best for him, and that if he did not want to be yelled at, he should try to do better next time. At that moment, it became obvious to Jeremy that his mother, a former kindergarten teacher who now owned and operated her own crèche, was more concerned about maintaining the facade than acknowledging their dysfunction.

  Jeremy realised that he was only truly happy when he was at school. He excelled academically, and all the other boys respected him, even if they didn’t like him. How could they not? He was a born leader, and Cornwall High School for boys was his personal Kingdom. He knew that every good monarch needed a faithful lackey, and Jeremy had found one in Nathan Hansen. They were in the same class and on the swim team, and Jeremy decided that they would be best friends. Despite being one of the brightest boys in the class, Nathan was a bit of a wimp in Jeremy’s eyes, and he could get him to do almost anything he wanted him to. When they were in the lower school, Jeremy would dare Nathan to pull all sorts of minor pranks, like spilling juice on another boy’s chair, or sticking bubble gum in the teacher’s grade book. As they got older, the pranks became more serious. Sometimes they even got out of hand, like the time he encouraged Nathan to take his mother’s BMW racing, and it ended up in a wall, or the time when they were caught smoking weed in the school shed. Jeremy had done all the smoking, but they were both expelled from the swim team and suspended from school for a week. Jeremy recalled that when his father had learned of his suspension he had made him spend the night in the Montego Bay district prison.

  The one Jeremy regretted most, and the one that had ended his friendship with Nathan, had taken place when they were in third year at UWI. Jeremy had always been a ladies’ man, ever since one of the Kindergarten teachers at his mother’s crèche had felt him up when he was fifteen. One of his main pleasures was bragging to his friends about all the girls he had nailed. Sometimes he would embellish. Every 20 year old man embellished every now and again when it came to the girls they had been with. But this time, Nathan had called him on it. Pretty much announced to everyone that he was a liar, and half the stories he had told about his various conquests were myths. It was then that Jeremy decided to make a bet with Nathan that he could not sleep with any girl at UWI within eight weeks. Sure enough, Nathan took the bait, and the girl of choice was Andie Persaud. Andie was the most timid girl that Jeremy had ever set his eyes on, and he knew Nathan could not win that bet. What he had not counted on was Nathan falling in love with Andie and reneging on the bet. Jeremy had not cared either way if Nathan slept with Andie. He was more interested in Andie’s big sister, the gorgeous Samantha Persaud. He was even more concerned with the fact that he seemed to have been losing the hold he had on Nathan. His worst fears had materialised when the entire plan had blown up in his face. Everyone, including Samantha, had written him off as the bad guy, and thinking back, Jeremy had to agree with them. Nathan never spoke to him again. His new best friends were Andie and Micah Elliot. To make matters even worse, Micah had started dating Samantha!

  His fascination with Samantha grew into something he could not describe. Now that she was dating Micah, she was always around, and all Jeremy could think was how absolutely perfect she was. She had a perfectly beautiful face, a perfectly beautiful smile, a perfectly beautiful voice and as far as he could glean, she got perfect grades. He was sure if he could take home a girl like Samantha Persaud, his father would have to admit that he had finally done something right. Little by little he began to fall in love with her. For the first time he understood what Rick Springfield’s hit ‘Jesse’s Girl’ meant. He wanted Micah’s girl. But getting her was not even a remote possibility, as Samantha hated him as intensely as she loved Micah, and he could do nothing to change that.

  Jeremy hoped that time would have changed Samantha’s mind, but from the moment she sat at Phillip’s table in Infierno, it was evident that her disdain was as strong as ever. Having her close to him after all these years made him crazy. Then, after all those tequila shots, he was kissing her; then they were making love; then she was freaking out…

  Jeremy sighed and pulled himself out of his daydream. If Samantha hated him before, she most certainly despised him now. His heart sank as he remembered how hurt she was and how he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms and comfort her, and let her know that everything would be okay. He would be her hero, and finally they could be together… Jeremy shook his head. It was all a waking nightmare.

  His cell phone rang and he grabbed it, hoping it was Samantha.

  “Where’s my cousin?” Phillip demanded.

  Jeremy was taken aback. “I—I don’t know. Home, I guess?” He stuttered.

  “Then why isn’t she answering her phone?” Phillip insisted.

  “How should I know that?” Jeremy asked. “Maybe she’s sleeping.”

  “Where did you go last night?”

  “Excuse me?” Jeremy was getting confused and more than a little frightened.

  “Did you sleep with my cousin?”

  “No!” Jeremy lied without even thinking. “She was ready to go so I took her to get a cab and she went home.”

  “Did you make sure she got home safe?”

  “Yes,” Jeremy said. “I made the cab drop her first.”

  “So why didn’t you take her back to the penthouse?”

  “Because she wanted to go to her apartment,” Jeremy said, actually believing his own lies. “She was tipsy and did not want your parents to see her like that.”

  “You sure you didn’t sleep with her?” Phillip sounded calmer.

  “I don’t think I would forget if I did!” Jeremy knew he was not lying that time. His night with Samantha was one he would not forget
in this lifetime.

  “You better not have!” Phillip said, sounding menacing once more. “I’m gonna try her cell phone again.”

  “I’m sure she’s okay,” Jeremy said, hoping he was right.

  “I hope so,” Phillip said. “My mom would kill me if anything happened to her. Then after that my Uncle would kill me!” He sighed. “Listen, man, I’m sorry I blew up on you like that.”

  “No worries,” Jeremy said, although he had more than a few worries at that moment, like Phillip finding out that he had lied about sleeping with Samantha. “Let me know when you get in touch with her, alright.”

  Phillip hung up, and Jeremy sighed. He pulled on a shirt and a pair of shoes. What he needed more than anything was a long walk. Too much was happening around him at once. He needed to clear his head. Most importantly, he needed to get Samantha Persaud off his mind.

  ***

  The entire Persaud family had made their way to New York to celebrate her birthday. Samantha sat between her sister and 20 year old cousin, Alex, Aunt Elisabeth’s son. She looked around at her family, feeling very lucky and blessed. They had shifted plans, taken aeroplanes, put on hold studies for exams, clients, patients, fashion shows all for her. Aunt Elisabeth had worked a miracle -- transforming one of Aunt Phoebe’s terraces into ‘La Tour d’Argent’ Samantha’s favourite restaurant in Paris’ 5th arrondisment. She even managed to replicate the menu – minus the Canetons. Samantha appreciated it -- truly she did -- but she just could not enjoy it. She could not enjoy being with her sister, and her so-called ‘club house cousins’, Klao and Bianca. She was not interested when her adorable little brother was showing her how far he had gotten in his video game. She even cringed when her grandmother, Sylvia Persaud, the Grande Dame of the Persaud family had kissed her cheek and told her how beautiful she looked. She had hugged her beautiful mother, and her dashing father, told them how much she missed them, and promised she was doing well after the break-up with Micah. She had even managed to smile and agree when Uncle Will, Aunt Elisabeth’s husband, marvelled again at how much she looked like her mother. She had half-heartedly discussed the glamorous world of fashion magazine publishing with her cousin Kamila, and Aunt Elisabeth’s daughter, Margaux, and tried to pretend she was as excited as Klao was when Kamila announced she would be having a sit-down with her newest heartthrob, Chad Michael Murray. She played with Kamila’s 3-year old daughter, Serena, and politely turned down Dylan and Darrin’s -- ‘the Persaud twins’-- offer to find Micah and turn him inside out for breaking her heart. She had done what she had to do, but now she was exhausted. As she played with her dinner, and listened with disinterest to the conversations swirling around her -- talks of Persaud Financials, the profits from investments and the upcoming Izzy Fashion shows in Paris, The Mercy Hospital Group, Dylan’s decision, much to Darrin’s dismay, to take a year off his surgical residency programme to volunteer in Mozambique -- Samantha realised that she just wanted the evening to be over so she could go home and lay down....