Sun-Kissed Read online

  sun-kissed

  melissa de la cruz

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  Also by Melissa de la Cruz

  NOVELS

  Cat’s Meow

  The Au Pairs

  The Au Pairs: Skinny-dipping

  Fresh Off the Boat

  Blue Bloods

  NONFICTION

  How to Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less

  The Fashionista Files: Adventures in Four-Inch Heels and Faux Pas

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Alloy Entertainment and Melissa de la Cruz

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Produced by Alloy Entertainment

  151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001

  Book design by Christopher Grassi

  The text for this book is set in Adobe Garamond.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN-10: 1-4169-1746-2

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4391-0751-5

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4169-1746-5

  For all the wonderful girls who e-mailed, IM’d, texted, blogged, and posted reviews—thank you for your unflagging support, cheerful enthusiasm, and many interesting questions! This one is for you. And yes, there is a lot about Mara and Ryan in this book. And to new readers—welcome to the Hamptons! Now go home. Just kidding.

  Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

  —Dorothy Parker

  All the riches baby, won’t mean anything, All the riches baby, won’t bring what your love can bring.

  —Gwen Stefani, “Rich Girl”

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  in seat 12A mara hopes that all good things come to those who wait

  in soho eliza is stuck in the fashion trenches

  on the upper east side jacqui finds that packing for the hamptons doesn’t help a hangover

  mara achieves golden girl status

  eliza blings it on

  jacqui babysits a thirty three year old

  somewhere chris martin is singing his heart out

  is this what they call ghetto fabulous

  you can’t always get what you want…

  when duty calls … blackberries vibrate

  black hawk down

  the first rule of party reporting fabricate fun

  as heidi klum would say eliza is “in” and paige is “out”

  if only all nerf football games ended this way

  mara has king size doubts about her new position

  there’s nothing like a job well done to make a girl feel good

  the devil wears louboutin

  jacqui tunes out preludeto divorce radio

  reunited once again the three musketeers take a cigarette break

  misunderstandings go hand in hand with too many margaritas

  temptation wears a bright blue bikini

  too close for comfort

  eliza puts out an APB on a dress

  is there such a thing as an early life crisis

  underneath ryan’s perfect exterior lies the soul of pigpen

  working hard or hardly working

  nobody ever said college humor was mature

  eliza turns main street into an haute couture drop zone

  mayday mayday

  in celebrity journalism noncooperation is never a problem

  playing designer deep throat

  mara’s sense of humor floats away with the tide

  to whom much is given much can be taken away…

  anna is the wife who cried wolf

  mara is big green with envy

  looking to get lost

  a team of horses can’t drag ryan away from the waves

  mara is a righteous betty

  around and around they go

  out of the frying pan and into the fire

  whoever said “practice makes perfect” is a liar

  jacqui springs a parent trap

  blue collar blues

  trouble in paradise

  and then she moved on to quarters…

  sometimes manhattan can be an escape from the hamptons…

  shannon tries her hand at a little identity theft

  scientists confirm what girls already know dopamine levels spike when shopping

  mara visits the ivy in the apple

  you always need to be armed in a food fight

  if the shoe fits …

  the girls string up cupid’s arrow and aim it at the perrys

  is there more to eliza than just a pretty face

  who will have the last laugh

  you get what you wish for

  donna karan eat your heart out

  she’s just not that into you

  nicky hilton can do it— why not eliza

  daughter knows best

  fashion weak

  a few technical difficulties

  jacqui in wonderland

  caught in the high beams

  sweeter the second time around

  the runaway bride

  the perrys are lonely no more

  sting was right after all

  a door is closed but a new window opens

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  in seat 12A, mara hopes that all good things come to those who wait

  AS THE PILOT CIRCLED LAGUARDIA AIRPORT, MARA WATERS switched off her iPod mini and put away the Dartmouth College catalog she’d been reading. She looked out of the tiny airplane window down at the Manhattan skyline—a luminous vision of steel and glass obscured by a late-afternoon haze. She’d made the forty-minute shuttle trip from Boston to New York several times now and was familiar with the commute. It was a pleasant enough journey that included stacks of complimentary magazines at the terminal and the company of crisp-looking professionals in worsted wool suits or crumpled corporate khakis, twinkling Bluetooth headsets discreetly curled behind their ears.

  It was the first week of June, and barely forty-eight hours ago, she had officially graduated from high school. The ceremony itself had been a relatively straightforward affair, with a dull speech from the myopic valedictorian and the halfhearted singing of the class song (Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway”—chosen by the administration after the class’s real choice, Green Day’s “American Idiot,” was banned). The only excitement had come when a member of the marching band flashed the stage, showing he was wearing nothing underneath his gown as he accepted his diploma. (His brightly uniformed colleagues quickly struck up a sassy bump-and-grind version of “The Strip.”)

  Mara had won the English prize, along with a two-thousand-dollar college scholarship. Her mother cried and her father took way too many pictures with his new digital camera while her sisters cheered from the stands. To the hearty beat of “Pomp and Circumstance,” she’d joined the three hundred other Fighting Tigers in tossing their cardboard hats into the air. Afterward, over watery punch and stale Mint Milano cookies at the gym, she’d watched as her classmates exchanged new college e-mail addresses
and promised to visit each other the next fall.

  If only she had been able to do the same.

  Mara frowned at the Dartmouth catalog, feeling envious of the cable-knit-clad coeds photographed studying on the lawn. Wait-listed. That was what the one-page letter inside the slim white envelope had said. Not “yes” or “no”, but “maybe”.

  She could find out she’d been accepted in a week or even a few days before school started. Or she could never be accepted at all. Luckily, she’d been offered a place at Columbia with a generous financial aid package, and she’d put down a deposit to hold her place just in case Dartmouth didn’t come through.

  So now her whole summer stretched out in front of her, filled with anxiety and dread, since she didn’t know where she would be in the fall. It was just so unfair. Dartmouth was her first choice, her only choice—as far as she was concerned. Ryan, after all, was going to be a junior there.

  Ryan. When she thought of his name, she couldn’t help but smile. Ryan Perry. Her boyfriend. It had finally happened—the two of them together at last. They’d met two years ago when Mara was working as an au pair for his younger siblings, and they had immediately hit it off. But other things and other people quickly got in the way. That first summer, Mara still had been with Jim Mizekowski, her high school steady. Mara finally gave Jim the boot the week before she was leaving, and she and Ryan had spent a blissful week together in the Hamptons. But later that winter, Mara broke up with Ryan after feeling totally insecure about the whole background-incompatibility thing—Ryan being one of those boys born to everything, while Mara was a girl who had to work hard for everything in her life.

  So they’d spent the second summer apart as well. Mara had found solace in the arms of Garrett Reynolds, the rich, tomcatting heir-next-door, while Ryan sought comfort even closer to home—hooking up with Eliza, one of Mara’s best friends. But that was all in the past now. Garrett was forgotten and Eliza forgiven. Over the past year Mara had often visited Ryan in New York and New Hampshire, and Ryan had finally made the trek to Sturbridge.

  All her fears about what he would think—that her house was too shabby, her parents too weird, her sisters too loud—had been immediately dismissed once Ryan arrived. He’d bonded with her dad over football and polished off a record four helpings of her mother’s chicken-fried steak. Megan pumped him for celebrity tidbits from New York (“Your friend did a body shot off Lindsay Lohan? Are you serious?”) while Maureen declared Ryan was a great name for a boy as she patted her pregnant belly. And he hadn’t said a word about the unfinished bathroom with the piece of cloth nailed to the window that substituted as a curtain or the fact that her parents kept the house at a chilly fifty-eight degrees in the middle of winter to save on heating bills.

  This summer was going to be the best one yet—she didn’t have to au pair anymore since she’d gotten a job as an intern at Hamptons magazine through a connection of Anna Perry’s. It was a standard entry-level post—fetching, faxing, and answering phone calls for the editor in chief, but it tantalizingly promised a few—underline few—writing opportunities. “We need someone to caption all the party pictures,” her boss had told her. Mara got the impression the job required the ability to accurately distinguish one Fekkai-blond socialite from the other rather than real writing talent, but at least it was a first step on the journalism ladder.

  It didn’t pay as much as the nannying gig (irony of ironies), and she would miss the kids and the girls—Jacqui was the only one left working for the Perrys, since Eliza had something else planned, as usual. But the best part of the job was that she would be free to live with Ryan on his dad’s yacht. They were going to live together, like a real couple. It was going to be the most romantic summer ever.

  Mara sighed, dreaming of sailing on the bay, Ryan at the helm while she lounged on the deck, suntanning. The two of them kissing while the sun set behind them.

  The plane glided into the gate, and Mara turned on her phone, which immediately buzzed with Ryans signature callback ring tone: John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. Doo-do-do-do doo-do-do-do …

  She smiled as she flipped open her phone. So what if she was wait-listed? She was still spending her third summer in the Hamptons with the boy she loved, who was waiting outside the terminal for her arrival.

  And no one could take that away from her.

  in soho, eliza is stuck in the fashion trenches

  “EH-LIE-ZUH!”

  “Eh-lie-zuh!”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Snap.

  Eliza blinked. Someone was talking to her. More specifically, someone was talking down to her. She put aside her chopsticks and tried not to look too irritated. Couldn’t she even eat dinner in peace?

  It was half-past midnight. She had been at the showroom since nine o’clock that morning and couldn’t wait to get home for a shower. She was, for the first time in her perennially Fracas-perfumed life, seriously “funky.” She took a discreet sniff of each armpit and grimaced.

  “Eh-lie-zuh. Hello. Earth to Eh-lie-zuh!”

  Eliza rubbed her eyes and finally focused on the person who owned that voice. Paige McGinley. Otherwise known as a Paige-in-the-ass. Her so-called boss and slave driver for Sydney Minx—famous fashion designer and all-around diva, owner of the showroom and the reason she’d had barely half an hour of sleep in the past forty-eight hours.

  Sydney Minkowitz was a gay Jewish dress designer from the Bronx who’d changed his last name to the more intriguing and less ethnic “Minx.” Early in his career, he’d befriended a coterie of New York socialites through vigorous ass kissing and with their support had launched a line of chic, casual, yet expensive sportswear that had grown to include licenses for accessories, perfume, housewares, candles, and linens. If you dressed, dined, or dreamed, you could bet there was a Sydney Minx product that catered to it.

  The histrionic designer was opening his first boutique in the Hamptons in two days, and the whole office was buzzing with frantic activity to get all the details for the grand-opening party and fashion show completed. Like everyone in New York, Eliza had been a devotee of Sydney’s early work—the waffle-knit “poor boy” cashmere sweaters that came with enormous price tags, the sexy drain-pipe trousers, the artfully graffitied logo handbags. But the designer had been slipping of late. The latest collections had veered wildly from sex-bomb attire one season to starchy, covered-up pretension the next as the label tried to connect with an ever-more-fickle audience of high-fashion buyers. You could only have so many bad collections before you were considered fashion roadkill, and with this opening, Sydney had a lot at stake.

  The place was so tense that if the notoriously difficult-to-please Sydney summoned the group to yet another meeting in which he called all of his design associates, production assistants, runway models, and office interns an untalented bunch of idiots, someone was going to burst into tears. Already, one of the pattern makers had left her sewing machine in a huff after Sydney had called the dress sample she was making “a two-dollar schmatte, an eyesore of epic proportions, an insult to the name of couture!”

  “Can I help you?” Eliza asked belligerently as she wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.

  “Why aren’t all the T-shirts folded yet?” Paige demanded. She was a dark-haired, sharp-featured twenty-two-year-old, a recent F.I.T. graduate who had ascended quickly from being Sydney’s personal assistant to being de facto creative director of the label. “I told you, all the shirts need to go in boxes so the messengers can take them to the stores tomorrow morning!” The T-shirts, silk-screened with the designer’s Photoshopped and markedly slimmer-than-life silhouette, would be given away for free in the overstuffed goodie bags to the VIP guests at the East Hampton party and sold for seventy-five dollars apiece at Sydney’s boutiques around the country to the hoi polloi.

  “Because I’m spray-painting all the fabric gold like Sydney asked for the ‘Anna’ coat,” Eliza replied, pushing away the Chinese food containers. She showed Pai
ge the metallic swatches that would be sewn onto a military trench Sydney hoped would catch the eye of the Vogue editor. Half of them were still unpainted.

  Eliza wiped her hands on the backs of her So Low sweatpants, then crossed her arms defensively. Packing the T-shirts was, like, menial grunge work! She was Eliza Thompson. Once named in New York magazine as the most popular girl on the prep school circuit! She’d only taken the job because she liked fashion and thought it would be a cakewalk to hang around a designer’s showroom for the summer.

  “Those swatches aren’t done yet? Sydney needed those hours ago,” Paige said, aghast.

  Eliza tried not to look too guilty. She had taken her sweet time spray-painting the fabric just so no one would ask her to do anything else. She’d noticed that if she looked busy enough, she could avoid doing the more-boring chores.

  “Anyway, forget this for now. Go help Vidalia. She can’t seem to get her dress on correctly for the run-through. Then I need those T-shirts.”

  “All right,” Eliza grunted.

  “And what is that smell?”

  Eliza froze, pressing her armpits next to her torso.

  “Ew! Who ordered Chinese food?” Paige demanded, holding up the half-empty container of beef chow fun that Eliza had been munching from.

  “Um, we all did?” Eliza reminded. The whole staff had sent for takeout since it was hours after dinner and they were all starving. She had been ravenously devouring the noodles when Paige had interrupted her meal.

  “Well, get it out of here. If Sydney comes back and finds his clothes smelling like Chinatown, he is going to have a fucking meltdown.”

  Eliza shoved in a few more mouthfuls of the tangy dish before reluctantly tossing it in the trash chute across the hall from the office. She walked back into Sydney Minx’s ten-thousand-square-foot loft. It was on the third floor of a former factory building in SoHo. The designer had bought it in the seventies when the building had still been an art collective. Sydney had sworn he would never leave the neighborhood but once business had taken off had quickly repaired to a swanky Upper East Side address, and the loft had been turned into the headquarters for his line.