The Seven Month Itch Read Online Free Page A

she’s everywhere . Rhinestone-encrusted on women’s handbags, on ads selling pantyhose and lipstick, on posters. Dad says I don’t have to forget about her, that it’s fine to admire her work – just not as much as I do. Or used to. I once asked him if I could like her as much as Holly likes her City Bakery cupcakes. He thought about it for a minute, then said yes. Hetold me that if all I did was have a fifteen-minute Marilyn moment once a week, he’d be happy with that. (Yeah, right. Like Holly’s cupcake lasts fifteen minutes!)
    Anyway, since the cruise-ship debacle, I’ve been on a strict low-Marilyn diet. Cupcakes, though, they’re another story. Like I was saying, we’re having Holly’s favourite – white chocolate. White chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate frosting, sprinkled with tiny white candy hearts. They’re going to be stacked almost to the ceiling. City Bakery offered to do it all for free (Holly is, after all, a big fan), but by that stage almost everyone was offering to do everything for free (which happens to Holly a lot) and Dad went all funny. He started calling up all the suppliers and insisting on paying. He went all Australian (because we are, though not quite Russell Crowe – he didn’t manage to assault anyone with the phone) and stormed about the apartment saying he’d look like a ‘bloody fool’ if he didn’t pay for anything. I was impressed, really. He was quite the man.
    Damn. I’ve missed my stop.

    Because I overshoot and have to double-back on the subway, I don’t have time to meet up with Alexa. I text her as I walk towards the library …
    c u @ lunch
    ‘Nessa! Hey! Wait up!’
    I whip around to see Toby running up behind me.
    ‘I thought I saw you in the next carriage. What were you doing uptown?’
    Um. ‘Oh, I, um … I had some wedding stuff to do.’ Better to tell a little white lie than look ‘I missed my stop’ stupid in front of your brand new boyfriend, right?
    Yes, that’s right.
    Boyfriend .
    I, Nessa Joanne Mulholland, aged fifteen (almost sixteen!), have an actual, real, live boyfriend. Wild, too. No, no, not in that sense of the word; I mean ‘wild’ as in I’m not holding him captive or anything. And when I say ‘boyfriend’, I don’t mean I just have a crush on him. And I also don’t mean he’s a boy who’s a friend. I mean a proper boyfriend. Really! We’ve been dating for six weeks now.Lunches, movies, the whole deal. I met Toby on orientation day – a nice word for the meanest librarian on earth grabbing us both by the throats and telling us exactly what we would and would not be doing during work hours in the library. Frankly, I could hardly believe we even had orientation. How hard can putting books on shelves be? Not very hard, as I’ve discovered. It’s not exactly taxing on the brain, but it’s a great little workout for my biceps, which are going to look great in my bridesmaid dress in eleven days’ time.
    Toby’s another college orphan (that’s what Alexa and I call all the kids whose parents, like ours, practically live at the place). He’s cute and funny, and super smart. In fact, he’s so smart he’s already taking some college classes while he’s in his final two years of high school, including one where he’s writing an amazing paper on Bette Davis! You’ve got to admit it’s pretty strange, Toby being almost as obsessed with Bette Davis as I am (yes, yes, used to be!) with Marilyn Monroe.
    It’s such a relief to finally meet someone like me – someone who’s watched all the movies a million times over and understands where I’m coming from, even if it isn’tthe same movie star we like. And he must really like me because he’s been watching my Marilyn Monroe DVD collection one film at a time. In turn, I’ve been watching his Bette Davis DVDs. I’m not entirely getting the fascination. (I mean, what’s the big deal with Bette Davis? And those googly eyes … yikes!) But there you go. As Grandma