Upper East Side #1 Read online

  Also by Ashley Valentine

  Bridgeport Academy

  Bridgeport Academy #1

  Upper East Side

  Upper East Side 1

  Upper East Side 2

  Upper East Side 3

  Upper East Side 4

  Upper East Side 5

  Upper East Side 6

  Upper East Side 7

  Upper East Side 8

  Upper East Side 9

  Upper East Side 10

  Upper East Side 11

  Table of Contents

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  Author's Note

  UPPER EAST SIDE 1

  Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Valentine

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Based on the Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar.

  1

  “I watched VH1 all morning in my room so I wouldn’t have to eat breakfast with them,” Porsha Sinclaire told her two best friends and private school classmates, Alexis Sullivan and Imani Edwards. “My mother cooked him an omelet. I didn’t even know she knew how to use the stove.”

  Porsha tucked her thick hair behind her ears and swigged her mother’s fine vintage scotch from the crystal tumbler in her hand. She was already on her second glass and planned on drinking several more. Anything to ward off the murderous rage that threatened to overcome her. Her forehead got all wrinkly and unattractive when she was mad.

  “What shows did you watch?” Imani asked, removing a stray strand of hair from Porsha’s black cashmere cardigan.

  “Who cares?” Porsha said, stamping her foot. She wore her new black ballet flats—very bow-tie preppy, which she could get away with because in an instant she could change her mind and put on her pointed, knee-high boots and that sexy metallic skirt her mother hated. Poof: rock star sex kitten.

  Meow.

  “The point is, I was trapped in my room all morning because they were busy having a gross romantic breakfast in their matching red silk bathrobes. They didn’t even take showers.” Porsha took another gulp of her drink. The only way to tolerate the thought of her mother sleeping with that man was to get drunk—very drunk.

  Luckily Porsha and her friends came from the kind of families for whom drinking was as common as blowing your nose. Their parents believed in the idea that the more access kids have to alcohol, the less likely they are to abuse it. So Porsha and her friends could drink whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, as long as they maintained their grades and their looks and didn’t embarrass themselves or the family by puking in public, pissing their pants, or ranting in the streets. The same thing went for everything else, like sex or drugs—as long as you kept up appearances, you were all right.

  But keep your panties on. That's coming later.

  The man Porsha was so upset about was Cyrus Campbell, her mother’s new boyfriend. At that very moment Cyrus was standing on the other side of the living room, greeting the dinner guests. He looked like someone who might help you pick out shoes at Saks—bald, except for a small, bushy mustache, his fat stomach barely hidden in a double-breasted suit. He jingled the change in his pocket incessantly, and when he took his jacket off, there were big, nasty sweat marks on his underarms. He had a loud laugh and was very sweet to Porsha’s mother. But he wasn’t Porsha’s father. Last year Porsha’s father ran off to France with another man.

  No kidding. They live in a chateau and run a vineyard together.

  Of course none of that was Cyrus's fault, but that didn’t matter to Porsha. As far as she was concerned, Cyrus Campbell was a completely annoying, fat, loser who deserved to die—by strangulation perhaps, after getting his bulbous neck stuck in the cord of his horrible red silk bathrobe.

  But not tonight. Tonight Porsha was going to have to tolerate him, because her mother's dinner party was in his honor, and all the Sinclaires’ family friends were there to meet him: the blue-blooded Harrison family and their sons, Jaylen and Tyree; the widower Mr. Sullivan and his daughter Alexis; the well-known actor Arthur Edwards, his gold-digging wife Titi, and their three daughters, Imani, Regina, and Camilla; Captain and Mrs. Braxton and their son, Kaliq. The only ones still missing were Mr. and Mrs. Crenshaw, whose teenage daughter Chanel and son Cairo were both away at school.

  Porsha’s mother was famous for her dinner parties, and this was her first since her infamous divorce. The Sinclaire penthouse had been expensively redecorated that summer in deep reds and chocolate browns, and it was full of antiques and artwork that would have impressed anyone who knew anything about art. In the center of the dining room table was an enormous silver bowl full of white orchids, pussy willows, and chestnut tree branches—a modern ensemble from Takashimaya, the Fifth Avenue luxury goods store. Gold-leafed place cards lay on every porcelain plate. In the kitchen, Myrtle, the cook, was singing Bob Marley songs to the soufflé, and the sloppy Irish maid, Esther, hadn’t poured scotch down anyone’s dress yet, thank God.

  Porsha was the one getting sloppy. And if Cyrus didn’t stop harassing Kaliq, her boyfriend, she was going to have to go over there and spill her scotch all over his tacky Italian loafers, and bludgeon him to death with her empty tumbler. Not that she’d ever actually kill anyone, but it was fun to imagine it.

  Such fun

  “You and Porsha have been going out a long time, am I right?” Cyrus said, punching Kaliq in the arm. He was trying to get the kid to loosen up a little. All these Upper East Side kids were way too uptight.

  That's what he thinks. Give them time.

  “You sleep with her yet?” Cyrus asked.

  “Well, we’ve known each other practically since we were born,” Kaliq stuttered. “But we’ve only been going out for like, a year. We don’t want to ruin it by, you know, rushing, before we’re ready?” Kaliq was just spitting back the line that Porsha always gave him when he asked her if she was ready to do it or not. But he was talking to his girlfriend’s mother’s boyfriend. What was he supposed to say, “Nigga, if I had my way we’d be doing it right now”?

  “Absolutely,” Cyrus said. He clasped Kaliq’s shoulder with a fleshy hand. Around his wrist was one of those gold Cartier cuff bracelets that you screw on and never take off—very popular in the 1980s and not so popular now. “Let me give you some advice,” Cyrus told him, as if Kaliq had a choice. “Don’t listen to a word that girl says. Girls like surprises. They want you to keep things interesting. You know what I mean?”

  Kaliq nodded, frowning. He tried to remember the last time he’d surprised Porsha. The only thing that came to mind was the time he’d brought her an ice cream cone when he picked her up at her tennis lesson. That was over a month ago, and it was a pretty lame surprise by any standard. At this rate, he and Porsha might never have sex.

  Kaliq was one of those boys you look at and while you’re looking at them, you know they’re thinking, that girl can’t take her eyes off me because I’m so fine. Although he didn’
t act at all conceited about it. He couldn’t help being fine, he was just born that way. Poor guy.

  That night Kaliq was wearing the green cashmere V-neck sweater Porsha had given him last Easter, when her father had taken them skiing in Sun Valley for a week. Secretly, Porsha had sewn a tiny gold heart pendant onto the inside of one of the sweater’s sleeves, so that Kaliq would always be wearing her heart on his sleeve. Porsha liked to think of herself as a hopeless romantic in the style of old movie actresses like Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge. She was always coming up with plot devices for the movie she was starring in at the moment, the movie that was her life.

  “I love you,” Porsha had told Kaliq breathily when she gave him the sweater.

  “Me too,” Kaliq had said back, although he wasn’t exactly sure if it was true or not.

  When he put the sweater on, it looked so good on him that Porsha wanted to scream and rip all her clothes off. But it seemed unattractive to scream in the heat of the moment, so Porsha kept quiet, trying to remain fragile and delicate in Kaliq’s arms. They kissed for a long time, their cheeks hot and cold at the same time from being out on the slopes all day. Kaliq twined his fingers in Porsha’s hair and pulled her down on the hotel bed. Porsha put her arms above her head and let Kaliq begin to undress her, until she realized where this was all heading, and that it wasn’t a movie after all, it was real. So, like a good girl, she sat up and made Kaliq stop.

  She’d kept on making him stop right on up until today. Only two nights ago, Kaliq had come over after a party with a half-drunk flask of brandy in his pocket and had lain down on her bed and murmured, “I want you, Porsha.” Once again, Porsha had wanted to scream and jump on top of him, but she resisted. Kaliq fell asleep, snoring softly, and Porsha lay down next to him and imagined that she and Kaliq were starring in a movie in which they were married and he had a drinking problem, but she would stand by him always and love him forever.

  Porsha wasn’t trying to be a tease, she just wasn’t ready. She and Kaliq had barely seen each other at all over the summer because she had gone to that horrible boot camp of a tennis school in North Carolina, and Kaliq had gone sailing with his father off the coast of Maine. Porsha wanted to make sure that after spending the whole summer apart they still loved each other as much as ever. She had wanted to wait to have sex until her seventeenth birthday next month.

  But now she was through with waiting.

  Kaliq was looking better than ever. The moss-green sweater had turned his eyes a sparkling green, and his smooth caramel skin was now golden brown from his summer on the ocean. And, just like that, Porsha knew she was ready. She took another sip of her scotch and cocked her fingers around the glass tumbler as if she were firing a shiny .38 caliber pistol.

  If only she could take Cyrus out of the picture—bam! And everyone else at the party for that matter—bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Then she and Kaliq could do it right there in the living room, naked, with the whole damned penthouse to themselves.

  She finished her drink and set the tumbler down on a marble side table with such force that both the glass and the marble almost cracked.

  Oh, yes. She was definitely ready.

  2

  “What are you two talking about?” Porsha’s mother asked, sidling up to Kaliq and squeezing Cyrus’s hand.

  “Sex,” Cyrus said, giving her a wet kiss on the ear.

  Yuck.

  “Oh!” Eleanor Sinclaire squealed, patting her blown-out bob.

  Porsha’s mother was wearing the fitted, cashmere dress that Porsha had helped her pick out from Armani, and little black velvet mules. A year ago she wouldn’t have fit into the dress, but Cyrus had paid for her to have thirty pounds of fat sucked out of her thighs and waist and she looked fantastic. Everyone thought so.

  “She does look thinner,” Porsha heard Mrs. Harrison whisper to Mrs. Edwards. “But I’ll bet she’s had a chin tuck.”

  “I bet you’re right. She’s grown her hair out—that’s the telltale sign. It hides the scars,” Mrs. Edwards whispered back.

  Of course, she would know.

  The room was abuzz with snatches of gossip about Porsha’s mother and Cyrus Campbell. From what Porsha could hear, her mother’s friends felt exactly the same way she did, although they didn’t exactly use words like annoying, fat, or loser.

  “I smell Old Spice,” Mrs. Edwards whispered to Mrs. Braxton. “Do you think he’s actually wearing Old Spice?”

  “I’m not sure,” Mrs. Braxton whispered back. “But I think he might be.” She snatched a spring roll off Esther’s platter, popped it into her mouth, and chewed it vigorously, refusing to say anything more. She couldn’t bear for Eleanor Sinclaire to overhear them. Gossip and idle chat were amusing, but not at the expense of an old friend’s feelings.

  Bullshit! Porsha would have said if she could have heard Mrs. Braxton’s thoughts. Hypocrite! All of these people were terrible gossips. And if you’re going to do it, why not enjoy it?

  Across the room, Cyrus grabbed Eleanor and kissed her on the lips in full view of everyone. Porsha shrank away from the revolting sight of her mother and Cyrus acting like geeky teens with a crush and turned to look out the penthouse window at Fifth Avenue and Central Park. The fall foliage was on fire—not literally, but figuratively. If it were really on fire she would have tossed Cyrus out into it and watched him burn like fat-streaked bacon. A lone bicyclist rode out of the 72ndStreet entrance to the park and stopped at the hot dog vendor on the corner to buy a bottle of water. Porsha had never noticed the hot dog vendor before, and she wondered if he always parked there, or if he was new, and if he usually stayed there after the sun had gone.

  It's funny how much you miss in what you see every day.

  Suddenly Porsha was starving, and she knew just what she wanted: A hot dog. She wanted one right now—a steaming hot dog with mustard and ketchup and onions and sauerkraut—and she was going to eat it in three bites and then burp in her mother’s face. If Cyrus could stick his tongue down her mother’s throat in front of all of her friends, then she could eat a stupid hot dog.

  “I’ll be right back,” Porsha told Alexis and Imani.

  She whirled around and began to walk across the room to the front hall. She was going to put on her coat, go outside, get a hot dog from the vendor, eat it in three bites, come back, burp in her mother’s face, have another drink, and then have sex with Kaliq.

  “Where are you going?” Alexis called after her. But Porsha didn’t stop. She headed straight for the door.

  Kaliq saw her coming and extracted himself from Cyrus and Eleanor just in time. “Porsha?” he said. “What’s up?”

  She stopped and looked up into Kaliq’s sexy green eyes. They were like the emeralds in the cufflinks her father wore with his tux when he went to the opera. One look into his adoring gems calmed the maniac inside her every time.

  Well, almost every time.

  He’s wearing your heart on his sleeve, she reminded herself, forgetting all about the hot dog. In the movie of her life, Kaliq would pick her up and carry her away to the bedroom and ravish her. But this was real life, unfortunately.

  “I have to talk to you,” Porsha said. She held out her glass. “Fill me up first.”

  Kaliq loved it when Porsha bossed him around. He took her glass and let her lead him over to the marble-topped wet bar by the French doors that opened onto the dining room. He poured them each a tumbler full of scotch and then followed her across the living room once more. She didn't stop walking. She was headed straight for her bedroom.

  “Hey, where are you two going?” Jaylen asked as they walked by. He raised his eyebrows, leering at them suggestively.

  Porsha rolled her eyes at him and kept walking, drinking as she went. Kaliq followed her, ignoring him completely.

  Jaylen Harrison, the oldest son of Misty and Apollo Harrison, was handsome—aftershave commercial handsome. In fact, he’d starred in a Gillette commercial, much to his parents’ public dismay an
d secret pride. Jaylen was also the horniest boy in Porsha and Kaliq’s group of friends. Once, at a party in ninth grade, Jaylen had hidden in a guest bedroom closet for two hours, waiting to crawl into bed with Alexis Sullivan, who was so drunk she kept throwing up in her sleep. Jaylen didn’t even mind the vomit-stained covers, as long as there was a semi naked body underneath. He was completely unshakeable when it came to girls.

  The only way to deal with a guy like Jaylen is to laugh in his face, which is exactly what all the girls who knew him did. In other circles, Jaylen might have been banished as a slimeball of the highest order, but these families had been friends for generations. Jaylen was a Harrison, and so they were stuck with him. They had even gotten used to his gold pinky ring, his trademark cashmere scarf, and the copies of his headshot, which littered his parent’s many houses and apartments and spilled out of his locker at the Riverside Preparatory School for Boys.

  “Don’t forget to use protection,” Jaylen called, raising his glass at Porsha and Kaliq as they turned down the long, red-carpeted hallway to Porsha’s bedroom.

  Porsha grasped the glass doorknob and turned it, surprising her Russian Blue cat, Kitty Minky, who was curled up on the silk bedspread. Porsha paused at the threshold and leaned back against Kaliq, pressing her body into his. She reached down to take his hand.

  At that moment, Kaliq’s hopes perked up. Porsha was acting sort of sultry and sexy and could it be...something was about to happen?

  Oh, something's always about to happen.

  Porsha squeezed his hand and pulled him into the room. They stumbled over each other, falling toward the bed and spilling their drinks and staining the white mohair rug. Porsha giggled; the scotch she’d pounded had gone right to her head.

  I’m about to have sex with Kaliq, she thought giddily. And then they’d both graduate in June and go to Yale in the fall and have a huge wedding four years later and find a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue and decorate the whole thing in velvet, silk, and fur and have sex in every room on a rotating basis.

  Suddenly Porsha’s mother’s voice rang out, loud and clear, down the hallway.