But a fuck-up gets what she can whence she can, and no clean house in the bargain…unless I used the drink money I saved tonight to hire a cleaning helper. That would be excellently lazy and frivolous.
“A fuck-up doesn’t use the word ‘whence’,” replied Mel when I uttered this profundity.
If I wanted a free club experience, then I needed to look as hot as possible. Mel and I sat in my bedroom and tossed around my wardrobe. All black and blue and beige of it. Mel grimaced and said, “I guess I didn’t realize how much of a Chico’s kind of day you’ve been having. My mother has this cardigan.”
I hung my head in shame.
“You need some sexy clothes, lady. And a push-up bra—these things are sad and industrial.” She waved around a molded-cup beige number, a flag from the world’s saddest country, Celibatopia. “I don’t suppose you kept one of Blade’s credit cards, did you?”
“No—I can do better.” I rooted in my desk for my emergency credit card. The one that never had anything charged to it because I was a sensible girl who composed back-up plans for her back-up plans.
I spun around and held up my gold card. “This is the part of our story wherein the heroine goes into irresponsible debt to have a makeover. Dagmar—from blah to fuck, yah.”
Mel went for her purse. “We’re going to Bebe. I’m putting you in something loud, tight, and awesomely trashy.”
My heart started to beat a tattoo of happiness. “Can I wear leopard print? I’ve always dreamed of wearing leopard print.”
Chapter Three
F*ck-Ups Twelve through Eighteen
Little White Lies Are Actually More Chartreuse Colored
I caught a glimpse of myself in a dirty window outside the hottest new club in Manhattan. It was called Mistake, and I knew it had opened just for me. Fabulous me. I tossed my hair, huge and frizzy. My brand new, too-expensive leopard-print dress slunk over my body in drapey waves that ended juuuust on the right side of ‘arrested for solicitation.’ My eyes shimmered dark and dangerous with glittery black eye shadow.
I felt like an impostor. An actress. I felt…sexy. I’d never been called ‘sexy.’ It had always been a word for other women, but now it was mine. I owned it. I clutched it to my nearly naked bosom like an expensive vase. And I didn’t need anyone else to tell me. ‘Sexy’ sprang from a well inside me I hadn’t known existed, and it existed for me alone.
“Who is this person?” Mel asked me, her arm snaking around my shoulders.
“Let’s find out,” I said, returning her hug. I took her hand and marched to the front of the line of well-dressed, attractive would-be club-goers to the bouncer at the front.
When I arrived, I took a deep breath and struck a hip-cocked, model pose in front of a huge guy in a black tee emblazoned with Security. His eyes widened when he shifted attention away from a group of bachelorettes to me. I executed a hair flip, and it totally rocked except for that one piece that dragged through my red lipstick. Whoops. I slid that hair from my pout and gritted down on my nervous belly flutter. It was time to act like every pretentious author I’d ever bowed and scraped to.
What would Khandye Kardashian do?
I stood in front of the enormous man and stared him down. He leaned in, waiting for me to say something, but I wouldn’t. I was done with asking for favors. She who spoke last kept the power. This was a trick Carmichael used when negotiating—always let them talk first.
The bouncer asked, “Are you on the list?”
I shrugged and smiled. “Do I need to be? My friend and I are going to wait for my cousins inside. Have you read my blog? Or seen my TV show?” I snapped my fingers and Mel buried a smile while she turned her phone to show the bouncer Khandye Kardashian’s website. In the dark, on a five-inch screen, if you squinted, I kinda looked like Khandye—gobs of makeup and huge, dark hair.
He blinked and his wide face burst into a smile. “I love those jar salads! I really try to watch my waistline—I’m an MMA fighter.”
“Really?” I said. Hair flip. “That’s so hot.” Hair flip. The other way. “Could you trounce everyone in this line for me?”
“Huh?”
“Beat up.”
His chest expanded like a puffer fish. “You bet, baby.”
I simpered until he clicked the rope free and drew back the velvet for me. I sailed past, not looking to one side or the other, but straight ahead. The crowd parted, and I started giggling before I even got into the main room. Mel ran and bounced off my back, her laughter louder than the thumping music. “Holy crap, Dag! That was amazing!”
12. Don’t you know who I am (pretending to be)?
“I’m shaking.” I clutched my purse to my chest to try to hide it. I was a fakey mcfaker, but I felt fabulous, almost as if I were high. Maybe I was. Riding on a wave of pretention that made my legs weak and my breath flee.
Mel shook her head and laughed in my face. “Don’t wimp out on me now—get us some drinks, skank.”
Skank. I’d come full circle with that sort of female insult. Dad had taught me that my entire worth lay in keeping my legs closed. Then, I’d grown up and learned that my value lay in my heart, in my work. Now? I knew I was lost. My cells fluttered out of control, as if my body might shake itself apart. I decided to lean into it. My value did not lay in my job title. It couldn’t, because that sort of thing was fleeting and out of my control. And my body, well, having a little naughty fun didn’t diminish my spirit, my soul. I’d judged women for that for a long time, and it was wrong. Experience lent a certain…something…to a woman. Why shouldn’t I explore all that life had to offer?
In other words:
13. Embrace my inner skank
I marched right up to the bar and circled it until I found a victim. Two guys, pretty cute, sitting alone and looking overwhelmed. I nodded to Mel. She examined them and said, “Tech geeks.”
“With money—look at those jeans. Let’s go.”
I came up behind them and took a deep breath…and slammed into the both of them at once. Naturally, they jumped to their feet and turned around, outraged. I put my hand over my mouth and said, “Oh, my God! I’m sooooo sorry!” My boobs in the boing! position, I took the one closest to me by the hand and gazed straight into his nerdy little eyes. “Can you ever forgive me? I’m…Giselle. This is Veronique. We just flew in from London and it’s been a long day slash night. I’m desperate for a drink after serving first-class jerks at thirty thousand feet.” I threw in a giggle so vacant it left a black hole.
Their eyes grew wide as Veronique’s narrowed.
What? So I’d decided to be Giselle. It might sound nuts, but Dagmar wasn’t the sexiest name ever given to a woman. I’d never understood how my twin had gotten alluring ‘Vanessa’ and I was named after a Greek parade float.
Also, what’s wrong with pretending to be a flight attendant? Flight attendants were fun, adventurous, globetrotting. Not unemployed losers having a quarter-life crisis in a dress they couldn’t afford.
14. The truth can be aspirational, which is a fancy word for bullshit
Mel and I had free drinks in our hands in thirty seconds flat. The guys were fine, a little dull, average. But me… I was a shining star of sexual charisma. They couldn’t take their eyes off me! And Mel came around to enjoying the perks of the mile-high club too—we told stories taller than the giant, dark, and handsome hunk who’d just given me a double-take on the way by. Baby, was he hot. But he disappeared into the crowd as I polished off my free drink. Oh, well. Plenty more where he came from.
“Ted, Tanner—you two are the best. You’re better than a layover in Cincinnati!” I informed them. They appeared to be confused as to what this, exactly, meant. “I have to visit the powder room, and Veronique is coming with me. But we’ll be right back.”
As soon as we were out of earshot, I said, “We won’t be right back. We can do better than the ant-farm enthusiast.”
Mel followed me to the bathroom. “But I’m just dying to hear about th
eir new app that rates women on a scale from one to go fuck yourself, dickbag.”
We cackled—cackling was quickly becoming my new favorite way to laugh—and peed away the free liquor. After we primped and I applied enough red war paint to terrify a charging elephant, we decided to dance.
And we did. We danced. Like I’d never, ever danced before. A little drunken, a lot abandon. I jumped and twirled and shook my ass and got sweaty enough that I’d never be able to return this dress. Who knew (who cared?) how much time had passed when we finally dragged ourselves away from the teeming mass of bodies trying to forget their workaday lives.
“I’m a little jealous of the fun you’re having,” said a British accent from beside me. And I knew who it came from before I turned. Or maybe it was wishful thinking. Magical thinking, for giant, dark, and handsome from earlier stood appraising me with mischievous brown eyes. My breath caught in the fairy tale that shone therein.
“Then have it with me,” I returned, a little breathy, and also a little amazed that I’d managed such a great line. If one of my nonfic authors had written that, I’d have rolled my eyes.
A smile twitched around his mouth—full, luscious—while his eyes narrowed into slivers—crinkly, adorable—the bigger the grin got. My whole body wanted to melt into the sticky floor, but, if I let it, I wouldn’t be able to kiss him as quickly as possible.
He shook his head. “I’m really not much of a dancer.”
“Of course you are!” I insisted. I took his enormous hand in mine and began to tug.
He stood firm, like granite, like hunk, like the muscles I fancied I could see throbbing through his thigh-hugging jeans and army-green button-down. Woo, I got a little lightheaded just imagining this six-foot slab of granite in my bed.
I hadn’t ever felt such an animal—
A random dance-floor elbow landed in my ribcage, nearly knocking me from vertical to splat. How long had I been standing there swaying and drooling? “Uh,” I stated, elegantly, while dropping his hand by accident. “Okay, how about a drink?”
He chuckled. “Are you offering or demanding?”
15. Demand
I slapped my hands on my hips and just stood there to dare him, capital D. With a hair flip for extra are.
“All right, dancing queen. Come with me and pick your poison.” This time he took my hand, taking his time with the taking. He slid his fingers light as a feather down my arm until he wrapped my tiny palm in his. I shivered from my toes to my hair and followed him like a puppy.
Mel shrugged and gave me a wave before leaping once again into the boogying fray. Hopefully she wasn’t too put out with me. Fucking up one’s life probably meant not caring about that, but I refused to screw over my best lady for a dude. Any dude.
16. Remember who loves you. Forgetting that would be the real fuck-up
Once at the bar, my gorgeous companion commanded attention, and he placed a chilled martini in my hand before too long. It had been enjoyable admiring his butt while he waited for the drinks. Perky, round—very round—and I was still entertaining thoughts of eating bonbons off the glorious orbs when he said, “I’m Yash. Yash Majumdar.”
Yash Majumdar… Why did that name ring a bell? “Giselle,” I blurted. “Kostopoulos.” For a terrifying breath, I wondered if I’d well and truly fucked up by not giving my real name to this amazing specimen with the familiar-for-some-reason name, but then I took a long pull of vodka and shushed my brain. No, no. I didn’t want a boyfriend, anyway. Boyfriends like Blade are often simultaneous boyfriends with some girl named Amy, so to hell with the lot of them.
One-night stands, however…
“What brings you out tonight, Yash?” I yelled over the music once we’d found a dark corner to become too close in.
His long body draped itself against the wall covered in chipped gold paint. “My friend got a book deal today, so he decided that rip-roaring drunk was the way to celebrate.”
OMG that British accent. Just James Bond-age me now, please. “Rip-roaring is a very writerly way to be.”
“And why are you dancing on a Tuesday?”
Because I had nothing to lose? “Why not? We got in today from…” Oh, boy—I couldn’t say anywhere in the UK because I’d never been to the UK, and he obviously had. “L.A. I’m a flight attendant. Getting out of California is always a reason to celebrate.”
That earned me another low and lazy chuckle, and my panties embroidered themselves with his name. “I’m not much for La La Land, myself. I’ve been there for business meetings, but was always happy to return to skyscrapers and dirt.”
“What business are you in?”
“I’m a writer, like my friend.”
OooooooOOOOoooOOOooohhhhhhhh. My eyes went wide. That was why I knew his name! Of course! I filtered through the memory files in my booze-soaked brain. Yash Majumdar. The British-Indian It Boy du jour a year ago when he debuted on the NYT bestseller list with his heartfelt, funny, gorgeously written apocalyptic satire.
I should turn around. I should turn around and flee because we probably have a hundred friends in common. ‘We’ as in Dagmar and Yash, not Giselle.
But he had lips carved by Satan himself.
17. Be sure to put the ‘fuck’ in ‘fucking up’
“What do you write?” I asked, swallowing the lie, diving into the rabbit hole.
He shrugged and morphed his face into such an adorable bashfulness that I nearly leaped onto him. “I write novels. Working on my second one now—terrified of it, actually. Sophomore flop and all that.”
Now I’d met many, many in the publishing industry so far up their own backsides, I doubted they could hear anything but their own digestive tracts. The fact that he hadn’t immediately told me about his second printing, five-star reviews, and movie deal set my skirt ablaze. “I bet it’ll be amazing,” I told him in complete truthfulness. “I mean, if you wrote one, you can write another. You already know the potential is inside you—it’s been proven.”
I shot him a smile that he returned. I imagined those wide, parted lips murmuring over every inch of my body, and I had to have him. Had to. Like a salmon has to swim upstream—
Straight into the paws of a hungry bear.
“Your place or mine?” I asked. “I mean—how about yours? I have the worst roommate.” Crap crap crap, he couldn’t come to my place. Not with piles of mail and such with the name Dagmar on them. The framed party photo of me and J.K. Rowling also might raise an eyebrow.
His shoulders fell. “I’m afraid I… I shouldn’t tonight. I have an early meeting with my editor tomorrow and”—he took a step closer, the heat from him singeing my hair—“and I enjoy having more than three minutes of conversation before I show you my ass. So to speak.” He fished in his pocket, never breaking eye contact, and passed me a card. “Please call. I’d love to take you out to a proper dinner.” With that, he took my hand and kissed it.
He. Kissed. It.
The motion didn’t feel like a put-on, and he flashed a dorky smile right after, as if he couldn’t believe he’d just done that either. “I promise I’m cooler than that,” he clarified before he turned around.
A few paces away, he swiveled to face me again. “Actually—no, I’m not.”
I broke into a hearty laugh. “Good. Cool people are so boring.” Blade had been the coolest of the cool.
With that adorkableness, Yash was gone.
A wave of sadness jittered my muscles and sank into my stomach. I was already bereft without him.
Something pushed me from behind and Mel’s voice filled my ear. “Holy crap. That was—”
“Yash Majumdar.”
“Is that his number?”
I clutched the sacred card to my too-exposed bosom. “Yes.”
She squeed and danced her way around to my front. “Woo-hoo! Blade who?”
“Giselle.”
“What?”
I face-palmed with his card. “He thinks I’m a flight attendant named Giselle!�
��
She pulled a horrid look then she corrected it like the amazing girlfriend she was. “Well—then be a flight attendant named Giselle. And climb that man like a tree.”
Okay. Okay. So what if he was, without question, the hottest, most charming and talented man I’d ever met. A tall, hot pile of dress-immolating hummina hummina hummina. A one-night stand would be sufficient. For sure. I definitely had not just made a huge, irrevocable, Giselle-sized mistake. Nope. Nooooooope.
18. Massive lies always turn out well!
Chapter Four
F*ck-Ups Nineteen through Thirty-Four
Plastic Clothing Is Not for Amateurs
Two nights later, I click-clacked in skyscraper heels to JaVaVaVoom to slide my application to Hunter the bro-ista. Never in a million years would I have guessed I’d be wearing a black pleather dress to try to acquire a new job. The new job, however, wasn’t the only thing I hoped to get tonight.
Heh heh.
I meant his penis.
Hunter wasn’t the man warming my thoughts on the way there, though. Yash and I had a date for the following night. We’d spent a wicked two days flirting via text. Oh, but he was even smarter and funnier than I’d previously glimpsed, more direct, and my imagination had been covered in unicorn stickers and doodled hearts.
And my engine had been revving at eleven for days now. Lucky, lucky Hunter, who would be the first to reap the rewards.
19. Bang two men in the same week
Nervous flutters flitted through my tacky dress. I’d only been with two men ever. Hopefully, I was good at this sex thing.
I pushed through the door to the coffee shop at nine-fifty-eight p.m. Hunter and I locked eyes immediately and he dropped a stack of paper cups. “H-hi!” he stuttered. “You came back!” Tonight his dreads flowed to his shoulders, like a sexy, surfing pirate.
“Yes, Hunter. I’ve come for you.”
Heh heh.
I meant his penis.
“Are you all alone here?” I asked as I made my way to him.
667 Ways to F*ck Up My Life Page 4
