The only date I had meant to go on.
“Tell you what,” he began. The phone rattled, and I heard a smile in his butterscotch voice when he returned. I suddenly understood why Bonnie got so stupid over Clyde…if he’d had a sexy damn voice like Yash’s. “Do you enjoy dumb movies?”
“Dumb movies are the best kind.”
He exhaled a grin. “Will Ferrell?”
My mouth dropped. “I love Will Ferrell. I would marry anchorman Ron Burgundy even though we all know what it did to Veronica Corningstone.”
“I knew you were a keeper, Giselle.”
195. Uhhhhhhhhh
I fell onto my back.
He continued being far too marvelous. “Listen, come over tonight. We’ll order in greasy food for a hangover and watch every Ferrell movie you can stomach, pun intended.”
“I should hope so.”
“Although…if you feel more comfortable, I can come to you. I am a man you just met, after all.”
196. No no no!
“No, that’s okay. I’ll give your info to my best girl, and if I’m never seen again, she’ll report to the police the person in whose freezer my body is dismembered.”
“Excellent. I’ll just have to dismember a different lady instead.”
I snorted. Wow, my imaginative beau could get very dark.
A pillow landed upside my head, and my best girl said, “If you don’t shut up, it’ll be my freezer.”
I managed to crawl into the living room. “Aren’t you worried that you might be in danger from me?”
“All the time. Especially when I can’t stop thinking about you. You might break my heart.”
197. Don’t say things like that!
I inhaled to make a witty rejoinder…but this was one piece of bullshit I couldn’t bear to blow. “So tonight, what time?”
“Come over around eight. I’ll have everything ready. I’ll text you the address.” He paused. “I wanted to take you with me to the UK for Christmas. Is that a loser thing to confess?”
His adorable earnestness mixed with macabre jokes sucked all free will from my body, and I was no longer a lying mess of dork lying ten feet away from her own hangover, but a wonderful, worthy woman who could make such a man’s eyes sparkle.
Seconds ticked by. His silence on the other end became labored. Don’t ask me how I knew. My heart knotted. My veins froze. “What is wrong with you?” I blurted.
He gasped.
“No, no.” I fell into the couch. Well, my head did. Sitting would have required too much effort. “I mean…what are your flaws? Because I’m a mess, Yash. I’m not great, and—and I’m not great. I’m flailing in life right now. Why are you into me?”
The silence this time turned ponderous. I think. I wasn’t a psychic, I was Ass-Breath of Loserville, in the Famewhore Blogs District.
“Giselle,” he began. “You’re funny. And you’re hotter than hell. And you’re obviously smart and adventurous, no matter what mess you’re currently experiencing.”
Hot? Adventurous? He should have met me two weeks ago when he’d’ve died of boredom. Blade almost did.
198. Better not think about that too hard
He blew into the phone and I managed to throw one leg over the couch. I was still on my back, but I’d achieved that much. “Let’s see, my faults,” he began. “I’ll have to think hard because they’re so few.”
“Uh-huh. I’m going to make you watch a Dance Moms marathon with me tonight.”
“Christ, no! Okay. I write alone in my apartment in my underwear.”
“Yum,” I said.
“Not so much. I write in my underwear and…the shirt.”
My intestines gurgled. “The shirt?”
“It’s an old, unbelievably holey rag that used to be white, but is now gray. If it were named in a clothing catalog, it’d be called ‘despair gray.’ Or perhaps ‘disease.’”
I burst into laughter.
“It’s got many stains, most of them brown and/or green, as if I took a giant shit on it, and then blew chunks.”
“Ugh, you are a writer, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. It’s disgusting. Pit stained. And I think it has a bit of a permanent funk.”
“Why? Why do you keep a disease shirt to work in?”
He laughed. “It’s lucky! I wrote most of my first book in it—I was pretty single at the time, go figure—and I got the call that my agent wanted to represent me and also the call that the book had sold while I wore it.”
“Aw.”
“The second call happened on the toilet.”
I covered my mouth so that my guffaws wouldn’t wake Mel again. “Wow. Nice detail.”
“You wanted the bad. Turns out—I poop.”
“Not me, you pervert.”
He listed more grievous faults. “I bite my nails. I will leave dishes crusted until they smell. And I will likely have to spend solid time cleaning my bathroom today so you don’t faint from horror.”
“That’s… That’s gross.”
“You’re the mess, not me.”
“Don’t sass me, stinky shirt.”
“Fair enough.” The line clicked and echoed for a moment. “Let’s see… I put almost everything off until far past the point of being a responsible adult. I had to start letting them take the rent directly from my account. I got many eviction notices because I just forgot.”
“Holy shit. That’s next-level irresponsibility. I feel a lot better about myself now.”
“Excellent.”
I threw my other leg up over the couch. “Out with it—more dirt.”
“Oh, come now,” he said, very British-ly. “I have to save a few terrible habits for the third date.”
“Someone’s optimistic.”
He laughed, the adorable and smarmy sound of a man whose performance on date number two would not be in doubt. I joined in, because I had no doubts, either.
“I’ll give you one more,” he dangled promisingly. “I write fan fic.”
“My best friend does that.”
“It’s X-Files. And I didn’t write it in the 90s, I write it now. And it’s about Mulder…and alien Scully.”
My mouth dropped. “You mean…Scully is an alien?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And…I’m going to regret asking…what sort of alien is she?”
A great and terrible silence descended through the line, and I began picturing a redheaded FBI agent with three boobs.
The truth was weirder. “She has tentacles,” he finally ground out.
I began giggling uncontrollably. Mel yelled from the other room, but she would forgive me once we Googled and read this fan fic.
199. “Oh, my God, I love you!” I blurted into the phone
He gasped. It was a manly gasp, but still very gasp-y in nature.
“I mean…” Oh fuck shit fucker fuckery fucking fucksticks! “I didn’t mean love love, I meant—”
“You mean ‘tentacle Scully reaming Mulder’ love you.”
My leg fell off the couch, I laughed so hard. Every cell in my body had turned into a bubble and I floated away on a sea of Yash. “Yes. Wow. That is a very damning flaw. And also a very damning virtue.”
“Thank you.”
“You understand I will be reading these immediately.”
He sighed. “Yes, I understand. Please be forewarned that I’m not half the lover alien Scully is.”
“Neither am I. It’s Scully as played by Gillian Anderson. She’s the hottest person on earth.”
“Or on Saturn Five.” He laughed at his own silliness and said, “Until eight, my dear. Enjoy the first day of your New Year.”
“January first!” I agreed with enthusiasm. Wait… January first. The first? “Oh, shit, I have to work! What time is it?”
“Noon-ish.”
“Aaaah!” I flipped my legs to the ground. I should have been at the coffee shop an hour ago! I’d agreed to work January first before I knew I’d be enacting mighty a
nd glorious revenge the night before. And also drinking.
Yash’s voice got higher. “Oh, no. You have a flight? Will you be back by eight?”
I paused on my knees while the world swirled. Shit.
200. Shit
“Uh…yes. I have to… I’m not flying. I’m… I’m…teaching?”
201. Yes. Teaching
“Yes, teaching,” I agreed with myself.
“Oh. What do you teach?”
Uh. Uh. “Landing.”
“Landing? Fuck me, you can land a plane?”
202. Landing?!
Uh. Uh. “Yes, of course.” I stood, but barely. The hangover babies in my head were having grandchildren, and these crotchlings were real second-generation trust fund assholes. “All flight attendants can land a plane. In case the pilots die.”
He groaned. “Does that happen often?” His voice had risen in octave, like Mariah Carey’s. “I don’t love flying—are pilots constantly dropping dead?”
I stumbled through Mel’s room and into her closet. I could not barista in my Forever 21 jailbait garb. “No, of course not. It’s just standard protocol. For safety.” I shoved clothes aside until I found a simple button-down. “For us.” Jeans. Jeans. Where were her jeans? “Flight attendants. Like when we…uh…” Her shoes were too big, shoot. “Shoot hijackers.”
“What?”
Wait—what had I said? My head swam, my stomach swam, and the thread of this stupid conversation had been lost on me at ‘tentacles.’ “Just kidding?”
“Oh, good. You—you don’t carry a gun on the plane, do you?”
203. I really needed to start listening to what came out of my mouth
“Nope. Well, I’ve got to be getting to Flight Attendant…College…of…Piloting and…Safety Systemic…Systems.”
204. I was the best liar ever
“I had no idea it was a college degree that flight attendants got. You learn something new every day, eh?”
205. Apparently
“See you later,” I told him before hanging up before I said anything else ridiculous before I ruined my chance of getting laid forever.
I yanked on two pairs of Mel’s socks to make her shoes kind of fit. She glared at me while I bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead. “Thanks for a great night, baby.”
“Your breath is even worse now. And you can just send that garbage can down the garbage chute if you don’t have time to wash it.”
Dutifully, I scooped it up and held my nose on the way out. “I’ll get you a new one.”
A happy grunt was my only reply. I trashed her trash and hopped a cab to work. Thanks be to all that is holy, I found a mint in my purse and sucked on it while spreading into the cab seat like a pool of, well, vomit. The whole world was made of angry molasses, and I swam through it with a headache the size of Alaska. Hopefully, Hunter wouldn’t fire me.
Actually… Who the heck cared?
And yet I did actually care that I’d put my fellow retail drones out—
206. Fucking up should not adversely affect the drone underclass
The cab pulled up to JaVaVaVoom. I paid and leaped from the door. And face-planted on the sidewalk. The tumble knocked the wind out of me, not to mention the rest of my stomach contents. On my hands and knees, I panted and spit out the rest of last night. Oh, gross. So, so gross.
Laughter erupted above me and I managed to lift my head just enough to see Hunter guffawing a safe distance away. “Well, Dag,” he said. “I see why you’re late.”
I collapsed onto the sidewalk in the posture adopted by lazy fetuses. The ground could not possibly be dirtier than the satanic rituals happening inside my body. “Ugh,” I replied, saying it all.
“Go home. We can handle it.”
“I’m sorry,” I groaned. Oh, God, I wanted to die. “I tried.”
“I hear you, and I appreciate that.” I heard a shutter click and I knew what that meant. “But I also reserve the right to mock your sorry ass forever.”
I flashed him a weak thumbs-up, and he, still laughing, returned to the coffee shop. My hand dropped to the sidewalk with a smack.
Home. I had to get home somehow. What should I do about the pile of puke? Was it rude to leave it on the sidewalk? But how did I clean it?
207. Ugh, I’d lost my lunch more in a few weeks than I had in a few years
208. That’s a sign of high-quality living
Two old ladies stopped beside me. “Oh, dear,” said one, a white lady in a leopard-print hat.
“My goodness,” said the other, a black lady in a leopard-print hat.
“Help me,” I groaned.
White friend said, “Mavis, this silly bitch is hung over. Ha! Don’t get your Keds in her mess.”
Black friend said, “She might be still drunk. If she isn’t, she should be. You get her other arm, Hazel.”
Hazel and Mavis hauled me with all their might to my feet. That is to say, they tugged weakly, and I hauled my hungover ass to my feet. “Thank you,” I managed to groan. I shoved my hand into my purse for my sunglasses, which I’d forgotten existed up to now. Aaaaaahhh. Bye, bye, evil sun. Swaying, I said, “I have to get a cab so I can go home. I have to rest because of cute boy.”
Hazel sucked on her dentures. “Cute boy?”
Mavis sucked on her dentures. “I haven’t had a cute boy in twenty years.”
“That’s because you don’t put out soon enough,” Hazel admonished. “At our age, you can’t wait three dates. He might be dead by then. It’s happened to you already.”
“Twice.”
I just stood there, rocking and holding my stomach. I could only dream that Mel and I would be discussing senior sex in leopard print one day.
They got me a cab and poured me into it. I asked them if I should do anything about the vomit, and they said no, that New York in the seventies had been puke as far as the eye could see.
Would they let me move in with them?
The two ladies waved as the cab took me away, and I slid all the way to lie in the back seat. The number of germs now swarming my body probably numbered in the gazillion range, but perhaps they’d be killed by the alcohol. Alcohol. I sniffed. I sniffed my arm—I smelled like booze. It oozed from my very pores!
209. Perhaps even…my soul
210. Scumbag achievement unlocked
By some miracle—i.e. the cab—I made it home. The walk to my elevator and into the apartment was a blur, and I just made it into the bedroom before I collapsed.
As I lay on my bed for a while and stared up at the ceiling, I thought about the pain I was in. The trouble I had caused last night. The excessive partying. The disregard for the laws of man.
211. And I loved every single moment of it
212. It is a far, far better thing to barf from fun times than to barf from sadness
Via crawling, the party girl’s method of creeping, I made it into the kitchen, where I grabbed a sports drink from the fridge.
213. Plan ahead to get a-drunk
Sports drink and I crawled into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. No doing my taxes today, no freaking way. Heh heh. I sipped and flipped on the TV, where daytime talk shows would lull me to sleep. Before I conked out, I set three different phone alarms for a few hours from now—neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hangover would keep me from sexy Yash tonight.
Chapter Nine
F*ck-Ups Two-Fourteen through Two-Sixty-Nine
The Handsome Prince and the Fairy Bookmother
Some number of hours later—reading clocks is hard in that condition—I managed to eat a little soup, down eleven whole crackers without incident, brush my teeth four times, and apply makeup. Yeah, I was superwoman, queen of looking cute after cosplaying garbage.
I nearly broke down and invited Yash over to my place, but there were just too many things there with Dagmar written all over them. One was a giant metal ‘D’ in Times New Roman hanging on the wall of the living room. There used to be an ‘& B’ there as
well, but I’d taken a baseball bat to them.
214. Sometimes coping involves baseball bats
Old me would never, ever have done such a violent thing. New me hadn’t thought twice about it. Bashing the letters on the front stoop had been a good upper body workout, and amused my neighbors. I’d even gotten to know Lydia in 301 as she’d taken her own turn at the bat. She had an ex named Blake—small world.
I took a baggie of saltines with me in the cab to Yash’s place. I’m a classy date—
215. Ready to put out and I bring my own snacks
Arrived, rang the bell, got buzzed in. When the elevator doors opened, there he stood before me, sexy as hell in jeans and soft flannel. He jammed his hands into his pockets and looked such the hot dork I nearly jumped onto him and committed a public act of indecency in the hall. However, I was too hungover for jumping…and humping would only happen after I’d gotten a meal in me that stayed down successfully.
216. Oh goddess of hussies, hear my plea
217. Or goddess of booze, maybe
“Hi! Are you feeling okay? How did flight training go?” he asked.
He began to lead me down the hall and I almost asked, “Flight training?” before I remembered the lie I’d told about teaching other flight attendants to land a plane. Wouldn’t pilots teach that if it were true?
218. Please don’t think about that too closely, Yash
“Everything’s great,” I assured him. As we arrived at his door, my stomach gave a tremendous gggguuurrrgglee. He laughed at me and I added, “I haven’t eaten very much today.”
He opened the door and a wondrous smell of delicious nearly knocked me over. “I can help with that.”
Once inside, he liberated me from my purse and led me by the hand to the living room. His soft, warm skin almost distracted me from the plethora of food on his coffee table. Almost. For lo, I beheld a bounty of sweet and sour veggies, noodles, egg rolls, cream cheese wontons, and even more. I sank to my knees beside it and hugged the table.
Grinning from ear to ear, he got on the floor beside me. “I hope this satisfies?”
“Uuuunnnnghhh.” I rolled onto my back like a puppy. “Insert here.” I pointed into my mouth.
His eyebrows rose.
“Your steaming egg roll.”
They got higher.
667 Ways to F*ck Up My Life Page 10
