“Well,” he says, hair still perfectly intact.
The rush of adrenaline and champagne is making me dizzy. What now? Oh God, what do I do next? I’m not sure if what I’m thinking is a flash of strategic brilliance or comes from a lame listicle, but here I go: The only way to follow a totally unexpected moment is with another unexpected moment. (The advantage of which is that I have no idea what would happen if I stayed. The advantage of which is that this satisfies my natural impulse to run.)
“Well. It was nice to meet you.” I give him a quick bisou on the cheek and walk away.
My head is swimming.
“Wait, I don’t get a name? A number?”
I feel like my head might explode.
“Maybe next time.” I don’t stop when I say this. I just keep moving forward. I have to escape.
Before I reach the stairs, I’m surrounded by a swarm of Shift Girls buzzing with questions.
Brie: “Did y’all just start kissing out of nowhere?”
Abigail: “Did you check for canker sores first?”
Sunny: “Did you actively steal my Resting Bitch Face? I told you it was effective.”
And then Gigi returns, finished with her artist, and squeezes my arm.
“I would say that making out with a stranger at a chic art show is gauche if he weren’t so damned attractive,” Gigi says approvingly. “Well done.”
“Thanks. See you all tomorrow.”
“After that you’re leaving?” Gigi asks. “I respect that. Bold.”
Bold indeed.
I wave and make my way down the stairs, two steps at a time, to finally release myself into the night air. The chilly weather has turned into a summer storm, and fat drops of rain are falling from the sky. I don’t have an umbrella, and I don’t care. The water feels good against my skin, but it doesn’t bring me down from my high.
15
“TINAAAAA,” I SHOUT INTO MY phone from the back of a taxi that’s going to charge me a whole day of minimum wage work at Shift to take me from Bushwick back to the Upper East Side.
“Uh-oh, sounds like someone’s a little drunky.”
I only shorten her name when I’m tipsy and incapable of handling three-syllable words.
“I might have had a glass of champagne.” I wring out my rain-drenched hair, leaving a small puddle on the cab’s faux-leather seats.
I try to wipe it up as Kristina asks, “Just a glass?”
“Or four.”
“But you’re such a lightweight! Four? This is why I don’t drink champagne. You just keep going.”
Hearing her say the number makes me perk up.
“Speaking of four.” I stop trying to dry the seat and announce with gravitas, “I have a new name to add to the list!”
She immediately knows what I’m talking about.
Kristina and I both have Word documents on our computers dedicated to chronicling the boys we’ve kissed. Kristina’s, which is longer and far more salacious reading material, is surreptitiously saved as “Chemistry Study Guide.” Mine has the even more covert name, “Rough Draft Spanish Paper.” Just in case someone were to break into my files searching for double entendres.
My list comprises the following:
1. MATTHEW HOLLIDAY
It happened the summer before tenth grade. We were playing a game of spin the bottle on the second deck of a Carnival cruise ship, behind the state-of-the-art Twister Sister water slide. I was tagging along on what Kristina’s dad called her “new family” vacation. (“More like my ‘faux family’ vacation,” Kristina said. She told her dad that the only way she was going to not only meet but spend a whole week with her soon-to-be stepmom and stepbrother, Erik, was if she got to bring a friend.) Anyway, Matthew tasted like the late-night pizza buffet, but it was overall okay. After the game we talked about the Hunger Games, the books not the movies, but he didn’t accept my friend request on Facebook.
2. D-BAG DULL MAN
You know the story. Junior year, homecoming. The kiss was great, but he was the worst. It should also be noted that his hand grazed my boob during our Dance Floor Make-Out.
3. BOBBY MCKITTRICK
My chin will never forget.
And now . . .
“Who is he?” Kristina’s voice explodes out of the other line. “Tell me everything!”
I tell her that by some strange twist of fate, I ran into the cute guy she pointed out on FaceTime my first day of work.
“No. Way. That’s absolutely insane. Who is he?”
“Well, his name is Carter. . . .”
“Carter what? I wanna Facebook stalk him.”
“Um . . .”
I realize I don’t know his last name and he knows . . . nothing about me except for the fact that I’m the girl who jumped him at a crowded party.
Kristina is in an excited tizzy and keeps the questions coming. “How did it happen? I want details. Do you like him? Are you going out?”
No. Because just like after you drink a Red Bull you get a spike of energy and then crash, I had a spike of confidence and then freaked out. And ran away. What if I never see him again? What if I do see him again since he’s obviously connected to Bosh Media in some way and he thinks I’m a total crazy person?
Suddenly the champagne isn’t sitting well. I don’t say anything for a minute. There’s no sound except for the French talk radio the cab driver’s listening to.
“Harper, you’re killing me. How did he do it?”
“I did it.”
I give Kristina the blow-by-blow about how I came in from out of nowhere and essentially forced myself upon him without any warning. During pauses, Kristina says things like, “No way. No effing way!”
“Am I a slut?” I ask when I’m finished.
“Harper”—Kristina enunciates every word like I’m an idiot—“you kissed him.”
Details.
“Fine, then, am I a kissing slut?”
“First of all, we do not use that word. We never use that word. It’s pejorative and flat-out offensive. Second of all, even if we did use that word, you still wouldn’t be a kissing slut. You’re something way better. Something way more empowering.”
“What am I, then?”
“You’re a Make-Out Bandit.”
“I kind of like the sound of that.”
* * *
My first thought after Kristina and I hang up is, “I have a blog post.”
My second thought is, “I have to throw up.”
I really am a lightweight.
“Lothar warned me that you might have come down with ‘food poisoning,’ ” Aunt Vee says from outside the bathroom door when she finally gets home from a late night with the Park Avenue Tulip Society. “Can you believe that dear doorman was trying to cover for you? As if I’d be disappointed that you finally went out and had some fun! Finally! I’ll make you my famous hangover elixir before my aerial spin class tomorrow.”
Between waves of nausea, I write different snippets of my night in my notebook.
The art.
The exhilaration.
The new, confident (until running away and hiding) me.
CONFESSIONS OF A MAKE-OUT BANDIT
No jail time involved.
This week I embraced a life of crime.
My victim was a cute guy at a party. I didn’t steal his wallet or his watch. (I don’t have the coloring to pull off an orange jumpsuit.) Rather, I stole a kiss and then disappeared without a trace.
This week I learned how to be a Make-Out Bandit.
I saw my target from across the room.
Just like a burglar cases a house before breaking in, to make sure the owners won’t be sitting in the living room watching Family Feud, I cased my target. Making sure he was alone and unattached.
As I said in last week’s blog, summer is about carefree flings. Sometimes, it’s just about a carefree kiss and nothing more. Because you want to. On your terms. And there’s no need to wait around twiddling your thumbs until a g
uy approaches.
I approached him very directly. I flirted a little and stole my kiss. His lips were very quick to meet mine and kiss me back. (Consensual banditry is key, ladies. Remember: orange jumpsuits.)
Then I left. Almost immediately. You steal a heart and escape unscathed.
He doesn’t know my name. He doesn’t know my number. Like any good bandit, I made sure my identity was never revealed. I wasn’t going in to find my next boyfriend. I just wanted to kiss and run.
And I liked it.
And I’m still on the loose.
Carpe that Effing Diem!
Harper
16
MCKAYLA CALLS ME INTO HER office first thing Monday morning to discuss my blog, which took me longer to write than the others. Maybe because I wasn’t making it all up as I went along this time.
When I walk in, I notice that McKayla’s changed her nail art again. She now has tiny Mona Lisas on her accent nails.
“I get bored easily,” she says when I compliment the new look. “Remember that, Harper, and don’t bore me. Ever.”
Her face is stoic. I can’t tell if she loves my blog or detests it and is kicking me out the door, with what I now recognize as Tory Burch ankle boots, like she threatened to do on our first day. I don’t want to know . . . but I also have to know.
“And did I?” I pull the words out of my mouth. “Did the blog bore you?”
She stares me down. I know it’s impossible with Bosh Media’s climate-controlled air-conditioning system—the halls are so cold that reporters sometimes walk around in “fashion snuggies,” courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana—but I feel the temperature rise twenty degrees.
“Surprisingly,” she says, “no.”
Yes!
“I actually thought it was . . . ,” McKayla continues tentatively, “fun.”
Yes, yes, yes!
“But is this an actual thing? A Make-Out Bandit? Is this a thing that your people call yourselves?”
I think “your people” translates to teens. Like I’m her phone line to “the kids these days.” Staffers at Shift are often asking interns things like, “Is One Direction still cool? Do we still care about them?” It’s pretty funny.
“Well, I’m not sure if there’s a Wikipedia page definition of it,” I reply, “but—”
“No matter.” McKayla’s dwindling interest applies even to the answers to questions that she herself has posed. “We can brand it as our own. Then if your blog post catches on, everyone will have to say Make-Out Banditry started at Shift.”
Maybe it’s Aunt Vee’s rejuvenation elixir she’s been feeding me ever since my drunk night out, maybe it’s the utter shock that I’m actually succeeding at this whole blogging thing, but my excitement brims over and I start thanking her, saying how “absolutely awesome this is, McKayla. Like, so, so great. It’s so great that I—”
McKayla cuts me off. Again.
“Didn’t I tell you to work on the bumbling?” Her phone starts buzzing. “Okay, I have to go yell at the viral team.”
I laugh nervously.
“I’m not joking. Their web traffic should be double what it is right now. Anyway, go tell a photo editor to put a picture of a sexy cat burglar or something in your Make-Out Bandit story, and then have the social team promote it on Facebook.”
“Will do.” Maybe I should warn Jamie about McKayla’s impending wrath.
“Oh, and, Harper, for your next blog, instead of reading how much you enjoy making out with everyone in sight, I think it would be nice for you to write about going on an actual date. It is in your job title, after all.”
Uh-oh.
* * *
Over the next few days, now that Jamie is out of the competition, the Shift Girls are reinvigorated in their attempt to make the Leader Board and prove we can write “clicky” stories when we aren’t doing other intern tasks—like getting coffee and transcribing three-hour-long interviews. I’m less worried about clickiness than I am about my impending blog post of doom.
But, come Wednesday, the impossible actually happens.
After it goes up, my Make-Out Bandit blog post breaks the barrier and becomes the tenth most popular story on Shift.
I bask in the glow of the Leader Board, projected on the television screen above my head, and pray that Jamie doesn’t write a viral post about Curmudgeon Cat that knocks my story down to number eleven.
“I totally want to make us shirts that say ‘Make-Out Bandit’!” Brie says. I’ve learned a lot about sororities by looking through Brie’s Instagram, but one of my biggest takeaways is the fact that membership involves a lot of custom-made shirts. Or “rally gear,” as Brie puts it.
“Make-Out Bandit,” Gigi says, lingering on the words.
Out of habit, my body tenses up, preparing for offensive remarks. But they don’t come. Ever since I stood up for her and then stood my ground when she questioned my motives, my relationship with Gigi has changed. We’re even tiptoeing around the possibility of friendship.
“I love it,” Gigi continues.
“I think it’s pretty feminist,” Brie adds. “Taking control of your sexuality.”
I never thought about it that way.
“Wait, the sorority girl knows about feminism?” Sunny asks.
“Um, don’t try to stereotype my sorority,” Brie retorts. “What about living in a group of strong, supportive women with a three-point-six average GPA and a promise to combat the boys’ club in the professional world after graduation makes me not a feminist?”
Sunny stares.
“Feminism is about believing in equality for everyone, period,” Brie continues. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote a book based off a speech she gave called We Should All Be Feminists. I’ll e-mail y’all a link—we read it for sorority book club.”
“I love that author,” Gigi says. “She’s Nigerian and a genius and she’s quoted in ‘Flawless.’ She taught Beyoncé about feminism.”
Whoa. When I first met Brie and Gigi, I assumed that they limited their reading material to features in Icon. I’ve definitely been misjudging people.
My computer dings with Brie’s e-mail, and I promise her I’ll order the book. Then I look through the rest of my surprisingly full inbox. Three weeks ago, the only e-mails I got were from Shift coworkers, mostly directed to the whole office about getting more #CleanEating options in the open kitchen. But now that my dating blog is making a blip in the Twitterverse, it’s a whole different story. PR firms have put my e-mail on media lists related to just about anything I’ve mentioned in an article. I’m getting press releases about new Ben & Jerry’s flavors (since I wrote about cute fro-yo guys), UV-protected clothing (since I’m a fan of sunscreen), breath mints (for make-out reasons?), and my personal favorite—books (since I advised girls to ask hot guys in bookstores for reading recommendations).
But one of my e-mails has nothing to do with press releases or appeals for more kombucha in the Shift kitchen.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Two questions
1) Am I the victim of a crime? 2) Is it problematic that I liked it?
Hi. I’m Carter. I believe you burgled my lips.
I have to read the e-mail three times to process it, and as soon as I do, my heart starts racing and my entire face turns beet red.
Oh my God.
He found me.
“How the hell did he find me?”
“What are you talking about?” Gigi asks, signaling to me that I’m speaking out loud and not to myself. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“Carter. From the gallery.” My left arm feels tingly. Am I having a heart attack? No, that’s ridiculous.
“No. Way. Mr. Make-Out Bandit?” Samples of eye shadows fall on the desk as Brie literally drops what she’s doing (sorting makeup) to scurry over. “How did he find you?”
“Oh,” Abigail says. “He Facebook messaged me to ask who you were after the art opening. Didn’t I mention t
hat?”
Umm, no. She most definitely did not. That I would have remembered.
“What do I say back?” I turn the Shift Girls into a focus group so I don’t nervously babble via e-mail like I inevitably would in person. I try to summon cool-and-collected Harper in the formulation of my response.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Re: Two questions
1) Afraid so. 2) If that means I won’t get a visit from the NYPD, I’m okay with that.
I’m Harper, and this isn’t my usual MO.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Re: Two questions
And here I was hoping you’d be a repeat offender.
Don’t worry, I get exploiting people for a good story. I’m interning at deviant. I’m a writer too. Here’s a link to my author page if you want to read my stuff.
deviant is a Brooklyn-based online-only publication so edgy that it even eschews capital letters. The articles it publishes are smart, sarcastic, and completely unapologetic when making fun of something or someone. It’s full of first-person essays (often involving sex and drugs, though lacking in the rock-and-roll department) and snarky social commentaries.
“deviant’s where all the cool kid Internet people work,” Jamie says. “At media-intern events last summer, they wouldn’t even talk to us.”
Curious, I click on the link he included at the bottom of his e-mail.
“ ‘A Day in the Life of a Scum-Sucking Online Troll,’ by Carter Bosh,” I read out loud.
“Wait,” Jamie jumps in before I get to the first sentence. “Did you say Bosh?”
“Oh yeah, didn’t I mention that?” Abigail asks. “He’s Trenton Bosh’s son.”
“No, Abigail, you really didn’t mention that!” I say, acutely aware that I’m currently sitting in a building that has his last name on it. That explains why he was waiting outside the building on my first day of work.
Soon I’m in the throes of full-fledged e-mail flirtation. Carter goes to Columbia, which happens to be my dream school. He drops the Dad Card pretty quickly. I bring up the fact that my mom’s an English professor, and that’s why she named me after Harper Lee—just so he knows I’m a reader too. He tells me that Mom should have named me Truman, since the writer’s next-door neighbor, aka Truman Capote, “100 percent wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.” Under other circumstances, I would consider those fighting words. But even though I immediately feel defensive and tell him that his claim is “100 percent incorrect” (discussion of the Capote conspiracy theory is banned from the Anderson household because it makes my mom so mad), it’s kind of exciting to be talking about books and authorship with an extremely attractive and debatably interested member of the opposite sex.
Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies Page 10