Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [59]
I got into this debate with my suitemate William, the F-Unit punk who helped create the Breakup Pool.
“Not that I care, because I already have a boyfriend, but I think it's pathetic that guys don't hit on me because I go to Columbia,” I said. “They know I'd be more of a challenge than a Barnard girl.”
“You've got it all wrong,” William said. “Guys don't hit on you because you give off an unavailable vibe.”
“I don't broadcast to total strangers in a bar that I've got a boyfriend,” I said. “How would they know?”
“It's your whole demeanor,” he said. “Everything about you says, ‘Don't even think about it.'”
This was an unnerving moment of truth. I mean, I know how much people annoy me, but was it so obvious to others? I was worried that William might be right, but I wasn't ready to back down.
“Oh yeah? Let's see what happens when I wear a Barnard T-shirt at the West End tomorrow night.”
We saw this as an anthropological experiment. Would men find me more attractive simply because I was wearing a Barnard T-shirt? Or would I be as off-putting as ever? So I hung out at the bar on a Thursday night in my baby pink Barnard teeny T. And much to my simultaneous delight (to be right) and disgust (to be right about something so sexist and gross), several guys tried to get me very, very drunk.
After I'd been flirting for about two hours, William approached me at the bar. Even through beer goggles, he looked the same as he always did to me: pale and wan and wearing a Misfits T-shirt and more black eyeliner than I did.
“Ha! Look how drunk I am! Being a Barnard girl pays off after all!”
“You're very fetching in that T-shirt,” William replied.
“See? It's even having a pheromonic effect on you. Men cannot resist the arousing powers of the Barnard T-shirt!”
“Actually, it's not the T-shirt . . .”
And then, surrounded by dozens of beer-swilling witnesses, he leaned in and kissed me. And as much as I was expecting another boy's mouth to feel and taste strange, it didn't.
So I kissed him back.
At this point in the story Bridget asked the obvious.
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No!”
She placed her hands on her hips defiantly, knowing there was more to it than that.
“We . . . uh . . . did go back to his room and we . . . uh . . . hooked up . . .”
“Hooked up,” Bridget said dryly, knowing full well that its unspecific, open-to-interpretation definition makes it a very popular term in situations like this.
“Right,” I said breezily. “Then I fell asleep.”
“Passed out,” Bridget corrected, most accurately.
“Same difference!”
I neglected to mention the part about hurling into his wastepaper basket before I passed out. I'm a puker. It's not an attractive quality. Though in this case it was good, putting a damper on the mood and guaranteeing that William wouldn't take any illegal, licentious liberties with me while I was out cold. Not that I think he would, but you can never be too careful. Date rapists in real life aren't as obviously simian and sinister as they are in made-for-TV movies.
“So what's up with you and this guy now?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It was a onetime thing. And it got hostile between us after it happened.”
“Hostile? How?”
My words were strangled by disgrace.
“What?”
“Christ. I can't even say it . . .”
“What?” Bridget said, grabbing my arm and pumping it up and down. “What?”
“He's a GOPunk!”
“A what?” she asked.
“A Republican!”
Bridget's face clouded with bafflement. “A punk Republican?