Page 3 of A Very Snowed In New Year
“La-la-la-la! I can’t hear you, devil woman!”
“Three. Like any time Damon and Elena kissed or didn’t kiss onVampire Diariesbecause Delena4Eva.”
“What are you doing, weirdo?” my little brother, Ben, asks from behind me in the foyer. He is louder than any almost-seven-year-old should be at eight thirty, but that’s the holidays for you.
And so, because my mom forgot to take her birth control pill around eight years ago, my cover has been blown. My parents have gone totally silent in the living room.
“I’m defining my character,” I tell him as I stand up straighter and step away from the wall. “Go to bed.”
“No.”
“Okay. Go back to your room and playMario.”
“Okay!”
I wait for the little turd to run back into his room and shut the door before boldly striding into the living room, swiping the notebook from my mother’s hands, snapping it shut, and securing it with the elastic closure.
“Heyyyy, girl!” she says through a forced smile. “You’re back already?!”
I narrow my eyes at her before turning to my poor, mortified dad and declaring, “If you must know, Daddy, I still have not screwed anyone, in any way.”
“Oh, thank Christ.”
Holding up my notebook, I emphatically continue, “And this list—which I, in fact,did notwrite for you to read, Mother—was written two years ago. Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t use dates in this journal. To paraphrase the great, sensual diarist Anaïs Nin from something I read online—the diary is written in the emotional heat of the present, interweaving the past with the present.Iam in emotional heat almost all the time. I am a passionate person. That is why I write what I write. And if I truly wanted anyone to read what’s in this particular notebook, I would have published it.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad blush before, but he is definitely blushing. I can’t tell if he’s more embarrassed that I caught him reading my diary or by the things I wrote or what I just said out loud. I can’t tell if I’m more embarrassed for myself or for him, and it doesn’t even matter because I need to get downtown to meet Shoshanna and I also need to complete this exposure-therapy session.
“But one day,” I continue, “I will be a responsible, sexually-active adult woman, and you just need to accept that and trust me to make good life choices. In New York. In Los Angeles. And anywhere out there in the world. Okay?”
“No. No, sugar, I do not accept that and it is absolutely not okay.” The corners of his lips are slowly, hesitantly curling upward. He knows how ridiculous he’s being. He knows I know he’s being ridiculous. We both know my mom is always ridiculous. But I’m confident that we all know that I will indeed wait until all circumstances are right and wonderful for my FirstTime. Finally, I can see his jaw and shoulders loosen up a little. “I do trust you, sweet pea. You’re a precious girl, and it’ll always be my job to protect you.”
I place my hand over his heart, and he covers my hand with his. “I know, Daddy,” I say. “But you don’t have to protect me from romantic love. Or from boys’ butts.”
His jaw clenches again for a second, and then he laughs the resigned laugh of a girl dad. “Understood.”
I turn to walk away, picking up my shoulder bag from the floor in the foyer. “I have to go meet Shosh. Be home before midnight!”
“You know if you ever want to talk to me about anything,” my mom calls out, “you can totes talk to me, buddy!”
“Nobody saystotesanymore, Mom!” I say without looking back. I refrain from telling her that I have plenty of friends who are more than happy to explain their blow-job techniques to me, because my dad has been through enough for one night. Tucking my diary into my bag, I don’t wait for the elevator and take the stairs down to the lobby, because all I want to do is keep moving.
There was a cab right outside the building heading downtown, so maybe that was the Universe’s way of high-fiving me for making a bold choice. Traffic on Columbus Avenue is not great, but Jodi is already with Shoshanna and they don’t care if I’m late. I take the journal out of my bag, turn on my phone light, and take a wistful, somewhat painful trip down memory lane while my driver has a hands-free phone argument with his wife and honks the horn at anyone who tries to pull in front of him.
I flip open to the first page. My Extra Super Secret Diary entries started when I was sixteen, and I guess it says a lot that I haven’t completely filled the 196 pages in three years. I’ve gone through dozens of regular diaries, but I’m only moved to write in this one on special occasions. The first special occasion was on February fifteenth, the day after Eddie and Birdie’s wedding in LA. Eddie is my aunt Maddie’s husband’s youngest brother, so we’re somehow related by marriage? I don’t know if there’s a word for who he is to me, other than the owner of one of the top five butts I’ve ever seen IRL. Regardless, he’s a dreamy actor with abs for days and he was a celebrity crush for me long before I met him through my aunt.
Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am to know so many beautiful men—Uncle Declan, Eddie, their cousins Nolan and Billy Boston. They’re all married now, to amazing women who aren’t me. And while they are, along with my dad, very much to blame for my virginity because they’re so overprotective of me, I am now realizing that they have prevented me from hooking up with randos in another way—they have shaped my idea of the perfect man. The bar has been set so high, not just by their chiseled jawlines and abs and butts but by the way they love their women—it’s no wonder I haven’t settled for boning a douchebasket in a bunk bed.
Dear Extra Super Secret Diary,
It’s all happening. I have met The One at Eddie and Birdie’s wedding and it’s the beginning of my HEA and I am so lucky because I’m only sixteen!!!!!
Well. I’ll just skip ahead because I know where this is going.
Dear Extra Super Secret Diary,
Well. It’s twenty days after Eddie and Birdie’s wedding in LA, twenty days after my first real kiss that didn’t involve a closet or spinning a bottle at a party, and eighteen days since I’ve heard from the hot waiter who kissed me. As per seven of my best besties’ opinions and advice, I have been ghosted and most likely blocked by said waiter and need to move on. Oh well. The long-distance thing never would have worked anyway. I live in New York. He lives in Los Angeles and London. Even though I will be going to UCLA in a couple of years, I can’t ask him to wait for me. Not when he’s that hot and two years older than me and has an English accent.
Sigh. I shall keep calm and move on. Wistfully.
