Sam is quickly losing interest in this conversation. “Straight people are so corny.”
“Shut up, fake goth,” Carrie says, rolling her eyes. “You’d fucking love that and we all knowit.”
Interestingly, Sam does not argue the point, but simply crosses her arms with a littlehumph.
“Keep going,” Carrie orders me, and Ido.
I tell her about Connor showing up unannounced, how he brought me a coffee, how we got another coffee, how we wandered around the Upper West Side forhours.All the flirting.
“He likes you,” is Carrie’s official assessment when my story comes to a close. Sam has no opinion—she has left the room.
I shake my head. “He doesn’t.”
“He does,” she insists.
“Hedoesn’t,Carrie. He’s not interested.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I kissed him, and he told me not to do that.”
“YOU WHAT?” I have never heard Carrie’s voice reach those decibels. She says it with so much force that she launches herself off the sofa.
Sam comes galloping back through from her bedroom. “What happened?”
Carrie points at me. “She kissed her boss and he told her to stop.”
“You little slut,” Sam says, a grin on her face. “Lead with that next time, that’s way more interesting.”
“I need the particulars. What happened, how did it happen, what did he sayexactly,” Carrie says.
I throw my head back and groan, covering my face with my hands. “I’m really embarrassed.”
“You should be,” Sam says, at the same time Carrie says, “Don’tbe.”
“Gah,” I say, wishing I could scrub the humiliation right off me. How am I ever going to look him in the eye again? “He walked me to the subway and I was just getting avibe,you know? And I thought fuck it, and I kissed him.”
“With tongue?” Sam clarifies.
My cheeks flame. “Umm.”
“Oh my god, she kissed her boss with tongue!” Carrie squeals.
It’s physically painful to have to say this part out loud. “That’s what stopped it. I kissed him and then tried to stick my tongue in his mouth and then he stepped back from me and said it wasn’t a good idea.”
Even Sam is struggling with the level of cringe. She’s biting on her knuckle, her hand balled into a fist.
“I just—” My gut twists at the realization that I called it so wrong. “I don’t know. He’s reallynice,you know? He referred to us as aweat one point! He put his arm around me! I got confused.”
“Fucking hell,” Carrie says. She looks completely shell-shocked.
“How am I ever going to come back from this?”
“You aren’t,” Sam says simply. “You will have to move back to Canada.”
“Sam.”
“I’m kidding, don’t be so dramatic,” she says. “It’sfine.Just pretend it never happened. Pretend you don’t even know who he is the next time you see him. Kiss one of those other guys you work with, so he just thinks you’re a big slut.”
