Read How to Meet Cute Boys Online
Authors: Deanna Kizis,Ed Brogna
How to Meet Cute Boys
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, corporate entities, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 Deanna Kizis
All rights reserved.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: July 2004
ISBN: 978-0-446-55642-2
CONTENTS
ACCLAIM FOR
HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS
“Entertaining…Ben is a smart and funny heroine who wisecracks with the best of them. Particular highlights are the
Filly
magazine pieces written by Benjamina herself. A very enjoyable book that will give a boost to the intelligence quotient of
the entire genre. Recommended.”
—
Library Journal
“Light and funny.…Kizis cleverly parodies the shallow magazine world.”
—
Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine
“
Elle
recommends HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS…a late-summer breeze of a novel.”
—
Elle
“Sharpen your eyebrow pencil and take those funny quizzes.…Kizis deftly skewers L.A. celebrities and the publicity party scene,
throwing in some priceless one-liners about the perils of modern dating to boot.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“A blast to read.…Kizis pulls it all off with great style. Think of this novel as the
Lucky
magazine of dating.”
—Dany Levy, founder/chairman of DailyCandy, Inc.
“Witty…engaging…an impressive debut from one of America’s top young writers.”
—Roberta Myers, editor in chief,
Elle
“Hysterical…an excellent, funny novel.…The author definitely has a witty sense of humor.”
—BookReviewCafe.com
“Hilarious…thoroughly entertaining!…It’s perfect.”
—Bestsellersworld.com
“Wonderful…hilariously accurate.…Compulsively readable, Ben’s observations on life, friends, and lovers are honest and amusing.”
—TheRomanceReadersConnection.com
“Very entertaining and fast-paced.…Kizis does a great job at creating a realistic novel.”
—MostlyFiction.com
“Laugh-out-loud funny.…Kizis has her finger on the pulse of the world of fashion, magazines, and relationships of the heart.”
—BookReporter.com
“A delightfully realistic portrayal of twenty-something single women living in L.A.…Benjamina is witty, intelligent, and successful.
Pick up this delightful novel and see the world through Ben Franklin’s eyes!”
—Bookloons.com
“A fresh, honest, and witty look at the dating scene for a woman in her late twenties.…The format is very catchy…I had such
a hard time walking away from this book. Rush out and get a copy of HOW TO MEET CUTE BOYS.…I hope Kizis will pick up the novel
where it ended. I am dying to spend more time with Ben and her friends!”
—Roundtablereviews.com
For Eve,
who constantly reminds me that
it’s good to have friends, even in hell
Thank you to Gregory McKnight, Mike Sheresky, Ian Kleinert, and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, for agenting it; Karen Kosztolnyik,
for editing it; Ed Brogna, for illustrating it; Christian Ablang, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Eve Epstein, Drew Fellman, Elizabeth
Flanagan, Harriet Friedman, Gayle Forman, Ali Goldstein, Bernice Hart, Bea Ilumin, Susan Kittenplan, George Kizis, Makenzie
Kizis, Jeanne Fay Manfredi, Chris Weitz, Lindsey Wilkes, and all the wonderful women at
Elle
magazine, for supporting it. And a special thanks to all you heartbreakers out there, for inspiring it.
We’ve all heard the story of Peter Pan by now. You know, Pan’s flying around, doing his thing, when he becomes obsessed with
this girl Wendy, and starts showing up at her house at all hours and taking her out on fancy adventures. Until, one day, Wendy
wants him to act like a man. She wants him to be
accountable
. So what does Peter Pan do? He flies off with Tinker Bell in tow to continue his life as another immature male and Wendy
gets left in the dust. Of course, Pan’s story is pretty easy to figure out: Boy meets girl. Girl becomes woman. Woman wants
boy to grow up. He can’t handle the pressure and bails. The Peter Pan syndrome—that’s pretty much every guy I’ve ever met.
But what gets me, what I’ve been wondering about ever since I first heard this horrifying tale, is this: What was Wendy thinking?
Why did she allow herself to be interrupted, distracted,
seduced
by some guy in green tights with a sparkle in his eye? Couldn’t she tell that he was just a boy?
1
“Oh no! You look so much cuter than me.”
Kiki had just let herself into my apartment and stormed into my tiny bathroom, where I was putting on my makeup. She scared
me half to death, as I was blasting the stereo and didn’t hear her knock.
Good thing she hasn’t lost her key,
I thought.
Yet
.
“I do not,” I said, doing a quick appraisal. Kiki looked like sex on toast, as usual. Her blond hair was down, jeans were
snug in all the right places, lips were berry red. Of course, she was wearing another black sweater, which toned her natural
vampiness down a bit. (Kiki thinks black sweaters camouflage her boobage.) And, okay, her eyes were
slightly
puffy, but I only noticed that because I already knew what was going on. Overall, I have to say, she looked hot. I looked
at myself in the mirror for comparison. Not exactly Kiki, I’m what people call “cute.” As in, even if I were wearing nipple
clamps, crotchless panties, and holding a whip, they’d say, “That’s
so cute!
”
I was going to need more mascara.
“Ben, you
know
you look amazing,” Kiki said, watching me apply another coat.
“I really don’t.”
“Oh my God, fuck you, you do.”
She spun out of the bathroom and headed toward my bedroom in a huff.
A couple of days before, Kiki had broken up with her boyfriend, Edward. Actually, make that, she broke up with Edward, her
rental unit. Renting, as opposed to leasing (or, heaven forbid, actually
owning
), is a common affliction among us over twenty-fives today. You end up dating this guy for months and you’re not seeing anybody
else, and he’s not seeing anybody else (at least, you
think
he’s not seeing anybody else), but you don’t actually call him your boyfriend because he doesn’t actually call you his girlfriend.
Then you get in a fight over some dumb thing, like maybe he didn’t call all weekend until Sunday, and when you tell him you’re
upset, he says something like, “Since when is Sunday not the weekend?”
The next thing you know, you’re having the I-Think-We-Need-to-Talk Talk (always prefaced with those six crushingly familiar
words), and he’s broken up with you when you weren’t sure you were even going out in the first place. Which is how you end
up mourning something you never knew you had, asking yourself questions—
Should I have done this differently? Not said that at all?
—that you didn’t even know were serious at the time. The whole thing becomes a downward spiral of regret and second-guessing,
something Kiki and I are extremely familiar with. After all, I write the articles about how shitty men can be, she edits the
articles about how shitty men can be,
Filly
—the magazine where we both work—publishes the articles about how shitty men can be, and a million-plus women read our articles
about how shitty men can be. And yet, we’re all still surprised at how shitty men can be. It’s a clear-cut case of the blind
leading the blind.
Anyway, after six weeks of heavy dating, Kiki’s rental unit had initiated The Talk. They’d spent a weekend together doing
couple stuff (making seared ahi tuna for dinner, picking out sweaters at Barneys, et cetera). He said things were getting
too serious, and she hadn’t heard from him since.
I heard the closet door bang open, followed by rummaging. Hangers whisked about; shoes clunked onto the floor. I pictured
Kiki standing half naked in front of my full-length mirror, probably trying on one of my tops, possibly with two different
shoes crammed onto her size eight feet to see which looked better.
“I look fat,” she said over the music.
“Yeah, you’re a real cow,” I hollered back.
I headed into the kitchen to make her a drink. A
strong
drink. I grabbed the supersized bottle of Absolut Kiki had brought over after I finally broke up with Jack—there was a bit
left. (I’d been nursing it alone, I admit it.) I peered into the fridge for a decent mixer, but the only thing I had was diet
Coke. But that was okay, I decided, swirling the concoction around in a glass. The vodka would elevate Kiki’s mood, the caffeine
would keep her awake.
From the bedroom I heard, “I look like a
complete loser!
” A crash of plastic and glass hit the floor, which meant she was into the product samples from publicists that were piled
every which way on top of my vanity.
“You’re a bombshell, Kiki. Get over it.”
“I
loathe
what I’m wearing!”
I entered the bedroom, and she’d exchanged her black sweater for one of my black sweaters. She was stretching it out.
“Well, now you’re wearing my clothes, so go easy.”
I handed her the drink.
She sighed, “Look at you. I wish I was a brunette.”
“Well, brunette
is
the new blond.”
“I’m too tall.”
“
Short
is the new
statuesque
.” I pirouetted around my room, looking for the various things I’d need for the evening and cramming them into my purse.
“Seriously!” she wailed. “You’ve got that fantastic starving-refugee thing going on—I look like a goddamn giraffe.”
Only Kiki could make being five foot eight with 34Ds sound like such a nightmare. She’s almost managed to convince me being
short isn’t all bad—insists everything’s more appealing when it’s smaller, be it a cell phone, an evening bag, a snack food,
or Sarah Jessica Parker.
“Famine is the new fashion!” I declared. “We pronounce it,
fa-meen
.”
She still didn’t smile. So I said, “Okay, have it your way: You’ve got
a little bit
of a giraffe thing going on, but you’ve got bigger tits.”
Kiki finally laughed. Downed the drink in a couple of gulps. Chewed an ice cube. Made a face. Her green eyes took on the look
of someone determined. Someone who had a job to do, and was going to do it, damn it, even if it was the end of her.
We took her Jetta, because it was parked closer than my Jetta. Before I could sit, I had to clear away a pile of her old bank
statements, a ratty brassiere, several diet Coke cans, the calendar section of the
LA Times,
and a half-eaten bag of McDonald’s fries, now hard as plastic.
Kiki watched me trying to organize the mess. “Ben, give it a rest wouldja?” she said. “You know you can just throw that stuff
in the backseat.”
It’s the same every time.
FILLY
QUIZ
BY BENJAMINA FRANKLIN