Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn Read Free Book Online

because my waist wears his belt around it. If my face shines, the glow is Ely by my side.
    Ely is probably right. The best I’ll ever get is if I fuck me. In fact, I’ve tried, but masturbation turns out to be hella time-consuming with not very satisfactory results. Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong. My work ethic has always been weak.
    I’ve never understood why looking hot has to be equated with sex and conquest. Whatever happened to anticipation, to courtship, to true love? Can’t a person look hot and not have it mean something? Call me an old-fashioned Naomi bitch, but I’m holding out for true love. Even if it is an unattainable fantasy.
    I’m not going to make the mistake of letting beauty (mine or his) guide my attraction to any man. That love-at-first-sight crap does not work. My father saw my mother’s picture in a magazine and fell for her before he’d even met her. When I was little, he would spend more time photographing her than photographing the images that were supposed to be supporting our family. But his attachment to her looks could only be sustained so long. Dad eventually tossed aside the beauty myth for the very real lesbian across the hall. He even wanted to leave Mom for her, but then the lesbian remembered she was a lesbian after all, so Dad just left, and Mom decided to cover her beauty under her bedcovers.
    I don’t think it was Dad choosing a lesbian over her that most damaged Mom’s sense of her own femininity. I think it was losing her marriage to a woman she’d called “friend.”
    The poker players halt their game when Ely and I reach their area of the lobby. We pause at the same time to silently admire Gabriel, dealing cards to the sleeplessheads. Yeah, I’d have him —who wouldn’t?—but he’s ranked number two on the No Kiss List List TM , and I UNDERSTAND THE BOUNDARIES.
    Sue knows trouble when she sees it. “Naomi, does your mother know you’re going out so late?” I suspect it’s my outfit that concerns Sue, not the hour.
    “Yes,” I lie. My mother’s passed out in the pharmaceutical daze she’s been in since Dad left. The doctor finally cut off her sleeping pill supply, but Bruce the First didn’t know that when he gave her his stash in exchange for Mom doing his laundry after his sister went on strike and told him to stop being a big baby and learn to do his own damn laundry.
    I do Mom’s laundry, too, now. I don’t mind. She’s very good about separating her whites from her colors. But no matter how many laundry loads I do for her or dinners I prepare for her or nights I spend curled up in bed next to her, I just can’t shake the blue out of her. I wish I could be that gold-standard daughter.
    Mr. McAllister stands up from the leather couch, clutching last month’s Vogue. Pervert. “ ’Night, all,” he says, taking a bow before walking over and stepping into the elevator.
    “Wait!” I call out to him.
    The elevator door opens back up. I turn to Ely. “Are you sure you didn’t leave anything else up in your apartment?”
    He so looks guilty. I so want to hate him.
    “Like what?” Ely mumbles.
    “Like your balls, to go along with your dick?”
    “Language, young lady!” Sue scolds, gesturing in the direction of sweet Bruce the First with Mrs. Loy’s Chihuahua in his lap. High school boys. So fresh, so clean. So pathetic and yet so irresistible. He breaks my heart for breaking his heart. I kill me.
    Well, then. Distraction, thank you so very, very much for seating yourself in the lobby in the middle of the night. No, not that distraction. Gabriel’s major league, and I might not look it but I am still farm team. Attention: pinch hitter. Bruce the First, step up to the plate, please.
    Ely can buy his own damn drinks tonight. A girl who looks like me should not be such a. It’s time for a changing of the guard. Why shouldn’t thebe ainstead, or anything or any1 to help me escape the lie of?
    “What are you saying, Naomi?” Ely asks.
    “Are