Cupcake by Rachel Cohn Page A

leave him to answer phone calls on the house line from my mother wanting to know if I made it home safely, and at what time.
    Lastly, said Danny, "When I first met you, I thought the 'Little Hellion' label pinned on you by your family back in San Francisco was perhaps a bit unfair. Now I get it."
    Ah, the return of the Little Hellion. Cheap shot. Maybe I deserved it? Last night I was a pretty cheap date. All it took was a bag of salty fries to make me go rated X. I mean, the sex part, at least what I remember of it, was quite nice. But was getting trashed so necessary to get me there? The problem with "quite nice" was that, despite keeping a Just in Case condom available in my purse, the not bothering to actually use said condom when the case called for it could bring about quite a few unpleasant consequences. Not such nice ones. And one in particular that I fully remember.
    Don't anybody dare sing "Oops! ... I Did It Again" at me.
    So. My whole life I waited to live on my own in Manhattan,
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    and this was the person I had strived to become? Chick-flick-lit girl moves to Gotham, meets charming rake, charms rake with her spunk and quirky sense of style. Wacky hijinks involving sea green cocktails and spicy stud-boys ensue. Bleh.
    This transition to living in Manhattan was supposed to be easier. On TV it always is. When the spunky gal takes on the big city, she encounters certain obstacles but always survives through a combination of wit, fabulous shoes, secondary character friends who are far more interesting than she is but whose looks don't meet the network's beauty standard, and that grit and determination thing. Where was the dialogue for the strung out still-teenage girl getting chewed out by her brother--and he didn't even know the worst of her offenses from last night?
    "Any questions?" Danny asked, his list of decrees finished.
    Yeah. Where's the closest Planned Parenthood office?
    "No," I mumbled. I pressed my face into the couch, so it would look like I wanted to rest, but really what I wanted was for Danny not to see my tears. I cried because I saw myself reflected back in Danny's eyes, full of disappointment. The hangover in my heart felt worse than the one in my head.
    Guess what, Danny? My real mistake was so way bigger than ditching our party, or pursuing the desire for casual, uncomplicated sex that seems to make a brother-roommate so uncomfortable. That's what!
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    The real mistake was the drunken lack of inhibition, when Jell-O prohibition--or at least moderation--could just as easily have led to "quite nice," only without the complicated variants of an "uh-oh" hangover. But after hearing Danny's tirade of rules, I couldn't confide in him about the real mistake. Or wouldn't. Not after he'd thrown the Little Hellion label in my face.
    But if the Little Hellion had been ready to go hog wild with the big fessing up, she might have found the not-chick-flick-lit girl dialogue to silence her Gotham roommate's tirade. Danny, I assume you think you're being all Protective Big Brother, setting down the law about responsibility, but I know plenty on that subject already, I assure you. I just fuck up sometimes. Don't you? And if you had any idea what it feels like to sit in a clinic, alone, chewing on fingernails while your heart palpitates and your soul disintegrates, waiting for a nurse to call you inside the saddest of procedure rooms, to then wait for a doctor whom you don't even know to undo your body's accountability to your irresponsibility, you would back off. Except you're a boy with no ovaries to worry about, and maybe you think you could imagine it, but really you couldn't. I've been there--I don't have to imagine it.
    Danny stood up from the sofa. He placed a blanket over my body, and a quick kiss on the back of my sobbing/throbbing head.
    I cried because I had wanted so much to live here with my
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    hero new-older brother Danny, but despite our ka-pow! soul connection, we had not yet experienced the