Party Girl by Anna David

From the Publisher

Celebrity journalist Amelia Stone is the quintessential Hollywood party girl: she stays out late, rubs shoulders (and occasionally more) with celebrities, and ingests copious amounts of cocaine.

But after losing her job, her friends, and much of her mind, Amelia makes the drastic decision to end her drug abuse. Once sober, she's hired by a big-name magazine to write a column detailing her wild adventures and she starts seeing the man who could be her Mr. Right.

There's just one problem. Overnight, Amelia has become the new face of Hollywood nightlife, and her editors—who don't know she's come clean —want her to play the part. As the lure of her former fast-and-furious lifestyle begins to pull at her, she must decide whether to save herself or salvage her reputation as the ultimate party girl.

Kirkus Reviews

Party girl journalist parties too hard, crashes, reassesses life and ponders the difficulties of staying fabulous and sober. For your consideration: Does a book count as chick lit if the heroine does blow and gets into ill-considered threesomes while utterly blotto? If nothing else, celebrity journalist and sex columnist David's first novel has navigated some of the genre's conventions; unfortunately, there's little else here that's new. David's heroine, Amelia, is a spoiled trust-fund kid with daddy issues and a prodigious coke habit who, when not out partying, scribbles celebrity gossip for an US Weekly-like rag called Absolutely Fabulous. Amelia has a habit of burning the candle at both ends, and, after throwing a couple of big stories, she is fired by her long-suffering boss. Coupled with losing her best friend over a guy, the unemployment news pushes Amelia into a full-fledged coke binge, eventually landing her in rehab. When a hot magazine asks her to write a "Party Girl" column, newly sober Amelia must decide whether she can maintain the "party girl" persona while remaining clean. It briefly seems possible that David is planning something fresh, but the monotonous language, undifferentiated characters and flat fringe-of-Hollywood setting quickly put the kibosh on that. Raunchier than average, but nothing special.

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Chapter One

It is a truth universally acknowledged that crazy things happen at weddings. Or at least that's what I tell myself as my activities segue from outrageous to risqué to downright depraved.

There's the bathroom blow job incident, which I categorize as "outrageous" rather than "downright depraved," solely due to the fact that my eighty-two-year-old stepdad walks in while I'm going down on the cousin of the bride in the poolhouse bathroom. Because of his eighty-two-ness (the stepdad, not the cousin, thankfully), he was prone to more "senior moments" than nonsenior moments—and thus is easily convinced that what had just happened never in fact happened. By the time I'm done talking to him, I've actually managed to convince him that not only was there no blow job, but also there had been no cousin of the bride. I'm pretty sure if I'd kept going I could have gotten him to believe there was no wedding. But the point is, in convincing my stepdad, I'm pretty sure I convince myself. And thus: outrageous, not downright depraved.

Don't bother asking me how I go from sitting next to the cousin and finding him mildly attractive—not gorgeous, just mildly attractive, someone I might have gone out with had he asked me—to kneeling down in front of him while he sat on Mom's bidet. It wouldn't have been my style to have asked, "Care for a blow job in the bathroom?" At least I don't think so. It's possible that after a bottle or so of good wedding champagne, Amelia Stone is replaced by Paris Hilton minus the millions, plus a good twenty pounds, but since my exploits haven't been caught on tape—note toexes, not that I know of—I can only venture this as a guess. I'd like to imagine that I happened to visit the restroom just as he was leaving and that our sudden passion erupted spontaneously. But by the end of the night—well, morning—the whole cousin incident was so comparatively pristine, I may as well have been a virgin in white in that bathroom.

Later, I find myself in the sauna with the groomsmen. It had been my mom's idea, that all the "young people" from the wedding should sauna and swim, but somehow it got down to just two guys and me. By this point, I know that I'm way more than mildly intoxicated, but since technically I'm on vacation, aren't I supposed to be? If I were this drunk in L.A., someone would probably bring out the coke and I'd thus be able to alleviate my alcohol buzz a bit, but parties at Mom's house tend to be pretty short on drugs—at least non-SSRI ones. And since in some ways there's no better high than having two men vying for your attention, I figure it's just as well that I'm not holding.

"I'm going to be graduating in May," Mitch says, as he offers me a sip of his warm Amstel Light. "Medical school has been a bitch."

"Oh, but now you're going to have to do your residency," Mitch's alleged best friend Chris interjects, while interjecting his body into the minuscule space that exists between Mitch and me. "You'll be working, like, ninety-hour weeks for no money."

"Which is so much worse than ‘doing your residency' at Paramount for a salary just above the poverty line?" Mitch lobs back, looking at me.

I swear I never get tired of the attention of boys. But I prefer direct attention, rather than transparent male dick-swinging contests. Do they honestly think that the one who gets the last dig in will win my affection? Don't they know that being an assistant and a student, even a medical student, aren't exactly lady-killer positions to be in, and that they should perhaps be digging into their personal arsenals for more compelling things to compete over?

I stand up and they're silenced. "Last one in has to do a shot," I say and before I've even finished the sentence, they're pushing each other aside in their zeal to jump into the pool. I stand at the sauna door, cold air rushing in, their wet towels at my feet. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that the two of them just wanted to have sex with each other.

"Okay, we're going to sleep now," I instruct them, as I try to get as comfortable as I can while lodged between these two guys in a double bed. "Sleep."

I honestly think we're going to bed. Was anyone ever that naive?

I can't even sleep on two Ambien by myself, but the birds are dangerously close to chirping—a horrifyingly depressing time to still be partying, as I've recently learned—this is the only bed left in the house, and neither of these guys are in any condition to drive. I turn toward Chris, who's facing the wall. Mitch is on the other side, facing the other wall.

A few minutes pass and I hear Mitch breathing heavily in that way that means he could be asleep. I sigh and feel more relaxed. My insomnia always seems embarrassing, and I'm all too relieved to be able to suffer through it without witnesses. Miraculously, I drift off for a moment or two.

And am awakened by lips on mine—specifically, lips belonging to Chris. My eyes swing open just in time for me to realize that Chris's kissing skills aren't half bad. Some people pride themselves on their gaydars. I pride myself on my kissdar because I can usually tell on sight if a guy is going to be one of those drench-your-face-with-saliva kissers, too-tentative pecking kissers, or a possessor of one of those lizardlike tongues that darts into places it's not wanted. Most guys, unfortunately, fit into one of these categories. It's the ones that don't that drive us mad, in all the good ways. Unfortunately, their kissing skills always seem to accompany a tendency for unemployment, a lack of an IQ, or just a general asshole-ishness. If they could kiss well and also possess qualities that actually made them good boyfriend material, women would probably maim and kill one another to have them. I had assumed that Chris would be some combination of too-tentative and lizardlike—that he'd start out with inappropriate propriety and then swerve into too much without the required sensuality—and am startled to discover that he seems to know what he's doing. He even knows the take-my-face-in-his-hands move.

I kiss him back, enjoying the secretiveness of the act. Despite all their lame competitiveness, despite the fact that Chris is an assistant at Paramount and that he attacks his alleged best friend who's actually doing something useful with his life in a pathetic attempt to win a girl's affection, I'm more attracted to him than I am to Mitch.

Chris is kissing well enough that it's impossible to say how many times we kiss—one time just seems to mesh into another. And then I'm utterly shocked when I feel a hand creeping from behind into my nether region. Had Chris and Mitch, in some sort of a silent pact, targeted my two most manipulatable zones and decided to each work one of them? The thrill of kissing someone while another hand works me from behind is unbelievable. I'm completely getting off on the anonymity of the hand (even though I obviously know whose hand it is) and on this wise solution to all that petty male competitiveness that was going on earlier, until I come back to earth and remember where we are. Which is in the guest bedroom directly below my mom and stepdad's bedroom in their house, which I'm visiting for the weekend to see an old friend get married—not to blow his now-wife's cousin and have a ménage à trois with two of his groomsmen. "Wait—you have to stop!" I suddenly screech. I jump out of bed and the two of them look alarmed, if not altogether shocked. I grab a pillow off the bed. "I need to go somewhere where I can actually sleep," I say, as if they'd been talking and I was tired of shushing them. Without another word, I stomp off to the den, where I promptly pass out on the couch.