Ways to Embarrass Yourself at the Plastic Surgeon’s

WAYS TO EMBARRASS YOURSELF AT THE PLASTIC SURGEON’S

PROLOGUE

#13: Wear Wonder Woman Underwear insted of the pritty lace stuff

W ord of advice: don’t ever turn twenty-four.

Twenty-three is great.

Twenty-three is heaven .

See, no one cares that you’re a screw-up at twenty-three.

Here are the Ways I Know That:

They don’t care that you barely passed high school and flunked out of college. Twice.

They don’t blink if you earn minimum wage as a shot girl between gigs.

They don’t say a word when you still live in your grandmother’s house like a teenager.

No one cares, because at twenty-three, you’re still just a kid figuring shit out.

Then twenty-four rolls around. Adulthood slaps you straight across both cheeks. And man, does it sting.

Within the space of a month of my birthday, I screwed up my knee, lost a part in a Broadway show, and was told I had to leave my childhood home so my grandmother could gallivant around Italy like a seventy-eight-year-old rom-com heroine.

I mean, good for her and all. After spending her golden years raising six grandkids, Nonna deserved a little fun. But honestly. No one ever mentioned that her third act came with a Greek chorus singing, “Time to grow up, Joni Zola.”

Four months later, Nonna was about to leave. Reality had returned to kick my ass to the curb. And that, my friends, was essentially how I found myself perched in a paper gown on the exam table at the Manhattan Surgery Associates, waiting for a boob job consultation that would overdraw my checking account by at least sixty dollars and making lists in my head to pass the time.

Because that was the kind of decision-making I did at twenty-four. Work at a bar and need money for a new place to live?

Bigger tits were probably the ticket.

So much for growing up.

“Bet you don’t get a lot of girls my age in here, huh?” I joked as the nurse, who was named Candy and who couldn’t have been more than three or four years older than me, puttered around the exam room, gathering bits of equipment to take my vitals.

Candy gave me a wry look as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. “Oh, we get all types here.”

I pulled at one of the black curls at the nape of my neck that had escaped my messy bun. “Not just middle-aged women looking for tummy tucks and breast lifts? That’s a relief.”

Zero smile. Not even a chuckle while she took my blood pressure, removed the cuff, and typed the measurement into the computer in the corner.

Okay, so I tended to make dumb jokes when I was nervous. And yes, I was nervous. You would be nervous too if you had convinced yourself that the only way to achieve a better life was to have silicone balloons shoved under your nipples for a bargain deal of fourteen grand plus interest.

Did I have fourteen grand?

Helllllll no.

But they had financing options, so said my cousin. I had a cute face. I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. Right now I was just trying things on.

“Dr. Hunt is a genius,” Candy said when she turned back with a device that looked like a bag clip. “You were really lucky to get this appointment—usually, his wait list is eighteen months. Extend your index finger, please.”

I rolled my eyes. Could she be more of a cliché, the nurse half in love with the doctor? He probably looked like a Ken doll, with his skin pulled tight like Saran wrap over his bones and giant white veneers that looked like light bulbs instead of real teeth. I bet he had plugs, too. Honest-to-God doll hair.

No, thank you.

But I’d take his services if he was the best, and according to my cousin, he was. Was it my life’s dream to have my tits done? Not particularly. Prima ballerinas and Broadway soloists weren’t exactly known for having bowling balls floating off their chests. That was more the specialty of Eighth Avenue. And maybe lowly bartenders.

But what was a girl to do in my situation? All my life, I’d been good at exactly two things: dancing and flirting. Thanks to a ruined knee, the former was no longer an option. And since I had no other skills and no education, I had to maximize the latter.

Men loved a pair of good-sized cans on the lady mixing their high balls, right?

God, I hoped so.

“I wasn’t planning to do something like this, but things happen,” I said after Candy was done taking my blood oxygen.

When she didn’t answer, I just kept talking.

“Most dancers don’t want to have big boobs, but exotic ones do, right? My cousin Rochelle makes more than a grand a night working at Diamonds, that club in Hell’s Kitchen. Do you know it?”

Candy shook her head. Of course, she didn’t know it. Why would a nice girl like her know the strip clubs of New York?

“Are you an exotic dancer too?” she wondered, almost like she couldn’t help herself.

I grinned. I knew I’d catch her interest somehow. I didn’t have the sense in my head God gave me, according to Nonna and all five of my siblings, but I was the best in a family of charmers. La civetta , as my grandparents used to call me. Officially, that translated to “owl,” but in Italy, it also meant a flirt.

“Nah,” I said. “But since it’s looking more and more like serving drinks is all I have going for me, I figured I might as well get the best tips I can. Nice girl like me should be able to find a sugar daddy in at least a week or two, am I right?”

Again, Candy didn’t answer as she entered some other things into the computer.

Man, this crowd was dead.

I tried not to pout. I was just trying to be nice—make a little conversation. It made me feel awkward when people didn’t talk back, and usually, I was very good at getting people to talk back.

Candy stood up from the computer and offered me another tight smile. “Dr. Hunt will be right with you.”

The door closed behind her. Kicking my legs back and forth, I started scrolling through my phone when it buzzed with a call from my oldest sister. I rolled my eyes. As the de facto mother hen of the six Zola kids, Lea was nothing if not persistent. She would press redial for hours until I picked up.

Vaguely, I wondered if I should tell her where I was just to hear her squawk.

“Hey, I can’t really talk now?—”

“Where are you?” Lea demanded. “You were supposed to be at the house an hour ago. Kate and I got the dining room boxed up, and we have the truck here to bring everything to the storage center, but only for the next few hours.”

I smacked a hand to my forehead as my stomach turned with guilt. “Shit. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“You forgot ?” Lea’s voice ricocheted through my phone’s tinny speakers and off the exam room’s hard, disinfected surfaces. “Joni, what the hell? Nonna needs to get all of her things out of the house this weekend, and then we have to clean and get everything ready for the new renters on Monday. We literally cannot do this without everyone pitching in. Even Matthew came down from Boston to help.”

I winced, as if just hearing the schedule physically hurt.

And maybe it did. At least the reasons for it certainly stung a whole lot.

When my grandmother had originally announced she was moving back to Rome to spend her golden years with her sisters, everyone was overjoyed for her. After all, Nonna spent most of her life raising the six of us after we lost our dad. Now that we were grown, she deserved an adventure of her own.

It made sense for them to be happy. My siblings had all graduated out of the little brown house on Hughes Street.

Lea had her brood in Belmont, the first of us to step out.

Matthew had a life in Boston, complete with a new wife, stepdaughter, and the little girl they were about to have.

Kate had her vintage clothing shop in Riverdale and too many new celebrity clients to count.

Frankie was raising her family in London with Xavier, the actual duke she had married last year.

And Marie, only ten months older than me, was currently attending culinary school in Paris.

Which left me, the family fuckup who still lived at home, with little more than a bright smile and a tight ass, to find her way into the world.

If I were a baby bird, I wouldn’t just be kicked out of the nest. I’d be hurled.

“I wish I could say I’m surprised.” Lea’s voice took on that almost metallic ting of her particular brand of scolding, like a triangle that never stopped ringing. “But you knew this was coming. Nonna booked her ticket a month ago, and the new tenants signed a lease. Don’t you have a calendar on that phone of yours? At least some way to keep track of things? Honestly, Jo, when are you finally going to grow up?”

The question pierced, just like every time she asked it.

“I don’t know. When are you going to stop being such a freaking nag?” I retorted. “I’m at a doctor’s appointment, and it slipped my mind. Shit happens. Besides, it’s not like I can lift heavy boxes with this garbage knee.”

I swung the knee on the exam table as if she could see it, making the paper under my leg crinkle like laughter.

“No, but you could at least do the bare minimum. Watch the kids while the rest of us move boxes, maybe. I can’t exactly do much right now with these four running around me.”

“No one told her and Mike to procreate like rabbits,” I mumble to the smiling woman in a poster for vaginal rejuvenation surgery on the other wall.

“What was that?”

I sighed and tipped my face toward the light on the ceiling. I grinned. Finally, a place where boob lights made aesthetic sense.

“Joni! Are you even paying attention?”

Immediately, I sat up straight, yanked out of my daydream like I was still that kid in the fifth grade who couldn’t pay attention from the back row. “Yes. Look. I’m…I’m sorry, but I really can’t come today. Tom threw me an extra shift, which starts at five, and since, as you pointed out, I’m going to be homeless in three days, I need the money. I’ll come up tomorrow, I promise.”

There was another heavy sigh before something crashed in the background. “Dammit, Pete! Tommy, I told you to watch your brothers!”

I held the phone away from my ear while Lea finished berating her eldest. Better him than me, I supposed. Tommy was a sweet kid, but sometimes I thought she expected a little much of a ten-year-old. Then again, the same and more had always been expected of her—including taking care of me.

“Tomorrow,” Lea repeated once she was back on the line. I could hear the warbling of Lupe, her youngest, in the background. She had maybe two minutes left on this call. “And for Mass.”

I huffed. “On Saturday? Come on, I don’t want to go to Mass two days in a row?—”

“ Tomorrow . And we are taking Nonna to Mass. She wants to go one last time with us, so we’re doing it.”

I huffed. “Fine, sure. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“For Mass too.”

“Oh my God, yes, I got it! Yes, for Mass too.”

“And then you’ll help clean and get your things. Your room’s the last one, Jo. We need your stuff out.”

With every task she threw at me, I felt like a sunflower at the end of fall, ready to wilt straight into the ground. I hated it when she did this—piled on the tasks. I wasn’t going to remember all of them anyway, and they just made everything feel that much more undoable.

But Lea didn’t hang up. She’d wait me out. She always did.

“Fine,” I said as I flopped backward on the exam table. “I’ll be there.”

I waited for Lea to hang up, but she surprised me by asking another question.

“So, a doctor? Oh, are you finally getting a second opinion on your knee?”

“ No .” I shut that one down quick. Whereas before I thought it might be funny to hear her reaction to me getting a boob job, I’d suddenly had enough of my sister’s opinions. “I told you, that’s done. The knee is finished, so I’m leaving that dream in the dumpster where it belongs.”

There was an uncharacteristic silence on the other end of the line, filled instead with the “yummy noises” my niece made whenever she particularly enjoyed her Cheerios.

Oh, Baby Lupe, you have no idea how good you have it.

As if she heard me, the little one started to cry.

“Mama!” she howled. “Mo-mo-mo-mo-mooooooooooo!”

Saved by the baby, who sounded a whole lot like a bell. Or maybe a siren.

“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” Lea said, back to her more characteristically frazzled self. “I gotta go.”

“Go,” I repeated.

“ Tomorrow ,” Lea said again, clearly waiting for something in response.

I heaved a big sigh. Yeah, she was going to drag me up there herself if that’s what it took.

“Tomorrow,” I repeated yet again. “I promise.”

The call ended, and I sat back on the table, toying with my escaping curls again and swinging my feet back and forth again. Weird how these tables positioned grown-ass adults so high up that they had to swing their feet like kids. I always liked this feeling, though, the way it made me feel weightless, even though I was still sitting on something. My feet looked so small from up here. At least I’d shaved my legs, but maybe I should have painted my toes before coming here—the hot pink was starting to chip. Then again, all my nail polish was in my room in Belmont, a room I had exactly two more days to vacate, and who knew where I was going to end up sleeping, and?—

A knock at the door interrupted my wandering thoughts. I sat up quickly as the door opened.

“Giovanna?” a deep voice spoke from the other side of the door.

“Er, yeah,” I replied.

The door opened fully, and a man dressed in a pair of gray slacks, polished brown shoes, a pressed gingham shirt, and a white lab coat entered, carrying a clipboard. I couldn’t really see his face, since he was studying the papers on the board. The best view I got was of the rims of his glasses, shoulders that barely seemed to fit under his coat, and a mop of lush, curly brown hair that was the only even slightly disheveled thing about him.

And then there was the fact that the man was approximately the size of an large oak tree. Far too tall to be anything but a linebacker for the New York Jets. Maybe the Giants. Certainly not a surgeon.

“Giovanna Zola,” the doctor read as he sat down on the stool and turned to the computer. “I’m Doctor Hunt. You’re here for a consultation for a breast augmentation, correct?”

“Um, yes. That’s right.” It was kind of odd talking to the back of someone’s head. “Gotta get some moneymakers. I can’t rely on charm alone these days.”

Not even a puff of laughter. The office was officially the worst . I couldn’t have been the only patient to tell a titty joke or two.

The doctor continued to mutter through my chart, as if talking more to himself than to me. “Age, twenty-four. Height, five feet, six point two five inches. Weight, normal. Hmm, your blood pressure is a little low, so we might need to watch that. I’ll make sure the anesthesiologist is aware.”

“It’s probably from all the dope I smoke in my free time,” I joked, though I mentally kicked myself for saying it out loud.

Yes, I tended to say inappropriate things when I was uncomfortable. And something about this clinic, with all its sterile surfaces, competent and highly educated people, and the doctor who wouldn’t even look me in the eye while he was speaking, made me very uncomfortable.

But at least I got a reaction. The doctor straightened immediately, shoulders spreading with the intent of a condor about to take flight.

“Do you actually use drugs?” he asked the computer. “Because if that’s a joke, it’s really not fun—Joni?”

The doctor finally turned around, and my jaw fell open as the list in my head wrote itself faster than I could make yet another insensitive crack.

Unbelievably True Things about My Plastic Surgeon

He can totally pass as Clark Kent.

He has the velvety-est brown bedroom eyes in existence.

I actually…know him.