Page 12 of Meet Stan

“That sounds great, Ivy.”

Record scratch.

“Ivy?” confusion quickly turned to anger, her face a grotesque mask of wounded pride and rage. “Ivy? Are you fucking kidding me?”

She got up and pounded me on the shoulder with her fist.

“It’s not even close to my name.”

“C’mon, um, ah—”

“You can’t even remember my name, can you?”

“It’s an S word,” I blurted. “Definitely—Sammy?”

“Screw you.”

She stormed out the door, leaving me feeling more than a little bit foolish. I’d called her by the wrong name, but come on, we’d only just met.

Not like it mattered. I was only flirting with her because she reminded me of Ivy, and the fact that I just kept thinking about her bothered me. The last time the same thing happened to me was in college, my first and last love.

The logical conclusion to that would be that I fell in love with Ivy and the absurdity of it almost made me laugh.

And even if that was true, love was only temporary. I knew in my heart that sooner or later all love was doomed to failure. My parents’ marriage had fallen apart, after all, and they’d had the whole shebang; high school sweethearts, storybook wedding, the works.

What made my friends think they were going to do any better than my folks had?

An idea came to me. I had to find a way to prove to the others in the firm that love was nothing more than temporary madness. Once you were cured, it was over and that’s why the divorce rate was so high in our country.

My genius idea was as follows: I needed to find a woman I could pay to be my pretend girlfriend.

Then I would masquerade around with her on my arm, pretending to have fallen in love, and take it all the way to the point where it looks like I’m going to marry her—only to reveal the sham at the last moment.

When they saw that my fake love was indistinguishable from their own ‘real’ love, Mason, Chandler, and Jon would have to take a good look at their own lives and ask themselves some tough questions.

Then they would see that I had been right all along. Love is nothing more than a temporary mental condition, and the nuclear family unit is an outdated thing. And if that wouldn’t convince them, then at least I would have the pleasure of pulling the prank of the century on these assholes.

At least, this is what I was hoping for. It was devious, and most of all, it gave me the feeling I wasdoingsomething. Not just sitting around moping about the fact that all of my friends had been tamed.

I loved my friends and I wanted them to be happy. I also loved the brotherhood that we had before they were domesticated and I wanted that back. And it was quite some time since I played any pranks on them, and good pranks were my specialty.

Now that I had the plan, I needed to find an ideal candidate. Someone willing to play my pretend girlfriend. I would almost certainly have to compensate them for their time. Not only did I have no problem with this, I thought it would even help prove my point all the more.

I thought about Jack, a private eye who did a lot of work for the firm. Then I realized that Jack would want to create an entire character for the performance, and it could get really annoying, really fast. Besides, the thought of spending more than five minutes in the same room with her sent cold shivers down my spine.

I thought about an escort but rejected the idea. I didn’t want to get caught, and you never know who at our firm has walked on the wild side.

Then, with great reluctance, I thought of Ivy.

I instinctively discarded the idea at first, but slowly, I began to warm up to it. Our mutual attraction and prior physical encounter weren’t problems; they were solutions. There would be just enough real chemistry there for the guys at the firm to accept the bait hook, line, and sinker.

In my mind, it was the perfect plan. The fact that she worked at the firm just made the fake relationship more convenient. And that would also help to keep it a strictly business relationship from start to finish.

I headed home and worked out the more nefarious details of my plot. When I would announce our engagement, what restaurant I’d book for the engagement party, even what wedding planner I was going to hire to plan the fake wedding.

Money was no object. I saw myself as fighting for the very souls of my friends. I wanted them to see the light, and come back to my way of thinking. That was a noble goal, in my estimation, and therefore was one of the rare times I would permit myself to waste money.

No, not waste money. Sacrifice money in the name of a worthy cause. I saw the domestication of my fellow board members as weakness, pacification, even so much as being neutered.

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