Page 32 of Meet Stan

Especially after Mason soon fell, and Chandler too. Now I was forced to spend my time with a bunch of fourteen-year-olds with names like Noobslayer and Drizzt Do’Urden. I don’t know what the fuck that is or how to pronounce it, but I’m pretty sure it’s a venereal disease.

Fortunately, if there was one good thing about playing with the junior high crowd, it was that they were highly unlikely to talk to anyone I worked with at the firm. Thus, I sort of let it slip after a while that I was doing the fake dating thing.

“Look, Pwnslayer,” I said into the headset as we waited for the respawn. “If you like this girl with the retainer in Chess Club, you’re going to have to make the first move. Just don’t come on too strong and you’ll be alright.”

“Aw, what do you know about it, Single4lyfe?” he shot back. “Could you even get chicks if you weren’t filthy rich?”

“I got plenty of ‘chicks’ a long time before I was ever what you would call rich, boy. But hey, don’t take my advice, no skin off my nose.”

“You just don’t understand love,” Pwnslayer said into my ear.

“You’re probably right about that. Or, maybe, I understand it better than anyone else. Love is temporary insanity boys, mark my words. And soon, all of my married friends are going to learn that.”

“How are you going to do that?”

So, I explained the whole fake dating thing, and my endgame. The kids were confused.

“Why would you even want to do that to your friends?”

“Why? Because they’re living their lives with wool pulled over their eyes, that’s why. I’m doing them a favor by showing them that their love isn’t real. It’s just as temporary as the arrangement I have with my fake girlfriend.”

We finally respawned, and that ended the conversation. Only as I was shooting cartoon effigies of people on my big, curved-screen monitor, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ivy. Not shooting her, obviously. I just kept thinking that this thing I’d been trying to set time aside to do just didn’t seem like all that much fun any longer.

I think I played for about an hour and a half longer, just goofing off in my boxers and an old tank top, when I heard someone buzzing on my intercom. I figured it was a delivery, and since I couldn’t pause an online game I decided I would go pick it up momentarily.

Then the buzz came again. It broke my concentration at the worst time and my guy fell into a river of lava. As the skull and crossbones came up on screen, I tossed the controller down on the sofa in disgust and went to answer my door.

“Hold your damn horses,” I griped, wondering how they’d made it past the doorman. I figured it might be some sort of package I had to sign for. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

I threw the door open, anger fueling the motion.

“What’s so damn important—Ivy?”

She glared at me, her face done up as if she’d been to the club. A glaze of sweat on her skin and the unfocused look in her eyes suggested she’d been drinking. Heavily.

“Hey,” she said, her expression unchanging. “You got a minute?”

“A minute?” I checked the time, and found it was after two in the morning. “Um, sure, what’s going on?”

She sneered at me, pretty face bunching up into a scowl.

“Are you going to invite me in, or make me stand out here in the hallway? I mean, I’ve really got to pee.”

“By all means, come on in.” I stepped back and gave her ingress. She walked stiffly in the door, a bit of a sway to her walk.

Ivy turned and jabbed a finger in my chest, hard enough so her nail kind of hurt.

“Hey,” she said aggressively, “how come you didn’t tell your doorman that you had a girlfriend?”

“Fake girlfriend,” I said, and instantly regretted it.

“You know what the fuck I mean,” she snapped, poking me in the chest. “You hear me? YOU know what I MEAN.”

“I guess I do.” She punctuated every word with another poke from her finger.

“Damn skippy you do. How come you didn’t tell him? Huh?”

“I guess it just didn’t come up.”

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