The marketing folks at Ben & Jerry’s really ought to do a data blitz and start tracking specific female customers’ cycles. Send a coupon out the week before. Think of the uptick in sales.
Hmm. File that one away for future campaigns.
“No problem,” I answer Amy, hoping they’ll spare the other carton for me and Shannon.
“Hey -- would you grab the extra soy sauce?” Amy asks me. “It’s in the cupboard.”
I open cabinet doors and stare and a sea of samples. Shannon’s idea of culinary delight is anything she can get for free on her mystery shops. A mudslide of soy sauce packets threaten to pour out like a ping-pong ball prank. I grab a handful, shove the pile back in, and close the door.
I’m not marrying her for her cooking.
“Want a beer?” Amanda asks as I plunk the soy sauce on the table in front of her and Amy. She’s dressed like Amy, but has a hoodie on. The logo is for a water delivery company I recognize from our facilities division. They deliver thousands of gallons for pool fillings. Her sweatshirt is so oversized it comes down to her knees.
“Sure.” She reaches down into a camping cooler filled with ice and hands me a brand that Jason must have left here for his daughters.
“That’s clever.” I’ve never seen the cooler in the living room before.
She shrugs. “We’re being efficient.”
“We’re being lazy,” Shannon and Amy intone together. Amanda’s face looks weird. Puffy. Like she’s been crying.
The room feels a little too small suddenly. The sound of Shannon popping the top off my beer slows down, as if I’m in the Matrix movies. Every second stretches into ten more and a dawning horror hits me.
This isn’t a Period Errand.
This is an Asshole Boyfriend Summit.
Worse—it might be both, combined.
I choke a little as I chug the first half of my beer down in one great gulp. The last Asshole Boyfriend Summit I was forced to attend was back in college, at Harvard. I was not the Asshole Boyfriend (note: the actual man is never, ever in attendance for these summits, and thank God).
The purpose of an Asshole Boyfriend Summit is to gather together as many friends, preferably female, to rip apart the ex to the point where the woman comes to see that she really is better off without him.
It’s like being stoned to death in absentia.
I wonder who the asshole is.
“It’ll be fine,” Amy murmurs to Amanda.
“I can’t believe I’m still thinking about him.” Amanda’s giving me wary looks. I retool my mission. Gone is the goal of a few beers, some Rock Band, and reluctant sex in Shannon’s bedroom with three pieces of furniture shoved against her door to prevent a Marie invasion, no matter how unintentional. I say I won’t ever have sex with her again in her apartment, but I say lots of things that aren’t true.
Turning down a shot at sex? I never put principles above my sex drive. That’s for monks and Duggar children.
That said, I’m not about to be the only man in a bowl of estrogen soup when one of them is processing a break-up. That’s like being a socialist at a Tea Party rally. Sure, you can be there, but when the crowd gets blood lust in them, who do you think will be scraping tar off their pecs and plucking feathers out of their ass?
Hmmm. Kinky.
Anyhow...I finish my beer and put the empty in the recycling bin in the apartment’s kitchen, which is about the size of my mailbox.
Amy and Amanda are whispering and every so often shooting me inscrutable looks. Shannon beckons me to snuggle on the couch and share the spare carton of noodles. I get three bites in before I hear it.
Andrew.
Amy says his name and I realize with a gigantic thud that my brother is the object of this summit.
Holy shit.
A tingling at the base of my skull begins. Pure evolutionary biology. As I share DNA with said asshole, I am now prey among the hunters. Soon I will be asked questions about my brother’s romantic activities. I would rather gnaw off my right testicle than—
Okay. Retract that.
I wouldn’t.
But talking about Andrew and...seriously? Amanda? in a romantic sense is about as interesting as discussing my dad’s latest piece of—
“Quick hogging all the shrimp!” Shannon complains.
I frown. “I’ve eaten exactly two pieces.”
She huffs. “Still...”
I hand her the carton.
Tears form in her eyes.
Oh, man. A Period Errand and an Asshole Boyfriend Summit and my brother? What kind of messed up karma did I earn in a prior life to deserve this?
I wrap my arms around her and whisper, “Should I go? Amanda seems upset.”
“She’s just...” Shannon shudders with a half-sob, a sigh of relief poking through. “It’s, um...”
I put her out of her secret-keeping misery. As Winston Churchill says, when you’re going through hell, keep going.
“This is about Andrew.”
She jerks in my arms. “Has he said anything about her?”
“What? No.” The only thing worse than talking about my brother’s sex life is being pumped as a conduit for information about his sex life. I need a shower. In a vat of napalm.
She shoots her eyebrows up and wipes her eyes. All business now, she interrogates me like I’m a perp in an episode of Law & Order.
“You’re sure he’s never talked about her?”
“I am.”
She glares. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Fifty. Countless more. I can win staring contests. I can.
My eyes shift to her boobs.
There. The staring contest is so much easier now.