by Schow, Ryan
Netty asked the question, “What?” with her eyes.
He said, “The way you’re wearing that dress is making me horny.”
Netty went from thirty-five watts to a hundred. She was the brightest bulb in the club for that one moment, which pleased him. The way she’d been lately, he wasn’t sure his opinion of her would even matter. Apparently it did.
“Aside from my sexual predilections,” Brayden said to Netty, just loud enough for her to hear, “you look amazing.”
The way he said it, it wasn’t like he was her brother paying her a compliment. He always kept that little bit of sexual suggestion behind everything he said. That’s what Romeo taught him. He told Brayden, “It’s like you’re constantly dropping bait. Waiting to see what you’ll catch. This is just you maximizing your odds.”
“You look hot, too,” she said. “Seriously.” The look in her eyes, it was just like the look in his eyes. His heart stopped for a second. WTF? Was that the friend-of-a-friend thing that made you a full fledged member of the friend zone? Or was she showing interest? He honestly didn’t know. He forced himself to put that thought on the back burner because Abby was looking at everyone again. Forgetting she was the center of attention. Now he understood what guys like Romeo and Titan went through when they trained AFC’s (average frustrated chumps).
“Help her please,” he said to Netty.
“Basically what you’re doing,” Netty said across him to Abby, “is trolling for cock, but not.”
She looked at them both, perplexed, and said, “Am I, or am I not?”
Brayden said, “You’re not. But you always are. It’s a way of life, Abby, if you want to feel confident. Maybe you’re not doing the wet and nasty with anyone, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t open to the idea of it, that’s all.”
Just then a pair of hot girls walked by and they all heard one say to the other, “What are the two hotties doing with that guy?” Abby let go of Brayden’s hand, like it was contaminated. Brayden’s face blistered. He closed his abandoned hand, felt the heat her hand left behind.
The disconnect was profound. It was anti-religious.
Moving in between two four sets of girls, with music and laughter and conversation in the air, she turned and, almost frustrated, said, “What am I to you?”
She looked more confused than ever with the glowing lights changing colors on her face. He wanted to kiss her. To yell at her. To make her understand all the things she would never understand.
“We like each other, Abby, but in ways the new you can’t grasp. You were coming into your own when this accident…took you. Maybe even ruined you. I guess what I’m saying is I’m trying to get you back. Not just back to me, but back to yourself.”
The look in her face said she might never get it. In that moment, he knew everything they had done together, all the progress he made in getting himself close to her while trying desperately to avoid the dreaded friend-zone, it was gone. As in over.
She would never be his.
The reality curdled his stomach, like old oil, or a bowl of spaghetti-soft guts. Nausea threatened. He looked at her, at every familiar line in her face, at those eyes he knew so well, at that mouth he knew tasted like sugar in his dreams, and he saw a complete stranger. He couldn’t even hear the music, that’s how deep his disappointment ran. He backed away from her involuntarily. Felt stricken. Absently, he let go of Netty’s hand, too. She touched his arm. He flinched, then looked at her and found both safety and familiarity. Then it was gone. He was an island in the middle of nowhere wrapped in fog.
“Brayden?” Netty said, concerned. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head.
Inside, his heart was breaking in two.
“What is it?” Abby said. Now they were both trying to help him, to understand him, to save him. But he would not be saved. He didn’t want to be saved.
He leaned into Netty and, disgusted, said, “I don’t know this version of her.”
Netty said, “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
“I think I’ve always been in love with her,” he admitted, although this came from a place of truth as well as weakness, and it scared him. Admitting it out loud made it real.
“What are you guys talking about?” Abby asked.
She looked like she felt left out.
“I’m taking Brayden to the bathrooms,” Netty said. “You mingle, okay?”
“No,” she said. She made a pouty face. “I don’t know anyone. And I can’t mingle if I don’t know anyone.”
“It’s okay, Netty,” Brayden said. He stopped Netty, who was trying to pull him into the crowd. “I’ll be fine. Let’s just…I need to, I don’t know, mingle myself, I guess. I’ll catch up with you guys in a little while.” He said this, then he moved into the masses, disappearing. All he knew was that he had to wean himself off of her. The days of being held captive by Abby Swann were officially over. As in, the show’s over folks, everybody go home.
5
The thing about approaching strangers is you want to make yourself known before you embed into a specific group. That’s how you work a club. Well not completely, but that’s the starting gate. The way you do this is by being the life of the party. That’s easier said than done, especially when you’re in a downward emotional spiral. But that was what Titan and Romeo taught him so that’s what he strived to do every time he hit the clubs.
Brayden is gone, he told himself. You’re Enigma.
So own it.
As he threaded through the crowd, smiling that mysterious smile, he complimented girls on their hair, their shoes, their make-up—pretty much anything he thought they worked extra hard to make stand out. It didn’t matter what they looked like, if they were nine’s or four’s, if they were a little on the thick side or petite. He got them smiling. And laughing. Then he made them introduce themselves. These girls, they told him he was sweet, ran their hands up and down his arms, asked about his night. Instead of hanging out and talking, he took them and said, “We’re making new friends, let’s go,” and they went, moving from table to dance floor to table and so on. Then he would drop them off and pick up five or six more. And then he’d drop them all off and start over again.
It was a rinse and repeat sort of affair.
For the girls who didn’t look approachable, he did something he learned called “forcing IOI’s.” Indicators of interest. When a girl looked at him, he gave a head turn, like he just discovered something magical in her. Her response told him her level of difficulty. How much game he was going to have to use. Based on their reactions, he categorized them as friendly, über friendly, hesitant and/or bitchy.
After about a half an hour, he found them. Holy crap. He found the tens! As in a pack of them. In the pick-up society, girls this hot were called HB10’s. As in, Hot Bitches who are 10’s. “Just do it,” he told himself. For the first time that night he was nervous. Then he saw everyone around the girls and he was like, okay, how the hell do I penetrate that?
Guys at the club, those banana-hammocks who secretly think every girl wants their junk, they were congregating in groups around the ten’s, trying to look extra cool, talking and laughing out loud, showing off their best sides just to get the girls’ attention. And half of these guys? They were better looking than him by miles. Not that good looks were everything. Guys like these, lots of them, he told himself they were no fish and all batter. He swallowed hard. In that moment, he was self-assured in his ability to open the set and run his game, and his social proof was in the stratosphere.
This is all you, he told himself. You’re totally ready.
He was.
Almost automatic, he walked to the edge of the cliff, then he stepped out into the abyss. Moving through all the good looking people with confidence, with that look, he approached the table, slowed for a casual flyby. He gave the girls an easy smile, like they were all friends, and said, “So this is where all the good looking people hang out, huh?” Like it was the b
ig mystery he just solved. It was right then he realized his mistake, that what he said, it was too cliché.
Shades of chumpery, he thought. Why the hell did he say that? It had to be Abby, how she had him all rattled. How maybe, in this moment, he was totally off his game.
In a snarky little shitty voice, one of the girls looked up and said, “So why are you here?”
He might as well have farted inside their secret circle, that’s how they were looking at him. His butthole clenched. Somewhere deep inside him, his embarrassment grew fur. His expensive new nose, his more prominent chin, his newish build and his ability to run solid game, it was all worth exactly dick right then.
When you’re learning the art of seduction, or pick-up, for the first time, you hear about asshole girls like this—social terrorists—but you seldom see them. They rank right up there with Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and Elvis sightings.
OMG, Brayden thought with horror, they’re real. He somehow managed to keep his composure. They nearly derailed him, though. Nearly. Titan had prepared him for this, and thank God.
“Actually I’m just passing through,” he said, rolling off her harsh neg, unfazed.
“Yeah, well keep moving,” another of the girls said. This one was extra snotty. Like everything happening to her was inconvenient. Behind him, he heard some of those wall flower guys with perfect hair snickering.
The way tens can become sixes when they open their mouths, it happened just like that. He was staring at a mixed table. Sixes sitting with tens.
“For sure,” he said, still smiling. He was no ten when it came to guys, but he wasn’t a six either. Their beauty was just two hours in the mirror with the right make-up and too much extra-hold hairspray. He told himself these girls shit and burp and stink and pick their noses like everyone else. And then he told himself these girls were freaking imposters.
What Titan once said was: “When a broad gets all cunty and such, you need to treat her like you can smell her menstruating. Neg her back, but playfully. You don’t want her becoming a fire breathing dragon. Then peel off. Quickly. The worst thing you can do is leave her thinking she stepped on your nuts.”
As he was rolling off, Brayden glanced over his shoulder at them, smiled, and said, “By the way, everyone knows good looking girls are such a bore, so I’m off to find fun girls. Girls with personality.”
He said it chipper, like their black clouds had nothing on his sunny day. He left them gasping at his comment. Their mouths wide open. One of the girls, her bottom teeth weren’t even straight. Bye-bye Big Foot. See you later, Loch Ness Monsters. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.
For the next half hour, he met plenty more girls. Fun girls. Decent girls. Girls he liked. He did flyby’s, gave non-verbal cues, dropped sexy-silly compliments (“If I had a foot fetish, I’d want your feet in those shoes”) and then he bounced. Halfway through the club, he spotted his target group. The group he just had to embed in. It was one of those things you knew the minute you saw it: three tables down, a four set with a stellar looking redhead at the helm. An HB9. Maybe an HB10, if only her energy would hold, and only if she had something interesting to say.
Somewhere in his mind, he was thinking about Abby. But not now. Now, it was all about the game. About his ability to open and create multiple conversation threads. He made his way toward the four set who were officially two seven’s, an eight and a nine who might be a ten. He wanted to hook the nine/ten, so he was all eyes on the seven. That’s how it worked. At least, that was the plan.
“Were you guys part of the fight outside?” he said to the girls. Not facing them, angling off like he couldn’t stay, he said this like he couldn’t believe it and he just had to share. The opener was vanilla, nothing fancy. Sometimes you ask the question then invent the story. It’s not the story that matters, it’s the nailing of the delivery that counts most. Even then, an opener is an excuse to have a conversation, simple as that. It’s how that first conversation goes that gets you in the circle or locks you out.
“What fight?” the seven asked. She was a barely interested Japanese girl in a slinky low cut top with smallish breasts and the kind of padded bra designed to made A cup titties look like slightly bigger A cup titties, except pushed north. The plush edge of her nipple was peeking out, though Brayden was polite and pretended not to notice.
“Across the club a few minutes ago. I thought maybe it was you at first”—he said, nodding to the nine/ten, the gorgeous red head—“but the girl who got sucker punched, she wasn’t nearly as pretty, and not nearly as refined looking as you.”
“Refined?” the nine asked. Her eyes seemed to clear, to come to life; she perked up.
“Yeah. That girl, she had chipped fingernail polish for Christ’s sake.”
The girls laughed. Walls came down. All the sudden, they were all almost friends. He just had to hang on past the opener.
The nine, she held up her hand, showed Brayden perfect nails. “See?” she said. “Not me.”
“I see that now,” Brayden said.
“What happened anyway?” the nine said.
Her face was lean and angular, her jaw line well defined. The symmetry was flawless. And her red hair? It wasn’t offensive the way some red hair could be. Rather it suited her. Especially her eyes. Near the pupil, her iris’s started out a caramelized orange, then bled into a light brown which then made this stunning bluish green halo around the edges. Plus, she had the cutest freckles ever. The details of her face were gorgeous, for sure, but they weren’t the only reason he liked her. It was her smile. When she let her emotion show, she had the faintest of laugh lines around the upturned corners of her mouth. The proof was on her face: she smiled a lot. It was a beautiful smile, her teeth perfect and white.
God, he loved that.
He took a breath then looked mostly at the seven’s and the eight and said, “Okay, so basically there was this super hot girl with her friends, just minding her own business, when this Courtney Love type blonde starts running her mouth. Your doppelganger”—he said, nodding again to the nine who just might be a ten—“she sort of waves a dismissive hand, so the blonde socks her in the face then yanks her top down. Her tits fell out everywhere.”
“No way,” the Japanese seven said, like she couldn’t believe it.
Inside he smiled.
“How were her tits?” the eight asked, being cute. The thing about a bullshit story like this one was, you weren’t asking much from your audience. You just wanted their attention. Now that he had it, he had to capitalize on it.
“It was darkish where this happened,” Brayden said. He let his most mysterious grin make its way to the surface. Then: “But in the dark, everything looks perfect.”
He could see by the looks on the girls’ faces, they approved. Which had them opening the circle to him. He was in.
“Listen, I have to go,” he said, using a false time constraint. Then to the nine/ten, he said: “I just wanted to stop and see if you were okay. Clearly you’re fine. I love your make-up by the way. Did you do it or was it done professionally?”
“I did it,” she said, proud.
“Why are you leaving?” the eight asked. “You just got here.” She was sort of hot for a white girl, but she looked like she was all looks and little substance. It was an unsubstantiated judgment, but he was getting good at reading people, so maybe he wasn’t wrong.
“I’m heading back to meet my girlfriends,” he said, making like he was leaving no matter what they said. “I’m Brayden, by the way. I’ll say hi if I run into you guys again.”
“This is Lexi,” the nine/ten said about the eight, “and Andrea and Julie,” she said of the two seven’s, “and I’m Savannah.”
At the mention of that name, Savannah, his head went from sixty to zero like it hit a brick wall. The way Titan and Romeo taught him to game, all the things he knew, how he was vibing this four set, everything just left him at once. His mind was a blank slate. The surface of the
moon, the surface of the sun. He was nothing and everything, just like that.
“What’s wrong?” Savannah said. Group-think took over. Now they all looked at him with the same question in their eyes.
“My best friend’s name is Savannah. Well, it was Savannah.”
“What happened?” Andrea asked. The other seven. She was the Caucasian/Hispanic hybrid, maybe in her early twenties with long black hair that went to her waist. Friendly, but forgettable.
He didn’t want to answer the question. He did anyway.
“She was killed a few days ago.”
The temperature plummeted. The energy he started to build, the mood he was trying to cultivate, it now had the consistency of wet shit. No one knew what to say. He was about to slink off when Netty tucked one of her skinny arms inside his. He turned and Abby was with her, taking his hand. Abby who used to be Savannah.
“Oh, hi guys,” he said, perking back up, “I was coming to find you.”
He was about to be the lady boner killer of the night when his wing women saved him. The looks on the girls’ faces at the table, seeing Abby and Netty physically interacting with him, it was his social proof re-entering the stratosphere. It was the four set of girls seeing him in an entirely new light.
“It was very nice meeting you,” he said, and then he, Netty and Abby found a table and ordered drinks with their fake ID’s.
“Who were those girls?” Abby asked. She didn’t want to be jealous, but he could see jealousy moving like a storm front into her body, especially her eyes. Earlier, she didn’t want to hold his hand because she was better for his social proof than he was for hers. Apparently that had changed.
“Lexi, Andrea, Julie and Savannah,” Brayden said. He kept telling himself the Abby he knew was gone. Dead the minute that little bald freak put three rounds in her.