“You’re not onto anything.”
“So, what is it about her? Is it the hair? The hair’s a lot. Long. Heavy. She’s got a lot of hair —”
“Stan.”
“Is it the smile? She’s got a real nice smile. Wholesome. Like a girl who would bake you really good cookies—”
“Stan.”
“It’s the eyes. Isn’t it? It’s the eyes.” He leans in. “They fucking sparkle, man. Like diamonds.”
I stare at the ceiling, trying to keep my cool.They sparkle like diamonds?
I turn my head and look at him. “Will you grab me something?”
He brightens. “What?”
I point at the floor. “Down there. My duffle bag.”
He hops off the bed and grabs the duffel. He holds it up. “This one?”
“Yeah.” I close my eyes. “There’s some hockey tape in there. Will you wrap it around your face a few times for me?”
There’s a pause.
Then Stanley bends over and howls.
He drops the bag. He launches himself back onto my bed with the full weight of a hundred and eighty pounds of drunk winger, and my whole frame creaks. My shoulder grabs again, and I make a sound through my teeth that I cannot keep in.
“I fucking knew it,” he crows. “You had no idea she had a boyfriend, huh? Is that what this is?”
“This isn’t anything, Stan.”
“Bro —”
“It’s not anything except you making up imaginary shit in your head. I’m beat. I’m not going back down there.”
“Her boyfriend’s not a bad guy, you know.”
I don’t respond to that.
“Ermington,” I say sternly. “I’m trying to sleep.”
He stops talking and just stares at me in deep thought. I don’t want to know what he’s thinking, but he’s going to say it anyway.
“I’ve never seen you this fucking ruffled, man,” he says. There it is. That sharp observation, calling it exactly as he sees it. “Relax. I just wanted to make sure everything was alright.”
“It’s fucking dandy, Stan.”
But the second the words are out of my mouth, I hear how they sound. I hear what they actually mean, which is that I ran. I ran out of my own kitchen and up the stairs of my own house. I locked myself in my own bedroom because a girl I have spent a lot of years pretending I don’t think about walked in with a boyfriend, and now I am lying here pretending it’s because I’m tired.
I did it again, and the worst part is that it wasn’t intentional.
“Am I allowed to go to sleep,” I say, “King Stanley?”
He looks at me dead in the eye.
“I don’t think you’re going to get any sleep until she leaves, so you can make the best of it by coming down to have another beer.”
