Fictionlet
“You heard that Sharon and Thomas broke up, right?” said Brigid.
“What?” said Greg. “No, I hadn’t heard that. After she kicked out Ozymandias and everything, eh? Too bad.” He looked over at the white cat, who was currently visible only as a shadowy white outline in the dark recesses under a cabinet. “You hear that? Your ex-roomie’s back in circulation again.”
“Meow,” said Ozymandias, and went to sleep.
Greg looked back at Brigid. “About the attitude I thought he’d take.”
“You’ve known her a good while now; ever thought of asking her out?”
“Is this about guy cred again?” said Greg, leaning his head back in vague amusement. “For what it’s worth, I did think about it once, back when you first introduced us. But better judgment quickly prevailed.”
“Hey!” said Brigid. “She’s an old friend of mine! What do you mean, ‘better judgment’?”
“My dear harpy,” said Greg. “You know Sharon. And you know the kind of drama-magnet men she likes. The ones who aren’t mean-spirited little tyrants or self-obsessed Lotharios, are couch-planting neanderthals who only speak when they want her to bring them more beer. I can think of nothing worse to say about a man, with the possible exception of ‘he reminds me of Treville,’ than that he’s the sort of man Sharon would fall for like a metric boatload of lead bricks. And as such, even if Sharon were someone that I was interested in pitching woo with, I’m pretty sure she finds me unbearably dull and vaguely incomprehensible.”
“Wow, when you’re mean about somebody, you don’t go halfway, do you?”
“I’m not being mean!” said Greg. “Just the facts.”
“Well she must not think you’re as bad as all that,” Brigid said. “She keeps inviting you to her parties.”
“That baffles me, too,” Greg admitted. “I sometimes wonder if it’s because she knows I’ll drag you along — whereas she knows from hard experience that you hate being invited anywhere if crashing the place is an option instead.”
-The Gneech
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