The Game

Orman.
    “Shitballs!” she called to Katya’s brother. “Can you go back to my apartment with the driver and get my DVDs?”
    After he left, Courtney told Katya, “He’s a nice kid, and kind of cute.”
    “You know, he’s a virgin,” Katya said.
    “Sure,” Courtney replied. She went silent, contemplating this piece of information for a few moments, then nodded her head and told Katya, “I’d give him a mercy fuck.”
    That night, Mystery returned. He had a stripper on each arm. They looked like they’d been working in the same dark club for twenty years; our hundred-watt lightbulbs weren’t serving them well.
    “Hey, buddy,” he said, as if he’d just come back from the grocery store.
    “Where were you?”
    “I went to a strip club and spent the night with Gina.”
    “Hi,” said a horse-faced brunette on his left arm. She lifted her waving hand meekly.
    “Well, dude, you should have called. It’s okay to have your little spat with Katya, but Herbal and I were really worried. That wasn’t cool.”
    He paraded the girls through the house, making sure he introduced them to Katya, then sat on the patio with them.
    Katya went about her business. She showered, she cleaned the daily explosion of peanut butter in the kitchen, and she did her special-effectsschool homework on Herbal’s face, giving him a lobotomy.
    While Mystery’s stripper gambit had failed to make her jealous, it did succeed in making everyone else’s respect for him dwindle further.

It was bound to happen. Katya eventually reached someone in the house. She’d been hitting on all of us since her pregnancy scare.
    It was Herbal who ultimately cracked. He was laid-back. He never lost his cool. He liked to listen. He was modest and understated. In other words, he was the exact opposite of Mystery. All that time he had spent with Katya while Mystery was pouting or laying indolently in bed or sleeping with a stripper out of revenge had affected him. He had developed feelings for Katya. After watching her suffer through Mystery’s manipulation and neglect, he’d even begun to believe that he was more worthy of her.
    “It’s getting harder and harder to say no,” he told me.
    “Just ask Mystery. He’s probably over her by now.”
    “Yeah. After all, he was cool with the whole Sima thing.” (Sima was Mystery’s ex-MLTR from Toronto who Herbal had fooled around with.)
    So Herbal asked Mystery. The answer was no. But that evening, after fighting with Katya again, Mystery found Herbal in the living room. “We’re broken up,” he said casually. “She’s all yours.”
    They were words he would soon regret.
    Within hours, Herbal had his dick inside her. Since Courtney was sleeping in his bed, he fucked Katya in Playboy’s room off the kitchen.
    When Mystery returned home that night from the Standard, he went to the kitchen for a Sprite. That was when he heard them. The moans that had been his exclusive nightly serenade were being sung to another man. He stood outside Playboy’s door in shock, listening to them have sex. Katya seemed to be enjoying it. Loudly.
    Mystery walked into the living room and collapsed on the floor. The blood drained from his face. Like his father’s death, it affected him more than he could have predicted.
    Never underestimate your own capacity to care.
    “I love her,” he said, as the first tear trickled down his cheek. “I love that girl.”
    “No you don’t,” I corrected him. “You said the other day that you hatedher.” The thoughts I’d been holding back for weeks came pouring out of me. “All you like about her is her body. The only reason you’re upset is because you feel rejected.”
    “No. I’m pissed at her for not loving me back.”
    “She loved you more than any other girl I’ve seen you with. She sat with me in the hot tub one night talking about how scared she was to let go and really love you. And as soon as she did, you became a cold, shutdown, miserable bastard.”
    “But I love her.”
    “You say that about every girl you sleep with. That’s not real love. It’s fake love. It’s an illusion.”
    “No it isn’t,” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “You’re wrong!”
    He stood up, stomped to his room, and slammed the door, splintering paint onto the carpet.
    He’d been so neglected as a child that the withdrawal of love pulled all his emotional triggers, exploding the carapace of narcissism built by his childhood escapism.
    As I walked back to my room,