Winners

I t was in the Self-Help section of Barnes and Noble that April met Justin. She was holding Open Yourself to a Win, a title her over-eager roommate had recommended forcefully to her on more than one occasion. She realized with a start that a tall guy, maybe twenty, was standing behind her, reading the book jacket over her shoulder.

“Open Yourself to a Win, huh?”

April felt a not entirely unpleasant flush of shame, like she’d been caught eating mayonnaise straight from the jar, but maybe wouldn’t be in trouble for it. “Yeah, I know it’s not, like, great literature,” she said.

“Are you worried you’re … currently closed for a win?” She wasn’t certain, but April thought this might be flirting.

“Um. Would you believe me if I told you it was a gift for a friend?”

“Well, not if you’re gonna undersell it like that. You’ve gotta commit to the bit!”

“I mean, you’re here in the Self-Help section, too.”

“Yeah, but I’m just here trying to pick up chicks.”

If April’s roommate were there, she would have squealed, “April! This dude is into you! Don’t just stand there: participate!” If her mom were there, she would have said, “Honey, it might not be the worst idea to put yourself out there.” If inspirational author Sheryl Sandberg had been there, she would have said to Lean In. Leaning in wasn’t April’s natural posture, though.

“I dunno, though,” Justin was saying. “I myself happen to be partial to girls who are ‘Fine with a Loss’” he made air quotes as he mocked the book she was still holding. April pictured herself buying the book, taking it home to her apartment, and reading it while eating wilted leftovers from last night’s salad. She looked up and met Justin’s eyes.

“A gentleman would offer to buy it for me,” she said, attempting to channel the confidence the book espoused, but also preparing to sink through the floor in flames of humiliation.

“Listen, I don’t want to be presumptuous, or whatever, but … what are you doing right now? I’m meeting my buddy Zach for dinner. Would you want to eat with us?” This person was a stranger, and April wasn’t even wearing her contacts, but in the spirit of opening herself to a win, she said yes.

At first, the existence of the friend suggested something platonic, but when April saw two other people seated at the booth at TGI Friday’s, seemingly a couple, she relaxed into the idea (tightened into it, really) that she was here as a romantic prospect. They all ordered beers, and within two minutes of their arrival, Justin’s was half drained. April was weirdly attracted to the large, cavernous spaces that must exist in some men, letting them eat and drink things so much faster than she ever could.

“So, should we order real food?” asked Zach, seated diagonally from April. His worn t-shirt read “Hedgehogs: Why don’t they share the hedge?” in manic yellow letters, and he wore Clark Kent glasses. Justin was much more her type. Plainly dressed, dark-complexioned, eerily good at maintaining eye contact—he made her feel important and worthless in thrilling simultaneity.

“I could eat,” April agreed, to be agreeable.

“Me, too. I mean, also?” said Liz, who April took to be Zach’s date.

“The lobster tail platter is good. You should get that,” Justin suggested. April tended to avoid shellfish, and the idea of dismantling a crustacean in an alluring way seemed beyond her. It was also, she learned with a quick glance at the menu, $35, which was more than she would like to spend on dinner tonight.

“Oh yeah! Liz, you’ve got to get it, too! It’s the best,” Zach chimed in.

“I eat anything,” Liz agreed with a shrug.

“Should we maybe get one to share?” April asked.

“No way. Four lobster tail platters. Or I walk,” Zach laughed.

“It’s good, I promise,” Justin said, and the toe of his shoe lightly grazed April’s calf under the table. April felt a warm glow spread from the spot his toe touched up to her cheeks; she had always been an easy blusher.

The guys motioned to the waitress, who came over and asked if they’d like to hear the specials.

“I think we know what we want,” Justin said, with a small smirk.

“Alright,” she said, turning to April, “What would you like, miss?”

“Um,” April faltered. “I guess I’ll have … the lobster tail platter?”

“Cacaw!” Justin made a weird sound, like a bird. When Liz ordered the same, Zach made the same sound. April could never decide how she was supposed to react to private jokes she wasn’t privy to. She knew from experience that asking for them to be explained made her look desperate, and even when they were, the mirth of the joke never transferred with its explanation. Was she supposed to laugh along, though? Or defer to their closeness by ignoring it?

“Two lobster tail platters for the table,” the waitress warned them, “that’s a lot of food.”

“We’ll have a side of fries, too,” said Justin.

“And extra hot sauce,” said Zach.

“How do y’all know each other?” April asked, once the waitress left to convey their strange order to the kitchen. Zach explained that he and Justin were both students at MSU, in their sophomore year. This made April four years older than them; she wondered if they hoped she was younger.

“You, too?” she asked, turning to Liz.

“Liz and I actually just met today,” Zach said. “She was kind enough to help me find some rad new towels at Target, and when her shift ended, she let me whisk her off.” This felt odd to April. They were both on a spur-of-the-moment double date?

Maybe reading April’s expression, Zach went on, “I don’t normally pick up girls at the mall, I swear. But there was something special about Liz.”

“What was special about me?” Liz asked.

“Well … the way you looked leaning on that counter. You had a look in your eye like you knew a secret.” Mentally, April called bullshit on this. Liz was one of the most blank-eyed people she had ever seen.

“You thought I was pretty,” Liz said, tucking her margarine-blond hair behind her ears.

“I think you’re pretty, present tense,” Zach replied.

“I dropped my fork,” Justin interrupted. April looked down, and indeed, there it was between their feet under the table. “April,” he said, “could you grab my fork?”

April bent down, retrieved the utensil, which was admittedly slightly closer to her than to Justin, and handed it to him. Justin made the bird sound again and put the fork on the table in front of him. Maybe the sound was some sort of celebration, or congratulations? Some of the guys April worked with at the movie theater greeted each other by holding their fingers to their eyes like fake glasses and saying “Seeeee”. Who knew why guys said things? April didn’t like being left out of the joke, though.

Justin had picked up a crayon from the basket on the table and was drawing on his placemat. At first, April thought he was just doodling, but after a few minutes, she realized that he was drawing her. She wished the seating arrangement were different, so she could show him her left side, which she knew to be superior to her right. She watched as the crayon moved, revealing her face in waxy navy blue. When she caught Justin’s eye, he looked down at his lap and smiled with only the left side of his mouth. It felt like a sign that she was in the right place: out having escapades. She liked seeing herself as the good-humored heroine of an odd meet-cute.

“Let’s play a game,” said Zach. “Two truths and a lie.” Zach’s truths were that he had played through and won all sixteen Final Fantasy games, and he had a pet snake in high school. Liz’s truths were that she won a beauty pageant when she was four and she could bend her pinky toe backwards (she demonstrated). Justin’s truths were that he’d interned for a summer doing computer forensics for a government agency he wouldn’t disclose, and that he’d never been to the state of California. When April’s turn came, she couldn’t think of a single showy anecdote to share.

“Um,” she said. “Okay. I was born in Michigan. I have a sister. And, um, I’ve been taking antidepressants since I was twelve.”

“Three is obviously the lie,” said Zach. They don’t prescribe antidepressants to kids, do they?”

“Show us your driver’s license,” said Liz. April reached into her bag for her wallet.

“All that will show is that she lives in Michigan now,” Zach laughed. “Wait a minute! April, Liz, you two can help us settle a debate! The question is: what is a woman more likely to have in her purse: a tampon or a tangerine?”

“No, we decided that’s too narrow,” Justin said. “A tampon or any piece of fruit.”

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it, but fine,” Zach conceded. April did not like talking about tampons in any context, especially not a potentially romantic one.

“Definitely a tampon, right?” said Liz.

“I’m an only child,” said April, desperate to change the subject. “That I have a sister, that was the lie.”

The food arrived: two massive white porcelain trays overflowing with lobster tails that barely fit on their table. The waitress looked embarrassed for them, leaving them unprotected with so much food. April was torn between theoretically appreciating the festivity of the spread and not actually wanting to eat it.

“Hey Liz, will you feed me a bite of lobster?” asked Zach. Liz giggled and pried open one of the bright shells, spearing a piece of lobster meat, dipping it in butter, then bringing the fork to Zach’s mouth. Zach chewed, swallowed, then smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Cacaw!” April now wondered if the sound celebrated the girls doing something the guys had asked them to. She felt uncomfortably like a dog in obedience school.

“This one’s a keeper,” Zach beamed at Liz.

“An upgrade from Toxic Maggie,” Justin agreed.

“Who’s Toxic Maggie?” asked Liz.

“My ex,” Zach said. He didn’t seem fully convinced of her toxicity.

“How long ago did you break up?” asked April, thinking Liz might want to know.

“It’s not even one hundred per—”

“Three weeks ago,” Justin interrupted. “And yes, it’s one hundred percent over. If you dropkick a guy after he floats you two months of rent, you don’t get a second chance.”

“You paid her rent?” Liz asked. “Can I, I mean, may I ask why?”

“She was having a rough time,” Zach mumbled.

“Yeah,” said Justin. “A rough time trying to decide what flavor of fro-yo to spend Zach’s money on and majoring in Astrology.”

“You can major in Astrology?” asked Liz. “That’s, like, signs and stuff, right?”

“Metaphysical sciences,” said Zach.

“I’m an Aquarius, but I think I act more like a Libra,” said Liz.

A loud group of guys in fraternity jackets walked in. April envied the life of a college boy who never had to modulate the volume of his voice regardless of his surroundings.

“Those guys were in Target earlier,” Liz said. “I guess they just got new pledges. They made a mess of the toy section. I don’t work that section, but I had to clean it. It sucked.” There was something about Liz’s monotone that was both off-putting and sexy.

“Ooo, Liz, I know how you can get them back,” said Zach.

“I wasn’t that mad, it was just annoying,” she said.

“You should flash them.”

“How would that ‘get them back’?” asked April.

“If you think I’m cute, you’ll do it,” said Zach.

Liz inhaled swiftly through her nose, then whistled and lifted her tank top up and down in under a second. The frat guys laughed, and a few gave her some half-hearted applause.

“Cacaw!” went Zach, confirming April’s suspicion.

“Such assholes,” said Justin.

“Seems like in this scenario we were the strange ones,” said April, feeling slightly ashamed to be sitting at this table.

Zach was cracking up, saying “Liz, you are my queen!”

“I hope they fucking choke on their hamburgers,” said Justin.

“Should we tell them about our evil plan for Sigma Chi?” asked Zach.

“What plan?” asked Liz.

“Well, let’s just say that getting a hold of a hundred rats is easier than you might imagine,” said Justin.

“Ugh!” gasped Liz. “I hate rats.”

“Hey, Liz, draw a rat,” Zach said, handing her one of the crayons from the basket.

April couldn’t help but picture Justin and Zach as rats, which was not, for her, an aphrodisiac.

“I’ve never gotten the appeal of frats,” April said. “Any meathead can join one, but then it’s supposed to be this mark of specialness.”

Justin swallowed a fry wrong.

“You okay?” asked April.

“That’s not true,” said Justin, recovered.

“They’re not for meatheads?”

“They’re not that easy to get into.”

“Our sweet Justin here did not make the cut to join the aristocratic brotherhood,” Zach added.

“I drew a rat,” said Liz, presenting her paper placement to Zach, who kissed the rat drawing, then made the bird sound again. “I think I’ll name him Bartholomew,” said Liz. Reaching for Liz’s picture, Zach knocked over his water glass, sending ice skittering across the table.

“April,” Justin said, with the forced calmness of a flight attendant in turbulence, “pick up the ice cubes from under the table.”

“What?”

“It’s bad luck,” Justin said. “Letting an ice cube melt on the ground. Five years of bad luck, multiplied by however many cubes spilled.”

“It’s true,” said Zach. “Five years of bad luck. Per cube.”

April stooped under the table and started gathering the ice cubes in her hand. She knew she was playing into the boys’ game, but Justin’s desire for her to do it seemed so much greater than her desire not to. The dark gray carpet felt grubby—April wondered how often they vacuumed under the booth—and the cold water unearthed little pebbles of dirt. Zach’s knee was jerking up and down in absent-minded frenzy. He probably burned off a beer’s worth of calories in fidgeting alone. Justin took up more than half of the booth, his knees spread wide, his legs unmoving. When April inhaled deeply, she could smell the denim of his jeans.

April crawled back up to her seat and deposited the ice cubes in Zach’s empty water glass, where they made a satisfying clink. Justin cacawed. April wiped her cold, wet fingers on the napkin in her lap. Retrieving ice cubes from under a table wasn’t exactly the stuff great meet-cutes were made of. She realized dully that it wasn’t her using these guys for an adventure, but the other way around.

“Okay, so we never settled our debate,” said Zach. “Tampon or tangerine?”

“Tampon or fruit,” Justin corrected.

“Whatever.”

“I say we test it,” said Justin. “April, show us what’s in your bag?” April conducted a frantic mental survey of her backpack and realized with horror that it did contain a tampon.

“No thanks,” she said. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff in there, I don’t want to … ”

“Liz, open your bag,” Zach interrupted. Liz pushed aside one of the massive lobster platters and turned her purse upside down. She shook out her phone, an overstuffed keychain, a granola bar, a bottle of Advil, a lighter, and a near empty pack of cigarettes. Zach cacawed.

“Hmm, inconclusive,” said Justin. “No fruit and no tampon. April?”

“I guess we’re just going to have to live in uncertainty,” April said, with an uneasy laugh.

“Are you hiding something incriminating?” asked Zach.

“No, it’s just … private.”

“April doesn’t trust us with her secrets,” said Zach. At this point, April worried that refusing to empty her bag was more damaging than revealing the tampon. She didn’t want to be a joyless person, someone who never quite gets the joke. She just didn’t see what was fun about any of this. She was the only person who opted not to participate in prank week at school. The only one at sleepovers who didn’t think it was fun to sneak into someone’s parents’ secret porn stash and stick sleeping girls’ hands into cups of water. Always on the periphery, never quite understanding what everyone else was enjoying so much.

“Fine,” she said, unzipping her backpack and shaking its contents onto the table. She watched Justin out of the corner of her eye, and sure enough, he cacawed. It was a contest; April was Justin’s entrant, and Liz was Zach’s. April mentally reviewed the meal, trying to remember what she’d done at Justin’s bidding, how many points she had earned him.

“Is this … could this be? Yes!” Zach shouted. “This is most definitely a tampon! And, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but I’m not seeing any fruit in here. April, am I missing anything? Are you carrying a minuscule mango I might have missed?”

“Okay, lay off,” said Justin. “You win: the evidence shows that with a sample size of two, a woman is more likely to have a tampon than a tangerine.”

The waitress approached the table, taking in the contents of the girls’ bags and the all-but-untouched lobster platters warily.

“Y’all still working here?” she asked.

“I think we’re ready for a check,” said April.

“Want me to … pack these up for you?”

“Okay,” said Liz. “I’ll bring it home.” The waitress took away the platters. When the check arrived, no one moved towards it. Liz seemed to assume that the guys would be paying for the meal, but April wasn’t sure.

“Thank you so much for dinner,” she tried. “It’s nice of you to treat us.” Justin didn’t protest and reached for his wallet. He and Zach each set a credit card on the check, and April cacawed. She saw a moment of alarm in Justin’s face, then a moment of hardness, then something else. Maybe respect.

“Can I be excused? I mean, may I? I’m just going to the bathroom,” said Liz, getting up, then folding her napkin neatly at her place before walking to the ladies’ room.

“Zach, can you take the check to the counter?” asked Justin.

“I think she’ll come back for it,” said Zach.

“ … then leave for another reason?” asked Justin.

Zach shrugged, “I’ll hit the bathroom, too.”

Once they were alone, April asked, “It’s a game, right? You’re trying to get us to do stuff?” Justin looked pained. April could swear she heard Justin swallow, like a cartoon frog in trouble.

April was sure that some sort of an explanation would follow, but after some infinite number of seconds, realized it would not.

“Have you guys done this before?” she asked.

“No.”

“What was it about me that made you come up to me at the bookstore? Do I look like someone who takes commands well?”

“I kind of didn’t expect that you’d say yes to dinner in the first place,” said Justin.

“And this is your idea of fun … ”

“If we won, I would have given you five thousand dollars,” Justin deadpanned.

“Um … what?”

“No, I’m kidding. Obviously. I dunno. I guess I’ve always just liked games. The structure. The clarity of knowing when you’ve won. I didn’t think it’d be, like, insulting for you.” April reviewed her inner state. Was she insulted? What she felt was more like a cool, dark disappointment.

“I’m sorry if I cost you the win,” she said.

“I mean, it’s not over yet,” said Justin. “That all-expenses-paid vacation to the Bahamas could still be ours.”

“What would clinch it?” asked April. “Furtive blow job under the table?”

Zach and Liz returned from the bathroom holding hands.

“Liz is gonna show me her place,” Zach said, not without some glee. “J, I’ll meet up with you later, yeah?” Liz took the giant plastic takeout bags, and April admired the confidence of a woman who wouldn’t leave behind two pounds of lobster in deference to setting the mood.

When they left, Justin and April sat in silence for a moment. Then, with that lopsided half-smile, Justin picked up his fork, and slowly, deliberately, dropped it under the table.

“You could just kiss it,” he said.

Feeling almost outside her own body, April crawled back under the table. She tried to find the thrill of adventure in the dark anonymity of the small space. Life is an ice cream cone, and it’s melting!, she instructed herself. She ran her fingers along the tines of the fork, and for an instant, pictured herself jamming it into Justin’s lap. She pictured herself stroking it gently up his calf, like a metal feather. She pictured herself curling up under the table and falling asleep for a hundred years. Justin’s legs were still as stone. April cradled the fork in her hands. She channeled the choir of her roommate, her mom, Sheryl Sandberg: none of them wanted her to get to third base under the table at TGI Fridays. Nor did they want her to commit aggravated assault with cutlery. She wasn’t sure what anyone wanted of her. Well, she knew what Justin wanted.

April got off her knees, emerged from under the table, dropped the fork into Justin’s lap, and walked out of the restaurant. She felt a lightness bordering on ecstasy as she walked out of the mall, putting more and more space between Justin and herself. Driving home, though, she was back to berating herself for once again failing to open up to a win.