Free THE BRO-MAGNET by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

discussion about furniture buying, the cat – Billy has changed so much in the past month since he got married, I’m half amazed that he’s still drinking regular beer and not some high-brow brand; or even worse, mixed drinks with strange names.
    “Here we are!” Three Sheets says brightly as she follows Alice back into the living room like Alice is the lead in a two-car train and Three Sheets is the caboose.
    Alice is carrying a square white dish upon which are arranged four appetizers that look to be about one-inch by one-inch square. It’s all very geometrical. And small.
    “Sit,” Billy says as Alice sets the plate down on the redwood table that’s got a hole for an umbrella but no umbrella, indicating I should take what is clearly the best piece of lawn furniture in the house, the chaise.
    I straddle the end, reach for one of the appetizers – I see now it’s a square of toast with a dab of some kind of pasty stuff on it with a sliver of something else on top of the paste – and pop it into my mouth.
    “It’s good,” I say to Alice.
    Before she can thank me for the compliment, which I’m sure she would have, Three Sheets starts to talk, making me all nervous again.
    “I wanted to thank you in person for what you did at the hotel,” she says.
    “It was nothing,” I say, not really sure where she’s going with this.
    Nervous, I pop another appetizer in my mouth.
    “Really good,” I say to Alice.
    “To me it was everything,” Three Sheets says. “I’ve been in that situation before – drunk, really drunk, and then… stuff happens.”
    “Yeah, well, we all – ” I cut myself off from saying anything stupid by shoving a third appetizer into my mouth. I make the OK sign at Alice with my thumb and forefinger as I swallow.
    “And then after stuff happens,” Three Sheets goes on, “what usually happens is the next day I get so nervous worrying that maybe I was too drunk to use birth control correctly and worrying I might be pregnant, the nervousness makes me skip my period and then I get really sure I’m pregnant and I freak out and then – ”
    “And then she calls me,” Alice says, “having called me at each stage in a panic, and I talk her through every step of taking a pregnancy test and everything turns out fine.”
    “Thank you for saving me from all that panic,” Three Sheets says.
    This is too much. Is this what it’s like for Billy now all the time? All this talk of women stuff and periods?
    “Um, you’re welcome?” I say.
    “Seriously,” Alice says, “thank you from both of us. If you’d taken advantage of Dawn like I originally thought you had, I would have been getting panicked calls all through my honeymoon. When I didn’t get any calls, I knew I was wrong about you.”
    “Wait.” I point my finger at Three Sheets. “Your name is Dawn?”
    I realize my mistake as soon as the words leave my mouth. Why oh why must I always commit the insanity of doing the same dumb shit – the same dumb shit that falls under the heading of just being myself – over and over again.
    Alice goes from civil to fishwife in one second flat. “Oh my God, Johnny, you are so gross! You went to a hotel room with my cousin with the original intention of sleeping with her and you didn’t even know her name?”
    I could point out to Alice at this juncture that Three Sheets – I mean, Dawn – was the one who invited me to that hotel room when she didn’t even know my name. But I don’t do that because I can tell Alice maybe doesn’t have the most respect in the world for her cousin already and if Alice thinks I’m a skunk for not knowing Dawn’s name, what will she think of Dawn for not knowing mine?
    “Yeah,” I say, popping the fourth appetizer into my mouth, “I’m a real creep that way.” I indicate the empty plate. “Hey, you got any more of these? They’re great.”
    “No, I don’t,” Alice says through gritted teeth.
    “You don’t?” I feel my eyebrows go up. I was