The Pretend Girlfriend

Chapter Two~ Starbucks and Beatrice

The thoughts racing through her mind began growing distant. Her eyes stayed shut without her needing to clench them. Slowly, she started to doze. But then her cell began to buzz. She'd put it on silent and left it on her desk, but she'd forgotten to disable the vibrate function. At first, she tried to ignore it. But it didn't stop. Grumbling about being left alone, Gwen climbed out of bed with a stormy look on her face. She snatched up the phone, meaning to just turn the thing off completely and get back to her very important nap. But the screen lit up, showing her a slew of missed text messages with their little green icon, as well as several calls, all from the same person.

All from Beatrice. The texts were all along the lines of, "Hey! What's up?" "Come on, let's do something!" "If you don't answer, I'll tell Steve Messner you think he's cute!" The phone vibrated in her hand again. Beatrice's mug shot appeared on the screen, smiling at her.

She had curly auburn hair and full cheeks. They'd been friends ever since meeting during orientation week back in first year. Gwen bit her lip again, finger hovering over the power button. Beatrice was a bit of a... strong personality. People usually thought she was joking when she threatened them with something embarrassing. But she wasn't.

Gwen had learned that early on. And she certainly didn't want Beatrice telling Steve Messner anything. He was a decrepit old Intro to Psych professor who liked to leer at all the girls in class and flirt with them in front of everyone. Gwen did her best to stay away from any of his classes after first year.

So Gwen answered the phone. "Hey, B, what's up?"

"Not you, apparently? Jeez, Gwen, I was about to come over there and knock down your door. Anyway, you're lucky. I found Messner's phone number off his faculty page ; I have it written down here and everything."

"You know, that wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to me today," Gwen said. She went over to the window and parted the blinds, peering down at the street as though she might see Janice coming in through the front entrance to tell her this was all just some misunderstanding. But the only things down on the street were cars and vans and trucks, and none of the pedestrians looked like Janice.

"What's up?" Beatrice said. Despite her jokey nature, she really did care about her friends, and could be serious if the need arose.

For the third time that day, Gwen related her story. Every time she mentioned Janice's name, she stomped down on her messenger bag. It felt good to hit something, and the books had a nice give to them.

"Okay, here's what you're going to do: you're going to meet me down at that Starbucks on the corner in twenty minutes and we're going to figure this out..."

"I can't afford a latte..." Gwen started. It felt good to get some sympathy, but she needed more than a Janice-bashing session over espresso.

"My treat. Just meet me in twenty minutes..." Beatrice's voice grew mischievous, "Remember, I still have Messner's number written down."

"Okay, okay, fine. Just make it twenty five minutes; I have to fix myself up."

"Twenty," Beatrice said. Before Gwen could argue the point, Beatrice hung up, and the text Gwen sent received in reply an image of a notepad with a phone number scrawled across it and a little devil's face drawn beneath. To Gwen's surprise, it actually felt good to do something . The urge to crawl back in under the covers receded as she threw socks and jeans and shirts out onto her bed looking for the right thing to wear.

Even though this wasn't going to magically make thousands of dollars suddenly appear in her bank account, it was a step towards some sort of solution. Even if it was just a solution to her burning need to unload on someone. Just moping about in bed also felt good, but it usually led to just sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, and that definitely wasn't going to get her the money she needed.