“Instagram,” Amy said instantly. “You know he uses it.”
I sucked on my teeth, putting off the dreaded moment a little longer.
“DO IT!” Eva shouted, and I jumped so badly I dropped my phone.
“Aw, gross!” I picked it up gingerly. Amy dampened a paper towel and wiped at my phone impatiently, with the air of a teacher who has dealt with a lot of gross things.
“Come on, that girl could leave any minute.”
Realizing Amy was right, I opened Instagram and found Christopher Butkus quickly.
“Dear Christopher,” I began.
“Come on!” Amy jiggled her foot. “Just get to the point. Ask him for advice to help Eva get a girl.”
I started the message again. “Hey, Christopher, remember when you gave me advice about”—I stopped and decided not to mention Stephen’s name, in case it caused Christopher to toss hisphone in rage—“a guy? Wondering if you could help my friend. She’s having bad luck with the ladies. Keeps getting rejected, ignored, and ghosted. She’s hot so that’s not the problem.”
I sent it—and then decided to add some more details.
“We’re at a club and there’s a cute girl here. But my friend is scared because she’s been burned too many times. Thoughts?”
“Okay. Well, that’s out there now. Should we go back to the bar and—” I was going to say that we should carry on with our night because there was no telling when he would respond, but then I glanced back at the conversation and gasped. “He’s typing back now.”
Amy and Eva crowded around me, and we peered down at my phone.
“People are all the same,” he wrote, and the three of us intoned his words aloud. “We like a bit of competition. We like to think something is our idea. We like to feel like luck is on our side.”
Eva looked up at me, puzzled.
“Can you be more specific?” I typed. “What should she do?”
“Have fun in front of the girl in question. Maybe talk about other girls where she can hear you. Get her to approach you.”
“What does he—” Amy began, but something clicked in my brain.
“I got it!” I typed a quick thank-you, then slipped my phone back in my purse.
Back in the club, I told Amy to follow my lead.
“Eva,” I said, “I’m going to find someone for you to dance with, and you have to do it. It’s just a dance, nothing more has to come of it with the person, okay?”
Eva nodded.
I scoped the crowd and found an edgy-looking woman with tattoos and long blue hair dancing with a group of friends. I pointed her out, and to my surprise, Eva didn’t ask anything further. Sheslithered through the crowd and danced right up to the blue-haired girl, smiling and confident. The girl looked delighted and turned her back on her friends to dance with Eva.
Next, I fished in my purse and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.
“Excuse me.” I approached a woman in a leather jacket sitting at the bar. After I had explained my request, she snorted and nodded with a grin as she pocketed the ten.
I dragged Amy onto the dance floor, where we started to dance right next to Eva’s crush and her latest partner. I gave a thumbs-up over Amy’s head, and the woman in the leather jacket gave me a salute. I felt like I was in a spy movie.
Leather jacket woman danced over to the short girl with box braids and shouted, “’Scuse me; I was wondering if you could introduce me to that girl? I saw you dancing with her earlier.”
“What?” Eva’s crush looked confused.
“That girl.” Leather jacket woman pointed over the crowd to where Eva was dancing. I mentally patted myself on the back for the excellent choice of decoy dance partner; dancing with the blue-haired girl, Eva looked untouchably cool. “D’you know her? Can you introduce me?”
“Um…” On her tiptoes, she peered at Eva, and her next words were tinged with regret. “Not really, sorry.”
