Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [47]
And I said, “JESUS CHRIST! HAVEN'T YOU PEOPLE EVOLVED AT ALL?”
Actually, I didn't. I did what I always do in situations like this. I made the kind of polite small talk that I hate, just to get it over with as quickly as possible. So I very calmly explained that no, Pepe and I weren't a couple because I was still with Marcus and he was still with Bridget and that we had just said good-bye to them because they were driving to California in the Caddie.
Then Manda, who has never met another girl's boyfriend she didn't blow, said, “Wow, you must really trust them.”
And Len looked up through his overgrown bangs and apologetically said, “Um.”
And the dirigible asked, “Is Bridget still smokin' hot?”
And the whole thing was so excruciating that I wanted to grab the minispoon out of the complimentary mint dish and stab myself in the eyes.
Fortunately, they were on the way out. The fearsome foursome hadn't arrived together, but had simultaneously arrived at the cash register to pay their respective checks. Now they were all considering heading out to the Bamboo Bar for happy hour.
“For old times' sake,” Manda said, which was a strange thing to say considering the old times included Len cheating on me with Manda, Manda cheating on Scotty with Len, and Scotty suggesting that we get back at both of them by banging each other.
“I think we'll pass on the Boo,” Pepe said, saving me.
“Your loss,” said the helium-headed beast. “Twenty-five-cent drafts.”
“We have to get together before we go back to school,” Manda said, hugging me as tightly as one can with elephantine tits. “Oh, and your hair looks soooo cute, by the way.”
My hair. DAMMIT.
Len held out his hand all formal-like and said, “Um. It was really good to see you, Jess.”
I shook it and said, “You too, Len.”
And I sort of meant it, though it would have been nice to talk to him solo and find out about his first year at Cornell. But such opportunities aren't afforded to The Ex-Girlfriend Who Has Moved On. What Len lost in points for his questionable choice in companionship, he made up for in his choice of attire—a totally sincere Cornell T-shirt. This makes him the only other college-aged male besides Marcus who hasn't succumbed to the tyranny of the ironic T-shirt. To make my point, Scotty was wearing the worst of its kind: the fake homemade ironic T-shirt, the likes of which are often seen on the Ryan Seacrests of the world. This particular version was Astroturf green and silk-screened with the name of a nonexistent fitness club, but the print was faded and reversed, to create the illusion of being worn inside out, a lame trick confirmed by the location of the 95 percent cotton, 5 percent Lycra tag sewn on the inside of the shirt, rubbing up against Scotty's neck fat, and not on the outside of the shirt, which is where it would be if it were truly being worn inside out. But the hallmark of this fake homemade ironic T-shirt was the iron-on-like letters spelling MOST ATHLETIC across Scotty's double-barreled chest, as if he had come up with the fashion innovation all by himself. Gee, this secondhand shirt is really cool. But it would be really, really cool if I turned it inside out, and applied some iron-on irony. I'm gonna heat up the good ol' Proctor-Silex right now! And furthermore, this isn't even a smart choice for an ironic T-shirt because Scotty was indeed voted MOST ATHLETIC in our yearbook superlatives, which just goes to show you how irony has become so misused, abused, and confused in these early years of the twenty-first century.
Okay, let's just get this out of the way: The reason I'm so annoyed by the pervasiveness of the fake homemade ironic T-shirt is that they ruin the purity of Marcus's genuine homemade ironic T-shirts of yore. There, I said it.
By the time Pepe and I sat down at our table, I was thoroughly exhausted. I didn't feel like talking anymore, so while Pepe went on and on about how amped he was about starting at NYU, I pretended to take great care in picking songs from the minijukebox in our booth.