The Play

“All right then.”

I haven’t been drinking, so I make the ten-minute drive to campus and turn onto Greek Row. I can’t find a spot in front of the Theta house, but there’s a stretch of empty curb a few houses away. I park the Rover and that’s when I hear the yells.

Oh shit.

I quickly jog down the lane, skidding to a stop cartoon-character style when I spot Nico on the lawn of the Theta house, shouting up at the second-floor window.

“Come on, Demi! Please!”

The man sounds utterly destroyed. I’d probably feel genuine sympathy for him if not for the fact that I know precisely what’s going on. He cheated on Demi at the party. There’s no other reason why he’d be outside Demi’s house, begging her to let him in.

“Please, mami, I love you! I fucked up, okay!”

I lurk near the hedges that separate the sorority house from its neighbor.

“Go away!” comes a high-pitched voice.

It’s not Demi. I peer up and see two girls at the window, their figures backlit by Demi’s bedroom lights.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you. Go away,” one of them yells.

“We’ll call the police if you don’t,” the other one warns. “You’re disrupting the peace. People are trying to sleep.”

“It’s nine o’clock on a Friday and this is Greek Row!” Nico growls. “Nobody is fucking sleeping, Josie! Just tell her to come down.”

“She doesn’t want to see you, you cheating prick.”

Yup. I called this one.

“Demi,” he wails. His voice actually cracks, and this time I do feel for the guy.

I know narcissists—I lived with one my whole life—and they don’t usually experience remorse. If they do show any regret, it’s probably an act. Yes, Nico could be putting on that act, but my gut says he isn’t. He seems genuinely heartbroken.

He made his bed, a voice in my head points out.

“Demi! I’m going to stand out here all night until you let me in! Please. We’ve been together forever! You owe me a conversation. You owe me a chance to explain—”

A shriek of epic proportions slices through the night air. It’s shrill enough to give Rupi Miller a run for her money.

Demi appears at the window, shoving her sisters out of the way. “I owe you?” she thunders. “I OWE YOU?”

Nico instantly recognizes his mistake. “No, I didn’t mean it in that way—”

She cuts him off. “You cheated on me with one of my friends! And then you cheated on me again with some random chick at a party!”

Oh, Nico, you stupid bastard.

Any sympathy I had for him is long gone. I’m solidly on Team Demi. I mean, I always was, but now I don’t care how gutted the guy appears to be. He deserves it.

“We’re done,” Demi screams out the window. “Do you hear me, Nicolás? We’re done.”

“Baby, don’t say that.”

“You’re right—we’ve known each other forever. I’ve been loyal to you forever. But you’re incapable of reciprocating that loyalty. So please, just go.”

“We can work through this,” he pleads. “Please, give me another chance. Let me earn your trust back.”

“Dude!” a random voice shouts from one of the neighboring houses. “You’re pathetic! Bitch wants you to leave!”

Demi ignores the interruption. “There’s no earning my trust back,” she calls to Nico. “We’re done. I don’t want to be with you anymore. I don’t want to be with a liar and a cheater. I’m worth more than what you’ve given me.”

She’s right about that. And call me a perv, but I’m disgustingly aroused by the sight of her right now. Her cheeks are flushed and her dark eyes are blazing like hot coals. She’s got a hand on her hip as she glares down at Nico. Fierce and confident. Scorned but not defeated.

“We’re not done,” Nico says.

“We’re done,” she repeats.

“You’re done, bro,” someone else hollers, and then other voices from Greek Row chime in.

“Go home, asshole!”

“You’re killing my buzz!”

Nico only has eyes and ears for Demi. “You don’t mean it,” he informs her.

Idiot. Men really need to stop telling women what they mean or don’t mean. The one lesson I’ve learned over the years is that a woman doesn’t appreciate it when you put words in her mouth—or your dick in someone else’s mouth.

“Oh, trust me, I mean it.” Demi abruptly disappears from the window.

For a moment I think it’s over. But then she reappears, her arms full of clothes.

“Let me help you clean out your drawer before you go,” she says angrily.

I choke on a laugh as items of clothing come sailing out the second-floor window onto the lawn. A Celtics hoodie. Some T-shirts. A pair of boxers float down.

“You don’t deserve a drawer in my house! You don’t deserve anything anymore. I’m done with this. Take all your stuff and get out of my life.”

Once again I think it’s all over.

But then Nico, stupid stupid Nico, utters the dumbest shit he could’ve ever uttered. “Don’t you dare throw my PlayStation out the window, Demi!”

If that ain’t a challenge.

She whirls around again, and this time she doesn’t come back.

Huh. Okay. Maybe she decided to spare the PlayStation. Nico seems to think so, because his entire body relaxes. He glumly walks forward and begins picking up the clothes on the lawn.

He still hasn’t noticed me, and I’m not about to make my presence known. It’d be like approaching a lion with a thorn in its paw.

Just when I decide all is well—when the night is quiet and Nico’s scattered items have been collected—the front door of the sorority house flies open and Demi emerges. Holding a tangle of cables, controllers, and a slender black PlayStation.

Nico’s head snaps up. “Thank you!” Looking relieved, he holds out his hands as if he truly believes he’s getting the game console back unscathed.

“Thank you? No, thank you,” Demi shoots back. She’s spitting fire again. “Thank you for wasting eight years of my life.” She hurls one controller to the ground. “Thank you for lying to my face.” The second controller smashes on the concrete walkway. “Thank you for disrespecting me.”

When she reaches the curb, the only item she’s left holding is the PlayStation.

I hold my breath. The other components could easily be replaced. This console itself can’t.

“I never want to see you again. You’ve ruined this. You ruined our friendship, you ruined our relationship, you ruined everything.”

Crash!

The PlayStation collides with the sidewalk, breaking into several pieces.

Nico has the nerve to say, “I can’t believe you did that!” Which prompts Demi to take a swing at him, and that’s when I jump away from the hedge.

She manages to get one sharp blow in before I haul her away from him, trying to corral her like a wild horse.

She might not be a teammate, but I think this still qualifies for paragraph four, line eight of the captain’s log: Don’t let your teammates commit murder.