Chapter 2
The King of Fail

"Aw, even I know not to say anything about them being on the rag!" Nick crowed, "Dude, you -- you are the king of fail. The king, Brian. You don't just reside in kingdom of Fail, you friggin rule over it."

I have no idea why, of all the people I know, I called Nick to discuss my problems, but low and behold, here I was, sitting forlornly on the sofa, hugging my knees, a blanket pulled around me and the cushions huddled up together behind my back. I sighed. Nick, my single, crazy-ass best friend, whose longest relationship was shorter than the expiration date on my current gallon of milk in the fridge, was now crowing and calling me a relationship failure.

Me, his married-for-ten-years buddy.

"I know, I broke the cardinal rule."

"Dude, the only thing you could've done to make it worse was call her fat and ask if she'd consider a threesome," Nick laughed, "You're a jackass, dude."

"You're really not great at the cheering people up thing are you?" I asked miserably.

"Oh is that what I'm supposed to do?" he laughed, "Sorry, my bad. Lemme try again..." he paused, hummed a moment, then said, "Y'know, there really is no positive spin I can put on this, dude. You're screwed."

Actually I was the opposite of screwed, but I wasn't about to go into that detail with Nick. Not Nick. Anyone in the world but Nick.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Troubleshoot," he said.

Figures he'd come up with some technical-computer-savvy term to respond with. "How?" I asked.

"Did you clean up the mess?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay, so go like - go do all her chores. Y'know? Vacuum, do the laundry, mop the floor, clean the toilet. Do whatever."

I scowled, "Nick it's like eleven o'clock at night, I'm not gonna go do all that shit right now..."

I could almost hear him shrug through the phone, that's how well I know him, I knew he was shrugging. "Well," he said, "Man then you're screwed."

With a sigh I stood up, "Do you even know how to make a washing machine work?"

"Okay Brian, heres' the thing about you and me..." Nick said, "I pay people to do my laundry. Just cause you are all domesticated family-like over there and acting like you're the Cleavers from the 1950's or something doesn't mean I know how to make your machines run. Alls I know is you can't put clorox in a Downy ball. That's all I know."

I shook my head.

"Seriously dude, do it. Troubleshoot."

Nick hung up and I sat there, staring at the mess. I sighed. "This is so stupid," I murmured. I flumped back down into the sofa cushions. I stared at the smiling faces on the Enchanted menu and thought about how freaking happy everyone always is in fairy tales. I shook my head.

Stupid fairy tales...