Season 1, Episode 16: Mean Girls

Episodes May 19, 2026

The light came on and I grudgingly came awake to a voice stirring me in a hushed tone.

"Do you want me to make you breakfast in bed?"

"I'm sorry, what?" I said, groggy because it wasn't even dawn yet.

"Breakfast in bed, honey. If you want me to do it, let me know and I'll go get started."

"Amber, can you make breakfast?"

"I mean, I've never done it before but I've been watching YouTubes and I think I can crush this."

"And you're all excited to try."

"Uh huh."

"You're absolutely adorable. But here's the thing - it's still dark outside and I really don't want to get up yet, so I want another hour to sleep."

"Yeah, but..."

"Amber, please."

"Well, but you have that meeting at 9 in New Orleans, so you probably have to get on the road by 7:30, and I know you like to take your time getting ready in the morning, so..."

I growled a little. She was right. It was barely six in the morning, I hadn't slept much, which was my fault for staying up and watching TV and then fooling around with my Factory Girl bed buddy, and I probably did need to get up a lot sooner than the hour later I was hoping for.

"So...breakfast in bed?"

"OK. But please don't burn the kitchen down, because I'm going to try to take a nap while you're doing it."

She gave me a big smile, then she leaned over and kissed me. Amber's kisses were kind of cold - literally, as body heat wasn't really something they built into her - but it's like they say, it's the thought that counts.

Even if the thought is AI generated.

She hopped out of bed, stepped into her slippers and padded down the stairs to the kitchen. I rolled over and tried to get a few minutes more of precious shut-eye time.

Alas, it didn't last long.

Breakfast was...passable. Amber's eggs were a little runny and the toast was a bit overscorched. But she got the bacon just right, so there was something to build on. And she was so happy watching me eat that I couldn't help but be in a good mood.

Then there was a shower, and then there was me getting dressed, including...

"I think you should wear this tie. I love how it looks on you."

"Oh, really?"

"Mmmhm! Bold stripes are manly. They say you're powerful and decisive and capable."

"Where'd you get that from."

"From GQ! Where else?"

Amber had been on a non-stop reading binge. I'd gotten the geek at the computer shop down the street to do some upgrades on an old laptop I still had and I'd given it to Amber, and she was using it to surf the web with every spare minute, filling up that hard drive of a brain of hers with every manner of useless, and some useful, information.

And then she insisted on a kiss goodbye as I left to hit the road.

As I was driving, it hit me that the illusion Amber was creating was the ultimate girlfriend experience. It had been a couple of years since I'd had anybody who really qualified as that - Peyton was sort of a half-assed friends-with-benefits relationship, and I had a few hookup opportunities I was less and less interested in, and way too many friend-zone things going on.

I had women in my life. I wasn't an incel, or whatever the awful term was for "single and not looking" men these days.

The problem was that - and Peyton was a perfect example of this - none of the women I was around appeared capable of bringing peace and enhancement to my life. Instead it was drama, strife, and conflict.

And I really don't do well with conflict on the home front. I have a really competitive streak, and it kicks in when I'm challenged. Get me thinking that a situation I'm in is win-lose, and I'll get creative about trying to win.

In business, that works...sometimes. On the golf course it's mostly a lot of fun. But in a relationship, most often when you win you lose. And I know this, but I struggle to apply it.

I'm not special in this regard. I get that. Guys who are in a position to choose will almost always pick women who are happy being a sidekick and a peacemaker. There's that meme about how 10 out of 10 men will choose a pretty, cheerful and sweet waitress at Waffle House over a corporate bossbabe with a gangster roll of money, and whether it's really 10 out of 10 or more like eight, there's truth to it.

I've dated bossbabes. Two big relationships. I was miserable. Both times it was like being with a man - an insecure, scheme-y beta male of a man. And what those relationships did to me, I didn't like - because when I got masculine energy from my girlfriend, I'd give it back. And not in an overly chivalrous way.

Which I'm not proud of.

Those relationships turned nasty. I turned nasty, but in both cases, at least from my perspective, it was a response to the stimuli I was getting from being on my guard the entire time and from the inherent problems of "petting a porcupine," as one of my friends calls dealing with a mean girl as your significant other.

Both of the two bossbabes I had serious relationships with made good money. I haven't seen either one in a long while. I wouldn't be surprised if they had more money than I've got. But one thing I knew was that their money was certainly never going to be mine - so what did I care what they made?

That didn't make me special, either. This is why guys will choose the sweet waitress.

So I do what I can to stay away from disagreeable women, at least from the standpoint of dating.

I had all this on my mind, of course, because that night I'd agreed to subject myself to being Peyton's plus-one for the Pink Ball. This was an annual gala thing that the Ladies' Benevolent Society put on.

And it was the Bossbabe Ball. That's what the LBS was - essentially it was a charity group that all the career chicks in town belonged to.

They didn't allow any husbands to go to the Pink Ball, not that too many of them were upset about that. The married bossbabes all went stag, or they'd go with their friends, or the Pink Ball was their chance to have an outing with their gay-guy friends. The unmarried ones brought dates, which was sort of a...status thing, like who could bring the hottest and most eligible, or at least most interesting, guy.

I didn't confer any status on Peyton that I could see. As hotness went, I was pretty average. I wouldn't consider myself all that eligible given the state of my business.

What scared me was that I was interesting. And that Amber made me that way. And that the Pink Ball was going to be the third degree.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to cancel. I absolutely didn't want to be the center of attention at that thing.

But I did my meeting in New Orleans, and then I came back and did another, and I busted my ass on a couple of reports I needed to send to clients, and then I went to pick Peyton up at her place, feeling guilty about the brave face Amber put on when I left.

I'd told her about the ball, and she said she was cool with it. And she barely batted an eye when I said I might be late and I might even stay the night at Peyton's.

But I could tell it was breaking her heart that I was choosing to spend the evening - maybe the night - with a real girl. And that made me feel like shit.

But at Peyton's...

"So what do you think?"

"I like it. But aren't you supposed to wear pink to this thing?"

"Something pink, yes."

"Well, I don't see..."

"You will, later tonight."

"Oh. But won't they give you a hard time about that?"

"The girls all know. If they can't see your pink thing, it means it's underneath."

"But what if you're lying?"

She just frowned at me. Peyton was terrible with banter, and I kept forgetting that.

So we went to the ball, and...

...they definitely didn't spare any expense putting it on.

But this was not an overly enjoyable place for a straight guy to be. I let Peyton work the room, seeing all her friends, and I hung back at the bar. Next to me, two gay dudes were gossiping about their dates.

"No. It's perfect. Sasha and Anna have a thing for each other, so it's not like you have to do either one of them. They'll do each other."

"Yeah, but you're Anna's date. Isn't she bi?"

"Of course she is, though I think it's really just with Sasha. But she has a thing for gay men. It's...well, normally I'm not into girls, but there's something about her."

For some reason, I guess they noticed me then, and the two of them stared at me. I just smiled a disinterested smile and turned back to order another drink.

Then I turned the other way, and...

"Hi."

"Hello there. I like your dress."

"It's the only pink thing in my closet, so..."

"Well, it's very fetching."

She smiled at me, and I was just about to ask her name, when...

"There you are! OK, so, you have to come and talk to these women, because they want to know all about your..."

"Peyton, come on. Don't make me do that."

I turned to look at my gorgeous interlocutor from a few seconds ago, but she'd vanished.

"Ummm, hello? Oscar, this wasn't just about you coming to this. It's about you participating in it."

"Yeah, but Amber is nobody's business but mine. Why are you telling anybody about her?"

"I didn't! They already knew!"

"Great. So Sasha did."

"I dunno. I mean, if you didn't want anybody to find out you shouldn't have gotten her."

"No, actually it wasn't unreasonable to think I could do that and have it be nobody's business but mine."

"Why whine about it? Come on, let's go take your medicine."

So I spent the next half-hour getting rudely grilled by a gaggle of bossbabes giving me the Mean Girl treatment about the fact that "you live with a sex doll." It was unpleasant, but I could tell that a number of them were more engrossed than grossed out. For something so offensive they sure did ask a lot of questions.

"Does it have orgasms?" Well, sort of. But she seems more interested in whether I do.

"It has a personality?" Yeah, definitely. She's a cross between Cinderella and I Love Lucy.

"Will it turn into a serial killer like in the movies?" Amber's barely strong enough to carry a pot, much less wield a knife.

"So, like, it cooks and cleans and it's like a robot housewife?" Well, yeah - and don't be so surprised if this catches on, since apparently a guy has to buy a robot from China to get what his dad and grandfather pretty much took for granted.

They didn't like any of my answers, but they kept asking more questions.

And my competitive thing took over and my responses became a lot more smartassed and less fun, which Peyton finally began picking up on. I caught the beginning of a lecture about how "sex dolls are the ultimate objectification of women," and I rolled my eyes and said it reminded me of the old Winston Churchill line - you've probably heard it; some woman at a dinner party he went to told him that if he was her husband she'd give him poison, and he retorted that if she was his wife he'd take it. The whole gaggle laughed, but I could tell a lot of them were a little uncomfortable.

And just then I caught a glimpse of that tall redhead from the bar. She'd apparently been watching my interaction with the bossbabe coven, but then she was leaving with some gorilla of a guy she was with. Our eyes did meet, if only for a fraction of a second.

Maybe by accident, as I did freeze in mid-sentence when Mystery Girl caught my eye, Peyton jumped in at that point. She put on this act where I was turning her on and she needed to get me home to "scratch this itch of mine."

It struck me that Amber would never dream of saying anything that crass, even though it did extricate me from an uncomfortable situation.

But at the car...

"I hate to say this, but I think I have a headache. We might have to take a raincheck on paying you for this."

"That's all right," I said.

"Wait, what?"

"It's fine. We can do it whenever."

"No. You're supposed to get mad. I just turned you down for sex."

"Actually, you didn't. I didn't ask."

"Oh, because you're gonna go home and pump the sex doll."

"I might, but Peyton...I'm not really in the mood. I just got dragged across concrete in there. I'm exhausted. If you said you wanted to cuddle with me I might actually choose that over sex right now."

"I can't decide if you've turned pussy on me or if you've just decided you'd rather bang that Factory Girl."

I rolled my eyes and sighed.

"Oh, for Chrissake, Peyton," I said. "If I'd brought you to some guys' club thing and all of them started asking you about your body count you'd be in therapy for weeks over it. Don't start this shit with me."