It was clear that I wasn't hitting this tonight.

With her sister watching me from the dance floor like a hawk, pretty much any moves I could think of were nullified. Yet, I still couldn't stop talking to this girl.

We covered all the basics with our conversation, like work, family, movies and all the usual crap. She told me that she worked at a travel agent, which I thought sounded pretty cool. Apparently it's not though, as booking someone else's holiday can get a little depressing. Especially now where we were still in winter. All throughout this, she refused to let me buy her another drink.

Just when I started to get a glimmer of hope that I might be able to persuade her to ditch her friends and come back to my place, her friends signalled to her that they were leaving and she gave me an apologetic look, sealing my fate.

"I guess I better get going too," She sighed, clearly disappointed.

"You can stay here with me. I don't mind," I shrugged, trying to play it cool.

"Nah, I better make sure my sister stays out of trouble. She has an awful habit of getting too drunk and making terrible choices," She laughed. Guess I'd been flirting with the wrong sister. "But it was really nice to talk to you," She said, standing up and zipping up her jacket before wrapping a black scarf around her neck.

"Absolutely. We should do it again sometime," I nodded, standing up too for no apparent reason.

"I'd really like that," She smiled back. Without thinking I took out my phone and asked if she'd like to put her number in it so that we could make it happen. Thankfully she did and gave me a short hug before darting off to catch up with her friends and slutty sister.

I exhaled deeply once she was out of sight, and briefly thought of following her to wherever they were headed next. However, I was quickly convinced otherwise.

"Looking smooth, Romeo!" I heard Eddie howl as he and Dean rejoined me.

"How did it go?" Dean asked, more sensibly.

"I did ok," I shrugged. I was between a rock and a hard place of sorts. To Dean, this would look like I'd done an amazing job of womanising. But to Eddie, this would be considered an "epic fail".

"Is she giving it up tonight?" Eddie asked expectantly.

"Not tonight," I sighed.

"Well fuck her! Let's go find some even hotter chicks!" Eddie did his best impression of a captain rallying his troops before storming towards the exit.

"We getting a cab home?" Dean asked me.

"Oh hell yeah!" I agreed before we chased after Eddie.

*

The following morning was met with the usual banging headache and dry throat, but I didn't feel as bad as I could have. Eddie on the other hand, certainly did.

"I'm never drinking again!" He claimed, banging his head on the table.

The three of us had gone out for breakfast in a bid to stop our hangovers before they got any worse. If we stayed in bed then we'd be suffering forever, so we decided to let a whole load of bacon, sausages, eggs and shit loads of coffee help us out. We recounted everything we could remember about the night before and how much Dean had now written down.

"I think I've got a solid first chapter in mind," He said cheerily.

"Does it involve David striking out with that chick at the bar?" Eddie asked from his almost horizontal position.

"No," He answered. "Nor does it involve you striking out with that weird chick. I swear you were telling me some funky shit when we couldn't find her again."

"Like what?" I asked with an excited chuckle.

"Like how once he got a hold of her and she surrendered herself to him, they were gonna go back to the apartment and have the most rough, beautiful, violent sex imaginable, smashing beds and tables and everyth-" He stopped suddenly when he saw that Eddie and I were laughing hysterically. "What? What's so funny?"

"Here's the extra toast you ordered," The shell-shocked waitress said, almost dropping Dean's plate in front of him instead of placing it.

"Oh . . . thank you . . ." He mumbled with his head down and his cheeks flushed.

As we continued to laugh at the awkward exchange, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Taking it out, I smiled when I saw Melissa's name pop up.

"Hope that bottled water helped this morning! Xx"

I laughed at the memory of our conversation then I replied saying that thankfully it wasn't needed, but I couldn't say the same for my friends.

"Mine too! Guess they all missed out on our very informative conversation! Xx"

Why was I attracted to a girl that used words like informative?

"David!" I heard before I could answer myself. "Are you even listening? Round two tonight. Yay or nay?" Eddie asked. Considering his hangover, you had to give him some respect. As for his commitment to never drinking again, not so much.

"Yay, obviously!" I snorted. What kind of a question was that?

"I don't know guys," Dean sighed. "I had fun last night but I should really do some writing. I mean, what good are notes if that's all they are?"

"The more you prepare the better, right?" Eddie grinned. Dean shrugged, seeing his point.

"I don't know . . ." He said again, but by now I knew we had him.

"Look Dean, I haven't seen you smile so much in months," I told him, seriously. "This is the progress we've been waiting for! You can't stop the train now!" Dean's facial expression told me that my words were the final nail in the staying-in-coffin.

"And you know what? I've made a decision," Eddie announced. "Tonight I'm gonna take a back seat. Tonight, I'm going to be the wingman to the both of you. Tonight, I guarantee that I'll get you both laid!"

"I love your dedication to the cause," I said, bumping fists with him. Once again though, Dean didn't look convinced.

"Thanks . . . I think. But I'm good."

"Come on dude, this has been going on forever!" Eddie cried. "This is the biggest step to getting over Christy, I swear to you!"

"He's right. The only way to get over someone is to . . . get over someone else!" I agreed, struggling to remember the real phrase.

"You two are idiots."

We both shrugged.

"Besides, look at me! I'm not exactly Ryan Gosling or anything. Girls just aren't going to flock to me like they do with you guys," Dean sighed.

"Amateur," Eddie chortled. Before Dean flew off the handle at him, I decided to explain exactly what Eddie meant.

"What he means is that looks, although a help, actually have very little to do with the hooking up process. Especially at our age. It's more about the way you are. Like, how you carry yourself, you know?"

"I guess you're right," He nodded. "It's what's on the inside that counts."

"Fuck no!" Eddie yelled.

"What?"

"It's all about how sell yourself, you know? Like how you're perceived. Like, we're obviously terrible people right?" I asked.

"Right," Dean confirmed.

"And do I look like Brad Pitt to you?" This time I asked Eddie.

"Absolutely not."

"Yet, who is the only one of us to get a chicks number last night?" No one answered this question. They couldn't argue it. "Do you understand where I'm going with this?"

"Not really," Sighed Dean.

I decided to try a new approach. One that he was certain to understand.

"Ok, this," I said, picking up a banana from the fruit basket we'd bought with our food. It was always a failsafe in case the breakfasts didn't go down well. You can still eat and rehydrate yourself. "This is a computer."

"That is a banana," Dean wasn't playing my game.

"Ok, fine. This is a banana. Your job is to sell me this banana," I handed it to him before liberating another piece of fruit. "Convince me that the banana . . . is a better machine than the apple."

"Ummm," He stumbled. "It's bigger?"

I stared at him in disappointment. Like that time my mom caught me trying to feed my homework to our dog.

"Maybe he'll learn better in the field?" Eddie suggested to me.

"Maybe you're right," I agreed.

Dean started to laugh then. "You two should teach a class or something."

"Laugh all you want, boy, but school is officially in session!" Eddie snapped.

"And I know the perfect classroom," I grinned widely.

*

We were seated in one of our favourite bars in all of Seattle.

It was a weird kind of place that wasn't too big but was always busy. Better yet, you always got a table if you wanted it. It never made any sense but we liked it that way. We were sat in the middle of the room, in the first row of tables from the bar so that we had the perfect view of all of our surroundings and the alcohol wasn't too far away.

"So remind me again what we're doing?" Dean moaned. I swear he was like a bratty child. "I feel like an asshole," He said, rubbing his sweater sleeves as if it would make them disappear.

"Relax," Eddie sighed. "This place is ultimate casual. You might feel like an asshole, but if you wore that shirt again then you'd look like one; and that is always way worse."

We'd all decided that tonight we were going to look as relaxed as possible. Mostly because we were still a bit hungover and we wanted to be as comfortable as possible. But also because in some cases, girls have no interest in the guys who're dressed up like an FBI agent. Sometimes casual is cool. I myself, was just wearing jeans and a blue long sleeved shirt that I'd gotten for Christmas.

"Whatever," Dean sighed, before opening up the Fetch app on his phone again and going on a swiping binge.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Put that away!" I cried.

"What?"

"Rule number one of picking up chicks in a bar. No phones!" Eddie answered. Dean raised his hands in confusion so I decided to elaborate.

"Ok, listen. If a girl is on the hunt for a man on a night out, she's gonna have a scan of everybody in the room. Now if she sees you on your phone, who are you texting? She has no idea. It could be your girlfriend, your mom or your sister or whoever. It could be some girl on Fetch. Not only that, but it looks like you're more interested in whatever's on the screen then you are with what's happening here. Alright, look at those girls over there," I ordered, pointing subtly to a table at the far side of the room. Once Dean turned his head to look, I asked "What do you see?"

"A bunch of hot chicks talking to each other," He shrugged. He wasn't wrong.

"What else?"

"One of them is on her phone."

"And what does she look like?" I asked again, all my attention on the group. There were five girls all sitting around the table with two talking excitedly about something and another two whispering about something else. The fifth was sat texting away to whoever and not taking her eyes off her Iphone.

"She looks like a moody bitch," Dean admitted.

"Exactly." Eddie chimed. "And so would you go over there and talk to her?"

Dean shook his head and put his phone away, accepting our lesson before sitting up straight and facing us both once more.

"Dude, breathe," I laughed.

"What?"

"He means sit down," Eddie explained.

"I am sitting down."

"No, you're supposed to be sitting in a chair. Right now, you look like a fucking chair," I sighed.

Once again my explanation required more information. I told him that if he sat back in the chair and got comfortable, then he'd look even more approachable. No girl would go near a man who'd pass for a corpse.

"Lean back, put your arm on the back of the chair or something," I suggested. "Look like you belong here. Like you own the place."

Dean looked at Eddie and me and saw that in fact we were both sitting in a relaxed position. He unfolded his arms and tried to mimic us. Finally, he got the hang of it.

"I feel . . . wide," He told us.

"Good. It's called marking your territory," Eddie stated.

Ignoring him, Dean turned back to me and asked what was next.

"How do we get to the girls?"

"Patience young Jedi," Eddie snuck in.

"Eddie's right, you're Luke and I'm Obi Wan. These things take time. We want to have fun first, and besides. A girl would have to be pretty fucking horny to leave a bar with you before nine o'clock!" I laughed.

"What Star Wars character am I?" Eddie asked, energetically.

"Jar Jar," Dean and I agreed.

"Assholes," Eddie huffed before getting up to buy us some more Coors Light.

"So seriously, we just wait?" Dean asked me now that we were alone.

"Absolutely. Look, you need to drink more to loosen up a bit and so do they. I'm all about getting laid, believe me! But I wanna hang with my buds too. The cell phone is only acceptable when someone's calling you, or when you're alone at the table, got it?"

He nodded in agreement and we turned our attention to the basketball game on TV.

That night was the first time in a long time that I felt I was able to just shoot the shit with my best friends without anyone being weighed down. We let Dean get on his phone once to note down all we'd taught him and any other crazy ideas he'd come up with. Meanwhile I checked my phone too.

Do as I say, not as I do.

"Out again!? You're going to need some more of that water from our favourite club in the world! ;) Xx"

I'd been texting Melissa all day and I'd lost count of the amount of times I'd laughed at her lame jokes. I'd tried convincing her to come out and meet us but she was determined to have a movie night with her psychotic sister.

"Are you not smashing her yet?" Eddie asked, stealing a glance at my phone as I was replying.

"I'm working on it."

"Speaking of working, I think I've found our targets for the night," Eddie nodded in the direction of a group of girls sitting at a table not far from "moody bitch on the phone". There was around seven of them but three were facing us and sneaking looks at us while giggling amongst themselves.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually up for this," Dean smiled. The alcohol was definitely taking its hold on him.

I told him to bring his chair around to our side of the table and the three of us continued to watch the basketball game whilst low-key spying on our obvious admirers.

"How is this working?" Dean asked after a while, clearly impressed by the attention we were getting.

"I told you!" I cried, keeping my eyes on the TV so it just looked like I was losing my shit at Lebron James. "Just relax and act natural. When you get to our age, the only real requirement that a girl has for you is that you aren't fake. Just be yourself and you're instantly more attractive".

"I thought we were faking this?" He asked.

"Just because we've got a game plan, it doesn't mean we're faking anything," Eddie pointed out. "It's just being prepared!"

Dean either agreed, or thought it best not to argue. Either way, he shut up and got back to acting natural. Ish.

*

"Guys look!" Dean panicked, nodding towards where the girls were sitting. They'd gotten up and were walking away from their friends. "They're leaving!"

"They're not leaving," Eddie assured him.

Sure enough, I watched them as they passed the exit and all went into the bathroom together, like girls do.

"This is a good sign," I said. "Next lesson. While we have no problem sitting out here coming up with a game plan, girls do it in the bathroom."

"They do?"

"Absolutely!" Eddie agreed with me. "Why else would they always go in together? It's not like they need to hold anything for each other!"

"I didn't need to hear that," Dean heaved.

A few minutes later the girls re-emerged from the bathroom and instead of heading back to their friends, they bought another round of drinks for themselves and then approached our table.

"Hey guys!" One of them said in a clearly flirtatious tone.

"Good evening ladies," Eddie smiled, instantly transformed from the crude dude I was used to, to the perfect gentleman.

"You mind if we sit?" Another asked, winking at Dean as she spoke.

"N-n-no not at all!" He stammered, stealing a chair from the table next to us for her to sit in.

As we all paired up with the girls, I couldn't help but think of one scary premonition.

Was Eddie right? Was this the night when all three of us got laid?