Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Megan walked into MacLaren’s that night in 2007, I was instantly drawn to her. Long blond hair, cute sundress, self-assured walk that incidentally showed off her hips – every guy in that bar was thinking only one thing. (Except Josh and Jermaine in the corner, who were on their first date and only had eyes for each other. But that’s another story.)

So Megan walked in, and I had this distinct feeling that we were going to get to know each other better that night. Just something in the air, but it never fails me. And I was right.

“Hi,” Megan said, sliding into the booth across from me. “Carl sent me over. I’m Megan.”

Sara didn’t take her eyes off her burger. Let me give you some advice - never mess with a vegetarian who’s recently thrown over scruples for deliciousness. “I’m Sara. Happy to meet you.”

Over Sara’s incoherent mumbles of meaty joy, I smiled at Megan. “Don’t mind Sara. Carl recently hired a new cook, Ricardo, and the burgers have become phenomenal. You should try one.”

Megan smiled back, looking a bit nervous and yet exhilarated at the same time. I often had that effect on people in those days. “My boyfriend – sorry, my ex-boyfriend – says I should stay off fried food. He thinks I’m getting fat.”

“Men,” I said, rolling my eyes in disgust. “They’re always trying to undermine your confidence. You look great.”

“Thanks,” Megan said, brightening. “I shouldn’t order a burger, though. I’ll get burger breath, and that’s not very sexy.”

I reached across the table to pat her hand. “Honey, the way you look tonight, you could have Godzilla breath and every man in the joint would still be knockin’ at your door.”

She giggled, and I saw to my satisfaction that she was calming down. It’s hard to screw up the “Hot Chick in Bar” play, but I’m sorry to tell you that it does happen. I’ve seen a girl get so nervous trying to pull it off, that she upchucked her martini all over Barney’s front – and not even being a fifteen on the ten-point scale could have excused the violence done to one of his beloved suits. She failed to score.

Wendy arrived at Sara’s elbow just then. “Here, I’ll take that.”

Sara tried to cling mutinously to the plate for a moment. “There’s still some sauce left.”

“It’s dribbles. Give it.” Plate ruthlessly acquired, Wendy turned to Megan. “Ted and Robin are already here, and it sounds like they’re expecting the others soon. You briefed?”

Megan fidgeted in her seat. “I think so. Lizzie explained it all to me.” She turned to me. “She said you’d talk me through it.”

“Don’t worry, everything will be fine,” Wendy assured her. “Carl’s calling me. You guys have fun. Particularly you,” she said to Megan, dropping her an exaggerated wink before departing in the direction of the bar.

“It’s like this,” I started, spreading my hands to help me explain.

That was when Barney walked in.

I pity everyone who hasn’t seen Barney in his prime. Fitted suits, cocky flair, rakish tilt to the head, expensive French cologne that was so understated you only caught it when you were close enough to kiss him…that man exuded sex. That man was legendary.

It was a shame he sucked so hard at picking up girls.

Wait. Let me back up.

~//~

The story begins in the fall of 2005. I had just moved in with my boyfriend, Carl MacLaren, who owned a bar. Carl had won the lottery when he was 27, and apparently a lot of guys dream of owning a bar, kind of like a lot of girls dream of owning a coffeeshop-slash-bookstore combination. (I imagine that of the two, bars make more money.) MacLaren’s was the result.

Anyway, Carl was his own primary bartender, and we lived above the shop. I was a PhD student at Columbia back in those days, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the bar. There are only so many papers you can grade sober, and only so much time you can spend staring at your dissertation before it starts staring back at you. And that, let me tell you, is not a pretty sight.

I met The Gang my first week after moving in with Carl. I was down at the bar, knocking back a drink, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Barney, although I didn’t know that. “Haaaave you met Ted?” he asked, before whisking himself away.

It was, although I didn’t know it yet, the beginning of an era…

~//~

“Hi!”

I took my eyes off the book I was reading. After successfully extricating myself from a clingy, if slightly dorky-cute, Ted, I had commandeered a corner booth to wait for Carl to take his dinner break. “Hi?”

The woman who had spoken sank down into the seat across from me with a moan. “God, that feels good. Hi, I’m Wendy.”

I shook her hand, remembering Carl’s stories about his bar staff. “You’re a waitress here, right?”

“For my sins,” she said, cheerfully. “And you’re Carl’s hot girlfriend, Yasmin.”

I laughed. “Guilty as charged. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, taking a swig of her beer. “I enjoyed watching you crush Ted’s hopes and dreams. Not that I hate him, but he’s a bit annoying.”

I raised an eyebrow. Back then I was really into slightly pretentious facial expressions. “How do you know so much about Ted?”

“Please,” Wendy said, snorting. In most people snorting would be an unattractive noise, but with Wendy it just made her seem whimsical. You’ll have to trust me on this one. “You work in a bar as long as I have, and you get to know the regulars. The Gang has been coming here for four years, and I know more about them than they do.”

“The gang?”

So she filled me in. Marshall and Lily, who I hadn’t met yet, were a couple who’d been together since the beginning of college, and who were getting engaged as we spoke. Wendy thought the ring was small but pretty. (She’d seen it when Marshall was showing it to Ted earlier that week.) She also had suspicions that Lily must be one of three things: an heiress, a gambler, or a hooker. (This was due to her wardrobe, which Wendy informed me could not possibly be afforded on a kindergarten teacher’s salary - back in those days they made even less money than a bar waitress.)

Ted, who I had met, was a serial monogamist who used to play the field but had recently begun showing signs of turning into a bleeding-heart romantic. Wendy was suspicious that this new leaf was a front, but after hearing Ted’s spiel about his dream wedding, I wasn’t so sure. She insisted, however, that anyone who was a wingman for Barney could never be truly interested in commitment. Not Barney’s wingman.

Ah, Barney. I’d barely met him earlier, if you can even call “Haaaave you met Ted?” an introduction. Wendy dismissed him rather quickly, although with a twinkle in her eye. “Outrageous, hilarious, thinks he’s God’s gift to women. To hear him talk, you’d think he slept with a new woman every night. Please.” She grinned. “Keep an eye on him, though, it’s fun watching him strike out.”

“Who are we talking about?” Carl asked, sliding in next to me and leaning down for a kiss.

“The Gang,” Wendy said, tossing back the last of her drink. “We’re on Barney right now. Finish filling her in – if you’re here, I’m back on shift.”

Carl nodded, and Wendy left. I tucked my book into my bag, although not before craning my neck to see what “The Gang” was up to. Ted had just had a drink flung in his face by a gorgeous girl. (MacLaren’s did seem to attract a lot of hot girls back then. I wasn’t quite sure why. Carl always said it was because it had a smokin’ bartender.)

“The Gang’s fine,” Carl said, munching on a fry. “Barney’s a turd, but he’s good business. Quietly bankrolls The Gang, for one thing, but he also buys a lot of girls drinks, of course. And he tips well if any of them make a scene.”

“Does that happen often?”

Carl shrugged. “And Lily’s lovely. If she ever breaks up with Marshall, and you’re up for it, we should definitely invite her for a threesome. I’ve seen the way she looks at girls. I bet she’d be game.”

I smacked him in the arm. “She’s getting engaged tonight. Have some respect, dumbass. And finish telling me about Barney.”

He grimaced, holding his arm. “Don’t tell me you like him.”

“I don’t!” I protested. “You’re my boyfriend, and I don’t even know him. There’s just something interesting about him. As a character study. You know I need character studies for the book I’m going to write some day.”

“Hmmm.”

Just then, Barney walked up to the table next to us. Carl winked at me, and we both settled in to watch.

“Hey,” Barney said, his voice dropping about an octave.

“Hey,” said the girl at the table, looking equal parts wary and intrigued. His voice did sound a bit creepy. Still, from where I was sitting, I could see the way his muscles moved under his sleeves, and if I could, she could too. I put a hand on Carl’s ample bicep to reorient myself.

“I usually don’t do this,” Barney said, leaning over her table, “but you look good enough to eat. Want to come over to my place and see just how hungry I am?”

I think my mouth might have dropped open. “He is bad,” I said to Carl, under my breath.

“Wait until you see him in costume,” Carl told me. “It gets better.”

~//~

The first time I saw Barney out of a suit, he was wearing all black, looking for all the world like a particularly emo Frenchman. He’d even grown out a tiny mustache that he touched pensively.

“Oui, mademoiselle,” he told a pretty redhead, “I am a food critic. I have won many prizes for my work, and restaurants fear my name.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “I have a very talented tongue.”

I was sitting next to her, and the hair on the back of my arms rose.

~//~

“So he does have some game,” I said, clinking bottles with Wendy. Zut alors!Barney had disappeared with the redhead. I didn’t blame her. Sure, it was corny beyond belief, but there was just something about him, something indescribable. Beyond the ridiculousness, you really did get the feeling that he knew how to rock a woman’s world. (Sara would later point out that this might just be because he believed it so strongly himself. Confidence is a powerful thing.)

“It’s funny,” I mused then, making a face over the lip of my drink. “One day I think he’s the most horrible pick-up artist ever, and the next he’s somehow making it work. He’s an enigma.”

Wendy slammed her bottle on the table. “That’s it.”

“That’s what?” I was alarmed. This was only my second week in Carl’s bar-world, and I didn’t want to somehow be the inadvertent cause of his best waitress quitting.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Wendy said. “I’ve got to know whether he does indeed have game.”

“You’re going to sleep with him?”

Wendy nodded, looking determined. “I, Wendy, will accept this challenge. I will sleep with Barney Stinson and determine once and for all whether we should be laughing at the girls who do or the girls who don’t.”

I should perhaps have been less amused by this. But I was still in the honeymoon period with Carl, and everything seems a lot funnier when you’re having plenty of sex. Besides, The Gang was a never-ending source of entertainment for us. They were like a bar videogame, except they also paid for drinks.

“I expect a full report, Captain,” I told her, solemnly.

~//~

I’d only managed to write 200 words in my dissertation that day – being distracted by pressing games of Minesweeper and a call from my mother – so I wasn’t in a particularly good mood when I walked into the bar.

Wendy gestured to me frantically.

“What?” I said, nodding at Carl. Bless him, he knew my poison and immediately supplied it. There was a reason I kept that guy around.

Wendy was on her way out with a plate of food, but she bent down to whisper in my ear as she went by. “He’s got game. Serious game.”

Over dinner later – it was a good thing I was a student, because otherwise routinely having dinner at 1 am would have thrown off my internal clock rather badly – she filled me in.

It had been an easy conquest. Dabbing at a small stain on her chest while pushing her boob up had opened his eyes to her attractiveness, and asking him to help her clean up after closing had given her an opportunity. After that, it was only a matter of time (and not much time, at that) until they were having sex on top of the bar.

“Reminding myself to tell Carl later to use industrial strength cleansers,” I observed. “So?”

Wendy grinned.

“Come on, full report!” I said. “Don’t leave me hanging here.”

Wendy bit her lip coyly, then waved across the room. I turned and saw Barney give her a little awkward wave back.

“What. Happened.”

“Welllll,” Wendy said, drawing it out, “let’s just say I never knew I could go more than once, if you know what I mean? I had three.”

“Really?” I had to admit I was impressed.

Wendy sighed nostalgically. “He wasn’t kidding about his tongue.”

I checked to see if Carl was safely out of earshot. Not that he had anything to worry about – I did love him rather dearly – but no guy really likes to hear his girlfriend discussing other men’s prowess. “And…downstairs?”

Wendy grinned again.

“Dammit,” I said, starting to tear my napkin into little pieces.

Wendy tapped her bottle on the table. “I’m kind of dating him now.”

“What? That wasn’t the plan! You were just gathering information!”

“Shhh! I know it wasn’t the plan. But hey, he won’t want to kill the bar, and neither will The Gang. I bet I can get at least a week out of him before he can’t stand it anymore and breaks it off.”

I had to admit, she had balls. “Is he really that good?”

Wendy laughed, and blew a kiss in The Gang’s direction. “Yes. And he’s also really cute when he’s worried.”

“What did you do to him?” I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to know.

Wendy coughed. At first I thought Barney had suddenly loomed up behind me or something, but then I realized she was just setting the stage for herself. “It finally happened. All this time, every drink I brought you, I always felt there was this unspoken connection between us. And I was right.”

“Oh God. Don’t take up a career as an actress.”

She threw her napkin at me.

~//~

And that was where it all began.

Oh, don’t worry, this is not the Wendy-and-Barney story. They dated for a week and then broke up. She got enough orgasms to leave her walking slightly funny for weeks, and he got a lasting fear that she was going to poison him for dumping her. (That wasn’t Wendy’s fault. She was nothing but nice to him. She did find it a bit funny, but nobody’s perfect.)

Wendy’s knowledge-gathering expedition, however, started an entirely different story. A story that would lead us one day not only to Megan, but far beyond. It would lead us, in fact, to you.

Before we get to that part of the story, though, I have to introduce you to Sara. There could never have been an Awesome League of Awesomeness without Sara.

Sometimes the best things in life need a catalyst.

~//~

“We’ve got a problem,” Carl told Wendy quietly, pitching his voice so that patrons wouldn’t hear.

Wendy looked up, brow furrowing. “Don’t tell me someone’s decided to leave lipstick messages on the mirror in the ladies’ room again. Because god, if I have to clean up lipstick one more time, I’m going to start confiscating them all at the door.”

Carl shook his head. “Remember that new drink I came up with?”

“I remember,” I said darkly, from my seat at the bar. He’d tried it out on me the night before. Back then he only took one night off a week – and probably wouldn’t have taken any without my urging – so believe me, on that night momma wanted her needs scratched. Dubious concoctions that turned into legendary hangovers had not been on the agenda. Yet somehow they had happened nevertheless.

“I said sorry about that,” Carl apologized again, doing his best puppy-dog eyes. They were pretty good, so I nodded magnanimously for him to continue. “The problem is, Ted may have just drunk five of them.”

Even Wendy, who didn’t fully appreciate the seriousness of this situation, blanched.

“Well,” I said, finger leaping to my nose, “I’m not cleaning that up. I will, however, have fun watching this evening unfold. Relocating to a table now. Wendy, do we sell popcorn?”

The full details of that evening are unnecessary. Let’s just say that among other things they involved Ted attempting karaoke, falling off the chair he was standing on to do the karaoke, spraining his ankle, hopping around on one foot pretending to be a penguin, making a great many drunk phone calls, trying to sound like a rhinoceros for three minutes straight, and a pineapple. Don’t even ask about the pineapple.

Ted didn’t throw up, though, and despite Carl taking pity on him and putting his phone number on Ted’s arm in case he got lost, nobody ever called. A day later, he was back in the bar, acting like nothing had ever happened. We shrugged, made impressed faces at his alcohol tolerance, tried not to think about what else he might have done with that pineapple, and went back to our lives.

Two weeks later, however, Sara sat down across from me.

I was scrawling grim pleasantries on a stack of papers. Pleasantries, because students these days think they’re paying consumers and will do just about anything to raise their grades, including crying, bribery, parental pressure, and suing your ass. So it’s best to try to phrase criticism as gently as possible, to avoid giving them any opening in which to claim you didn’t like them and took it out on their grade. (Seriously, I’ve had someone complain that I was prejudiced against rich people and held him to a higher standard because his dad was a millionaire. Someone else said I was a lesbian and didn’t like him because he was straight. As the first guy couldn’t string sentences together and the second guy had mistaken Wikipedia for a peer-reviewed journal, neither complaint went very far. Still, I’ve learned the hard way to be careful.)

Grim, meanwhile, because that’s exactly how you feel by the thirtieth example of what I used to call the “it’s 3 AM and this stupid thing is due at 9 AM oh crap well I’m smart I’ll just pull it out of my ass” paper.

I’m telling you all this because it may help to explain my frame of mind when I looked up, saw a pretty girl smiling at me, and grunted, “Hey. I’m busy.”

“Hey. I’m Sara,” Sara grunted back, in an uncanny imitation. “Can I buy you a beer?”

I cocked my head to one side. “Sorry, I’m currently playing for the other team. My boyfriend’s the bartender.” I gestured in Carl’s direction. “Thanks though.” Hey, she was cute. I was grumpy, not blind.

She laughed. “Not hitting on you. Especially now that I know your boyfriend’s the bartender. I just need to talk to you, and I thought a beer might buy me some of your time.”

I took a long look at the stack of papers in front of me. Then shrugged. “I should finish these, but frankly it’s probably better for my mental health that I put them off until tomorrow.” And better for my students’ grades, although that mattered less to me. “Okay, buy me a beer and tell me your problem.”

So she did. Her problem, it turned out, had to do with one of her friends, a girl called Trudy. The two-week-old Pineapple Incident, as we were calling it by then, had apparently had another chapter - in which Trudy went home with Ted.

“I wouldn’t have thought Ted would have been able to do much, drunk as he was,” I said, impressed despite my own better judgement. (Yes, if you’re saying that we shouldn’t have gotten this invested in the private lives of our regulars, you’re probably right. But it’s an irresistible urge. You’ll know if you ever run a bar. Or a coffeeshop. Mostly a bar.)

Sara laughed. “He wasn’t. He drooled all over her shoulder and then passed out. The next morning she had to climb out the fire escape to avoid an awkward situation with his girlfriend.”

“Robin’s not his girlfriend,” I said immediately.

(Oh, Robin. I haven’t introduced her yet. I keep forgetting you don’t know everyone. Okay, Robin was the hot chick who threw a drink in Ted’s face that first night when he hit on me and risked castration by Carl, and then they ended up going out but he said I love you on the first date like a jackass, and then they became friends and she joined The Gang. More – much more – on her later.)

Sara shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, Trudy’d just broken up with her long-term boyfriend, so her judgment was pretty impaired. When he left her an apologetic voicemail the next day, she was going to call him back and see if they could actually date.”

“This is after he took her home, drooled on her, and passed out,” I said, just to confirm.

She nodded.

“Damn,” I said, taking a swig of my beer. “Ted’s got the luck of the Irish or something.”

“So she called him,” Sara continued. “But he didn’t pick up. He’d gone to the bathroom or to get a bagel or something, and his friend had his phone.”

Somehow I knew where this was going. “Did his friend happen to be called Barney?”

“You do know him!” Sara said, sounding relieved.

I turned my head to The Gang’s booth, but it wasn’t their usual time and they weren’t there yet. “I have that dubious pleasure.”

Sara suddenly looked a bit awkward. “The thing is, she ended up having sex with him.”

Ah. “And now you want to slap him for taking advantage of your friend when she was in a vulnerable place?”

Sara blinked at me. “No. She knew exactly what she was doing. Believe me, I know. She told me all about it in extensive detail afterwards.”

I tapped my finger on the top paper. A page-long paragraph gleamed sadly up at me. “Then what’s the problem?”

Before she answered, Sara downed the rest of her drink. “My boyfriend broke up with me two days ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I wondered whether I should reach over and pat her hand. Female solidarity and all that. I didn’t know her very well, though, and anyway she didn’t look all that heartbroken. “Are you doing all right?”

“I’m better off without him,” she said, confirming my assessment. “He was a lying rat. The thing is, though, he cheated on me with the instructor of my massage class, while saying he wasn’t in the mood for sex with me because I’d gotten ugly. He had sex with her for a month before he bothered to break up with me.”

I cracked my knuckles. “Tell me where he lives. I’ve got a car, we can turn the alarm on outside his building at 4 in the morning every night for a week. I keep crazy hours, it’s cool.”

(Sara says that’s the moment when she decided we were going to be best friends forever.)

Sara grinned. “I like the way you think. But no, I wouldn’t put his neighbors through that. The important point is, though, that I’m both very horny and very inclined to prove that I’m not ugly.”

“You’re not ugly,” I told her immediately. “You’re very pretty.”

“I don’t only like the way you think, I like you,” Sara said. “If you ever want a massage, let me know. I’m still training but I’m really good at shoulder ones.” She frowned. “I’m going to have to change classes now. Dammit, George, I hate you.”

(The first time Sara gave me a shoulder massage was the moment that I decided we were going to be best friends forever.)

“I’ll definitely take you up on that sometime,” I told her. “Meanwhile, though, I’m guessing you want me to find you someone to go home with tonight?”

Sara shook her head. “Not someone. Barney Stinson.”

Wendy, passing by, jerked around. “I can’t stop, but say what now?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, waving her off. To Sara, I asked, “Why Barney?”

Sara sighed, picking at the fries she’d ordered. (This was back when she was still a vegetarian. Unfortunately, I didn’t know, or I would have told her that Carl’s cook did them in bacon fat. I blame myself for her later backsliding. Bacon will do that to anyone.) “I told you Trudy slept with him and told me all about it? Well, apparently he’s the single best fuck she’s ever had in her life.”

“Really,” I said, sitting back and steepling my fingers under my chin.

One story is an anecdote. Two are…well, two anecdotes are not data. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that. Sorry, I’m an academic, had to do it. I’ll get back to Sara now.

Sara nodded. “Yes, really. And I figured, well, the single best fuck I’ve ever had in my life sounds like a perfect way to wash George and his stupidity out of my life forever. It’s like a little celebration and a massive fuck-you, all at once.”

I thought about this, but could find no overt flaw in the reasoning. “Go you. Have fun.”

“The thing is,” Sara said, leaning forward across the table, “how am I supposed to get him? I’m used to having guys hit on me. Even if I knew a lot about hitting on guys, I don’t think he’s the sort to go for that.”

“So you thought you’d come get the inside scoop from me,” I surmised. “Why’d you think I’d know?”

Sara shrugged. “You were here the night of the Pineapple Incident. I’ve been back three times and you’ve been here every time. I figured you were a regular and might know a good approach. And Carl recommended you.”

Thanks, Carl.

“Well, the person you really want to talk to is Wendy,” I said. “She’s actually slept with him.”

Sara’s eyebrows shot up. “And was it awesome?”

“Yes,” Wendy said, dropping down next to her. “What’s going on? Fill me in.”

~//~

In later years, we dubbed it the “Heartbroken Damsel” play. For our very first attempt, it was a beauty.

We set Sara up at the bar, ruffling her hair up and settling her skirts. We made her practice her sad, lonely eyes. Then we hunkered down to wait for The Gang.

They arrived, got beers, started to talk about their days. When I thought an appropriate amount of time had passed – in other words, when Barney started to covertly eye up the women in the room – I signaled to Wendy and we sprang into action.

“Poor Sara,” I said, as we walked slowly past their booth. “I can’t believe George dumped her.”

We settled into the booth directly behind The Gang’s. My head was nearly bumping Barney’s. (There were already two guys in our newly commandeered booth, but we just smiled at them and they scooted over to make room. Being pretty rocks sometimes.)

“Do you think she should have come to the bar so soon?” Wendy asked me.

I shook my head. “I’m afraid she’s going to make a bad choice. Her dad called to yell at her earlier for losing a great guy like George.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she slept with the first guy who was nice to her,” Wendy said, mournfully.

“Well, he’ll be a lucky guy, is all I can say,” I told her. (Yeah, I was laying it on a bit thick, but hey, it was our first time. Cut us some slack.) “I’m going to go buy her a drink and try to ward guys off. Maybe after your shift ends you can take her home.”

I bought Sara a drink. After a few minutes I excused myself to the bathroom, and stayed there until Wendy texted me to tell me the package was away. I hadn’t even had time to fix my lipstick properly.

The “Heartbroken Damsel” had been a success.

~//~

Sara came back the next day, rosy-cheeked and with a tendency to bounce. We celebrated her success in what would soon become “our” corner booth.

“So, tell her,” Wendy said, gesturing towards me. “Tell her how amazing he is.”

Sara laughed. “At first I was a little worried – he’s so unbelievable when picking girls up. He told me he was a NASA astronaut and his shuttle launched in eighteen hours.”

“How did you keep from giggling?” Wendy asked.

Sara gave an eloquent shrug. “I looked at his fingers and remembered what Trudy told me. Then I said how about we went back to my place and I’d give him a sending-off to remember all the way to Mars.”

Wendy high-fived her.

“Let’s not do that again,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“You’re right,” Sara said. “Jazz hands instead.”

I sighed.

“No, but really,” Wendy insisted, “Tell Yasmin just how awesome he is.”

Sara bit her lip. “Yeah, he’s damn good. Part of it is probably just the delicious feeling of doing something so uninhibited. Saying ‘fuck you society’ and having a one-night stand for the pure fun of it is awesome.”

Wendy nodded. “And it’s great to know that he’s not going to develop inconvenient feelings and want to see you again. Totally ruined my last one-night stand. The guy had this whole fate thing going where we were destined to be together forever, wouldn’t leave me alone for weeks.”

“And coming off a relationship where sex felt like a chore, it’s really nice to just do it for fun again. Plus George knew all my moves – Barney didn’t know any of them, so I was full of surprises. And since I wouldn’t see him again, I could try out new things that I was too worried George might think were weird.” Sara giggled. “My verdict is that they were weird but amazing.”

I was starting to wonder how early I might be able to persuade Carl to leave work. Or maybe just to take a quick break and pop up to the flat with me.

“On top of all of that, though, he’s just awesome at it,” Wendy said, sighing. It’d only been a month since they’d broken up, and I still caught her looking longingly at him once in a while. It didn’t help his paranoia about her holding a grudge, that’s for sure.

“If only he wasn’t so damn awful with his pick-up lines, he’d be sporting a much better average,” she continued. (Wendy was a stats geek. She was keeping a running Barney-score, in her spare time not spent dominating her fantasy football league. For a self-proclaimed ladies’ man, Barney apparently had shocking numbers.) “All those women who turn down The Genie with The Lamp or The Ridiculous Looking Civil War General or The I Have Twelve Hours to Live Guy – well, I feel bad for both them and Barney. They don’t know what they’re missing, and he’s scoring less than once a week.”

“Hey, less than once a week is still pretty good,” I protested.

“Not for Barney,” Wendy said.

Sara looked contemplative. “There’ve got to be a lot of women out there who’ve just broken up and would like to have some hot no-strings-attached sex. Or, let’s be fair, just want some hot no-strings-attached sex for no other reason than that it’s awesome.”

“Yeah,” I said, slowly. “What’s your point?”

When she turned to me, there was the light of genius in her eyes. “And Barney would, I’m sure, like to improve on his current success rate.”

“Yeeeees,” I said.

“And we were awesome at running a play to get him in bed with Sara,” Wendy said, catching the spirit.

Sara’s answering grin was wicked and excited all at once.

“What are you suggesting?” I asked, suddenly feeling like the wet-blanket older sister. “We can’t take out a Craigslist ad offering up Barney’s skills. For one thing it’s not a nice thing to do, and for another we’d get all sorts of weird people in here. I’m not going to do that to Carl.” To Wendy, I added, “And you’d be cleaning up lipstick kisses on the mirrors again.”

Wendy made a face. “We don’t have to take it public. We can start small. Just put out the word in a very quiet way to our friends that we know someone who’s a stud in bed. If they want one night with him, let us know and we’ll do our best to help make it happen.”

“And if everything goes well,” Sara said, taking up the thread, “they could eventually tell their friends. It’d be a female grapevine. You know it happens informally all the time anyway – well, this would just be a little bit more organized.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know if it’d work.”

“One night with a stud who’ll do all sorts of freaky stuff with you, make you come so hard you can’t see – multiple times – then never bother you again?” Sara said. “Yeah, I can’t see that appealing to anyone.”

“He’s linguistically skilled and equinely blessed,” Wendy added. “What’s not to love?”

“I don’t know, you guys,” I said. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

~//~

It was a good idea.

~//~

“Excuse me, but I’m an eye doctor and I couldn’t help noticing your eyes.”

Lucy blinked, fluttering her eyelashes. “Is there something wrong with them?”

Barney smiled, that slow wicked smile that made your spine prickle. “Such well-developed pupils can mean only one thing.”

“And what’s that, doctor?”

He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “You may not realize it, but your body is talking to you. It’s telling you that you want to come home with me.”

“You can read this in my pupils?” Lucy said, drawing back just enough to let her gaze be drawn as if irresistibly to his lips.

He paused for effect. “It’s scientific fact.”

As they left, she waved to us. Sara put a tidy little check-mark next to her name.

~//~

“Hi, I’m Barney.”

“I’m Billie.”

“I wonder if you could help me with a problem, Billie?”

“Depends what it is.”

“My friend Ted – he’s over there, yes, that guy who refuses to wear a suit – he says that soulmates don’t exist. Do you think he’s right?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe you’ll think it’s silly, but I think they do. And when I saw you sitting here at the bar, I felt a chill run up my arms. I had to come talk to you.”

“Oh my god. I’ve just been reading Rita Rogers’ ‘Soulmates: A Practical and Spiritual Guide’. I can’t believe it. Do you think the universe is bringing us together?”

“Wow, I didn’t see your book there. That’s uncanny! Billie, I think you’re right. And who are we to say no to the universe?”

As they left, Sara made a tick next to Billie’s name.

~//~

“I’m going to try something new,” Heather said, stealing some of Sara’s peanuts. She was a grad student from the art department, who I knew through chess club. (In the early days, when the Awesome League of Awesomeness was still in its infancy, the grad student grapevine was our biggest contributor. Not to resort to stereotypes, but grad students are always on the lookout for cheap ways to de-stress. And Barney was an excellent choice.)

“What’s that?” Sara asked, swatting her hand away. “We should really be keeping track of these plays somehow. We don’t want to run the same one twice.”

Wendy snorted. “Oh, please. Like he’d notice.”

“Go on, Heather,” I said. “What new thing?”

Heather tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Everyone runs plays to get him to make a move on them, right? Which is great and all, but I’d kind of like to run a play on him. Turn the tables for once.”

“What if he doesn’t go for it?” Wendy asked, ignoring Carl waving at her from the bar. (It was a good thing for her that she was one of my best friends, because otherwise I think Carl would have had words with her over her prolonged ‘bathroom breaks’. As it was, he let it slide.)

Heather shrugged. “Then I lose my chance.”

“If he turns you down for being too forward – god, that sounds like the nineteenth century – you could always come back next week and apologize for your slutty twin sister,” Sara suggested.

Heather grinned at her. “I like the way you think.”

Sara added her name to the League list. “I think he’s going to that media thing tonight – Robin’s up for an award. How about tomorrow night?”

“I’ll put it in my planner,” Heather said.

~//~

On the night, Sara and I set up camp at the bar, chatting together quietly. Heather sat at the end, browsing on her phone and biding her time.

Ted bought the first round, but soon enough it was Barney’s turn, and Sara and I tried to watch without seeming obvious. Making a move on the Barnster, the King of Moves. Would it work?

“Hey.”

Barney looked to his right, where Heather had tapped him on the elbow. His momentary look of surprise faded into his more usual intrigued once-over. “Hi.”

Heather smiled at him, letting her eyes twinkle. She was good. “Nice suit.”

If he’d been a bird, he would have preened. As it was, his shoulders went back and his chin stuck out a little. Sara nearly choked on her water. “Thanks. Nice sundress.”

Heather put a hand on his arm and leaned in. “I bet your birthday suit is even nicer.”

Sara did choke then.

Over Sara’s coughing, I barely heard Heather seal the deal with a simple, “My place?”

“Lead the way,” Barney said.

~//~

Oh, yes, it was about this time that Ted and Robin started dating. This isn’t really incredibly relevant to the story, but it’ll be important later. They dated for a year, so just bear that in mind. Oh, and also Lily and Marshall broke up for a while, but they eventually got back together and got married. (And Carl’s attempt to proposition Lily for a threesome failed miserably. I laughed.)

~//~

Hmm, I know you have places to go, so let’s see, what other parts of this story are important? I don’t want to end up on too many tangents and drag this out forever. That would be cruel.

There was that time that Lauren was having a bit of fun on her morning after by acting like she was going to camp out in Barney’s apartment (and watching him freak out at the thought), and then Lily randomly showed up and Barney said she was his wife. We never did figure out what was going on there – Marshall and Lily were broken up at the time, but as far as we knew Barney and Lily had never been together. The Gang was entirely too incestuous. (I’ll come back to this point.)

Then there was that time Marshall slapped Barney with all his might, right in the middle of the bar. Carl was going to call the cops, but Barney seemed to be fine with it (well, he was moaning and complaining, but in a peevish way, not in a “you’ll be going to jail for assault” kind of way). Maybe it was some sort of payback for Barney marrying Lily? Although that wouldn’t make sense with the fact that Barney later slapped Marshall three times, and that they kept slapping each other over the years. The Gang was an odd bunch.

Oh, yes, and then there was that time that Sarah the Rockette (she got the appellation to distinguish her from our Sara, but she really was a Rockette) ended up making out with Barney in the back of a moving van in the loading dock behind the bar. (Don’t ask. My boyfriend was an enabler.) Of course, then Ted drove the van away. In the ensuing commotion, Sarah the Rockette kicked Barney in the groin trying to escape. Man down. (She’s still vowing revenge on Ted.)

I think it was about then that Marshall and Lily finally got married. May 2007 or thereabouts. And Robin and Ted broke up and she went to Argentina and came back with a gorgeous boyfriend, and Ted got a butterfly tramp stamp in drunken revenge. Good times.

And then there was Stacey…

~//~

I don’t want you to think that we at the Awesome League of Awesomeness had Barney locked up all to ourselves. For one thing, scheduling could get difficult. None of us were managerial types, so juggling Barney’s schedule (gleaned primarily from overhearing The Gang over-share) with those of a constantly changing cast of friends and friends-of-friends and friends-of-friends-of-friends – well, it got tricky. And when Sara got a job at a Wall Street firm, she had less time to run it all. Still, we did our best.

The bigger problem was that Barney wasn’t completely predictable. Oh, we did our best – we knew his weaknesses, like sundresses and ample cleavage and “daddy issues” and pretending to be tipsy – but MacLaren’s was a moderately popular pub with a statistically improbable ratio of pretty women. (Much to Carl’s delight and the prospering of our bottom line.) On any given night, our ALA representative was not Barney’s only prospect.

Now in the early years of ALA this was only an irritant, not a fundamental flaw. If it was Erin’s night and Barney went for a non-affiliated girl instead, Erin could always come back another night and try again. There was no chance that Barney would start dating the non-affiliated girl, and an even smaller chance that he’d fall in love and go off the market entirely.

As time went on, however, this began to change. And Stacey was the first.

“Hey,” Carl said one morning over breakfast, passing me the orange juice. “Barney got slapped again last night.”

I’d stayed in to rewrite a dissertation chapter. Now I started to regret that. “Really? Marshall again? You should put up a sign saying ‘No physical violence’ or something.”

Carl grinned. “Nah, it’s funny. Marshall’s got a powerful hand on him.”

“It’s not funny,” I said, severely. “You and Wendy find that whole slapping thing The Gang’s got going on to be entirely too funny. Physical violence is never the answer.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t Marshall,” Carl said, skipping adroitly over that argument, which we’d had before. “It was this blonde chick at the bar.”

I forked up some eggs. Carl’s scrambled eggs were to die for. “Ah. See, it’s a good thing ALA is around. Otherwise Barney wouldn’t only be getting laid less, he’d be getting slapped more.” I shook my head sadly. “Criminal lack of game.”

Carl passed me the fruit. “Nah, that’s the thing. Barney asked her to slap him. He said something about showing Ted that girls didn’t go for lines?”

I chewed for a moment, contemplating the situation. “I don’t even want to know what’s going on there. Barney asking a pretty girl to slap him sounds like the beginning of a particularly involved con.”

But of course I did find out what was going on there, because the Stacey situation wasn’t resolved in one night, like the rest of Barney’s cons, shenanigans, and dalliances. It dragged on for six weeks.

First Ted went out with her for two weeks. This wasn’t a problem – Ted was a bit saccharine when he was dating, which caused much rolling of eyes in both The Gang and in the ALA corner booth, but he was a serial monogamist and we’d been through it all before. This was like the thirtieth girl he’d dated. He’s a sweet guy, don’t get me wrong, and eventually he’ll make some woman really happy. But he’s awkward, he wants to rush into commitment too early, and he’s possibly the worst chooser of women ever. So many of our ALA members would have been perfect for him, if we hadn’t been looking for a Barney rather than a Ted at that particular moment. Instead, he went out with a succession of women who were all wrong for him.

Stacey, though, might just have worked. She was a blonde reggae musician who seemed to be really sweet. Until Ted broke up with her for some reason that (unsurprisingly) seemed to have a lot to do with Barney. From the snatches of conversation that Wendy was able to overhear on her trips past the table, it had something to do with Barney climbing the peaks of Mount Boobies. (Again, I didn’t even want to know.)

The twist in this particular episode of Ted-Fails-At-Dating came when Barney started going out with her.

Now, Barney didn’t date. He just didn’t. He might occasionally throw someone the Evil Twin treatment, which was greeted as an unexpected bonus by ALA members, but otherwise you got one round with the Barnster and that was it. Wendy, who’d dated him for all of a week by capitalizing on his fear of losing MacLaren’s, was the proud exception.

And now there was Stacey.

Furthermore, he wasn’t even having sex with her, if the increasingly gleeful teasing from The Gang (and Ted in particular) were to believed. Barney Stinson, dating someone? And not having sex with her?

All became clear when Barney stalked in a month later, dramatically threw himself into their booth, and surrendered with much beating of his breast. Apparently there had been a bet as to who could sleep with Stacey first – yes, well may you say “eww” – and after many psychological wargames, both of them had failed.

With Stacey gone, Barney was back on the market, and he threw himself back into the game with a renewed vigor. But the fact that Barney could date, if he had a reason to put himself through it, was newly established.

It wouldn’t be long before ALA was thrown into genuine crisis.

~//~

Before we reached that point, however, there were two other smaller crises to face.

First, there was the time that Barney got the Yips…

“We’re going to have to postpone this week’s schedule,” Sara said, frowning at her spreadsheet. It was a good thing that Barney had already slept with her, because in her Wall-Street suit she looked fantastic. If she hadn’t already been checked off his list, he wouldn’t have left her alone all night, and we wouldn’t have got any work done.

“Why’s that?” I asked, munching on a chicken wing and trying to keep from getting sauce on the stack of graduation forms I had to fill out. “Things come up at work? Wendy and I can probably manage.”

Sara shook her head. “No, it’s not that. Something’s gone wrong with Barney.”

“Thrown his back out at the gym?” Wouldn’t have been a big surprise - Marshall had been walking wounded all week. This is the problem with new gym members, they never start slow. Want to run a marathon first go.

“No, he’s the only one of The Gang who actually goes to a gym on a regular basis, not just on a dare,” Sara told me. “Whatever he tells his friends about going to the gym just to pick up girls, that man is a regular gym rat. Remember his…oh, you haven’t seen his abs.”

“Rub it in,” I said, only half serious. I’d seen Carl’s abs, I wasn’t lusting over Barney’s. “So what’s the problem then?”

She chewed her lip. “He was at the bar last night in sweatpants and a hoodie.”

I put down my chicken wing to stare at her. “No.”

“Yes.”

“The one night Carl and I take off, and Barney shows up in sweatpants and a hoodie?”

“Bad luck,” Sara said, patting my hand. “But it’s true.”

“Why? Was it some sort of play? Because I’m struggling to think of any play that would require a hoodie. Unless he was pretending to have a kid and be too tired to suit up? I don’t see how that would help him pick up girls, though. Too tired to suit up implies too tired for other things.”

Sara shrugged. “There may have been a line about how his entire sexual history was built upon a rotting foundation of lies. Though Wendy might have misheard that – she was distracted by the hoodie. Apparently in some religions Barney in a hoodie spells the end of humanity.”

“Really?”

She eyed me over her carrot stick. “I made that last bit up.”

I shook my head. “No, I mean the part about his sexual history. That sounds serious.”

“You’re telling me,” Sara said, pushing aside her raw vegetables to pick up her spreadsheet. “We’re going to have to reschedule Lisa and Julie – there’s no way they’d be getting the genuine Barney experience at the moment. And depending on how long he takes to get over the Yips, we may need to reschedule…”

“Sara,” I said, glaring at her. “Forget ALA for a minute. Is he okay?”

Her eyebrow went up. “He’s Barney. He’s fine. He’ll get over whatever this is eventually and be back to his pinstriped self.”

I was sure Sara was right – after all, like she said, this was Barney, and we’d known how he worked for years – but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Barney was a human being: a raunchy, goofy, crass human being, to be sure, but also a giving, thoughtful, loyal one. He had an understanding with Carl to undercharge the rest of The Gang and put it on his tab. He was never cruel to the face of any woman he slept with – he’d probably never call them again, but he’d never say an unkind word to them in bed. And he was fanatically loyal to his friends.

So when that night I saw for myself the vision of Barney in sweatpants and a hoodie, I couldn’t find it in me to laugh at the picture he made. I couldn’t feel any schadenfreude at the thought of Barney for once lost for words with women. He was hurting and insecure, and that’s not a funny thing.

Sara was at an important client dinner, and it was Wendy’s night off. When an aging woman in animal print walked into the bar and sat next to the woebegone figure in his sweatsuit, there wasn’t anyone around to see it except me.

“Rhonda!” Barney said.

As their conversation went on, the situation became a bit clearer. People forget they can be overheard in bars. They blurt out the damndest things … Actually, it may seem a bit hypocritical, when I’ve been telling you so much, but I’m going to gloss over the specifics, if you don’t mind. I felt a bit like a voyeur at the time, and I would have got up and left the bar, except I was afraid that my leaving would alert them to my presence and be more awkward than my staying. And yes, perhaps a little bit of me wanted to understand.

Basically, Barney wanted to sleep with Rhonda, and she was turning him down, and that was interfering with his mojo. Without getting into specifics, I knew that Rhonda was as far from a normal Barney-target as it was possible to be, and yet he wanted her. Barney had hidden depths; maybe, as Sara would have phrased it, he was more messed up than we’d ever imagined, but I found myself choosing to root for the two of them instead. At the end of the day, I hoped we got the old Barney back – and not because it would end ALA if he was changed forever, but because I found that I unexpectedly had a soft spot for that guy.

So when Barney bounced back into the bar the following night, suited up and with the gleam back in his eye, I smiled and sipped my drink.

“Guess Barney’s back to normal,” Sara said, dropping into the booth across from me. “Told you it wouldn’t take long.”

“Yeah,” I said, watching him pull up a chair to their booth, the jaunty set back in his shoulders. “You were right.”

~//~

“Hey, do you like the circus?”

Whitney smiled up at Barney. “I love it! My favorite part is the acrobats. When I was a kid, I used to want to be an acrobat. I trained for a couple of years – you should see how flexible I am.”

His eyes went a little unfocused, but he rallied. “Well, if you like the circus, did you know today is International Sword Swallowers Day?”

Whitney told us later she nearly lost it at that point. Being an ALA member did require an iron grasp on one’s giggle reflex – Barney wasn’t for amateurs. “Is it? That’s fascinating. Are you a sword swallower?”

He blinked, then blinked again. “No.” He rallied once more. “But I’ve read books. I could give you some tips.”

Whitney leaned in to run a finger up his sleeve. “I’d love some.”

~//~

It wasn’t even Jenna’s day – she was just waiting for me to come down from the apartment, and doing a bit of preliminary reconnaissance in the meantime. But Barney caught her checking him out, and before she knew it he had come over to sit at her table.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is me,” he said, apologetically. “Would you mind – I know you probably have deadlines, but the twins’ parents really don’t want stories in the papers before the surgery. They’re a bit superstitious.”

“What twins?” Jenna asked, furrowing her brow.

Barney laughed, charmingly. He really did have a charming laugh. “You’re very funny. The conjoined Smith twins who I’m operating on next Wednesday, as you know.”

“I don’t know what twins you’re talking about,” Jenna said, arranging her features to read simply confused, not annoyed.

He sat back. “You really don’t know. How refreshing. I’m Dr. Barnabas Stinson, the famous surgeon. You’re not a reporter?”

“No,” Jenna said. “I’m Jenna. I’m a ballet dancer.” (Really, she was a lawyer, but some ALA members entered into the Game more than others.)

Barney smiled what we called his George Clooney smile. “So very pleased to meet you, Jenna.”

It was then that this mutually satisfying (if mutually and harmlessly deceptive) conversation was brought to a halt by Ted waving at Barney from across the bar.

“Excuse me, Jenna,” Barney said, pressing her hand. “My friend Ted looks like he might be choking. I’ll be right back. Don’t you go anywhere.”

“I won’t,” Jenna said, trying not to giggle.

And then it suddenly got weird. He’d been gone no more than seconds before a woman pushed through the crowd and tapped Jenna on the shoulder. “That’s Barney Stinson. Whatever he says to you, it’s all lies. Sleeping with him was the worst decision I ever made. If you don’t want to regret it forever, run away now.”

When Barney came back two minutes later, he found Jenna with a small contemplative frown on her face. “Are you all right?”

With an effort, Jenna shook off her thoughts. “I’m fine. Is your friend okay?”

Barney gave a long-suffering sigh. “He suffers from acute dullard syndrome.”

“That sounds bad,” Jenna said. “Tell me more about these conjoined twins.”

They smiled at each other.

~//~

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Sara said, eyeing my slice of pepperoni pizza longingly but valiantly sticking to her pita chips. (Technically she shouldn’t have had them at all, but Carl turned a blind eye to my friends smuggling in outside food. He was a sweet guy. Also Sara scared him.) “There’s a woman going around telling girls not to fuck Barney?”

“Did you recognize her?” Wendy asked.

Jenna shook her head. “I’ve never seen her before.”

“And none of us were downstairs to get a glimpse of her,” I mused, around a bite of pepperoni. “She could be anybody. I mean, obviously not an ALA member, but that still leaves the field pretty wide open.”

“This could be a good thing for us,” Sara said, tapping her fingers absent-mindedly on her briefcase. “If this woman is scaring away all the unaffiliated girls Barney hits on, it leaves us as the only candidates in the field.”

I frowned. “I don’t know how I feel about us exploiting the situation like that.”

“What, you going soft? It’s his choice whether or not to sleep with people.”

“I know, but…it’s different if we’re only options. If we’re the only options it feels wrong.”

“Well then, what should we do?” Wendy asked sensibly, breaking into our argument. “Do we put somebody else in there and be stationed around to see who approaches her to warn her against Barney?”

Sara shrugged. “Sounds like as good a plan as any.”

But Hannah’s efforts were in vain. Not in vain for her – she went home with the Crown Prince of the Netherlands, Prince Baarney. We, however, didn’t know Barney’s saboteur from Adam. (Or Eve, rather.) She wasn’t an ALA member, but she also wasn’t anyone we’d ever seen him go home with before. It was a mystery.

We wouldn’t solve that mystery for months, until Barney himself became aware of the situation and solved it for us. In the meantime, the Unknown Woman wasn’t around all the time – just occasionally – so I was able to suppress my scruples. (And occasionally run interference: the Unknown Woman had more than one accidental beer down her front just as she was about to approach one of Barney’s targets.) I did wonder what was going on, and just who she was.

We were shortly, however, to have a much bigger crisis of confidence, one that left the Unknown Woman in the dust.

~//~

She was crying.

Robin Scherbatsky was crying.

“What do we do?” Wendy asked, leaning over my table. “Should I go over and offer a shoulder? We know each other, but we’re not friends.”

I told you we’d get back to Robin. I promise this story isn’t going to take forever – I know you have a plane to catch – but we can’t go any further without talking about Robin.

She was beautiful, that’s the first thing anyone noticed. Luminescent, in a way that you don’t often find. I always thought it was funny that she was a TV reporter, because she looked so much better in person than she did on TV – but then I suppose she looked pretty good on TV too.

But Robin wasn’t just a pretty face. She was funny, and dry, and Canadian, and awkward. When she was dating Ted she made him a happy man – until she couldn’t commit and broke his heart. To be fair to her she’d told him from the beginning that she wasn’t the marrying type. Ted just hoped. I think he’s finally over her now, all these years later, but it took him a long time to get to this place, to the place where he’s finally ready to move on. This may be old-married-woman talk, but I hope he finds someone to make him happy.

Enough about Ted, though. Robin was great at her job, even when it was less than completely dignified, and she never gave up on her dreams. She was one of the strongest women I knew, second only perhaps to Sara. I would have liked to have been friends with her, beyond the acquaintances we were – but she really only ever had time for The Gang, and besides ALA would have made it awkward.

So yes. The second strongest woman I knew, a woman I liked and rooted for, and she was crying in our bar.

“I don’t know,” I told Wendy. “She’s trying to hide the fact that she’s crying. Maybe you could…take her a beer and pretend someone sent it to her? Might give you an opening?”

But we didn’t have to put that plan in action, because Barney showed up.

He slid into the booth across from her, and we couldn’t hear what he was saying, but we saw the moment he realized she was crying. We saw her start to explain; we saw him start to laugh – saw his face change – saw him get up and sit next to her, drawing her head down to his shoulder. We saw how he held her close, rubbing her arm soothingly as she cried – and then how he somehow made her laugh through her tears, because he was Barney, and that’s just what he did.

And then she leaned up to whisper in his ear, and they left the bar together.

“Did that just happen?” Wendy said, her eyes wide. “Did Robin just go home with Barney? Robin?”

“Well,” I said. “There’s a turn-up for the ages. Robin and Barney.”

Wendy snorted. “That’ll never work.” Carl called her, and she bustled off back to work.

I nibbled at my pencil. I’d never seen Barney tolerate tears for one second before. This one time, Barney had hit on a non-affiliated girl at the bar who’d just been dumped by her cheating boyfriend. This was fertile territory for our Barney, and he’d moved in with poise – but the instant she crumbled and started crying on his tie, he’d been gone. Not just from the vicinity, but out of the bar entirely. Presto chango. Now guys don’t like tears in general, but I’d never seen anyone physically run away that quickly.

And yet he’d gone to Robin without a second’s pause.

Maybe it was just friendship – I’ve told you how loyal he was – but still…

~//~

Any doubts Wendy and I had entertained about whether Robin and Barney had actually gone home together – or rather, about what exactly they had done when they got home – were extinguished the next day.

“I didn’t believe you,” Sara breathed. “God knows I didn’t believe you, but look at him. Look at him! Could there be a clearer picture of a guilty man?”

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Wendy offered, popping a bacon-wrapped hot dog in her mouth.

“Seriously?” Sara asked, eyeing the hot dogs. “Since when did you guys start serving those?”

Wendy shrugged. “The cook’s having a mid-career crisis or something. It’ll be eggplant in the shape of flowers tomorrow, probably. Want some?”

Over Sara’s withering vegetarian glare, I interrupted. “Why do you think it’s for the best?”

Wendy made a show of savoring her hot dog. “Look, Barney being a stud now is fine, it’s great. But eventually he’s going to want more.”

“Some people never do,” Sara said. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to want to settle down.”

“Yeah, that’s a fair point. But I don’t know. I’ve got the feeling that somewhere deep inside Barney does want to settle down.”

Sara snorted. “Somewhere very very deep inside.”

“Maybe Wendy’s got a point, though,” I said. “When’s the last time he slept with someone he actually considered a friend? Strike that, when’s the last time he slept with someone he actually knew?”

We considered matters. For all of a second.

“Exactly,” I said. “Those two are friends. Great friends, if you think about it. Now they’ve slept together. Maybe this is the start of an epic love story.”

Wendy and Sara looked at me. They looked at each other. Then they burst out giggling.

“Okay, fine,” I said, sulkily. “But look at that man again, and tell me something isn’t going on.”

Sara downed the rest of her gin and tonic. “Oh, something’s going on. That man’s afraid of Robin’s ex-boyfriend cutting off his junk, that’s what’s going on.”

We’ll skip over the whole bit where Sara was totally right.

Oh, okay, that bit involved Ted and Barney breaking up as friends, a whole lot of awkward, Barney finding out who his stalker was – you remember the Unknown Woman, well, her name turned out to be Abby – and pretending to propose to her to make Ted jealous (I told you The Gang was ridiculous), Ted getting in a car accident, Barney running across town to get to his bedside, and Barney getting run over a bus.

And yes, for a short period of time I half bought Carl’s theory that Barney and Ted were actually in love with each other and just dating (Ted) and sleeping with (Barney) half of the women in New York City in an attempt to deny their feelings for each other. It would have made a lot of what The Gang did make a lot more sense.

But no, that isn’t the story.

What is the story is the night I saw the writing on the wall.

~//~

It was an ordinary night. The Gang was camped out in their booth. Ted was talking about Stella. (Oh yes, he was engaged to Stella at this point. Don’t worry about remembering her, she dumped him at the altar later. But at this point they were nauseatingly happy.) Barney was acting normal – he was finally recovered enough from being run over by that bus, after much physical therapy, to need the services of ALA again. And then Robin arrived.

And Barney went bonkers.

Okay, so it wasn’t a totally ordinary night. On a totally ordinary night, I would have been in our corner booth, across the room from The Gang, and I wouldn’t have overheard what I overheard. As it was, Jermaine was getting dumped by Blake in our corner booth, and I hadn’t the heart to kick them out. (I did however make a mental note to fix Jermaine up with my friend Josh. But that’s beside the point. Though they got married last week, so my matchmaking skills are excellent.)

Anyway, so Robin made a joke. I forget what it was, but it wasn’t funny. Everyone kind of rolled their eyes, except Barney. Barney laughed and laughed, and when The Gang got confused and told him it wasn’t that funny, Barney got defensive…

~//~

“That was a great joke! Smart, funny, beautiful, the whole package, everything you’re afraid to let yourself want…in a joke.”

“He said that?” Wendy wrinkled her nose. “God. He’s got it bad.”

“I don’t know,” Sara said. “Maybe he was just having an off night. We’ve seen him do some strange things before. And he went home with Jillian, right? So obviously he’s not all lovey-dovey about Robin.”

I shook my head. “I was there. I saw him. He may not know he’s in love with Robin, but…”

“He knows.”

“Hi, Jillian,” Wendy said, scooting over to make room. “He knows what?”

Jillian stole one of my sliders, while Sara looked longingly on. “He knows that he’s in love with Robin.”

Wendy did a little booth-dance. “I win.”

“Spill,” I said, “and I’ll forgive your slider theft.”

Jillian laughed. “Okay, so yeah, Gina didn’t oversell the Barney thing. He’s awesome and the League is awesome. Best week-before-bar-exam stress relief ever. But anyway, so I was getting dressed this morning and I overheard him talking to this friend of his.”

“Cute fashion plate, friendly giant, or scruffy professor?”

“Fashion plate.”

“That’s Lily. Go on.”

“Well, he told her he thinks he’s in love with this Robin girl. He said something about sleeping with her one time and catching feelings? And then a lot about closing his eyes and thinking about her and hearing a song and thinking about her and sleeping with that chick – oh, that was when I went to the shower – and thinking about her.”

“He didn’t call out Robin’s name when he was having sex with you, did he?” Wendy asked, with interest.

“Wendy, sometimes I think you’re still too fascinated by the details of Barney’s sex life,” I told her. “You need to get yourself a boyfriend.”

“No, he didn’t,” Jillian said, cutting across what was becoming a rather well-worn argument at this point. “He didn’t say my name either – to be quite honest I’m pretty sure he’d forgotten it by then – but I’m not picky. I hear my name every day. It’s not every day that I…”

“Did you hear anything else?”

Jillian grinned. “Yeah, something about wanting to smell Robin’s hair? It was harder to hear at that point because of the bathroom door. But I cracked it open after that and I did hear -”

She paused for dramatic effect and Sara said, sotto voce, “Wait for it…”

“Lily promised to help Barney win Robin if he promised not to sleep with anyone else,” Jillian said, all in a rush.

We all looked at each other, speechless.

“Well, that’s torn it,” Sara said finally.

~//~

“I can’t believe I’m spending my night off in the bar I work in,” Wendy said morosely, staring into her beer.

With Jillian gone to go study for her bar exam, the three co-presidents of the Awesome League of Awesomeness were holding a war council and getting thoroughly sloshed. It seemed as good a response as any to the shocking news that Barney - Barney Stinson - was suddenly and unexpectedly off the market.

“It’s a war council,” I told Wendy. “Night off or no night off, we’ve got to figure this one out.”

“Barney,” Sara said. “Barney.”

“Can I get you girls anything?” Carl was at my elbow.

Sara blinked owlishly up at him. “You’re not a waiter.”

“We’re getting hammered,” I told him. “Beer. Oh so much more beer.”

Carl raised an eyebrow. “I’d say you’ve already made a good head start on getting hammered.” He leaned down to steal a kiss. “I’ll bring more beer.”

“And burgers,” Sara said, with sudden decisiveness. “Burrrgers.” She giggled. “That’s a funny word.”

“So that’s it,” I told my co-conspirators, over burgers and beer. “We’d only just got things rolling again after Barney’s accident and physical therapy. If he’s off the market now, we’ll have to go on hiatus again.”

“The momentum will die out,” Wendy said, sagely.

Sara was too busy making orgasmic noises around her mouthfuls of burger to contribute to the conversation. (It wasn’t just her detoxing from vegetarianism. That was the week that Carl had hired a new cook, after the last one had tried to put bacon ice cream on the menu. NYC breeds dreamers.)

“Well, we had a good run,” I said, draining the last of my beer and reaching for a new bottle. “Perhaps it was time to move on anyway. I’m a PhD now, can you believe it? And Sara, you’re moving up in your company, and Wendy…”

“I’m still rocking my fantasy football league,” Wendy said, before the silence (in which tipsy me considered what I could say to someone who was still a waitress) got awkward. “And I met this neat guy over the Internet – no, don’t look at me like that, he’s gay – called Nate. He really likes some of my stats ideas. We might do something together.”

Fantasy football was beyond me. I sailed on. “Maybe ALA was a part of our lives that’s over now. Maybe now that we’re leaving our twenties, we should leave this behind too.”

“I’m going to miss it,” Wendy said. “He was always so bouncy and smiley when he got laid. And we made so many women happy.”

“To ALA,” I said, raising my beer bottle.

~//~

Now, I realize that we ourselves have had a couple of beers tonight, but remember way back to the beginning of this story? Back when you asked me to explain the Awesome League of Awesomeness in the hours you had to kill before getting a cab to the airport?

Well, before I backed up to the beginning, I started with Megan, who had just arrived to make a play for Barney, and Sara was sitting in the background devouring a burger, having recently given up her vegetarianism for the delicious meaty delights purveyed by Carl’s new cook, Ricardo.

So if you’ve been following along, you’ll see that our toast to the ending of ALA must have been premature. And it was. I don’t know what happened between Barney and Robin – most likely, he simply lost his nerve – but for the next six months, things went pretty much back to normal. Barney kept banging chicks, we kept the League running – the only thing that changed was that Barney was now pining after Robin the whole time. Because hell, that man was pining.

Now, I’m sure The Gang had lots of amazing adventures (some sarcasm intended) between the moment we saw the writing on the wall and the time the first doom arrived. But to tell you the truth, I’m going to have to skate over those six months, because I was preoccupied. Because Carl and I had just got engaged.

When you’re newly engaged, the whole world ceases to seem quite as important. You’ve unlocked the secret to the universe, and yes, you feel a bit superior to everyone else. We’d seen it for years with Marshall and Lily, who lorded it over The Gang, and I can’t deny that knowing Carl wanted to marry me – that we were planning kids, even – was an amazing feeling.

Anyway, with me deep in wedding planning, Sara and Wendy took over the daily running of the League. I was busy trying to juggle the wedding with establishing my career post-PhD, so I may have got a bit divorced from my pre-engaged life. (See what I did there?) Robin moved to Japan; Stella left Ted at the altar; Robin moved back from Japan; Marshall and Lily considered having children; Ted was designing a building; there was this surreal bit where one of Carl’s bartenders, Doug, got in this fight in the alley with Ted and Barney as wingmen; Carl went around the bend (probably due to engagement-related happiness) and let Ted and Barney run MacLaren’s for a night; there was even another surreal bit where I think Barney and Marshall were sexting Ted for an entire day (yeah, The Gang is weird, news at eleven).

Through all of this, my bridesmaids-elect kept me updated. And then –

“Ted got sent to the hospital by a goat,” Sara said, bursting into our apartment. (She could have knocked, but Sara believed that if you had a spare key, why not use it?) “Corner booth now.”

“Ted got attacked by a goat?” I asked, unbelievingly, ten minutes later. “A goat.”

Wendy nodded. “Yep. And you haven’t heard the big news yet.”

“To be quite honest, I’m struggling to imagine any bigger news than Ted having to go to the hospital because he got savaged by a goat,” I told her.

Sara grinned around a mouthful of something fried. “Imagine it.”

“What are those?” I asked, peering down into her basket. “And tell me what has happened this instant or I’m going to go out of my mind. I love Carl, but there are only so many flower arrangements I can look at before the endless shenanigans of The Gang start looking oh so fascinating.”

“One, they’re jalapeno poppers – Ricardo made them specially for me, so hands off – two, just elope with Carl already and you won’t have to deal with your mom’s advice any more, and three, remember Megan?”

I withdrew my hand from Sara’s jalapeno popper basket after she smacked it. “Should I remember Megan?”

“ALA member from a few months back,” Wendy supplied. “Not important. What is important is that she’s a nurse.”

“Okay…”

“So when Ted went to the hospital after being brutally attacked by a girl goat –”

We all had a laugh.

Sara took over. “And when Ted, Marshall, and Lily all left Robin and Barney alone together in the hospital room –”

Wendy finished. “Megan saw what they did.”

“Go on,” I prompted.

Sara and Wendy grinned at each other, then at me. “They kissed!”

“And not just any kiss,” Wendy added. “A pent-up-desire, all-my-lovin-for-you, stars-aligning kiss.”

“You’ve been reading those romances again, haven’t you?”

“Anyway,” Sara said, ignoring both of us, “Barney’s off the market.”

I thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. “We’ve been here before, ladies. Yes, Barney’s in love with Robin – and maybe Robin’s in love with him – but one kiss doesn’t mean they’re in a relationship. Neither of them is any good at that, remember?”

Wendy shook her head. “50 bucks says ALA’s back on suspension.”

We never bet with Wendy. Especially after she started working part-time online with Nate Silver.

~//~

And she was right.

What was funny was that The Gang didn’t know. Oh, they found out about the kiss about a month later when one of the lovebirds accidentally spilled the beans, but those two pretended it was a one-time thing and they weren’t together. And The Gang bought it.

But we knew better.

Because we tried sending people, just to make sure. Alisha told him how much she loved his suit. Barney thanked her and walked away without even looking at her impressive cleavage. Miranda told him that she and her best friend Kristy had always wanted to have a threesome with the right guy, and that they’d been told by a mutual friend that he was incredible in bed. He smirked, but then recollected himself, thanked her, and walked away. Tonya told him that she’d had a dream in which he rocked her body. He started humming some catchy song, thanked her, and walked away.

It was the thanking that really told us Barney was smitten. (Barney was many things, but ‘polite’ had never really been one of them.)

That and the way he looked at Robin. We didn’t know how The Gang couldn’t see it. Maybe they were caught up in their own lives. Or maybe he’d always looked at her that way.

So we suspended ALA. All that summer of 2009, as Robin and Barney snuck around, and Wendy did mysterious stats-things on the Internet, and Sara carried on what she thought was a clandestine romance with Ricardo the cook. ALA shut down, its spreadsheets gathering dust, its secret handshake all but forgotten.

(Oh yes, and that summer I got married. Not that it’s important to this story, but hey, it’s important to mine. We did end up eloping, just as Sara had suggested; we went to the courthouse with Sara and Wendy and Doug and Ricardo, and then we had a big party back at MacLaren’s for all our friends and regulars. It was much better than the enormous wedding my mother had wanted, and it had beer and Ricardo’s burgers and Ted’s hilarious dancing and Barney and Robin sneaking away to have sex in the bathroom. It was perfect.)

~//~

“I can’t believe they broke up,” Sara said gloomily.

(You didn’t think this story was over, did you? We’re only up to the fall of 2009, and it’s February 2013. I know, you’ve got places to be. I’ll try to be quicker about things. But true love never did run smooth on the first try. Not with Barney and Robin.)

Back in 2009, I sighed and tapped my pen on the chapter drafts of my first book, which I’d decided would be improved by the imbibing of beer. “I know. They were perfect together.”

“They weren’t perfect together,” Wendy disagreed. “Lily and Marshall are perfect together. You and Carl are mostly perfect together, although to be quite honest I can’t believe you married a guy who doesn’t like chocolate or pizza. Anyway. Barney and Robin are more… perfectly messed up together.”

I made a face at her. “Call it what you want, but those two are in love. I don’t buy their breakup. They’ll be back together.”

“In the meantime,” Sara cut in, “you know Barney. He’s going to be back to his old ways with a vengeance.”

I made another face. At this rate I was going to get forehead lines. “Do we really want to resurrect ALA? I know we have a waiting list as long as the Mississippi River, but I thought we’d left that all behind. I’m married, we’re in our 30s now…”

“Speak for yourself,” Sara said. “I’m 29. Anyway, look at it this way. We’re hopeless romantics and we think Barney and Robin should be together, right?”

“People have the right to determine their own…”

She glared at me.

“Fine. Yes.”

“Then,” she sailed on, victorious, “we should definitely restart ALA. Our members aren’t looking for a relationship. They’re just looking for fun. They won’t be any danger to the great Robin & Barney cause. Whereas if we leave Barney to play the field now that he’s gotten over his fear of relationships, who knows what might happen? He could be engaged before we have time to say suit up.”

“I agree with Sara,” Wendy chimed in.

“Who’s going to look after it, though? With book deadlines and my job, I can’t be in the bar every night anymore. Much as I’d like to be.” I was only being partly sarcastic.

Sara shrugged. “It pretty much runs itself these days. We can take turns being reception committee, but once we greet our members and point them in the direction of Barney, they do the rest. We don’t really need to get briefed afterwards, that was just a fun thing.”

They both looked to me. “Okay,” I said, with a little sigh. “Start up the hounds.”

~//~

“He has a playbook,” Claire said, dropping into the booth next to Sara. Her eyes were alight. “He actually has a playbook, and I’ve seen it.”

“Forget the playbook, I’ve seen him in a scuba suit with a sock stuffed in his crotch,” Wendy said, snorting.

“Can of Pringles,” Claire informed her.

Sara raised an expressive eyebrow. “Forget the scuba suit, I’ve seen him naked.”

They all exchanged glances, then started laughing. I rolled my eyes.

“Though he’s really buffed up recently,” Wendy said, a little wistfully. “I kind of wish I’d saved my go.”

“Oh my god, his shoulders and abs,” Claire started.

“Children,” I said.

Claire giggled. “Oh yes, the Playbook. It exists! I wish I had a copy. Not to run plays, of course, but from what I saw of it, there’s real comic gold in there. I bet I could sell a million copies.” (Claire was a book editor with a major publishing house.)

Sara ticked off Claire’s name on her spreadsheet. “It’s just like old times,” she said, nostalgically.

“Except you’re eating meat now,” Wendy said, stealing one of her buffalo wings.

Sara turned pink. “Yes, well, Ricardo. Also meat is tasty, if evil.”

“Said every straight and bisexual woman ever,” Claire added.

“Preach.”

~//~

We may have gone a bit overboard with the scheduling at first. In the old days we would never have had an ALA member scheduled every night of a week. We didn’t have that many members, for one thing, and we liked to give Barney breaks, for another. But in the aftermath of Barney being in physical therapy for four months, followed shortly by him being in a relationship for six months, we had a backlog of interested members and an overexcited scheduler.

In the very unlikely event that you ever become friends with The Gang – don’t tell Barney about how his Perfect Week happened, okay? Never divulge the secrets behind sausage-making. (Although if you want the actual secrets behind sausage-making, go talk to Ricardo. He’s the best.)

And hey, Day Three and Day Six weren’t ours anyway. Though Day Seven – Christie – had a lot of fun with things. Off-Broadway actress, excellent in her craft, if a little bit too playful.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself – the Perfect Week happened after Karina, not before.

We’re almost to the end of the story, I promise, but you have to hear about Karina.

~//~

“You’ll never guess what I’ve just done,” Carl announced, bursting through the door into our apartment.

I looked up from the galley proofs of my book. “Tell me.”

Carl’s grin was terrible to behold in its largeness. “I’ve just hired a hot bartender.”

Now, I thought Carl was a hot bartender, but you know what he meant. In those days – in these days, for that matter – a hot bartender was the factor that could tip a bar from being popular to being legendary. Customers crowd in, they tip well, they recklessly spend more…it’s just good business, all around.

And Karina was one hot bartender.

She was also only a temporary hire – tending bar for a few months before her first year of medical school – but in her short time with us she was involved in two major developments. The first, unsurprisingly, had to do with Barney.

If you’d asked me who would be more excited about the fact that MacLaren’s had hired a hot bartender, my money would have come down equally between Carl and Barney. Carl, for the business, and Barney, for the game. Under the circumstances, I thought I’d better warn Karina.

“He’s not a bad guy, and from what they tell me he’s a great lay, but I just thought I should warn you that he probably won’t leave you alone. And this is his regular bar, so he’ll be around a lot.”

Karina laughed, not unkindly. “Yasmin, that’s sweet, but I’m used to customers not leaving me alone. It’s great, I get more tips.”

“I don’t know if I’ve stressed how persistent Barney can be,” I said, offering her another blueberry muffin.

Karina took it. “And you have a league of women to sleep with this asshole?”

“He’s not an asshole,” I said, feeling strangely defensive. “Oh, all right, maybe he is an asshole, but he’s our asshole. And the league is more of a … fraternity of women.”

“Fraternity?” Karina said, her eyes shooting up. “Fraternity guys are the loudest.”

My phone pinged. It was Carl, texting me from across the bar. Don’t scare off my hot bartender.

I sighed. “Not that kind of fraternity. Anyway, now you’re aware of the Barney situation. Good luck on your first night.”

~//~

“You’ve got to come downstairs.”

Like Sara, Wendy never had learned to knock. I raised my head from my work. “What’s going on?”

She flung herself down on the couch. “Last night was fine, fun even. Karina was totally awesome. Gorgeous. The entire bar was dancing on her puppet strings. And then Barney showed up.”

I winced. “What play did he try to run?”

Wendy giggled. “I don’t know. He never got that far. Karina strong-armed him the instant he came up to the bar.”

“Huh,” I said. “Guess she didn’t need my advice.”

“The thing was, she told Marshall…haha, I can’t describe this. You have to come downstairs.”

“What’s got your panties in a twist?” I said, but I followed.

The answer, it turned out, was Barney in a tshirt and jeans.

“So I decided to have a little fun,” Karina said, tossing her hair. “No harm done. And look at how cute he is out of a suit.” To Wendy, she added, “You weren’t kidding about the arms.”

He was cute. We all looked at him for a moment.

Someone waving at Karina from down the bar recalled us to ourselves. “Well, I’ve got to go,” Karina said. Then she winked. “But put me down on that spreadsheet. After I have a bit of fun with him, I’m going to have a bit of fun with him, if you know what I mean.”

“This girl’s trouble,” I said, with foreboding.

Wendy stared after her with admiration in her eyes and something else I couldn’t read. “I like her.”

Karina looked back at us and dropped us a wink.

~//~

The thing with Barney and Karina didn’t last long. She caved in just a few days, and then Barney was back to wearing suits. In fact, that was just before the Perfect Week, which I’ve already told you about. And then there was the Super Bowl, when he put his number on national television and suddenly had a magic always-ringing phone. The stories with Barney never really end. I could keep telling them for hours. Or years, even.

But you have places to be. So I’ll just tell one more.

~//~

Anita was gorgeous. She looked like a movie star, and acted like one too.

She was also entirely unaffiliated with ALA, and we hated her.

Why? Well, I think I told you that even though we restarted ALA after Barney broke up with Robin, we were hopeless romantics and were totally rooting for them to get back together. Despite the fact that Barney was again sleeping with everything that moved, we still believed he loved Robin. Their breakup never sat right with us; none of us really believed in “destiny”, but if ever two people were made for each other, those two people were Barney and Robin.

So when Anita came on the scene and started cold-bloodedly stringing Barney along in accordance with her self-help book, Of Course You're Still Single, Take a Look at Yourself, You Dumb Slut, we didn’t like her for several reasons. One, she wasn’t Robin. Two, it didn’t look like she was after just one night of fun, which meant she was a threat to Barney and Robin’s eventual happiness. Three, she never tipped anyone. Four, she made Robin miserable.

But we couldn’t do much about it. She was gorgeous, and Barney was hooked.

Until…

Sara sunk into the booth across from me, setting down a plate of hot wings. Ricardo had probably done something fancy to them – he and Sara were trying to persuade Carl to make MacLaren’s more of a gastropub, without much success so far – but they looked tasty nonetheless. “Anita here?”

I shook my head, sipping my sparkling water. “No, I thought she and Barney had a date tonight, but apparently not. He’s here with The Gang, except for Robin. She’s out on a date with Don.”

(We could do even less about the men Robin dated than the women Barney slept with. We weren’t as worried about them, though, because anyone with an eye to see could see the way Robin looked at Barney. Don was nice, and Kevin was sweet, and Nick was incredibly hot, but Barney was the one Robin couldn’t keep her eyes off of. Maybe she didn’t yet know herself, but we knew.)

Sara sighed. “Is this the one, do you think?”

The one to take Barney off the market again? “I don’t know. She’s beautiful. She’s after a relationship. She could be.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about Barney and relationships in the same sentence,” Sara said, reflectively. “Two years ago, I would have said it was impossible. But now…” She trailed off.

I tipped my head back against the wall. “Sara, I’ve had second thoughts about keeping ALA going.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “What happened to the whole ‘keep Barney busy with ALA members so he has time to realize how he feels about Robin before he jumps into a commitment with someone else’ thing?”

I gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “It just doesn’t feel right. Who’s to say that getting into another relationship might not be the catalyst that brings him to his senses? Or that Barney getting serious with someone else might not make Robin realize she’s not over him?”

Sara looked unhappy. “It’s dicey. It’s leaving a lot to chance.”

“Life is chance,” I said. “Not to sound too deep or anything. But look at Karina and Wendy over there.” I gestured with my water bottle. “They don’t think we know – they may not even know themselves yet – but I think that’s the beginning of another story. And the reason it even has a possibility of happening is because Karina’s ex-girlfriend once dated Carl’s brother and he recommended that she get a job here. The reason it might happen is because Wendy was wearing a Mets shirt the day she came in looking for a job, and Carl had won 10 dollars on a bet on the Mets the night before. Life is chance.”

“Barney and Robin are meant for each other,” Sara countered. “Are we going to leave that to the whims of chance and the well-honed wiles of Anita?”

“Barney has well-honed wiles too, even if they’re a bit unfortunate at times. And ultimately we need to let him live his own life. He’s getting older, and I think he’s finally growing up. We need to let him make his own choices – we need to let him go.”

“But ALA’s so easy to run. It’s harmless.”

I shook my head. “Let me ask you this. If you knew that someone had been meddling in your relationship with Ricardo from the very beginning, would you be happy or upset?”

“Upset,” Sara said, tipping her head in concession.

“It’s cute that his cooking seduced you out of vegetarianism. It’s a great story. If someone had been interfering with that, even in a small way, it wouldn’t be quite the same.”

Sara groaned. “I know. It’s just hard to let go. I look at him –”, she gestured at Barney, “ – and I know that if Robin walked into this bar right now, his posture would change. His eyes would light up. His entire body language would orient towards her. He’s smitten with her, and he doesn’t even know.”

“Shhh,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. “Anita’s here.”

And then something very strange happened.

Anita walked up to The Gang’s table and accused Barney of standing her up, before offering to go out with him anyway. He said no, citing a promise to a friend. (Sara and I exchanged glances.) Anita kept upgrading her offer, until she’d moved past “sex tonight” and on to something that required her to whisper it in his ear rather than broadcast it to the whole bar. We watched Barney’s eyes go wide.

“There’s that then,” Sara said gloomily.

And then Barney got up and walked, very uncomfortably and rigidly, away from Anita and her temptations – walked straight out of the bar.

“Sara,” I said, watching Anita stiffen with outrage, “He just kept a promise to Robin and refused to sleep with one of the hottest women I’ve ever seen. Refused, in fact, to do what I’m pretty sure were some excellently depraved acts. Just guessing by the look on his face.”

“Your point?”

I followed Anita with my eyes as she stalked out. “I think he knows he’s smitten.”

~//~

We gathered the next night to mark the end of ALA. Carl left Karina to tend bar, and he came to sit in the booth with us three co-presidents.

“It’s the end of an era,” Sara said, clinking her champagne glass with Wendy and Carl.

“I feel a little bit like a mother sending her kid off to college,” Wendy said, a sentimental look on her face.

“Geez, you’re one week into a relationship and already acting like a old biddy,” Carl said, then grinned when she flashed him the finger.

I raised my water glass. “To Barney, the Prince of MacLaren’s. May he make good decisions, may he find his true love, and may he reap all the joy he has sown with the members of our good company.”

“May he always patronize this bar,” Carl added.

“May he never give up suits,” Wendy put in.

“And may we one day raise a glass to celebrate his wedding to Robin,” Sara finished.

“To Barney!” we all chorused.

It was March 2010, and the Awesome League of Awesomeness had lasted just over four years.

~//~

The rest of the story? Oh, it’s all pretty boring, I think. Life went on. Soon after we disbanded the League, Carl and I bought a new apartment. It was still near to the bar, but it had an extra bedroom that we could turn into a nursery. Wendy bought our old apartment with the money she earned from the lucrative consultancy business Nate had encouraged her to start. She still waitresses at the bar occasionally, but just to keep her hand in because she loves it. (And to flirt with her girlfriend while they’re both at work.) Sara and Ricardo moved in together and got a cocker spaniel puppy named Bob; last year Ricardo got headhunted away from us to be the new executive chef at that trendy spot uptown. We’re very happy for him, and MacLaren’s has gone back to serving good old-fashioned bar food.

Oh, you meant the rest of the story about The Gang? Goodness, their adventures never seem to stop. Letting go of Barney was a hard thing to do, and he certainly kept us guessing about what was going to happen to him. He dated a lovely girl called Nora for a while – they could have been happy together, if not for the unfinished business between him and Robin, but eventually we’re pretty sure he broke up with her because he knew it wasn’t fair to her if he still loved Robin. Then he dated a nice stripper named Quinn, and actually was engaged to her for a bit, but she worried us less than Nora had – they liked each other a lot, and Quinn was awesome, but they were no Barney and Robin.

Meanwhile, Robin dated Don & Kevin & Nick, all nice in their own ways, all deserving of happiness, but she was as much in love with Barney as ever, and the other men she dated all eventually went their separate ways.

And then finally…

All right, go ahead, Wendy.

~//~

Wendy

Once upon a time there was this hot guy who made the ladies swoon. He had a great tongue and – fine, I’m getting to it. He slept with half the women in New York, but there was one woman who was right for him, one woman who could make his smile really reach his eyes. Life conspired against them for seven long years, until one fine day…

Carl

There was this guy. Good for business. Although sometimes he got drinks thrown in his face and that made a mess. Slippery on the bar floor. And it was a little weird that his sexual shenanigans kept distracting all the staff in this place, and even the bartender’s girlfriend. But he was a good guy and always tipped well. So everyone was happy when one day…

Sara

There was this woman who was training to be a massage therapist, and she had this asshole boyfriend, and then one day he dumped her and in her quest to get over him she ended up becoming best friends with these girls who hung out at the local bar. Then she started this awesome league, and got really good at managing both spreadsheets and people, and the skills she learned helped her get this awesome job in corporate America and get promoted…oh, fine. There was this guy who was pretty funny and awesome, if maybe the most insecure person ever, and he had a lot of adventures and slept with a lot of women and eventually grew up and realized the only woman he really wanted was sitting right next to him in The Gang’s usual booth. And one day…

~//~

You guys are crap at telling stories. Here, Carl, take Sophia, she needs her diaper changed.

I started this story, let me finish it.

Look, when you walked in here tonight you must have realized we’re having a bit of a party. My friends Jermaine and Josh – I think I mentioned them a million years ago, way back at the beginning of this story – well, they got married last week, and we’re just clinking a few glasses to celebrate.

So when you recognized our group as being the one that your friend Nancy pointed out to you several years ago as being the Awesome League of Awesomeness who had hooked her up with this amazing guy called Barney, and you came over to us to say that you had a few hours to kill before you had to catch a plane flight to California with your band, and could we point you in the direction of this Barney guy – well, we were already feeling celebratory and nostalgic.

It doesn’t take much to get me started telling stories. (You may have seen my second book, which is just now out in stores. Yes, I ramble as much in it as I have here.) And besides, I had to explain why it wouldn’t be possible to point you in the direction of this Barney guy, no matter how much you wanted to take a quickie revenge on your jerk ex-boyfriend and have some great sex while you were at it. You can’t hook up with Barney, sorry.

Because Barney –

You know, I’ve told this entire story and never really described Barney? I just kept on talking about his abs and arms and suits. Sorry about that.

But if you look around this bar, there’s really only one description you need to find him.

Barney’s the utterly besotted man leaning on the bar talking to his Robin, the woman he loves, the woman he’s marrying in May.

(He’s the one touching her wrist, gentle and teasing; she’s the one smiling, tipping her head to look up at him; he’s the one leaning in for a kiss, as if he just can’t help himself, even in front of everyone; she’s the one kissing him back, her fingers fluttering up to land on his cheek, holding him to her; they’re the ones breaking their kiss and leaning their foreheads together at the bar in MacLaren’s, silly and breathless in love.)

So no, you can’t have Barney. ALA is closed for business forever.

You can have Ted if you want, though. He’s not dating anyone at the moment – his last girlfriend was seriously messed up. I told you, he picks all the wrong girls. Maybe if the girl picked him for once, he’d have better luck. I’m not sure exactly where he’s gone, though, maybe in search of a pineapple? We should find him, though. I know he likes bass players.

No? That’s right, you have a plane to catch.

Well, I hope the story didn’t bore you too much. I know it dragged on – I’ve seriously got to learn to tell shorter stories. Have a safe flight. Oh, don’t forget your umbrella. Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime – look us up when you’re back in New York, we’ll get coffee. Goodbye!

~//~

Funny that she had a yellow umbrella. Looked just like that old one of Ted’s, don’t you think?