“Hey…” He starts carefully, his voice lowered. “Sorry to interrupt your date. We got done early and I can still catch Mike downstairs…”
“Don’t bother,” I sigh.
He enters the rest of the way, almost funny as he carefully tiptoes into the middle of the room.
“So… I don’t get it? Is the date still in progress or…?”
“We broke up,” I blurt out, startling myself.
Instantly the corners of my mouth tug down and my hand flies up to cover my chin.
“Oh! Don’t cry!” he barks out as he dives toward the couch.
Before I know it, his arms are draped over my shoulders, gathering me in a heartfelt but somewhat scrawny embrace. Still, it feels pretty nice.
“I’m not crying!” I insist as I sniffle. “I don’t even know what I was thinking! He was a jerk!”
“A total jerk,” Clay repeats as he pats my hair. “Who names their kid Brian anyway?”
“It was Ryan.”
“Even worse,” he mumbles consolingly.
I wish I could say this is the first time that I have sniffled into Clay’s sweaty shoulder in my life. But since we have been best friends since registration day, it’s definitely been at least four or five times. I’ve given him a shoulder to cry on too, just for the record. It’s even.
“What did the bastard do this time?” Clay asks gently when I’ve stopped sniffling and slumped into a slightly more relaxed position.
“Do?” I repeat stupidly. “I guess… Nothing?”
Clay shifts backward and removes the bottle of wine from my hands where I forgot I had been holding it. I can see the tattered edge of the label. I must have been picking at that thing for kind of a while.
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asks as he stands and walks to the kitchen, then unfolds the corkscrew and begins to open the bottle. The popping sound of the cork is music to my ears and he pours us a couple of glasses and comes back to the sofa before I start.
“Oh, this wine is terrible!” I whimper as I sip it. It’s sweet and sour at the same time. Kind of smells like feet.
“It’ll get better. Just keep
drinking,” he advises me.
Obediently, I force myself to take a gulp. Thankfully it is pretty strong and I think it is numbing the inside of my mouth.
“So, do I need to kick his ass? I mean, do I need to have Mike go and kick his ass?”
“No…” I sigh in defeat. “He’s just a jerk. Not a jerk who deserves an ass-kicking. Perhaps in a universal karma way he does. But not for his actions today.”
“Good to know,” Clay smirks.
I smile up at him, taking a deep breath. It’s amazing how different I feel now that he’s here. Just twenty minutes ago, I felt absolutely desolate. Now, it almost seems funny.
“First, he was two hours late for dinner.”
“No way!” Clay scoffs. “This was your big date! What a jerk!”
“I know, right? I worked on this!”
“You did! I can tell! Because you are terrible cook.”
The image of the charcoal-briquette skis that are currently hidden away in the oven flashes through my mind, but I decide not to tell him about that right now.