The fact that he was calling me up for chick advice? Honestly, I couldn’t believe it was happening. Whatever he had done, he must have pissed off whoever she was pretty fantastically.
“So, buy her fucking flowers?” he asked after I offered my most sage wisdom. “That’s it?”
I suggested sex toys but only because I wanted to see how he would react. I wished I could have seen his face, but I didn’t want to actually be punched.
“Flowers seem kind of…cliché.”
“There’s a r
eason for that,” I informed him. “They work.”
Maybe he agreed with me and maybe he didn’t, but he obviously didn’t have any other brilliant ideas, or he wouldn’t be calling me in the first place. I considered asking him who the girl was because I never saw him leave a bar or anything with one but decided against it.
“You can always just apologize,” I heard myself say.
“Not for this shit,” he mumbled before hanging up.
I stared at the phone for a second, shoving it back into my pocket and shaking my head. The guys I was with wanted to head back downtown for a little bar hopping, which worked for me. Unfortunately, they picked a bar with a crappy atmosphere, bad live band, and no chicks. They seemed to love it, so I claimed to be tired and headed out onto the street.
The awesome thing about downtown Chicago is that if you end up at a crappy bar, there’s probably another place to hang out just down the street. I didn’t have much luck finding anyone to talk to at the first couple of places, but I finally found myself in one of those basement clubs with a lot of techno bass and flashing lights.
Danielle and Richard were there. Recently married, they were still in that kind of sickly-sweet mode of making googly-eyes at each other on a regular basis even though they had been living together for a year before they were officially hitched. When I caught up with them, they were leaning close together at the bar, taking sips of each other’s beer. It didn’t bug me much, but it usually drove Chris right out of the room.
I think he’s jealous.
Hell, I’m a little jealous.
I mean, who doesn’t want to find true love, right?
The music changed to something with a lot of yelling and overuse of the word fuck in the lyrics, which Danielle seemed to like very much. She headed to the dance floor with a couple others to twist and shout a bit.
“What have you been up to?” Richard asked me.
“Not a lot,” I said. “Did the con thing last weekend, which wasn’t bad.”
“I heard about your sister’s trick.”
“Yeah, but she failed!” I laughed.
Richard smiled and shook his head and looked out towards Danielle on the dance floor.
“I miss those days sometimes,” he admitted.
“How often?” I asked.
“Not a lot,” he said, “but more than I thought I would. When I was single, I just wanted to find the right girl. Now I know I have her, but it can be a little…I don’t know…suffocating? Only sometimes, though. Most of the time she’s awesome, and I can’t believe how lucky I am.”
I thought about the whole suffocating thing, which I’d heard other married guys say. It was countered with every unattached guy I knew who usually said he was lonely. I never really had it either way.
Did I?
I had a lot going on, a lot of friends, and was never too far from a woman in my bed. Granted, I didn’t really date, but that was always fine with me. I wasn’t about to date a local girl, who just might figure out who I was related to or what the guys I hung out with did when they weren’t drinking.
Dating meant sharing, and I didn’t really like the idea of telling a woman about me or my family. I mean, really, what do you say when you’re out with a chick who doesn’t know who you are, and they ask you what your parents do for a living?
“You got any weed?” Richard asked.
I eyed him.