Bad Sex & Good Scotch: A Reunion Story

Chapter 10 - Now

The waitress asked me if I was sure I didn't want something to drink. I told her I was, but as she smiled and turned away, I changed my my mind. "Actually..." I quickly scanned the list of single malt Scotches. "Macallan 18 on the rocks would be great."

I opened the menu and distractedly flipped through its laminated pages. Suddenly, a palm came down hard on my shoulder, startling me. I looked at the hand, then followed the attached arm up to the shoulder, and finally landed on a familiar face. Familiar in the sense that I knew that I should know who this was, but not so familiar that I actually did.

"Hey, Aaron!" he said. He had a puffy Irish face and thick red hair that had made a tactical retreat several inches up his forehead, where it had formed a new line of defense that seemed to be holding. A Van Dyke framed his mouth and the darkening enamel of his teeth.

"Hey!" I said, matching his enthusiasm as best I could, and stalling for time. "How ya been?"

"Can't complain!" Andy said. No, not Andy. But he had been friends with Andy. Maybe roommates. Tom? "Great wife, great kids, what else could you want?" He indicated his family. His wife waved. She was a dark-haired Latina, with a round, amiable face. His three kids, two girls and a boy, ranged, I guessed, from five to eleven.

"It's nice that you brought your family," I remarked. The name Pete suggested itself. Pete and Tom seemed associated somehow. Maybe they were the roommates. But which one was he?

"Well, it seemed like a good idea, but after ten minutes the kids were bored as shit." Indeed, they were in the process of pushing each other and saying things like, "Quit it!" and "You quit it!" and "No, you quit it!"

Pete and Tom, I realized, were friends of my parents, a gay couple who owned an art gallery. But Steve... the name Steve now seemed to hold some real promise.

"My family stayed back home," I said.

Steve nodded. "Smart."

I tapped my temple with my forefinger and grinned, like this was my ingenious plan to cut loose during reunion.

Noticing I was alone, Mark, as he was now known, asked if I wanted to join him for dinner. His youngest was crying now and his mother was attempting to get the girl to release her death grip on his hair. 

"No!" I said, a little too quickly, and a lot too emphatically. "Thanks, buddy," I continued, having lost faith in the name Mark, "but I'm meeting Carrie."

His head jerked back in surprise. 

"Seriously?" said... Eddie, maybe?

The waitress returned a few minutes later with an unadorned double old fashioned glass. Cylindrical ice crackled in amber liquid. I'm not an alcoholic, but I sure do love my alcohol. It makes me charming and brilliant and, at one point in my life, extraordinarily good at video games. 

By the time Carrie and Daniel arrived, I was pleasantly buzzed and ready for battle.