Chapter Five
“See you tonight. Happy Hour at Darby’s,” the text on my phone reads. It’s from Matthew. From Diagnostics. It’s midday on Friday, and I’m wondering where the week has gone.
I don’t remember actually agreeing to go, and I haven’t actually declined, so I’m holding my phone tightly, encouraging myself that this will be great. It’ll be good to hang out with some of the guys from his department. I’ll have fun.
I text back: “See you then.”
As I walk into Darby’s, Matthew sees me from across the bar and begins waving, shoulder tapping the guys around him, pointing at me and yelling.
Fortunately, the bar is so loud that no one actually notices the commotion, except me.
I make my way across the bar, and Matthew meets me halfway, shaking my hand with a strong grasp while his other hand firmly grabs my forearm.
He’s beaming back and forth between me and the group and I feel like I’m being pulled into something warm.
“Liam, it’s good to see you.” I hear from someone, I think his name is Jordan. He’s reaching across the high-top table for a shake.
“Everett,” says another, addressing me by my last name with a head nod. This is Max. “How’re things in engineering?”
I’m nodding and shaking hands and laughing and trying to remember names: Max, Jordan, Amir, Joacim.
“Before the waitress gets here, we should let you in on our game,” Joacim is saying. The other guys are smiling and laughing.
Matthew throws his arm around my neck, squeezing my shoulder. “Here’s the deal: When the waitress comes over, order a drink that sounds like a real drink, but isn’t. First person to get called out, buys the first round.” He looks me in the eye and squeezes my shoulder again.
“You in?” Max is pointing with two hands.
“What?” I’m trying to absorb the chaos. I see the waitress heading our way.
“Just make it sound believable enough that she doesn’t question it,” Jordan says, throwing a handful of nuts into his mouth.
“If she calls you out, the round is on you.” Amir has his arms crossed and his ‘I dare you’ face on.
Suddenly the waitress is here. “What’re we having, gentlemen.” She’s dressed all in black, tight against her skin, with a small apron tied snugly around her waist. She lays a hand on the high-top table, gray nails brushing the surface gracefully.
“I’ll have a ‘full stack,’” Max says, raising a hand like he’s holding a martini glass. I guess it works, because her gaze cycles around the table.
“I’ll have a falcon, and make it a double,” says Amir. She looks for a moment at him, and then presses on.
“Northern exposure, on the rocks,” Jordan says. She immediately moves on.
I find myself growing visibly nervous. I think my hands are twitching under the table.
Matthew is next: “I’ll have a fourth floor.”
And then her eyes are on me. I blurt the first thing that comes to mind: “A KPI, please.” I stop breathing for a second, and then exhale purposefully.
“Anything else?”
No one at the table speaks, there’s just head shaking all around and then she’s off.
With a collective exhale, the table erupts into laughter. Palms are hitting the table, hands are clapping shoulders. Everyone is talking at once, I can’t make out any of it through the maelstrom.
“She didn’t even flinch,” I say over the noise. “I can’t believe that.”
“We’ll see what happens.” Matthew says, laughing. The chaos happening at our table makes the rest of the bar seem to disappear. I can’t stop laughing, my heart racing.
“So let’s get Liam’s input on the fridge?” Amir says, which is followed by a groan around the table.
“What?” I say.
“The wifi fridge? What’s your take?” Amir is beaming and he’s speaking so fast his words are rolling together. “Great idea or over-engineered?” There’s both laughter and groaning from the others.
I start laughing, almost so much I can’t speak. “What, so you can check the fridge temp from your phone? Shouldn’t it just be cold?”
Matthew is rolling, leaning against my shoulder.
Amir is beside himself, pointing and building an argument through the noise. “It’s brilliant.” He smacks the table with an open palm. “You can check the inventory of your fridge when you’re at the store. Be alerted if something goes wrong.”
I hardly let him finish his sentence when I’m adding, “What about the wifi toothbrush? Like anyone really wants to see their brushing stats?”
The group erupts into laughter, Matthew is grabbing my forearm and pounding the table, and suddenly Joacim is offended: “I check my stats every day!” He’s screaming over the noise, “It’s calculated into my Healthometer!
And look at my teeth.” He flashes broad pearly whites at us with an awkward lip curl.
We’re nearly rolling on the floor and everyone seems to have something to add about the toothbrush. It’s so much I can’t follow. Before we know it, the waitress is back and has brought nothing with her. We stop laughing long enough to hear what she has to say.
“You guys are messing with me,” she says, then turns to Matthew, “There is no such thing as a fourth floor.” The table erupts again, slapping and laughing and pointing.
Matthew hangs his head slightly and then says, “We’ll just have a round of lagers for the whole table instead. This one’s on me.”
There’s shoulder clapping and thanks giving and pointing as the waitress turns to go. I can’t stop laughing, and I can’t even remember the drink I ordered earlier. Matthew looks at me, a bit of defeat and elation mixed together. I smile back, feeling my teeth shine, thinking of wifi toothbrushes.
I’m nearly exhausted from laughing so much, and I’m impressed that these guys haven’t mentioned work a single time since we got here, although you can’t escape the fact that they’re all engineers.
The table is piled with empty dishes and glasses of all kinds and I think we’ve debated most every unnecessary topic we could find.
Max took his leave of the table long ago, and now Amir and Joacim are declaring their need to get home.
We exchange handshakes and shoulder pats and traditional goodbyes and then Matthew and I are left alone at the table.
The noise of the bar has changed, and we can hear the background music as the room itself has become more quiet.
“I’m glad you joined us tonight,” Matthew begins. “You’re a lot of fun.”
“Me too,” I confess mostly to my empty glass. “And you too, I mean.”
There’s a moment’s pause before he sighs, “Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you’d make it.” He fidgets with a napkin as he speaks.
I think about this. “I’m not really a ‘group of guys’ kind of person,” I reply slowly, wondering if the words are actually true or just muscle-memory, “but I’m glad I came. Thanks for inviting me. The guys are great.”
Matthew stops fidgeting and just stares at me with a half-smile. He exhales through his nose and I see his gaze lock on my forearm. My skin feels the burn of his eyes and I tuck my arm under the table in my lap. He smiles a full smile and then looks away.
Together we sit, fingers fidgeting on whatever the table casually provides, and let the low murmur of the bar settle between us. The quiet provides a warm contrast to the echoing laughter of the evening.
Eventually Matthew leans over and whispers: “Do you like dares?”
No. I do not like dares, but I find myself saying, “Sure.”
“How good are you at spycraft?”
“What?”
“Being a spy?” He’s still whispering. I blink slowly as he continues, “Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to leave the bar with me as if you’re a spy.”
I stare at him unblinking for a minute, then look down at my watch, pressing buttons on it with my thumb and index finger, then say in the most serious tone I can muster, “I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point, then.”
He smiles brightly, then straightens. “Copy.”
He immediately stands, turns, and heads to the bar, presumably to pay his tab. He leans in to whisper something to the waitress and points at a random table across the room. His face looks serious and quickly hers matches.
I leave cash on the table, grab a cardboard coaster and head toward the door, straightening my shirt as I go.
I see Matthew has stopped at the front door, has turned to face the room with one hand on a hip, jacket pulled open, and is watching me.
I place the coaster on a table in front of a gentleman I don’t know, look him in the eye and say, “The ibis has clearance. You know what to do,” and then head directly toward the door, flanking Matthew as he opens it and we step out into the blue-gray lights of the parking lot.
We march twenty steps into the glowing light when Matthew suddenly breaks, throws his arm around my shoulder and slaps his hand on my chest. The movement is friendly and warm and I welcome it.
“What did you say to him?” He’s laughing and hanging on.
“I activated the codeword,” I say straight-faced.
He’s laughing so hard he can’t hold on to me anymore and steps away staggering and beaming.
“What did you say to her?” I ask trying not to smile.
“I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you,” he says through hysterical laughter.
I can’t help but laugh along.
“You’re great, Liam. That was fun,” he says.
I smile back, standing there watching him. He heads back toward me with a hand outstretched, which I grab and begin shaking.
“I’m so glad you came tonight.” He’s grabbing my forearm firmly and his eyes are swimming in the parking lot lights. His ears rise with the strong muscles of his smile.
“I’m glad you invited me. This was fun. I needed this tonight.”
We stand in the parking lot, our hands locked together, my forearm tensing under his firm grasp, for longer than we should.
I’m not sure who is smiling bigger, and there’s almost a dare to be the first to let go.
A heat begins to rise up the back of my neck.
When a car turns a corner, we are suddenly glowing in the headlights and we release simultaneously, exchanging goodbye nods as we head toward our respective vehicles.
When he reaches his car, he turns. “Maybe I’ll see you around at work next week,” he’s hollering across the parking lot.
“Maybe so. Until then,” I say, climbing into the cab of my truck, settling into the seat.
The ghost of me handing that cardboard coaster to a stranger materializes in my mind with a surge of surprise, or embarrassment, or joy or something I can’t name, and I grab my forehead with a sharp smile and a firm shake.
In the rear-view mirror I watch Matthew slide into his car and pull away.
“You do realize that every time you write back to me, there is a personal challenge!” the journal reads. “I intended to send you on an adventure, but somehow you keep reversing it. I don’t know why it keeps surprising me.”
The sloppy blue writing in the journal makes me smile. It’s almost easy: easy to read, easy to write back, easy to be me.
Easy. In a world where I seem to want to make things difficult.
“I took your challenge. I became a kid again. And I learned something very important,” the journal reads.
What follows is pages of childhood memories at their finest. Making brownies just like they used to with grandma.
In the backstory, there’s a brother and a sister and more mess than you can possibly imagine.
The chaos and the measuring and the waiting and the fun is detailed in a way that makes me feel like I was there.
In fact, I think I lived a piece of this in my own family.
“She didn’t care about the flour on the counter,” it says. “Or on our clothes.”
My favorite part was the extravagant amount of chocolate chips, and then the waiting.
Waiting for it to bake. Waiting for it to cool.
Making the chocolate frosting, and then covering the brownies.
Everyone worked together, four knives and four arms spreading chocolate everywhere.
There was licking of fingers, and smearing on faces, and eating until everyone was sick.
My brain digs deep and finds the same joy and sweetness from my own childhood.
“But it didn’t turn out that way for me this time,” the journal says, “My brownie-making experience wasn’t the same.
I tried to relive it, tried to make them on my own.
I essentially made a giant mess, and very chocolatey brownies,” it says.
“The brownies were fine. Extremely sweet and indulgent. But lonely. I think I’ve discovered that the best part of making brownies was the people I shared it with.
Even though the brownies hold the biggest part of the memory, I realize now that the brownies didn’t matter. ”
I stop reading and have to think about this.
It was the same for me. It just hadn’t clicked: The best part of my be-a-kid-day wasn’t the shoes or the swings or the sweetgum balls. It was…
I’m staring at the page.
Thinking of Martin.
“I don’t mean this to sound sad.” the journal continues, “I had a great time. It was just a reminder that life becomes memorable only because it’s shared.”
I find myself reading the words aloud.
“That’s the thing I learned from being a kid again.”
It’s a lot to take in. My mind throttles through the laughs and messes and joys I’ve experienced my whole life. But, instead of thinking of events or trips or things, I’m seeing the faces and smiles and laughs that make those memories what they are. The people who make them real.
I turn the page and almost can’t breathe:
“Let’s do something together,” the journal says. “But separately. It’ll be like a date, but on our own. Then we can share our experience with each other when it’s over.”
I stop reading and stare for a minute.
Creative, I must say. How can you go on a date with a secret person? Separately, of course.
Reading further, I learn the details of our together-separately date and I can’t help but smile as I close the journal. This is going to be fun.
I need to call Martin.