Seems to be a common theme, but then again, my personal life is crap, so that’s not such a huge surprise.
Blaine clears his throat so he can continue reading from the list. “Meal prep posts on Instagram. Bloggers who smile with their mouths open in every photograph.” He rolls his eyes after reading that one. “People who wake up before five to work out.”
Phillip grins. “Is he missing anything?”
I grunt. “Whatever, you can’t deny those things are fucking nauseating.”
“Yeah, but not enough to bitch about them.”
“All I’m saying is that shit cannot be sustainable.” I’m in a mood, and nothing they say will break it.
“Sure it can. I wake up at four forty-five to jog.” Blaine likes to constantly rub in our faces how fit he is. How well he eats at every meal. How disciplined he is about going to bed at a reasonable time. How great the chick he’s been dating is.
The fucker meal preps.
“No one wants to hear about how amazing your life is, either,” Phillip tells him.
Wow. Aren’t we a barrel of laughs?
“You’re such an ungrateful bastard.” Blaine laughs, picking at the olive in his empty highball glass before leaning back in the big, overstuffed leather chair.
“Bastard. God I love that word.” I smirk, doing more than just chugging rest of my cocktail. It’s cold—full of ice—and sour, just how I like it. It slides down smooth…a bit too smoothly, because the alcohol keeps going straight to my head.
Damn. I should probably eat something besides condiments and cocktail snacks.
“Yeah, you do love throwing that word around for no apparent reason,” Phillip declares, telling us all what we already know.
“You also love being a bastard,” Blaine adds unnecessarily, reaching for a handful of the mixed nuts set on the decorative table in front of us. It’s no bigger than a footstool, just large enough for all our drinks and the tiny bowl of free snacks The Basement provides.
And yeah—yes. I love being a bastard.
“Bastards are the new nice guys.”
Phillip rolls his eyes harder than a twelve-year-old teenage girl arguing with her mother. “They are not.”
Snapping my fingers, I point toward my friends. “That gives me a fantastic fucking idea.”
“You swear way too much,” Phillip points out, ignoring me, determined to snub the light-bulb moment I’m having.
Blaine has no such reservations about my foul mouth or my ideas, instantly curious for more details. He’s always been a bit of a follower. “What’s your great idea?”
“The Bastard…b, b b,” I repeat the first letter of the word for encouragement. “What’s another word that goes great with the word bastard, begins with the letter b?”
“Bagel.”
I roll my eyes. “How the hell does bagel make any sense?”
“Considering I have no idea what the hell you’re even talking about, I’d say it makes total sense.”
“Bandits,” Phillip tosses in, chewing on nuts.
Bastard Bandits? The fuck? “No.”
“Baggage,” says Blaine.
“Boomerang?” says Phillip. “B words are hard.”
“No!” I exclaim, excited. “Think bigger. Like—what could we call a club?”
“What club?”
I sit forward, balancing my elbows on my knees, looking both of them dead in the eye. “Back in the day, they used to have secret societies and they would get together and smoke cigars and talk women and gamble.”
Phillip scratches his balls through his polyester slacks. “I still don’t get it.”
“We should do that.”
Phillip glances at me, then at Blaine, then back at me. “So you want to have a secret club?”
“No?” Actually, yes. Yes! It’s a great fucking idea! Maybe it’s what I need to get out of the funk I’ve been stuck in at home and at work. Maybe it’s what I need to feel some creativity—the creativity that dimmed when Kayla left me. “Yes. A secret club sounds so badass.”
“You want us to have a secret club and act like bastards?”
“I personally don’t want to act like a bastard.” Blaine pouts. “You’ve got the market cornered on that lately. I want to be one of the good guys.”
My head shakes. “That’s not what I meant. You don’t have to act like a bastard. We could meet every week and smoke cigars and shit.”
“Stogies—me likey.” Phillip nods, warming to the idea like I knew my friends would. “And we can drink scotch on the rocks.”
“Let’s order another round right now!” Blaine enthuses, getting into the moment. He raises his hand for a second time, like a grade-schooler to get the server’s attention, and when she comes over, he orders us a round.
B, b, b…
Bastard drinking club.
Nah, doesn’t have the nice ring to it I’m going for.
Bastard brigade. Bastard…
“Bootleggers.”
“Oh Jesus.” Phillip sits back, crossing his legs.
“What does bootlegger even mean?”
The server sets the drinks in front of us, interrupting the flow of our conversation and doing her best to keep a straight face. “Bottoms up, gentlemen.”
Blaine tips his head to the side, a sour expression crossing his features; he’s downed the most alcohol of the three of us. This place might be in the basement of an old building, but it’s bougie as fuck and serves the best of everything, the best liquor in the best atmosphere. We’re seated beside a brick wall covered with plaques from members who were part of an era gone by, from when The Basement was in its heyday.
In its prime, back when you had to pay to take a seat at the table and share a drink.
Now, anyone can frequent The Basement to imbibe, but that wasn’t always the case.
“Maybe we should get drinking jackets if we want to act like gentlemen,” Phillip suggests. “Like Hugh Hefner used to wear before the old goat kicked the bucket.”
Blaine pats his rosy cheeks. “Yeah, but navy blue instead of red. Red isn’t a complimentary color for my complexion.”
We stare. Did he just argue a case for a jacket to flatter his skin tone?
He shrugs at us, no shame. “What? It’s not.”
“Try not to push down so hard on your razor when you’re shaving,” Phillip tells him. “You’re giving yourself razor burn, you douche.” Reaches forward to give our friend’s cheek a light smack with his palm. “And use an aloe-based moisturizer.”
Blaine swats Phillip’s grabby hands out of his personal space.
I ignore them both and power ahead with my idea.
“The club is still in need of a proper name, but we’ve already got a dress code?” I laugh, excitement building. “Where the hell do we get our hands on three velvet smoking jackets?”
Blaine is rubbing his ruddy face.
“Lisbeth.” Phillip swirls his glass. “I’ll have my sister look into it—she can find anything.”
Phillip’s sister Lisbeth is hot, smart, and a stage manager for a Broadway production company in New York City. If anyone can get us jackets to wear on a lark, it’ll be her. And did I mention she hates my guts? Granted, she seems to hate everyone’s guts, but particularly mine. Pretty certain it has something to do with the fact that when we were in our teens, I accidentally walked in on her while she was in the bathroom. Saw Lisbeth naked before she had tits and told the guys at school how flat-chested she was, before I learned about respecting boundaries, and privacy, and because I didn’t know she would carry a goddamn grudge the rest of our entire lives.