I say a silent prayer for Ryan, May God have mercy on his soul. Amen.
As usual, Ryan’s good-naturedness diffuses the awkward situation, and Ryan heads offstage to kiss her.
Jennifer smiles like it’s a performance, leans back, and taps her cheek.
“Don’t kiss me too hard. I don’t want to mess up my makeup for the pictures tonight,” she says.
“As you wish,” Ryan says like a dutiful robot and then leans in to kiss her.
Good thing I’ve built up my internal puking immunity to situations like this over the past year.
I’ve known Ryan since we were roommates freshman year in the dorms. We’re also roommates now in our own apartment, and play on the Greene State University baseball team together.
He’s handsome, agreeable, a little funny but not too edgy. He’s kind and caring and would jump on a grenade for the ones he loves.
Not to mention the fact that Ryan comes from a terrific family that is loaded with money if he goes into the family business. If Ryan didn’t want to work, he wouldn’t have to.
And if Jennifer doesn’t want to work, she definitely doesn’t have to, either.
I watch as Jennifer FaceTimes with a friend of hers from back home in Florida, zooming in so whoever it is can see her space rock.
I mean ring. It’s a ring.
Sliding my way through the crowd, I head back to the bar and saddle up on a barstool for a moment, away from our group of friends and the engagement party crowd.
“Weirdo alert.” My fraternity brother Guy Farnsworth pulls up next to me as I wait for the bartender to come back. He nods toward a girl at the end of the bar.
It’s a girl I know, Skylar Houston. My chest tightens a little at the sight of her. Farns is on the baseball team with Ryan and I and he’s decent guy, but I always feel like he’s trying to overcompensate for something.
“Do you even know her?” I retort, masking the fact that I know Sky quite well. The two of us studied abroad junior year, fall term, and our host families were neighbors. We became an odd couple of besties, taking all of our classes together and going out three or four nights a week with our group of friends. Yeah, I’m in a frat and on the baseball team, and she’s the hipster girl who prefers playing Settlers of Catan to going to a country music concert, but you know what? We got along like Laurel and Hardy for the twelve weeks we were in Buenos Aires learning Spanish.
Cue corny sitcom music for the Odd Couple.
So I play dumb and listen to whatever Farns has to say about Sky, more intrigued than ready to take his opinion seriously.
Farns nods and swigs his drink. “I do. I had to take this translation of poetry class last term for my required art credit and she was in it. The whole term she pretended to be Rita Hayworth, spoke in a 1950s accent and everything. I tried to get her number, you know because she’s actually low-key cute underneath those glasses and baggy clothes. But she just pretended it was still 1959. She literally told me, ‘Oh that’s swell you’d like to ask me out. My shift at the drive in diner starts soon though and I’ve got to shine my roller skates.’”
I’m unable to contain my laughter thinking about Sky saying that. “So you’re mad because Skylar didn’t give you her number. You poor thing.”
Farns stiffens. “It’s not about that. I’m just saying, I mean, trust me, she’s weird. She’s all about performance art. She did this “piece” last term, where she—”
“Where she just sat in a room for four days straight. Yes, I know. I went.”
Farnsworth furrows his brow. “You went?”
I nod, then sip the beer Kathleen cracks open and puts in front of me. I might not get to see Skylar as much since we roam in very different social circles on campus as opposed to when we were abroad. But any time I can check out some of her quirky art, I’m game.
When I don’t say anything, Farns continues. “That’s some weird shit. And earlier tonight, I saw her walking around with a sign that says, ‘I’m here to listen, if you need to talk.’ What even is that?”
I squint. Farns seems to think this is a putdown, but I just find it amusing.
“So?”
“So she was wearing a cardboard sign, dude! With rope around her shoulders! Anyway, I tried getting her number again. She said that I should think about my priorities more, and look at my life like I’m an artist and my life is one long piece of performance art. What does that even mean?”
I grin broadly. Sky is definitely a weird, out-of-the-box thinker, which is one of the reasons I like her.
Because aren’t we all a little weird on the inside? She has the courage to let it shine through to the outside.
Farnsworth gets called away from the bar by someone else and I take a good long pull on my beer, happy to be alone again with my thoughts.
Letting out an audible breath, I close my eyes and pinch my forehead, when I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Everything all right, Lucas?”
Her voice sends a literal shiver of joy down my spine.
No one says my name like she does.
When I spin around and see her, I can’t stop the giant, genuine smile that spreads on my face.
“Skylar! Hola!”
I jump down off my barstool, wrap Skylar up in a tight hug, then pull back.
Skylar is a cute brunette with shoulder length hair and clear blue eyes that sparkle. The outfit she wears tonight at The Purple Spike is grungy as usual. Loose, faded jeans, a comfortable looking sweater that would fit in at any ugly sweater holiday party, and giant black-framed John Lennon style eye glasses. And yes, she still wears a cardboard sign around her upper body that says ‘I’m here to listen, if you need to talk.’
“You doing okay, Luke? I saw you from across the bar and you looked like you were sulking.”
You know those friends who you can go a few months without seeing, but then you pick up just like you were in the middle of a conversation?
Yeah, that’s me and Skylar.
Because we run with very different social crowds, we have a wonderful no-bullshit, unfiltered dialogue as friends.
It’s perfect, because since our paths don’t cross in our social circles—she runs more with the hipster, social justice crowd than the jocks and frat guys like I do—we often speak candidly with each other in a way that we might not if our people intersected.
“Actually, no, it’s not okay. It’s been a rough night. Ryan got engaged.”
Sky has heard all of the stories about me and Ryan doing dumb—but often fun, hilarious, and harmless—shit together freshman and sophomore year. Like that time I surprised him by putting a giant tree branch in his bed. Or when we ran out of gas on the way to a baseball game after a night of drinking in the next town over and got torn a new one by our baseball coach when we arrived late to the game that afternoon in the county sheriff’s car, who was nice enough to give us a lift.
Sky scrunches up her face. “I don’t understand. If he’s getting married, shouldn’t you be glad for Ryan? Not sad? If one of my friends was getting married, I’d think that’s so great they found someone who makes them happy.”
I hesitate, because getting into this is only going to make me mad.
“I think that part of it is great. Maybe.” My voice actually cracks, and I avert my eyes, my body tensing.