On the Rocks(54)

When I was far enough away that I could hear myself think, I sat down on the sand and threw my head back to stare at the stars. I said out loud to the waves as they crashed against the beach, “Fuck my life.” I meant it. This was not how I wanted this night to go.

“And here I was hoping that you were going to tell me that you were still in a good mood,” Bobby joked. “What are you doing? I saw you walking down the beach looking like someone had stolen your lollipop. Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He sat down and handed me one of the two red Solo cups he was carrying. “Thank you,” I said with a weak smile. I placed the cup on the hard sand in front of me. I struggled to make small talk and force my feelings back into my emotional basement where they belonged. “Have you been to this thing before?”

“No,” he replied. “It’s . . . uhh . . . not really my scene. There are at least three different guys over there named Chad, did you know that?” He pointed back to the Polo-clad guys surrounding the keg, looking like a walking pack of Starbursts.

“I didn’t know that, actually. I haven’t been in there yet. I got a phone call from my sister and decided I needed a few minutes alone before I joined everyone.”

“Sorry to spoil your alone time.”

I shrugged again. “It’s fine.” He tilted his red cup toward mine, and we clanked them together, spilling beer foam onto my hand. He produced a napkin from his pocket and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem. But since I did bring you this beer, free of charge I might add, are you going to tell me why you want to f*ck your life?”

“Oh, you know, just the usual nonsense that seems to follow me everywhere I go.”

“Like what? More wedding stuff?”

I didn’t answer. It was wedding stuff, but I guess it was a little more than that too.

“Come on. You owe me,” he said.

“Fine. Yeah, the wedding stuff. I won’t get into all the details, but for a lot of reasons my little sister’s wedding has me in a funk. It’s kind of held a magnifying glass up to my own life and made me look at where I am. It’s not where I thought I’d be, believe me.”

“You’re at a party on one of the prettiest beaches in the country. Where else would you rather be? A lot of people would kill to be you.”

“If you knew the full story, I think you’d retract that statement.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“Let’s just say it was a bad breakup and leave it at that.”

“Okay. Just so you know, I’m going to keep trying until I catch you at a weak moment and you tell me the full story.”

He really didn’t know who he was dealing with. I’d wire my jaw shut before I’d tell him what had happened. It wouldn’t even be a big deal. If I couldn’t lose these extra pounds before the wedding, it might come to that anyway.

“Look,” he continued, “I’m thirty-three, single, and currently in between jobs. Do you think when I graduated law school this is where I thought I’d be? You can’t plan everything in life. Stop looking at what’s gone wrong and start appreciating what you’ve done right. To people who don’t know that you’re a walking basket case, you seem like you’ve got it all together. I mean it.”

I laughed. “I’m so not together it’s a joke. And now I have to go to my sister’s alone, not to mention the fact that I have to get her wedding underwear.”

“You have to get your sister underwear?” he asked, confused.

“Yup.”

“Girls are weird.”

“I’m leaving on Wednesday for her dress fitting. I’m going to need Xanax to get through this.”

“I have some if you want them.”

“What are you, a dealer now? Or do you just offer narcotics to chicks to get them stoned so they’ll go out with you?” I joked. I looked at Bobby sitting next to me, just trying to be a good friend. I realized how badly I had misjudged him.

“We’ve come a long way since we first met, huh?” I asked him as I bumped his shoulder with mine. “You’re not nearly as big a jerk as I thought you were.”

He rested his forearms on his knees as he buried his feet in the sand. “Aww shucks. Thanks . . . you weren’t the friendliest person when we first met either, you know.”

“Fine. But you came on a little strong, don’t you think? I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to handle you being so . . . you.”

“I get that a lot. People either love me or hate me. I thought you were a cool girl, so I guess I messed with you more than I should have considering I really didn’t know you. I wanted us to be friends, and I guess I thought it’d be okay if I ripped on you, sort of like an older brother or something. Sorry if I took it a little too far.”

“It’s not a big deal. I kind of like it. But does this mean that you’ll stop making fun of me now?”

“No way. It’s just too easy most of the time.”

“Thanks.”

“I liked you off the bat, for what it’s worth. Even if I thought you were a humungous pain in the ass with way too many defensive mechanisms, and I had no romantic interest in you whatsoever . . .”