My Favorite Half-Night Stand(2)
We groan in unison because he has a point. Reid and Ed are both in neuroscience—also at UCSB—but while Ed works as a postdoc researcher in Reid’s lab, Reid is a newly minted associate professor, just awarded tenure. Said tenure is why I’m wearing both a dress and a party hat, and why there are somewhat droopy crepe paper streamers hung throughout Chris’s living room.
Chris is always Team Reid; he’s gathering up the game pieces, but not to put them away, to compromise. “We’ll switch things up. I’ll be the dog, Mills.”
“I think you’re missing my point, Christopher.”
Four sets of eyes stare blankly back at me, urging me to give up the battle.
“Okay then,” I say, resigned as I stand and walk into the kitchen for another bottle of wine.
An hour later, I’ve lost track of how much pretend money I’ve paid Reid, and how many times Alex has refilled my glass. Alex is a professor of biochemistry, which explains how he can always be counted on to get me drunk. Which I am. I don’t know what I was complaining about: Monopoly is awesome!
Chris reshuffles the Community Chest cards and places them facedown on the board. “Ed, are you still seeing that redhead?”
I have no idea how Chris remembers this. Between Alex and Ed it seems there’s never a shortage of odd dating stories to go around. Alex, I get. He’s tall, dark, and wicked, and even though he’s originally from Huntington Beach, he spent every childhood summer with his extended family in Ecuador, giving him an accent that stops women in their tracks. He’s also never serious about anyone, and rarely sees someone again after getting a cab home in the morning.
Ed is . . . none of these things. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not unattractive and he has the aforementioned full head of hair, but he’s more like a grown frat boy than a manly man. If we went to his place right now we’d find ketchup and a case of Mountain Dew in his refrigerator, and a living room full of pinball machines instead of furniture. Still, he goes out more than me, Reid, and Chris combined.
Not that that’s saying much.
Reid is a workaholic. Chris is gorgeous and accomplished, mentoring fellow African American chemists right here at the university. But he’s also picky and serious, and works the same insane hours as Reid does. And me? Honestly, maybe I’m just lazy.
Alex counts out his spaces and sets the dice in the center of the board. “You’re talking about the one with the eye patch?”
Okay, that jogs my memory.
Ed isn’t amused. “She did not have an eye patch.”
“Actually, I remember her, too,” I say. “I distinctly recall seeing a patch covering an eye.” I motion to the board and the neat row of hotels lined up there. “PS, it’s your turn and if you roll anything other than a two—which will land you in Jail—you are fu-ucked.”
“Slumlords,” Ed mutters, but rolls the dice anyway. I have no idea how, but he does—miraculously—roll a two, and does a celebratory fist pump before scooting his little car into the space marked Jail. A momentary reprieve from the rows and rows of Alex’s hotels. “And it wasn’t an eye patch, it was a small bandage. We were being . . . amorous and things got a little crazy.”
“A little crazy as in . . .” I trail off, deciding I might not really want the answer.
Reid laughs over the top of his glass. When Ed doesn’t immediately clarify, though, his smile slowly straightens, and a hush falls over the room as we’re all left to mentally unravel this, logistically. “Wait. Seriously?”
I tidy up the meager remains of my money. “He did say it was a small bandage.”
Reid falls forward onto the table laughing, and maybe it’s the fact that half my blood has to be wine at this point, but I’m reminded all over again that the first thing I noticed about him was his smile.
Just over two years ago, Reid and I were introduced by my then-boyfriend Dustin, the department chair for criminology. (Yes, this means that my ex-boyfriend is now my boss—the reason I will never date someone I work with again.) Reid was new to UCSB, and at the dedication of a new computer science building, Dustin made some crack about it being the first time anyone had seen Reid outside his lab. Apparently Reid and his fiancée had just broken up; her first complaint was that Reid spent too much time at work. I didn’t know that at the time, but I found out later that Dustin had. Reid laughed at the little dig and continued to smile warmly as we shook hands. I had a tiny, immediate crush on that sparkling, crinkly-eyed smile that survived the sting of Dustin’s underhanded jabs.
For un-Reid-related reasons, I broke up with Dustin a few months later, but because it turns out no one liked Dustin anyway, I got to keep Reid, and all his friends, too: Chris and Reid went to graduate school together, Ed joined Reid’s lab as a postdoc shortly after he was hired, and Alex shared lab space with Chris when they were both new faculty at UCSB. I’m the only non-sciencey person in the group, but at work and at home, these guys have become my sweet little chosen family of sorts.
“So,” Chris says, “I’m going to take that as a no, on the still dating question.”
Ed rolls again, happy when he doesn’t manage a double and gets to remain safely in jail. “Correct.”
“Then who are you inviting to the commencement banquet?” Chris asks.