“Yeah, so I feel like you did not properly prepare me for thisat all,” Ryan says as I spot Jake’s truck looming over the others around it.
“I don’t think I properly prepared myself,” I reply. I don’t know if I feel fifteen or eighteen right now, but neither age feels particularly appropriate to be here. ThankGodI didn’t tell my mom the truth about where I was going when we were baking cookies together this morning, or she never would’ve let me come. I wasn’t thrilled about lying to her, but I did it for the sake of rebuilding my friendship with Savannah and Rory. And it was just a small lie, one that any normal eighteen-year-old would tell.
“Stevie!” Before I know it, something is whizzing through the air right at my head from the bed of Jake’s truck. Thankfully Ryan sticks his hand out just in time to snatch it. I turn and see him holding a can of Bud Light.
“Nice catch! Sorry!” Rory yells, but she doesn’t really sound all that sorry.Great.Very thoughtful of my best friend. The last thing my head needs is to be nailed by a full can of beer. “Here, Stevie.” She winds up to toss another one, but I stop her.
“No, no, I’m good,” I reply, looking between Savannah and Rory both up there, double-fisting.
I have no problem with them drinking, I can drive us home, it just throws me off-balance a little. It feels like just a couple of months ago that the three of us drank a six-pack of beer together for the first time and then hated how we felt after. I think I remember Rory swearing off the stuff for the rest of her life, even in the afterlife. But I guess that wasn’t recently… it was years ago, and obviously things have changed since then.
I wonder if there’s some version of me that could have grown up to be more like them, to be up there dancing and drinking and not worrying if my ass is hanging out of these shorts right now.
“Laaaame,” Savannah sings into one of her beer cans along with the melody of the song, pointing at me and making me feel even more uncomfortable than I already do, standing here with Jake’s Confederate flag waving in my face.
I look up at Rory dancing in front of that guy she came to meet, who… actually seems more than a few years older than us. I visibly cringe as I read his shirt.
I LIKE MY WOMEN THE WAY I LIKE MY DEER. HORNY.
Savannah being with Jake I guess I could understand at least a little. But Rory withthisguy? She’s like the smartest person I’ve ever met. I mean, she got into UNC’s biomedical research program. The Rory I knew wouldn’t have come within a hundred yards of a shirt like that. But here she is, grinding on him like her life depends on it.
Ryan cracks his beer and takes a small sip, and the two of us awkwardly stand there as everyone else dances and sings aroundus. This was supposed to be an opportunity to get to know him more, to catch feelings again, but I can barely hear myself think here. I should’ve just let him take me to lunch like we originally planned. Savannah and Rory used to give me the best advice, but despite what Rory said earlier… it feels like they don’t even know me now, not just that I don’t remember them.
And then it gets worse.
“Yo, Bruce Lee!” A deep voice shouts from behind me, pulling my attention away.
I turn around to find a man old enough to grow a full beard sliding down over the side of his truck toward us.
“Come on, let’s see what you got.” The guy laughs, holding his fists up in front of him like a boxer… a very drunk boxer.
Ryan turns his back to him and so do I, but he doesn’t give up.
“Who wants to see me fight Bruce Lee?!” he yells, and the people around his truck erupt with cheers behind us.
“He can’t understand you!” a woman yells.
My blood is freaking boiling and there are a thousand things running through my head that I could say, but everything feels caught in my throat. I look up at Savannah and Rory and Jake and all the other people here with us, hoping maybe someone else will speak up or jump down to help, but they all just keep dancing.
The guy comes right up behind us then. I see him out of my peripheral vision, hopping back and forth between both feet before he throws a few light jabs into Ryan’s back. Ryan closes his eyes as his face goes beet red. But the guy doesn’t let up at all until finally Ryan turns around. He gives him one shove. Itisn’t very hard, more like he’s trying to create distance than fight, but it’s enough to knock him off-balance in his inebriated state. He stumbles backward until he ends up on his ass, still laughing the whole way.
Jake clangs two empty beer bottles together and yells, “Round one! Bruce!”
My face drops as I watch both Savannah and Rory not only paying attention now butlaughingalong with everyone else surrounding us.
I don’t even recognize them at all anymore. I watch the relationship I was trying so hard to save crumble right in front of my eyes.
What the fuck am I doing here?
“Let’s go,” I say to Ryan above all the noise, placing my hand on his shoulder. He sets his can of beer down on Jake’s tailgate and then we head off toward the parking lot, a chorus of boos directed at us as we go.
“Thanks, Pat,” Ryan says as the waitress sets down chocolate milkshakes and two burgers in front of us at the Dinor. It’s after ten, and the place is almost empty. Ryan hasn’t said much of anything since we got here.
“Are you okay?” I ask as he stirs his straw around in the shake. He nods. “I’m sorry I took you there. I didn’t… I mean—”
“I’m okay, Stevie,” he says, finally looking up at me. “But why did we go there instead of just grabbing something to eat in the first place?”
“My friends thought lunch wasn’tfunenough or something…,” I reply.
