“Are you ever afraid that time will start moving faster and faster the older we get?” I mused, looking down into the bottle of my craft beer.
“This afternoon’s award for being the most maudlin out of all of us and an all-around party pooper goes to…Brody!” Ace announced like he was hosting some kind of game show, pointing at me like I’d actually won something.
“I’m just saying,” I said with a shrug. “It’s already going to be fall.”
“Stop,” Chuck complained, sporting a massive apron that still stretched across his chest. “This is a summer pool party.”
“Late summer,” I pointed out. “In the rest of summer, you didn’t have a new house and a new pool.”
“Will you throw him out, Chuck?” Jack asked, rocking back and forth in the swinging bench. “I’ve had about enough of his weirdness.”
“I’m not being weird,” I said. “I’m just commenting on the passage of time. What if it’s like one of those big plastic funnel things you used to see at the mall you know the ones? You’d drop a coin and it would spin around slowly, but the closer it got to the hole at the bottom, the faster it would whirl around until it’s gone. You think that’s how life is going to be the older we get? It’s already going to be fall.”
“I used to slap the quarters out before they got to the bottom of the funnel so I could do it again,” Sloan called from the pool. “Where does that fit in with your life philosophy?”
“You don’t fit in anywhere in my life philosophy,” I informed him.
“Then don’t talk so loud,” he fired back. “Some of us are here trying to enjoy ourselves.”
“Don’t be rude,” Amy fussed at him.
“Better listen to her,” I said. “Or else she won’t be nice to you before she leaves.”
Sloan spluttered. “Are you insinuating that I’m not going to get any goodbye sex before Amy leaves for her work trip? Jack!”
Amy gave a belly laugh. “Why are you complaining to Jack about it? I’m the one sharing your bed.”
“It’s club business,” Sloan said. “We put it up to a vote no discussing any other club member’s sex life. Or lack thereof. Brody.”
“Hey, if my thing was a violation of the rules, so was Sloan’s,” I complained to Jack, who just shook his head and sipped his beer.
“What even happens if one of you violate club rules?” Katie asked.
We all stared at each other until Jack cleared his throat. “That’s, uh, club business,” he clarified.
“Bullshit,” Katie laughed. “You all don’t do anything to adhere to whatever rules you decide on. You’re more of a social club than anything else.”
“You’re just jealous you’re not in the club,” Jack said. “You’d understand if you were, but I can’t help that we can’t manage to vote you in.”
“I am well aware that you are the one holding up that vote,” Katie said, crossing her arms and looking dangerous.
“So, uh, Amy,” Ace said quickly, looking to head of a fight we’d all heard before. “Where are you going for your work trip?”
“Oh, I’ll be in Toronto, talking to American ex-pats,” she said, quick on the uptake. “People who’ve left the country after the last election. Then I’ll be headed to Paris, then Tangier. It’s kind of a story about what prompts Americans to want to move away and live abroad.”
“That sounds really interesting,” Ace said.
“I would want to live abroad to get away from Jack,” Katie added helpfully.
“And I would stay here because that would mean Katie wouldn’t be here,” Jack added.
I cleared my throat and clapped my hands. “This has been funChuck, you and Haley have an incredible place here but I really need to get going,” I said, shaking my head at all of the shenanigans. It was never a dull moment around us, at least.
“You don’t have anywhere to go, Brody,” Chuck prodded. “We were just teasing you. Stick around.”
“Um, one of us has to open the bar,” I said. “Is anyone else volunteering to go serve the good people of Rio Seco buckets of cold beer and well-mixed cocktails?”
“You’re a good man, Brody,” Jack said lazily after a beat. “We thank you for your service.”
“My God,” Ace said, shaking his head at Jack. “I think you’re going to break your streak of going to the bar if you don’t show up tonight. What has it been?”
“I don’t keep track of that kind of stuff,” Jack said, flipping his hand dismissively.
“I think it’s been like two years, consecutively,” I murmured, making a show of counting on my fingers. “Three years? Has it been three years?”
“You should keep him here, Chuck,” Ace said, grinning. “Keep him out of our hair at the bar.”
“I don’t get in your hair,” Jack protested. “I don’t tell you all shit about how to do your jobs.”
“Then you’ll give his liver a break if you let him chill out here poolside with you, Chuck,” I put in.
“Why are you all ganging up on me?” Jack demanded, petulant. “What did I ever do to you? I’ll fire you both, make Haley my heir. Don’t think I won’t.”
“His liver’s going to be just fine,” I said solicitously, giving him another beer.
“You just want to keep your job,” Jack said, but he accepted the bottle all the same. “Wait, is this one of yours? I want one of mine.”
“Just try it,” I coaxed. “I was thinking about introducing it at the bar shit. The bar. I have to get going. I really do.”
“Aw, come on, Brody,” Sloan complained, spinning around in the pool, making waves. “You’re no fun at all if you leave now. We were just going to get a game of…of something going.” Amy, at least, had the good humor to laugh at him.
“You weren’t,” I fussed at him. “All you’re interested in is drinking as much alcohol as you can fit inside your belly and pissing it out again in Chuck and Haley’s pool.”
“Sloan!” Chuck bellowed, waving a pair of tongs at him from the grill. “You better not be pissing in my pool!”
“I’m not pissing in your pool,” Sloan said, putting his hands in the air in a way I’m sure he thought was disarming. Really, though, he just looked like the guiltiest suspect in the history of all cases of pissing in pools.
“When’s the last time any of us saw him get out of the pool?” I asked, grinning as I stirred the pot.
“You better not be peeing in there, Sloan,” Haley warned, not looking up from where she, Katie, and Amy sunned themselves in chairs Jack had gifted her and Chuck for housewarming presents. “We have a special chemical that turns the water purple if you pee in the pool.”
“What?” Sloan looked around him. “That isn’t a thing. Is it? Amy, is that a thing?”
“If Haley says it’s a thing, then it’s a thing, Sloan,” she said, rolling over, slipping a bikini strap down her shoulder to check her tan. “Am I getting red?”
“More like coppery,” Katie said, lowering her sunglasses to check. “Damn, I’m jealous.”
“It’s just melanin,” Amy said, giggling. “Sloan, will you get out of the pool and help me with the sunscreen?”
“Yeah, Sloan,” Haley said. “And after you do that, take a bathroom break. Please.”
“The purple in the pool isn’t a thing, though, right?” he asked, dripping water as he hoisted himself out of the deep end. “Right?”
“Why?” Jack asked, laughing as he pushed himself in the hanging swing that had also been a housewarming present. I was beginning to suspect that he had purchased a majority of the furnishings for the porch and pool area, which went to show just what kind of a guy he was generous. “Would you be surrounded by a cloud of purple if it were?”
“No,” Sloan said with a quick glance up toward Chuck, who was purposefully ignoring him as he flipped steaks. “Definitely not. No cloud of purple for me. This is the perfect time for a bathroom break.”
“You’d better check the chemicals in it, Chuck,” Ace recommended, examining the progress on the meat. “I don’t trust Sloan as far as I can throw him.”
“If he’s upset the pH in the pool, then he’s going to get to take a road trip to buy us some new chemicals,” Chuck said, his voice raised meaningfully toward Sloan.
“Or you could just force him into servitude,” Jack added, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head. “Sloan Norris, pool boy for life.”
“Only if I get to wear a speedo,” Sloan said, waggling his hips suggestively as he rubbed sunscreen into Amy’s shuddering back as she laughed at him. They were sweet together. As big of an idiot as Sloan could be sometimes, she saw right through him, to the part of him that was true. Seeing them together like that made me wistful for a relationship of my own. You got to a certain age and the thrill of the one-night stand sort of faded.
Or maybe that was just me. Maybe I really was being maudlin.
“I’m the only one around here who gets to wear a speedo,” Chuck said, punctuating his words by closing the lid to the grill with a clatter. “My house, my pool, my rules.”
“You keep threatening us with that speedo, bud, but I don’t think it’s ever going to materialize,” Ace remarked. “I don’t think you have the balls to rock one.”
“Or maybe the balls are the reason I don’t rock one,” Chuck countered.
“I know you all aren’t over there discussing your balls,” Haley called up from the poolside. “I know that because you are all grown men with legitimate jobs who are all socially well-adjusted.”
“Are you so sure about that?” Katie asked.
“Which part?”
“The socially well-adjusted okay, all of it.”
Haley heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I am honestly just trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“Let me lay your doubts to rest,” Chuck said. “Ace, will you take the grill?”
“I’ve been trying to get you to let me take the grill since I got here, bud,” Ace said, accepting the tongs and popping the lid again. “What’s in these foil packets?”
“Baked potatoes, except for that big one,” Chuck said, pointing. “That one’s vegetables.”
“Vegetables?” Ace snorted. “Who’s ever heard of such a thing at a barbecue?”
“You just wait,” Haley called up. “You will be singing a different tune after your first bite.”
“You going swimming, man?” Chuck asked, jerking his chin at Jack, who shook his head.
“Don’t want to frighten anyone,” he said, tapping at his torso. I’d only seen it once or twice, but the scarring from the explosion that had done its best to rob Jack of his life was pretty extensive. There was a reason he usually declined to take his shirt off in front of people.
“You know damn well that nobody gives a shit about that,” Chuck scoffed. “You’re just sensitive about that beer belly you’re growing.”
“You skip one or two ab days, and then the beer belly just comes for you,” Jack drawled, grinning. “Let my example serve as a warning to all of you poor bastards.”
“Let’s try and be body positive, please,” Chuck said, stripping his own shirt off.
“Is that something you read on the internet somewhere?” I teased him.
“Just something I believe in.” He shucked his shorts off next, and…
“Jesus. The speedo wasn’t a joke.”
“My eyes,” Sloan complained faintly.
“Jealous?” Chuck executed a few impressive poses he probably saw while watching wrestling or something before running and doing a cannonball directly into the pool. The wave he generated soaked Amy, Haley, and Katie, making the three of them shriek with laughter.
“I’m a lucky woman,” Haley said, and I couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic or not.
Chuck came up for air. “Damn, I love this pool. Come swimming with me, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want to get my hair wet,” Haley said.
He splashed her helpfully, and she shrieked again, trying to block the onslaught of water. “There. Now you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“You’re the one who’s going to worry when he wakes up next to a woman with green hair,” she grumbled, but joined him in the pool all the same.
“Okay, I am really, really going now,” I announced to the party at large. “It has been a wonderful day, though I have seen and heard things that I would like to forget about.”
“I know you’re going to think about me all evening,” Chuck said, grinning broadly as he bobbed around the pool with Haley on his back.
“I think I’m going to drink on the job to ensure that doesn’t happen,” I assured him. “Have a good night.”
“I’ll be by later, probably,” Jack said, but I waved him off.
“No rush. You know the bar will be fine if you take a night off. Just enjoy yourself.”
“This beer of yours isn’t that bad,” he acknowledged, lifting the bottle I’d given him earlier. “Maybe we could try it out.”
“We can talk later,” I said. “I really have to go. You know there’ll be people waiting for me to get there.”
“Call if you have any issues.”
“Okay.”
It was already nearly dark by the time I got on the road. It was hard to extricate myself from my friends sometimes, but someone had to open the bar. It was my livelihood, sure, but I also enjoyed it. If only I could get the people of Rio Seco to embrace craft brews, my life would be complete. Until then, it was just a goal I kept pushing toward.
My motorcycle roared down the pavement, and I really opened the throttle, intent on making good time back into town. The traffic was light, the weather was good, and the bike was a living thing between my legs, bearing me toward the bar. Near the intersection with the interstate, though, I squinted, seeing the dim outline of a figure in the beam of my headlight. The closer I got, the more details I saw. It was a woman, she was tall, her hair was wild, and she was oh, God.
She was stepping out into the middle of the road like someone with a death wish, a grin pasted on her face, and it became clear, even as I braked heavily, rolling the handlebars out of the way, that I wasn’t going to be able to avoid her.