The Not Friending

A few days later I was meeting my friends for happy hour. Abraham had plans, but they weren’t until later. I asked him to meet us at the seedy happy-hour bar. He agreed.

I walked in the bar and found a couple of guy friends at a table, including Schmoozer. I greeted him and spoke to him for a few minutes. Then I noticed there was someone else at the table: a guy who was looking down and not making eye contact with me. It was Guy, Schmoozer’s friend who left me on the side of the road.

I hadn’t seen him since that incident last September. The reason I haven’t seen him was because I have no intention of ever being around that guy again. I’ll recuse myself from anything he is attending. Schmoozer explicitly knows this. He’s asked me to attend parties he’ll throw, and I won’t go because that guy would be there.

And here is this guy sitting with Schmoozer at a happy hour I invited Schmoozer to.

I stared hard at Schmoozer. “You are a douche bag,” I said evenly and walked away from the table.

Had I not invited Abraham to meet the friends, I would have walked straight to my car and driven home. Instead I went and stood aimlessly at the bar. My hands shook in anger.

Schmoozer appeared beside me. “Before you get mad at me,” he said calmly, “I didn’t invite him. I invited other coworkers, and they invited him. I knew you would have a problem with him being here. We can sit at another table. Is that okay?”

I sighed. “It’s fine. I can sit at another table. I’m just not going to be around him.”

“That’s fine.”

I retrieved my pitcher of Yuengling Light from the bar and brought it back to a table catty corner from that guy. Schmoozer and another friend followed me. Then Katie walked in with her boyfriend. I groaned. This night is not shaping up very well.

Everybody hates Katie’s boyfriend. Katie once brought him to my father’s house last August, and he insulted my father to his face while we were sitting around the dinner table. My father laughed it off at the time but later asked me who the hell this guy was. You don’t insult my family, especially when they have invited you into their home.

But something happened. Something even bigger than insulting my father. It’s not my story to tell, but Harvey has refused to be around Katie’s boyfriend the same way I refuse to be around Schmoozer’s friend. And hey look! We are all in the same bar on the night Abraham is supposed to meet my awesome friends!

Harvey walked in the bar with her husband, took one look at Katie’s boyfriend and burst into tears and ran out of the bar. The same way I wanted to earlier. A friend and I were the only people to witness this. Katie and Schmoozer kept wondering where Harvey disappeared. They assumed she was standing guard at our normal table. My friend never said anything. I didn’t have the heart to tell Katie that Harvey left because I knew it would upset her, so I just kept my mouth shut.

It took Katie a half hour to realize that Harvey had left because of Katie’s boyfriend. Then she burst into tears and declared their friendship over. It was the perfect storm of drama. I had a bit of my own drama, then the group was fracturing in front of me.

I looked around. Katie was crying. Harvey was somewhere in the county crying. The main players—the people I wanted Abraham to meet—weren’t even there. Harvey and her husband had left. Swayze was on a date. I didn’t want Abraham’s first experience of my awesome friends to be Schmoozer, who I could give or take these days, a crying Katie and her hostile boyfriend. That’s not very awesome.

I texted Abraham. “Drama alert. Don’t come.”

He texted back, “Thanks for the heads up. See you later tonight?”

“Okay.”

I was disappointed. I received texts from all the main players asking how the meeting went. I had to explain that it didn’t. Harvey apologized and said she would make it up to me.

I looked at Katie. “Well, we might as well get drunk,” I shrugged.

“Yep.”

Happy hour lasted six hours. I sat there for six hours and listened to her douchey boyfriend. Schmoozer was oddly flirty. He seemed almost glib that Abraham didn’t show. He said now I was free to date other people. Katie yelled at him and told him to shut up.

I drank so much that Abraham did show at the bar. He showed six hours after he was supposed to be there. I climbed in his car, and he drove me home.

“I’m both really glad and really sad you didn’t make it,” I wavered.

He put his hand in my lap. “I’m sorry.”

As I told him about the night, I purged all the drama as fast as I could. I spoke quickly and my voice rose in pitch. By the end of the story, I was squeaking while tears fell down my cheeks. I had put too much emphasis on the evening and it blew up in my face, not by Abraham, but by my normally drama-free friends.

We’d try again. We agreed on that. We still had the double date planned with his friends, but I decided to not push meeting my friends. I learned my lesson. It’ll happen when the timing is right, preferably at Harvey’s house when she’s hosting one of her parties. And then it will be great.

“Hold my hand?” I asked Abraham.

He intertwined his fingers in mine.