A Story to Tell Your Friends

“You’re both here! Finally!” I heard a squeal before I felt Jack’s hand rip from mine and a pair of arms fling themselves around my neck, causing me to stumble back a little.
“Yes, Lisa, we’re here,” I laughed, hugging her back. Jack and I had stayed in the restaurant for a little longer than expected, not leaving until after 9. The rest of the guys had been at the bar for a couple of hours when we got there and had clearly been drinking a lot since they’d got there. I heard Alex telling Lisa to calm down a little from behind her locks of hair, saying his own greetings to Jack. I’d text Tammy about ten minutes ago, telling her I was on my way to the bar and where we were headed, knowing she’d be ready and be here soon.
“What took you so long?!” She asked, pulling away from me. “Jack left at, like, 5. It’s be four hours.”
“We ate crazy amounts of pizza. That takes some time.” Lisa narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously, but pulled back and fixed herself solidly to Alex’s arm.
“So, I hear Tammy is coming out tonight,” Alex said as he showed Jack and I where the rest of the guys were waiting.
“Yeah, she just text telling me she’ll be here in like fifteen minutes. Don’t worry, she got all the crazy out on me when you guys weren’t around. I think she’s just happy to finally be going out in LA.”
“Well, she picked the best company to do it! We’ll take care of her, don’t worry.” I smiled at him as I sat myself down next to Rian, greeting him and Zack and allowing Jack to squeeze in next to me in the booth.
“Don’t worry about looking after her, she’s the mother hen of our group. She somehow still manages to be the most responsible one even when she’s had twice as much to drink as everyone else. She’ll be looking after you guys by the end of the night.” Alex pulled a chair over and sat himself at the end of the table, leaving room next to Lisa for Tammy when she arrived.
“I love her already,” Jack told me. “I mean, these guys get me so drunk I can’t walk then just leave me.”
“Dude, we spend most of our nights dragging you into cabs and putting you to bed,” Zack snorted.
“Ah, but you do get me so drunk I can’t walk.” The guys laughed at him, telling him to shut up and go get himself a drink. Jack obliged, standing up, smiling at me as he walked to the bar. Lisa raised her eyebrows at me and I shrugged. If she was sober enough to remember this in the morning, I’m sure I’d be getting a text or a phone call asking me all about dinner.
“So, how was your first week at work?” Lisa asked, resting her chin in her hand.
“Incredible! I’ve barely had time to think, but I’ve been enjoying getting stuck in and working with something I can really make my own, you know?”
“Well, I’m an Events Manager, so, yeah, I totally get it. You get given an idea and you can basically put your own spin on the entire thing.”
“Exactly! I’m so glad someone understands it.”
“Bottoms up!” Jack shouted, putting a large drink in front of me and placing shots of Jäger in the middle of the table. I looked up from the glass in front of me to Jack, raising my eyebrows. He shrugged, sitting back down next to me. “I bribed you with buying the first round, so I thought it was only fair to do it properly. Now drink!” The guys passed the shots around the table, each of us taking one.
“On the count of three! One, two, three!” The six of us threw back the Jäger and put our glasses back down in the middle. I squeezed my eyes shut at the taste as I did it. I have to admit, the taste of it neat always made me feel a little queasy. Give it to me with Red Bull, though, and I’d drink it until I couldn’t see straight. Which, admittedly, didn’t take long. I heard Jack laugh at me, putting his arm around my shoulder and pulling me closer.
“What’s wrong? Don’t like the taste?”
“Jäger’s so sweet,” I joked, remembering the almost unlimited plays of Six Feet Under the Stars I had both been forced to suffer through since High School and had made others suffer through in High School.
“But, if it keeps me around, are you down?” He laughed back.
“That was so fucking cheesy!” I laughed, shoving him lightly. Alex and Lisa, who had been the only ones not listening to Jack and I turned their heads abruptly, looking confused, while Zack and Rian laughed at him.
“Hey, that was pretty damn witty if you ask me! And, you! I thought you weren’t a fan!”
“Please, I live with a girl who’s been obsessed with you since Put Up or Shut Up. If I didn’t know that lyric, I’d be deaf.”
“Are you chatting shit about me, Clar?” A voice asked to my left.
“Tammy!” I shrieked. “Guys, meet my BFF, Tammy. Tammy, meet the guys!” Lisa shuffled up a little closer to Zack, allowing Tammy to sit comfortably next to her. She placed her drink on the table in front of her as she sat down, clearly having gone to the bar before she made her way over. I saw her smile weakly and say ‘hello’ as the guys all greeted her. I could feel the nerves radiating off her, but knew she’d soon settle in once everyone got talking and she got a little alcohol in her system. Jack seemed to take the most notice of her, striking up a conversation about last week at the store and her new job (which I’d filled him in on while we’d been texting). I started talking to Rian, feeling as if I’d left he and Zack out a little in my conversations previously, almost continuously engaged in conversation with either Jack or Lisa. I watched Jack talking to Tammy from the corner of my eye, starting to see her open up a little. Admittedly, she was drinking doubles and was already half way through her first, while I had barely taken a couple of sips of the drink Jack had gotten me (which I now knew to be Disaronno and coke).
Jack’s arm remained around my shoulder while we both spoke to other people and I could feel the eyes of his friends on us again, though Tammy was joining in this time. I felt a little more comfortable with their stares today than I did on Wednesday. Maybe it was that I knew a Jack a little better, or maybe it was the alcohol he and I had already consumed at the restaurant and were continuing to imbibe, but I couldn’t feel that old anxiety rising in my chest.
“Okay, so maybe I have a little crush on him,” I admitted an hour and a half later in front of the bathroom mirror while I reapplied a little of my makeup. Lisa and Tammy both squealed from their position on the counter. The seven of us had continued to drink fairly heavily and were all more than a little tipsy, as evidenced by Tammy and Lisa acting like twelve-year-olds in the bathroom. We’d all been buying rounds of shots in between our drinks, alternating the form it came in. “So what? He’s leaving in less than three weeks. A crush is a crush. I just think he’s cute and funny.”
“But a lot can happen in three weeks, Clara,” Lisa told me, grinning and typing away on her phone at lightning speed.
“I really hope you’re not live-texting Alex a transcript of our conversation.” Lisa grinned sheepishly, quickly putting her phone down and feigning innocence. I rolled my eyes. See: twelve-year-olds.
“Come on, you haven’t acted like this with a guy for like four years,” Tammy stated as I put my lipstick back in my purse. “You should see the look you get on your face when you’re texting him. And damn do you guys look cute cosying up in the booth!”
“We do not cosy up,” I muttered, eyeing the other girls in the bathroom and ensuring I was leaving enough room for them to get by me. Tammy had taken to the group quickly and they her. I could only imagine the way the fifteen-year-old inside her was freaking out when ‘Alex Freaking Gaskarth’ started making jokes with her as if they were old friends. They were such an easy group of people to get along with, I loved it.
“I beg to differ,” Lisa scoffed, picking her phone back up and showing me a picture of Jack with his arm hanging around my shoulders, my hand holding his, grinning with my eyes wide while he whispered in my ear. I had to admit, it looked a lot cuter in picture form than it had been at the time. Zack and Rian had gone to get another round in, so Jack and I were left alone on our side of the booth. His arm hadn’t left my shoulders since he’d sat back down half an hour before, and I’d grabbed his hand to stop him from fidgeting and just hadn’t quite let go. He was whispering a joke to me about something he’d read online about the guys and I’d just started laughing at it. It had all felt really quite innocent at the time, though seeing the picture Lisa had managed to sneak, I could see how it could have been misinterpreted. I rolled my eyes.
“That is so much more innocent than you think it is!”
“Then why has Jack not let go of you since you guys came in?”
“How should I know? I know he used to think I was pretty and he does keep making jokes, but that’s just Jack. He’s a little flirty.”
“Please, Clara. I told you earlier, Jack hasn’t been like this in ages. Why do you think Alex and I are pushing him so much on this?” I pulled a face at Lisa’s insinuation, beginning to act like a twelve-year-old myself a little. “Besides, he still does think you’re pretty. He told me this morning.”
“Have you been gossiping about me, Mrs Gaskarth?”
“Always.” Tammy and I laughed at her and I dragged them both off the counter top, ready to make my way back to the guys. I didn’t pay their comments much mind, aware that Jack and I had been a little cosy all night. We’d barely spoken since we’d come in to the bar, choosing to interact with others for the most part, though always touching, whether consciously or unconsciously, and I was aware everyone else had noticed. Since he and I had admitted we kind of had a crush on each other, we’d managed to cling to each other almost continuously and I didn’t know how much Jack wanted to play this down. I mean, ‘hey, I think you’re cute’ does not a relationship make. On the same vein, there probably wasn’t anything to play down, so I suppose it makes sense not say anything about it.
“So, what’s the gossip then?” Alex asked, having taken Lisa’s spot in the booth, sliding his arm around her waist as she sat down next to him. I saw Jack grin at me, motioning me to sit next to him. I obliged, squeezing in at the end of the booth with Tammy sitting on the chair at the end of the table. Zack and Rian were sat opposite each other on the other end of the booth, deep in conversation about something or other.
“Jack and Clara are a cuter couple than they thought they were,” Lisa giggled. I narrowed my eyes at her, in the middle of taking a swig from my glass.
“What, are you jealous we can give you and Alex a run for your money?” Jack asked, his arm finding its way around my waist.
“No, we just need someone to double date with that Alex doesn’t hate.” Alex protested, telling her he quite liked all the couple friends they already had.
“I think you’re missing one rather important factor here, guys,” I interrupted before Lisa could explain his reaction to double dates that made her adamant he hated every couple they knew. The pair raised their eyebrows at me. “Jack and I aren’t a couple.”
“Aw, aren’t they cute?! It’s like when we were sixteen and pretended we were just friends too!” Lisa shrieked, choosing not to act like I’d made an even remotely valid point. I caught myself as I went to move into a comfortable position closer to Jack’s side, knowing it would only fuel her argument. I looked over at Tammy for a little help, but she shook her head at me. I suppose I should have gathered from our bathroom conversation that she was already on Lisa’s side.
“She’s right, guys. We most definitely are not a couple,” Jack told them, though choosing the opposite stance to bodily contact than I had chosen, and pulling me closer to him, making me relax a little into his side. “I just like to cuddle with pretty girls.” I rolled my eyes, nudging my elbow into his side at the joke.
“If you keep telling them I’m pretty, they’ll never leave me alone.”
“If you keep telling them I’m adorable, they’ll never leave either of us alone.” My eyes widened, snapping round to Lisa.
“Are you showing Jack my texts?!” She smiled at me guiltily, while the others burst out laughing and my face started to burn. “Oh, I am so never telling you anything again!”
“Oh, come on, Clara!” Lisa whined. “I only did it so he’d have the guts to ask you out or something. You should see the way he’s been glued to his phone since he got your number! He stayed with us all day Wednesday, staring at his phone and it wasn’t until I spoke to you that I realised the idiot was trying to think of something to say to you!”
“Lisa!” Jack hissed, his cheeks now starting to turn a little. Lisa went to open her mouth to say something else, but Alex placed his hand firmly over it, telling her maybe she’d best stop while she was ahead.
“Aw, look, I’m finally not the one who’s embarrassed! What kind of topsy turvy world are we living in?!” Jack narrowed his eyes at me, trying to contain the scarlet in his cheeks. “Aw, don’t worry, cutie pie, I think it’s adorable how embarrassed you are.” I leaned up, kissing him on the cheek with a smile.