In Miles’ monthly attempt to keep Dick socialized, he decreed that all his friends go to a bar downtown. At first Ramsay was fine with it because he’d been under the impression that it was just a pub. Ramsay could sit and drink as well as the best of them. But it turned out that Miles had brought them to a club. Ramsay didn’t like clubs. He didn’t like dancing, he didn’t like young people, and he didn’t like loud music.
“You’re only thirty, but at heart you’re eighty-five,” Oscar told him, patting him on the shoulder. Oscar thought this was very funny and Ramsay did not, but he let Oscar have his moment because Ramsay knew Kyle was coming. Miles had told Ramsay at work while Oscar was in the bathroom. He had invited Kyle with the express intention of mending fences between Kyle and Oscar. Kyle, it seemed, was upset that Oscar had been so rude to him at Robin’s birthday party. Ramsay personally felt that it would be a very cold day in hell before Oscar apologized to Kyle and also that Oscar didn’t actually have anything to apologize for. If anything, Kyle should apologize to the world for merely existing.
“Man, that got dark,” Robin remarked when Ramsay said as much to him. “But you’re not wrong. That man is a scourge on the earth.”
A bold claim and one Ramsay wholly agreed with.
Miles had invited a lot of people out with them for guys’ night, but most people hadn’t been able to come. David was at home with his family, Bear had declined with some vague excuse about needing to work with a kiln, and Frank was at home with Giada, watching HGTV in sweat pants and being disgustingly domestic. That left Miles, Oscar, Ramsay, Robin, Kyle, and Dick. Four of them were trying to avoid Kyle, who was trying to avoid Oscar, and Miles was trying to get them all to dance. It was not going well.
Ramsay stuck to the bar. It was as close to the alcohol as he could get and simultaneously as far from the music as he could be. He was still surrounded by throngs of young people, though. They were drunk and stupid and happy. It was annoying. Some of the others would come and hang out with him by the bar every so often. Dick stood with him for a very long time. It probably wasn’t the grand socializing Miles had been hoping for when he’d dragged them all out, however, because he and Dick didn’t say a single word to one another the entire time. That was why Ramsay liked Dick so much; his reticent opposition to chatting.
And then Ramsay was approached by several members of the same bachelorette party at different times. Some of them came to him in pairs, other clearly braver ones came on their own. He was obviously some sort of notch on a dumb bachelorette scavenger hunt game they were playing, which was humiliating and upsetting in equal measure. For a while, he tried to figure out what the goal was, but then it was too depressing to continue thinking about.
One woman approached him long after everyone else had given up. She was a fair bit older than the others, but he knew she was part of the group because he’d seen her with the others at several points earlier in the night. She was a tall, very beautiful woman with an afro that made her even taller and more beautiful. Ramsay was annoyed before she even opened her mouth.
“On a scale from one to being haunted by a Ferbie, how annoyed are you right now?” The woman asked Ramsay.
“Like I’m being forced to listen to beat poetry,” Ramsay answered flatly. She laughed.
“I’m Gemma,” she introduced herself, holding out her hand, which he shook begrudgingly. “I was supposed to come over here and ask you to give a lap dance to my baby cousin for her bachelorette party. It’s for raunchy bachelorette bingo.”
“I would sooner chew off my own arm like that guy who got trapped in a canyon,” Ramsay told her in the same flat voice. She laughed again.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to ask you,” she told him, holding her hands up in defence. “I feel like that would be terrible for your psyche. You look like you’re one drink away from throwing yourself onto a freeway. Also, no offence, but I have very little faith in your ability to give a lap dance.”
“I can assure you that I definitely cannot,” he told her.
“So can I get a name or do you keep it secret like whatever’s torturing your soul?” Gemma asked wryly.
“I’m Ramsay,” he told her.
“Well, Ramsay, it’s nice to meet you,” Gemma said. “I feel like you hate it here and are also far too old to be here, much like myself. I’m here with my twenty-two year old cousin, who’s so young to be getting married that she’s basically a child bride. What’s your excuse?”
“My friend brought me here,” Ramsay answered, nodding to where Miles was talking to Kyle. Kyle still looked mopey, as if his fragile emotions would never recover from all the hurt Oscar had caused him.
“Both of those dudes look like tools,” Gemma told him bluntly. Ramsay grunted.
“One of them is,” he conceded. “One of them means well, but is dumb.”
“One of them looks like Chachi from Happy Days,” she commented. “One of them looks like every fuckboy I’ve ever known.”
“Chachi’s my friend,” Ramsay explained. “The other one can burn in hell.”
“I have no doubt that he will,” Gemma replied.
Gemma eventually returned to the bachelorette party, but not before she gave him her number and made him promise he would use it.
“Look, you’re handsome, but sad-looking. I’m the only option you have,” were her parting words to him. She laughed afterward, as she was walking away, but he wasn’t sure it was actually all that funny. On the plus side, she was truly beautiful and interesting. If she was his only option, he was doing pretty good.
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