New information received today will change the course of your life forever!!
Normally I dismissed Amy’s messages as hokey, but every time I saw Morgan these days, I had high hopes of getting some new information. My brain went instantly into a spiral of speculation, and I had to actively close down that part of it so I could focus on the task at hand.
Over the last couple of years, Chloe had got really into mead. She’d become a bit of a snob about it, actually. So when Phil and I had started planning her birthday, he’d immediately suggested a mead tasting to put her snobbery to the test. Now I had meads from all over the UK, from the country’s largest meadery to an obscure small-batch producer in Scotland who only produced a few dozen bottles a year.
Jared came into the kitchen as I was unloading them. I braced myself for the conversation; Jared was a good guy, but he wassucha lad, and I’d had enough of that on the stag do a couple of weeks ago. He and Fatima had been sixteen when they’d got together, and apparently she’d had teacher vibes even then, so I always wondered what had attracted her to him.
“It’s really good to see you, man,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d seen him. He’d moved to Manchester a while ago for work, and he didn’t make it back very often except to see Fatima.
“Yeah, you too,” he said. “I really miss it around here.”
I grabbed the paper cups I’d bought and started lining them up behind the meads – seven cups for each of the twelve kinds. Without being asked, Jared started writing numbers on the bottom of each one so we could remember what they were.
“This is so cool of you guys,” Jared said, “making such a big deal of each other’s birthdays. I wish I were around more, but work is so busy. I’m glad Fatima has you all.”
“The shiny new job not so shiny anymore?”
“Not so new, either,” he said. “I’ve been up there almost a year now.”
“Yikes. And no sign of getting to come home?”
Jared shook his head as he started to pour out sips of the first mead into the paper cups behind it. “Nope. Gotta make manager for that. I thought I was closer to that promotion than I am. It feels so out of reach sometimes.”
I nodded in understanding, even if I didn’t, in fact, understand. “How’s it going with Fatima then?”
Jared sighed, and I heard the weight of a thousand sleepless nights in it. “Mate, long distance is fuckinghard. Honestly, between you and me, I’ve been thinking about just coming back. Getting a new job. I miss my friends. I miss my house. And damn if I don’t miss Fatima all the time.”
I could empathise; I was worried I’d just handed myself the same fate by pointing Morgan towards jobs further afield.
“But I fucking love work, actually. It’s weird, because I know it’s the thing keeping me from Fatima. But when I’m there, I really love it. I sort of lose myself in it, you know?”
I nodded, but I did not, in fact, know. I certainly didn’t love my job enough to get lost in it. So I offered him the only advice I could think of; the only part of his plight I felt I could relate to.
“I think that if you care about someone, you want them to have that. Something they love doing. Even if that means you don’t get as much of them as a result.”
Jared stood up from the pour he was in the middle of and nodded, staring at me for a moment.
“Damn if that’s not the most sentimental shit I’ve ever heard you say.”
I gave a weak laugh as I felt my face go red, looking down at the cup in my hand. “Yeah, sorry.”
“No,” he said, reaching a hand out, not quite touching me but grabbing my attention. “I meant that in a good way. Everyone else is all, ‘go get that bag, Jared’. Or even ‘love comes and goes’. But I like that perspective.”
I laughed again, pouring out the last bottle of mead in the cups marked with the number twelve. “Yeah, well, it’s hard being so wise.”
“You’ve got it bad yourself, haven’t you,” he said more quietly.
I looked up at him and tried my best to look confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fatima told me you and Morgan have been hanging out a lot. I don’t know her, but she seems cool.”
“She is,” I said, almost defensively, even though it was a painfully oversimplified way to describe her. “Like, really cool.”
The rest of the group broke into shouts and gasps, and I looked over to see Morgan doing her ridiculous victory dance in the middle of the group. She looked so happy. So comfortable. It made me smile.
Jared must have caught me staring. “Yep, real bad,” he said.
Fatima and Grey came into the kitchen, arms linked. Grey was wearing their rainbow cloud-pattern biker vest, which they always busted out for birthdays. They’d even dyed their hair pastel pink to match.
