Waving Not Drowning

In the middle of their conversation, Ray leans across the table and injects himself into the story. Kerri stops short, caught off guard. She takes a moment to assess the situation, read Ray's tone, decipher his intent and decides against a defensive response, which is generally a wise choice. Lara'a oblivious to Kerri's sudden freeze out and gives Ray the floor. Kerri's new here; these people are not yet her people. A sprawling mass of  tables jammed together in a long row to celebrate a birthday of a new mutual friend where everyone seems to know each other intimately. She gets a sense of long term relationships, private jokes, battles fought and won and histories stamped in the ground. Boisterous, loud, rambling conversations and anecdotes overlap, cancelling each other out. Kerri's private conversation with Lara about her peripatetic childhood and father's journey in the service prompts an invasive and unsolicited query from Ray. He peppers her about her fath...

It's an incredibly short ferry ride. Thirty seconds. The time spent lining up, boarding, offloading and making their way to and from the gate adds another forty minutes. Everyone around Jane looks familiar. The 30-something couple with the man who makes direct eye contact with Jane while his girlfriend, maybe wife, cracks open a Tupperware container of homemade yogurty muesli and frantically stirs, folds and caresses the muck with an enviro friendly portable bamboo spoon. She's sure she knows them from somewhere. High school? The gym? Did they date? Did she date the woman? Oh, college. The two women in line directly in front of Jane have spread out across the aisle in the middle of the boat, blocking a heavy set young Italian woman from making her way to the exterior deck of the ferry. She has to sandwich her way between two pillars of immoveable flesh in tweed and cotton. They're either angry old lesbians or nuns. Jane can't decide. Matching high waisted khakis with br...

"Call it! Call it call it! Get on it- yup, yup, yup, you're there- you're there! No! no no no no- it's dropping, it's short! Damn! DAMN." Roger watches helplessly from right field as the pop fly drops mere inches in front of Cary's feet, then bounces and rolls right through Cary's legs and heads toward the ravine. Roger whips his head to the left involuntarily as if to dismiss the image. He clucks his tongue in disgust and frustration and is just short of throwing his glove to the field. A bit of a drama queen. That's why he gets stuck out in right field, especially against teams with  few to no lefties or pull hitters. Just to rile him up. Dennis makes sure to shuffle him around every so often so that he doesn't catch on and threaten to leave. They often come up short fielding a team so that's why the others keep Roger around. But boy is he loud. And cranky. Hostile, even. Physically threatening at times, which is really not appropriate fo...

She said what? Are you kidding me? No, no way- that's just insane, I can't believe she thinks she can just SAY that to you and then walk away, nuh uh. You go after her and you TELL her, that's right, you tell her what's what and that nobody, I don't care who she thinks she is, gets to speak to my sister like that. Or better yet, you let me at her. That's right. You tell me where to find her and I will rip her a new one and make her apologize. Who does she think she is, talking like that to my sister. MY LTTLE SISTER! Does she know who you are, I mean, does she know who I am? These kids- huh, I know, right? I was young once too but you don't share the things she told to Mark and Craig and not expect there to be consequences. Fuck the higher road; mess with you and you mess with Big Sis from Hell. Just don't tell mom and dad, alright? This is between us. Sisters. We got this. Fucking Ainsley. I know she's your friend and all but she's an idiot. As ...