Settling down into the canvas chairs aroundthe fire, they continued their technobabble geek speak, onlyoccasionally remembering to throw me a conversational bone. Afterabout an hour of nodding my head to discussions like ‘friction losseffects on mass flow ratios’, I was glad to hear the sound of tiresrolling up the gravel of my driveway. It sounded like Sid and Sarahad finally arrived and I quickly got up so I could greet them.
The rest of the evening was much moreenjoyable, as I now had people around me who knew how to talkoutside of a lab. After dinner, stuffed full of steak, lobster andall of the fixings, we gravitated back to the fire pit with freshdrinks and resumed our friendly banter. I was at a loss at how tointroduce our little ‘surprise’ into the conversation, and waitedfor Mark to make the first move. Hopefully he would wait untiltomorrow so I could just relax tonight and enjoy both company andconversation without the fear of someone having a heart attack.
Several hours and several drinks later, wemutually agreed that it was time to crash for the night anddispersed throughout the house. Once the guests were all settled, Iwent back to our bedroom and gratefully shed my clothes. Mark,being clueless on the etiquette of proper hospitality, was alreadyin bed, figuring that a vague wave saying, “Rooms over there.Night.” was good enough.
I crawled into bed and snuggled up until wewere spooning, relaxing for a few moments before asking when hethought would be a good time to broach the subject.
“Tomorrow,” he replied groggily. “We need topick the perfect moment, as we’ll only have one shot at this. If weblow it, they’ll either run away, burn us at the stake, or headstraight for an interview with the tabloids.”
“Alright, I’ll trust you on this to make thefirst move, but if I see you chickening out and passing on goodopportunities, all bets are off and I’m taking lead.”
“Fair enough,” he replied. “But give me a bitof slack before jumping in with both feet. We’ll have all week toscare the crap out of them, so planning the proper time is notsomething we need to rush into.”
With Mark in my arms, and those words in myear, I gave myself up to sleep, confidant that everything would goaccording to plan.
***
I woke up suddenly in the morning, foregoingmy usual lazy ritual. For one of the few times over the last coupleof years, I was out of bed before Mark. With guests in the houseand Mark sawing logs in here, I decided to postpone my morningshower and slipped into a sweat suit so I could go make somecoffee.
Quietly making my way to the kitchen, I wassurprised to see that someone had already started a pot. I glancedout onto the deck and saw Sara sitting there with a book in onehand and a steaming mug in the other. Fixing up my own cup ofcoffee I stepped outside, shivering slightly in the cool morningair.
“Morning,” I said to her.
“Morning,” she replied, looking up from herbook. “I thought I was the only one who got up at a normal hour ofthe day.”
“If one solitary retard gets up at somestupid hour, said person could hardly claim normality,” I shotback.
“In that case, welcome to the stupid hour,retard!” she retorted.
“Love you too, hon,” I replied with a grin asI sat down in the chair across from her and took a sip of coffee.“How have you been these days?” I asked, “The men were shovelingtheir stories too fast and furious last night for us to getproperly caught up.”
“We’ve been doing pretty good I guess,although I still have the impulse to kill some idiot driver everytime I need to go into the city proper. Atlanta has too manyassholes for my liking.”
“I know what you mean,” I laughed, “SometimesI think they follow me since I run into them everywhere.”
“So tell me, what’s the reason for suddenlycalling us here?” She asked, throwing me a sharp stare.
“Do we really need a reason?” I evaded.“Can’t people just get the urge to want to meet with friends oncein a while so they don’t become strangers?”
“Some people maybe, but not you and Mark. Youtwo do nothing without six months of planning.”
“We’re not quite that bad,” I replied,injured.
“Almost,” she riposted. “I can wait I guess,but you should know that Sid and I have a bet going.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I bet that he’s going to propose, andSid figures that you got knocked up. So whatever the bigannouncement is going to be, don’t drag it out too long beforespilling it.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” I said with awink.
We made small talk for a while, catching eachother up on current news, and then decided it was time to get theothers up and have some breakfast. I simply turned the bedroomlight on as I passed by on the way to my shower. Mark could nevereasily sleep with the light on, so I was confident that he would beup by the time I was finished.
Toweling my hair dry, I stepped past Mark whohad just finished shaving and gave him a peck on the cheek on myway out of the bathroom. Once dressed, I headed to the kitchen toget started on breakfast for us all. As everyone else finishedgetting ready, they slowly trickled into the kitchen to lend ahand. With all of the extra help, breakfast came togethersurprisingly fast and we were soon sitting around the tabledevouring our feast.
Finished, Sara and I both volunteered to dothe cleanup so the boys could head out to the golf course wherethey had a morning tee time booked. We didn’t mind, knowing thatthe boys would take their turn cleaning up after dinner. Wavinggoodbye to the guys, we made short work of the cleanup and settleddown back outside on a couple of lounge chairs. I tried to keep ourconversation generic, but had to evade tricky little questionsperiodically as Sara tried to pump me
