The jukebox turned up too loud, the smell of beer and fried food and too many people in not enough space. There was a Rocky's game on three different screens. Someone near the bar was singing along to something and doing it badly. Marcus had somehow secured a high top table near the back. Eight people from the office had shown up.
Ethan was surprised by that. He'd figured four, maybe five. But there was Marcus with his booming laugh already filling the corner and Diane and Kevin from the architecture team and the two younger project managers whose names Ethan still sometimes mixed up Jake or Jason both 26 both wore the same kind of flannel shirt both called him man instead of Ethan or Mr. Parker and Clare. She was already there when he arrived which shouldn't have surprised him since she'd left the office 20 minutes before him.
She'd claimed a spot at the table and was laughing at something Marcus had said. Her head tilted back, completely unself-conscious about how loud she was. That was one of the things Ethan had noticed about her in the two years they'd worked together. Clare Clare Bennett never performed her happiness. When she laughed, she just laughed.
Parker Marcus threw a hand up. He actually showed. I owe you five bucks, Diane. I never doubted him, Diane said immediately. which was a lie and everyone knew it and everyone laughed anyway. Ethan found a spot at the table.
Somebody handed him a beer. The conversation moved the way it always does when a group of co-workers gets a few drinks in shop talk at first, then gradually looser, funnier, more personal. Kevin complained about the new project management software. Jake had a story about a client who'd asked whether they could make the building more vibesy. Marcus told a story about his college roommate that got more elaborate every time Ethan heard it.
And for a while, for a genuinely surprising stretch of time, Ethan forgot to feel like he didn't belong there. He forgot to calculate the minutes until he could leave. He forgot the version of himself that had built walls around every Friday night for 4 years and called it responsible. He was just a man at a table laughing with people who knew him, holding a beer he'd barely touched. And for a few minutes that felt startlingly quietly okay.
The table was cramped. Eight people, four stools on each side, and the bar had gotten more crowded as the hour moved toward 8:30. People were standing two and three deep near the bar. A couple of times, someone bumped into the back of Ethan's stool hard enough that he had to catch the edge of the table. Clare had been sitting at the far end of the table, two seats down from Ethan, when she stood up to go get a second round.
You want anything?" she asked him on her way past. "I'm fine," Classic Parker answer. She disappeared toward the bar. Ethan turned back to the conversation.
Marcus was in the middle of something about zoning permits and a city council member who'd apparently shown up to a site inspection wearing flip-flops, and Diane was laughing so hard she'd covered her face with both hands. "And move your legs, Parker." He heard her voice before he saw her. When he turned, Clare was standing right beside his stool, holding two drinks, one for herself, one for Diane, and looking at his bar stool with an expression that could only be described as utterly unbothered. He looked at her.
He looked at his stool. What? Your stool. Move your legs. She nodded toward her end of the table.