Bad Sex & Good Scotch: A Reunion Story

Chapter 14 - Now

When people asked me to see photos of my children, I told them I didn’t have any on me. That was untrue, but it was my hope that if I didn’t show them pictures of my kids, they wouldn’t show me pictures of theirs.

But they always did.

“That’s Robbie,” Carrie said as I stared at a picture on her iPhone of a curly-haired boy wearing a down jacket and woolen cap, a snow-covered ski slope in the background. His smile was enormously fake. “He’s nine.”

“Cute,” I remarked.

She scrolled past several more pictures until she landed on one of a larger curly-haired boy, Robbie’s brother. He was performing in a school play, wearing a regal robe and a crown, his mouth open, mid-song, his supposedly invisible braces clearly visible.

“And that’s our twelve year old,” she explained.

“Cute,” I remarked again. “What’s his name?”

A strange look passed between Carrie and Daniel.

“Aaron,” she said.

Daniel quickly added, “We both just really liked the name.”

It was clear that he was lying. This was Carrie’s’ choice. Daniel couldn’t have possibly understood why, of the thousands of potential names they had to choose from, she wanted the name of the first guy who ever banged her, however ineptly.

But Carrie had insisted on the name Aaron and Daniel had acquiesced, probably reassured by the idea that he would never meet me face-to-face.

“I don’t blame you,” I said with what must have been a smirk. “It’s a great name.”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was a very long and delightful silence and when it was done Daniel announced he was leaving.

“Well, I gotta get up early to hit Sedgewick,” Daniel said as nonchalantly as he could. 

“Ah,” I nodded. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Daniel is addicted to golf,” Carrie explained. “It’s all he talks about.”

“You play?” asked Daniel. There was a hint of a challenge in his voice as he envisioned himself kicking my ass all over the links tomorrow morning.

But I shook my head, dashing his plans. 

It had been like this all evening. He kept searching for some way to establish his dominance, trying to draw me into a fight over something, anything. He believed, correctly, that if he could get me to stand there and exchange punches — under the veneer of civility, of course — he was sure to emerge the victor. 

But I refused to give him the fight he wanted. 

He bragged about his career. “The great thing about working for The Monahan Fund is that I can stay at any Four Seasons in the world for free!”

I joked about mine. “The great thing about writing ads for Squire Restaurant Supply is that I have all the salt shakers I’ll ever need! Although I still have to buy my own salt.”

He told me about the time he had torn his rotator cuff competing in a half Ironman. I told him about the time I had somehow pulled a muscle in my groin trying to put on a sweater.

He talked about the expensive private school his kids went to, one of the top twenty in the nation. I talked about the free public school my kids to and how it was, um, free.

And now, this.

“You don’t play golf?” He made it sound like a personal affront.

“I told my wife,” I said calmly, “that if I ever say that I want to take up golf, she should shoot me in the head.” Carrie laughed. “And believe me” — I finished off my second Scotch — “she’s looking for an excuse.”