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10: Play It Safe

10: Play It Safe

            Georgie is the complete opposite of me. We sit, a table of ten, and she continues to talk about herself to Caggie, about her uncle and her brother and her fitness regime and what she has for breakfast, and what she likes to do in her spare time. In the space of the twenty minutes of arriving at the hotel ballroom which has been the venue for the dance-a-thon for five years now, and being assigned a table and waiting for everyone else to arrive, Georgie has been talking non-stop. Fred sits at my side, looking put out as we all listen to the sound of her voice as she tries to entertain us all with some story of a summer where she went skiing with her older brother all his friends, as though we can relate to her and her luxuries at all, living in a suburbia surrounded by slander and murder and death and even more secrets to make up and cover all of the good things, we don’t have the luxuries of country clubs or holiday resorts. It’s a wasted breath telling her to be quiet, as Charlie is quick to get her talking again as a distraction from the glares he’s receiving from Byron for simply bringing a date who isn’t me.

            Byron had arrived ten minutes ago, along with Graham, Hilton and Ricky, all four of them buzzed more than what I am, and once they’d gotten a look at three blondes compared to the usual two who filled the table of ten we booked each year, they’d put two and two together and come to the conclusion that Charlie has a date – a blonde one. He had given me some form of an apologetic look, like he’d been responsible for bringing Georgie into Charlie’s life, although he was about as innocent as the girl sitting to the table next to us, sipping away at the martini she bought from the bar and refusing any advances from the males approaching her as they no longer have a dance partner, under the assumption that because she’s not under the armpit of a male, she must not have one either.

            It’s sombre on the table, Hilton and Ricky have gone to the front doors, awaiting the arrival of Skylar to take the final place at our table of ten, and by that time, the bell for dinner will ring and soon after, the dancing begins. Mom says it’s bad to dance on a full stomach, but if the order was to be switched, everyone would be too exhausted to even look at food straight after, maybe not Byron as he avoids sleep like the plague. Fred keeps looking at Caggie from across the table, and then they both either look at Charlie, Georgie or me before rolling their eyes in annoyance. I’m not entirely sure what I’ve done, or what I’m supposed to do because it’s not just them two who keep looking at me either. Graham makes eye contact with me again from across the table, next to Byron and on the other side of Caggie, and his eyebrows lift, in a suggestive manner, and then his eyes dart towards Charlie like it’s now my responsibility to get Georgie to be quiet. At this point, her anecdotes have begun to be background noise, and I’m no longer paying attention to whatever it is she’s now talking about.

            Graham takes the initiative to shut her up, in a not so subtle way but not plain rude either. As Byron’s best friend, the two of them are never up to any good, and the look they just shared, of mischief and boredom, is enough for me to be on alert that things may get a little messy right now. “Have you spoken to Neeco, Caggie?” Her eyes light up at the sound of someone else’s voice, and Georgie stops talking almost immediately. She may like the sound of her own voice, but I know she’s not rude enough to talk over people she’s just met, especially when she’s trying to make a good impression amongst us.

            Caggie makes a face, along with Byron at the sound of her nickname – he still calls her Cath, a shortened version of her real name. “I don’t ever keep in contact with my exes.” She says nonchalantly, and I know she’s telling the truth. Even if Neeco had been in touch with her since they’d broken up, she wouldn’t spare him the time of day. Caggie says she wouldn’t get back with any of her exes, which I believe wholeheartedly. “Exes are exes for a reason, the relationship must have ended over something and I wouldn’t take that risk again of getting into another relationship with the same person. I wouldn’t purposefully look to get hurt a second time.” She said once, after a particularly bad breakup with some older guy who broke up with her on her birthday because he found some other girl who was just it for him, and he told her that it was a dick move, he knew that, but he wasn’t gonna continue to be in a relationship where other girls were catching his eye. To make it up to her, he’d given her three hundred dollars, birthday sex and promised that he would never parade future relationships in her face. I’d asked if she’d ever get back with him, because even though it was a dick move, he seemed like a really good guy, and that had been her response. “Don’t get back on the same horse that’s hurt you already,” she says to Graham, flippantly, “just get a new one and it may treat you better.”