A Game Of Pawns

Chapter 5

BUZZ-BUZZ

I got up and pushed a button on a small console on the wall, near my apartment door. "Hello?" I was pretty sure who was buzzing my room but held the button to listen to the other side to be sure.

"It's me. You ready?" Tommy's voice came from the plastic box on my wall.

"Be there in a minute," I replied.

I reached for my wallet and apartment key on the counter, then turned off the lights and left, locking the door behind me. As I reached the exterior exit, Tommy was facing away from my building, his left hand in his pocket and the other on his hip. He was taller than me; I was fairly short, so most people were. He was thin; some people might consider him gangly due to his size. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and an opened button-down that had a green and blue swirly design on it. His worn blue jeans were wet from the knee down on his left leg.

"Hey," I said, opening the door. Before I could ask about his wet shoe, he told me.

"Dude. I walked straight into a puddle." He was clearly irritated. "Way deeper than it looked too."

"You want to borrow some pants and shoes?"

"Nah," he said. "I'll deal. It's a hot day anyway. Maybe it'll keep me cool."

"Optimistic as always," I said as I fell into step beside him, making the familiar trek to Bingo's Pizza. Michael would be there soon. He worked on the outskirts of town and drove to Bingo's, instead of walking like us.

Tommy huffed. "Stop trying to make my positivity sound like a bad thing. You would be optimistic too if you had a girlfriend as wonderful as Trisha! You really should, man. Having a girlfriend is great! Bad days can turn into backrubs, movie nights, maybe some makin' out. And then there are good days." He winked, then looked at me seriously. "When are you gonna get back in the game, man?"

"Ha. When do I have the time?"

"You say that, but you have more time than you let on. We could take one Saturday off so you could find a date. Then maybe we could double. Trisha keeps saying that she wants to meet you." We turned the corner and onto a busy sidewalk. "Not that we need to double date. I just think it would be fun to do once in a while. So?" He asked expectantly.

"So what?"

"Oh, come on. Is there anyone you're into? Like at work or something?"

I winced. "I don't want to date someone I work with. I feel like it would be a weird transition. Plus-"

"Plus nothing," Tommy interrupted. "I know why you don't look for anyone. You don't want something to change your day-to-day life. You like your routine." Tommy overexaggerated the word 'routine', saying it in a deep voice and bobbing his head side to side as he practically drooled out the word. He made it sound like it was a bad thing to have in my day-to-day life.

"That's not-" I cut off, "completely true," I mumbled, which just made him laugh.

I changed the subject, which he didn't argue with and I got an earful about how great Trisha was. The word "Beautiful" was used no less than seven times; I counted. I was happy that Tommy found someone that he liked so much but he talked about her almost too much. He really had beaten the subject into the ground. I learned more about what Trisha was doing with her life than Tommy was doing with his. Trisha had gotten a new haircut that made her look "Even more beautiful than usual." She started mentoring a kid at a school every Tuesday and Tommy remarked that "She's got such an amazing soul." She was almost done getting her teaching degree and he declared her to be "Smart and gorgeous." Her sister was getting married in a couple of months and Trisha's dress for the wedding made her look like, "The most stunning woman I had ever laid eyes on." Tommy would be going to the wedding too and that was about as much as he said about himself since I had asked what was new with him.