“Safe zone’s gonna be the stairs,” Stratton sloppily points in the opposite direction from where they’re located.
Peck prepares to acknowledge this when he’s interrupted.
“Sabotage?” Mo, Gillette’s girlfriend, who’s positioned on the countertop beside him promptly asks while angling her chocolate colored face her boyfriend’s direction.
“Why are you looking at me when you ask that question, I Moan?” Gillette grunts as he struggles not to spill his drink during his battle of getting up.
“Why do you look like you’re about to give birth to Scrappy Doo, Scooby?”
“Uh…Scrappy Doo is his nephew so…which one of us looks stupid now?”
“Still you,” I casually interject into the nearby conversation.
“Agreed,” Crash calls out on a chuckle. “Still you, G-Unit.”
“Sabotage?” Stratton taps his chin twice, shoots his index finger straight up into the air, and declares, “I will allow it.”
“Oooo,” Poppy, Rutledge’s girlfriend, snaps her brown-skinned face upward to meet his green stare from her stretched out position that allows her head to rest in his lap. “How are we supposed to do that?! How are we supposed to get to the stairs, Ren?! We’re way over here, and those are like way over there! That sounds so hard.”
“Yeah, I’m with Hootie,” Rutledge grumbles between his sips of his drink. “Too hard.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” Gillette swiftly taunts.
“You look like you’re about to get yours examined,” Mo immediately chides. “By your dad.”
Her teasing reference causes everyone in the room to laugh, except her boyfriend who suddenly struggles harder to get out of the idiotic place he got himself stuck.
“You know why you have no fuckin problem sayin’ this shit isn’t hard?” Rutledge questions at the end of his laughing. “Because you don’t have any idea what it’s like having a girlfriend who has toddler legs.”
“Hey!” Poppy peeps in obvious outrage.
“You’re basically fucking Catwoman who could rescue your bitch ass from the drain if you weren’t being such a dick,” Rutledge starts snickering again.
“No yeah, I so fucking could.”
“But in my sitch, Hootie’s more like Toto, and I don’t have a fucking basket to put her ass in, so the shit is harder,” Rutledge callously counters.
“Hey!” Poppy pops up to further voice her disapproval yet accidentally rolls off the couch onto the floor in the process.
Rutledge is accurate. His chick already lacks coordination without the assistance of vodka lending a hand. I silently worry about the alcohol aiding in a hospital necessary concussion if this game gets out of control.
We collectively hiss at her clumsiness; however, Stratton shouts, “Sixty seconds to chug your drink, get a new one, and get to safety!”
Her female friends shriek in unison, “Drink!”
Poppy squeaks in surprise and swiftly grabs her cup. Like a champ, she gulps it down and sprints across the room, tripping over a dining room chair leg in the process. Her frame is sent flying to the side, straight into the rolly computer chair that’s at the desk area nearby the kitchen. She manages to literally save her face from damage but her torso’s not so lucky. Through winces and whimpers of pain, Poppy rearranges herself into the chair, plants her feet on the seat to guarantee they won’t fall in “the lava”, and is tossed a Jell-O shot cup by Mo, barely managing to catch it.
I didn’t think one move would immediately result in the aforementioned concussion possibility.
Concern instantly cakes Rutledge’s voice and gaze. “You okay, Hootie?”
“Mmhm,” she happily hums, her nervous tick of nose twitching making an understandable appearance.
“Hootie…baby…look at me.”
She swiftly does.
“Swear to me on our pups and shit that you’re fine.”
“Little dizzy, but yeah. I’m totally fine.”
A small smile slips onto his face that Crash promptly erases by yanking the coffee table out from underneath his propped-up feet. “Yeah…but you’re not.”
“Oh!” Stratton jovially shouts. “Shit. Just. Got. Interesting!”
Rutledge glares at my guest, igniting a protective instinct inside of me that I know isn’t actually needed at the moment. Afterwards, he downs the contents in his cup, springs to his feet, and rushes to the kitchen to get a replacement beverage, nailing a hard strike in Stratton’s leg on his way by.
“Fuck!” Stratton grumbles and groans while Rutledge snatches up a Jell-O shot followed by a seat on the island across from Gillette.
“I’m stuck,” Gillette grumbles uncomfortably. “Like legit fucking stuck.”
“Pathetic,” his girlfriend mocks prior to gracefully stretching her leg out to reach for a barstool with her pointed toe.
No surprise there.
She’s a fucking cheerleader.
Much like my own date, she’s much more flexible than most.
Not date.
Guest.
Crash is just my guest.
Right when her toe successfully hooks the object to scoot it closer, Rutledge ruthlessly kicks it away, ruining whatever her plan was going to be.
Mo shouts her outrage. “Dick!”
“Nice,” Gillette promptly praises.
She tosses him a scathing look. “Oh, shut up, Oscar the Slouch.”
“That makes you Grundgetta,” Stratton speaks up despite the pain he’s in.
All of our attention soars to him over the statement.
“What! Like you fuckers didn’t watch that shit growing up?”
“Rowlf the dog was my favorite,” Poppy enthusiastically coos.
The paw print tank top that she’s wearing makes her announcement beyond unnecessary.
I’m not a huge dog fan but respect the chick for knowing who the fuck she is.
I also respect her for showing Rutledge it’s alright to be whoever it is you really are.
I may not have that level of courage, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.
It doesn’t mean that one day I don’t hope to achieve it.
I like to believe that one day I’ll be able to allow my hockey crew to see that I like poetry, David Bowie, and mango parfaits without it completely shifting their view of me. They – for the most part – believe me to be the big, strong, silent, aggressive type. I don’t say or do anything to counter it because that’s what I need them to remember when I’m protecting their asses out on that ice. The other side of me is irrelevant in comparison to that. It would be counterproductive to have them concerned I can’t keep two very distinct parts of my life separate when needed.