Last Call.

Not long now. He’ll ring the bell soon and I can use it, gather everything up and leave. She was right, this was a mistake. It has been too long, we’re too different, time has widened the gap between us, and we were never close to begin with. He continues rambling on, a bored variation on the same kind of tall tale he’s been telling me all night. None of it is real. I tried, I really tried. The ties that bound us are loose and now is the time to drop this rope. He laughs hard, and I laugh along, the table opposite glare at us again, it isn’t that kind of pub, why did I think it would be a good idea to bring him to my regular. He complained that they didn’t have his kind of lager, the kind you find in any old pub, but he’s sank six of what they did have, so it can’t have been that bad.

He raises his glass high, draining final drops, and they spill down his chin, he doesn’t notice, then he does and wipes them with his sleeve. “So” he says, “what’ve you been upto?” I’m sure it’s the first real thing he’s asked me all night. So I try again. “Well, the usual really -” he cuts across me, “I saw this before” and he pulls out his phone, scrolling down his feed to find something more important than whatever it was I was going to say. He scrolls and he scrolls, his arm stretched across the sticky table so I can see. I look from the phone to his face, his eyes are glassy, thin grey stubble above the ears he’s missed when shaving his head, a small clump of shaving foam hiding in the highest loop of his ear. And it strikes me. Noone told him, pointed it out to him. He lives alone in that house, and in the taxi to the train station he probably didn’t speak, and on the train he will have scrolled, alone. And here tonight, I’ve glanced at it more times than I can count, and I never said anything either.

“Can’t find it - sorry”

“That’s okay.”

“What were you saying? The usual?”

“Yeah, just working, coming here, trying to get to the gym -”

“The gym?! Just get a real job and you won’t have to”

“Doesn’t pay as well though”

“True”

He raises the glass again, even though it’s empty. He must know it’s empty. I take a big long drink from mine. The golden ale I love, only place around that does it. I can drink so many of these. But tonight I haven’t. Had the feeling I needed to keep my wits about me, make sure I don’t say anything I shouldn’t, even though I want to.

“What have you been upto, besides work?”

“Fuckin’ nothing.”

We both try to drink, difference is my glass still has something in it. He looks through the bottom and sets it down, hard on the table. Then he looks around the room and seems to consider something. Eyes flicking from table to table, face to face. I wonder if he might be sick. But then he looks right at me, and his eyes look clear.

“Do you think they find it as hard as we do?”

I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything.

But he keeps on staring, unmoving, right through me and my intentions. I’d forgotten this side of him, it’s been so long since. And so I have to answer truthfully, because I know what he’s talking about, and asking what he means would just be an insult to both of us, there’s no use in pretending.

“No, I don’t think they do.”

“Why?”

“Well, I, we don’t really know how they are really feeling, what they’re thinking, they could all be sat there wishing the night was over.”

“Like you’re doing now.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying, there could be things going on that we don’t know.”

He nods along, and surveys the room again, never in a million years could I guess what he’s thinking, despite years of trying. So I carry on.

“And, they probably haven’t been through… what we have.”

He does that sharp nasal exhale people do when they want to look like they agree with you. I’d look around the room if I could, but his backs to the wall, so all I can really look at is him. The barman rings the bell. Last Call. Almost home time. But now…

“One last one?” I ask, and I can’t control the tone of my voice.

“No, probably shouldn’t”

“Sure?”

He considers again.

“Yeah go on then, last one.”