took a sip from the devil's cup

Andrew is vainly sipping on a root beer through a straw with the approximate diameter of a human hair, one that probably had a past life as a stir stick. His badly-sized suit jacket is sticking between his shoulder blades with sweat; the only hint of a breeze comes from a portable plastic fan that has been inexplicably decorated with the words “Just Married” in glitter letters. The bartender must be a friend of the bride’s, because she is pretty and brown-haired and patently ignoring him. Is that what bartenders should be doing? He strongly considers asking her for a dance, just to have someone to dance with and to be able to said he did. Maybe when her shift’s over. He’s not an asshole.

By that time he will probably be dead from complete mortification. All the place settings are hand-stenciled, and there’s a Mason jar at every place setting. The groomsmen are wearing flannel. The bride has taken off the tiara she wore during the actual ceremony and put on another tiara. Cousin Dustin has never looked happier, and she looks at him like he has personally hung the moon and stars. Every part of it has been meticulously planned out of sheer spite toward single guests.

Jim doesn’t want to be here either, that much is clear. Which makes it all the more mysterious why they are here and haven’t faked violent illness to make their escape. But he’s on the far side of the garden court, nursing an enormous plastic glass of red wine and politely pal-ing around with his sister in law. The only other person at the bar is surrounded by the wreckage of five or six Shirley Temples, not the drink of choice of a grown man who is voluntarily sober.

Andrew temporarily grows absorbed in ripping up a damp paper napkin, until the other man’s voice snaps him out of it. It is a voice of the appropriate timbre and size to suit the kind of craggy ex-smoker in a criminally tight black tee shirt who scopes out the open bar at weddings and orders Shirley Temples:

“Groom or bride?”

Andrew blushes and stammers something about being on the groom’s side, though he has never been on Dustin’s side in anything except a doomed game of flag football back in 2006. The bride and groom are sharing their fourteenth couples’ dance; a knot of their closest friends and relatives are shuffling and clapping half-assedly of the fringes of the dance floor, with smiles on their faces. They look like they’re having a good time. Andrew is not having a good time.

The other man gestures with a heavy, conspicuously ringless hand toward the group; something in his face suggests amusement, or possibly disgust.

“Ever notice that it’s never the people with rhythm who clap along?”

Andrew laughs, eyes downcast. “These guys wouldn’t know rhythm if it bit them on the ass.”

(Andrew is being scrutinized by a pair of unnervingly blue, reptilian eyes. He can feel it. Hell, the bartender can probably feel it.)

“You don’t say.”