Great Things

            It was Sunday night just like any other with the girls: happy hour beers and cosmopolitans. It’s was a rarity that Joy, Michael, Maritza and I could get together for some much needed friend time. We had gathered tonight to play catch-up and discuss the possibilities of the future. They say that life is what happens when you’re waiting for a table, but sometimes life is what happens while you’re sitting at it.

            Joy and I slid into one side of the booth while Maritza and Michael sat opposite of us. Joy had her blonde hair up in her usual ponytail out of her face. She was the type of woman who thought like a man but kept her class like a lady, which matched perfectly with her mouth like a sailor. Michael had only enough time to take three shots of vodka at the house after he got off from work before we had to meet Maritza so he was still wearing his work clothes which consisted of a Steelers shirt and jeans. My roommate and slightly buzzed at this point, he had made it his mission to be completely wasted before we left that night. Maritza had her brown hair slightly curled while she sported a white blouse with a black jacket to go over it, jeans and a pair of heels. She was a woman of many hats. She was a wife, mother, manager and friend. She was a woman with no filter and who always had us laughing.

            We had known each other for years and even worked together at one point in time. There have been breakups, smiles, parties and goodbyes that we had seen each other go through. I guess this is what having old friends felt like. You grow up watching your parents talk about their old friends and hearing them say, “Remember that one time. . . “and just listening to some madcap adventure they had and the memories they made, but do we ever really think at the time that’d we be doing the same thing someday?

            And yet, here we were doing just that. It was a particularly special time in our lives, Joy had reached her limits with her job as a General Manager in Texas and decided to quit. The hours she had put in seemed endless. She was always tired on her days off when she’d visit us and spent that time to catch up on her sleep when her phone wasn’t ringing off the hook with her employees sounding frantic on the other end. It made me sad to see her stressed out so much. She was too young and too talented to be in that position. So with her newfound freedom she needed a place to crash while she tried to get out of her lease and figure out what her next step would be and what better place to crash than the couch she often slept on when she visited. She was contemplating moving back home to look into a job that was offered to her the last time she had visited, great pay, great hours, traveling and weekends off. Too bad Maritza didn’t see it as a great opportunity like the rest of us did. I didn’t want her to move either but if it meant that she could be happy doing something she loves then I was more than happy to see her off.

            Another piece of good news was the engagement between two of our closest friends. Ashley and Eric had been dating for the last two years and seemed utterly and endlessly in love with each other. He popped the question by naming a star after her just like he did on one of their first anniversary, but this time he had put his last name with hers. And by November of this year she would be forever known as Mrs. Eric Deleon. I could remember a trip to the bookstore that Joy, Ashley and I took to look at anything wedding related. A clerk directed us to a section that I didn’t know existed. Somewhere wedged with “Gay and Lesbian”, “Sex” and yes, even “Divorce” was the answer to all our questions: “Weddings”.

            While I browsed the gay and lesbian section finding a book of short stories from new voices in gay literature, Joy and Ashley flipped through a book on different sexual positions giggling like a couple of schoolgirls in the process. We needed to focus so we all took a book on how to plan a wedding. My head began to spin after only flipping through a couple sections about marriage licenses and deciding the kind of music you wanted to “set the tone of your wedding” no music pun intended. Ashley seemed to find one that suited her interest and gave step by step instructions. Everything you ever wanted to know from the engagement party to making the guest list. It was official, Ashley was getting married.

I took in the moment we were in drifting peacefully through the farthest corners of my mind as I always did when I tried predicting the future when Maritza must’ve caught the melancholic look on my face. She tried arguing with me that I was a townie and that I should just accept it already. I shuddered at the thought of my body being put to rest in the Dirty Curry so she ordered us a round of tequila. As we joined her in raising our glasses we looked at one another about what we should toast to. It had to be something memorable and epic in its simplicity. Leave it to Maritza to say it perfectly: “To great things for the future.” I didn’t know it at the time but I was smiling on the inside as well as the outside. There was something in the way that she said it that had me believing that there would be nothing short but great things in our futures.