Lula and I were happily celebrating our successful capture of Wally Williams. We earned these drinks after chasing Wally up and down Stark Street and needed them to bleach our brains after seeing "all" of Wally's "glory" flopping in the wind when his pants caught on a jagged fence and tore open. Let's just say -Wally without underwear is not the same as some others without underwear, and I'm having a hard time unseeing that.
"Damn right," yelled Lula, over the din of the exuberant happy hour crowd. "You know what we need? We need to find us some young, able-bodied men and show them ..." Lula, already a few margaritas in, tapered off and stared across the bar, mouth hanging open.
Grinning at the thought of Lula - in her neon orange track suit and, for today, pink and orange streaked hair - awestruck over something, I turned to see what got her attention.
And my mouth went slack, too.
Sitting across the bar was a table full of young, able-bodied men - young, able-bodies men I knew well; young, able-bodied men out of their Rangeman uniforms and in jeans and muscle-hugging t-shirts...and apparently, drunk as skunks! Their table was littered with beer bottles, and Lester, Bobby, Cal, Vince, and Slick were whooping it up.
They made me smile, even drunk. I felt such pride when I looked at them. They are such good guys, and my friends. My hot, hot, hot friends. "They're something, aren't they, Lula?"
"You ain't kidding, White Girl." Lula has a thing for Bobby - an unreturned thing, but Bobby is too polite to let his feelings show.
Walking over to them, maybe stumbling a little, I said, "Whoo Hoo" to get their attention. Lester jumped up, his chair flipping backwards, and gave me a hug before passing me around to the other guys. "What's up, guys? What's the occasion? Ranger finally sending Lester to a third world country?"
"Beautiful, I'm hurt." Les is all drama. "It's National Beer Day!"
"Of course it is. And looks like you guys have done a bang up job celebrating it."
Taking the beer Vince handed me, I asked, "Where is your illustrious boss tonight?"
"He passed on tonight. But...I bet we can get him here in record time. Come here, Beautiful! I'm gonna take one for the team!" Then he mumbled, "Well, for Ranger's team anyway." Adjusting his chair, he pulled me on his lap and wrapped his arms around me. I relaxed into him, willing to pull the tiger's tail just a little.
You see, Ranger and I are idiots. We can't manage to get our shit together long enough to figure out what we are to each other, so we just keep on with some light flirting, kissing, groping, and innuendo. It's gotten a tiny bit more ... hmmm ... frequent since Joe and I called a permanent end and truce four months ago, but nothing either of us would consider official. I'm pretty sure he's not flirting, kissing, or groping with anyone but me, and I feel good about that.
We smiled big for Bobby, who snapped our picture with Lester's phone. Lester, brave guy, texted Ranger the picture captioned "National Beer Day must be my lucky day!"