Azure

  One evening, a bunch of us went bowling. For the most part, an uneventful evening, but something funny happened as we were leaving… Paul asked me if I wanted to go to a bar. Paul didn’t drink and he didn’t go to bars. Not unless Jay’s band was playing. I took the bait.

  “Why do you want to go to a bar?” I asked. He was supposed to meet someone there. Some girl he met from the Internet. Now, this was back in the day when meeting someone from the Internet seemed like a sketchy thing to do, but I was intrigued. I turned to Deana, “Wanna go to a bar?” She said sure.

  We followed Paul. Both Deana and I pondered how this was going to turn out on the trip over. Before we went in, we asked what we were looking for. He said she was a tall girl with blonde hair. He also told her he would be wearing a Mets hat. With this information we went in.

  At a quick glance, there were mostly guys in this bar except for a table with four girls. You could see the look of disappointment in Paul’s face, but we told him that she just may not be here yet. We ordered drinks and I watched the Yankees game, so it wasn’t a complete loss for me. Deana and I exchanged glances as Paul looked petty down while watching the game with us.

 After a little bit, one of the four girls started to walk by us and stopped. She turned to me and said “Kerry?”

  At first I didn’t recognize her, but then after looking at her eyes it hit me “Azure!” It was a girl who worked at Penney’s briefly. She had eyes that were amazing and unforgettable, (like Miss Elaine’s)

I started talking to her all excitedly and caught a glimpse of Paul looking even more down. Here we were at a bar so Paul could meet a girl that he really liked and the prettiest girl in the place comes over and talks to me. I tried to deflect attention to Paul. “Oh Azure, this is my friend Paul.”

  Azure followed with “Paul? That’s Sue over there.” It turns out that Azure was friends with the girl Paul had been chatting with online for months now. Sue was blonde, but not blonde, blonde. A dark blonde. And she was tall, but also very heavyset, so when she was sitting, you wouldn’t know how tall she was.

We moved over to them. There was Sue, Azure and two sisters, Michele and Jennifer.  The seven of us all got to talking. And it seemed like Paul and Sue hit it off well enough. They played darts and we were there for a few hours. When Deana and I decided to leave I told Azure I would call her sometime and we would hang out. She sounded a little shocked “Really?!?” Yeah, really.

  As we left, Paul and Sue were making plans to hang out again. Overall, a very good evening.

  The following week, we were hanging out at Fiddler’s Green and I asked Paul if they ever went out. He said no. I asked why not. He said he hadn’t seen her online. Paul was always online. Something was not copasetic. And I told Paul outright: “Paul, if you aren’t interested in her, that’s fine. At least let her know. I’m friends with Azure, so I have something at stake here now.”

   He told me not to worry about it and everything would be fine. I told him that it better, because I don’t want to be blindsided the next time I talk to Azure.

  A week later I was blindsided.

  I was in the area picking up or dropping off my younger brother for something, and I stopped in the bar to catch the end of the Yankees game. Azure wasn’t there, but her friend Michele was. After a few minutes of small talk she said.

  “So, what’s up with your friend Paul?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant. I saw this coming a mile away and yet, I was unprepared.

She went on to inform me that they had plans to go to a movie and when Sue saw him online the next morning, Paul ignored her and didn’t respond to her messages. I think I made a pained, scrunched up face. He lied to me right to my face and now I’m in that position I didn’t want to be in.

  I apologized for his behavior and told her not to judge any of my friends on Paul’s behavior because he wasn’t like us. I don’t know what Paul was thinking. Actually, I did. He was hoping to find a super-model online that he could bring to one of our parties like a trophy. Sue wasn’t much of a ‘looker’, but neither was Paul and you couldn’t  even say “but Paul has a nice personality” because he was grumpy, rude and most of the time… dull. He hadn’t dated anyone since Carrie and it was pathetic how anywhere he had to go for months after they b

roke up was by way of her house. I had felt bad for him in the past, but now I wanted revenge. I’m writing all these things to show the anger I was feeling at the time.

(Editor’s Note: Azure is not Azuree [pronounced Azurey] from previous stories, they are like night and day.)