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It’s a beautiful day, and Ravi is wine drunk. And when he gets wine drunk, he gets introspective.
Right now, he’s introspecting as to how the hell he got here – here being his captain’s backyard in the middle of summer, where his co-workers are arguing about why they’re gathered and getting drunk together in the first place.
It started when Bobby, the inspirational man that he is with a penchant for impromptu speeches, stood up with a glass of lemon iced tea.
He had clinked it happily. “Thank you all for being here,” he said. “I won’t talk for long – as you all know, we need to celebrate life every chance we get, and I’m so glad to be here with you all as we make good on that promise. Now, let’s hear from the man of the hour!”
Everyone cheered and looked around the table expectantly. Ravi smiled and clapped politely. This went on for a good two minutes.
“Chimney, get up,” Hen had finally said, playfully bumping his shoulder.
“What do you mean?” he had asked, mirroring her grin. “It’s Buck’s birthday, silly.”
The table quietened.
“That was two weeks ago,” Buck replied. “Do you not know my birthday?”
“Um, I thought we were here to celebrate Chimney’s fifteen years on the job,” Hen said.
“I thought we were here for Athena’s retirement party.”
“Who the hell said I was retiring?”
Maddie said, “Mm, Karen, this is for your new job, right?”
“No? I thought we were celebrating Eddie’s coming out.”
“We most definitely are not.” Eddie’s face flushed.
“Isn’t this for May going back to college?”
“I hope not. I’m only leaving next month.”
“Anniversary?” Chimney suggested.
“Whose?” Bobby asked.
“Yours and Athena’s?”
“Nope.”
“Well, what does the cake say?”
Eddie opened the cake box. “It just has a smiley face on it.”
“Okay, who was in charge of the cake?”
“Bobby’s the one who told me to keep it generic!” Hen snapped.
Ravi felt himself slipping away about halfway through this. He sips his drink and sighs. He had tried so hard to avoid getting sucked into this… this weird, enmeshed family dynamic the A shifters had. But it was hard. There was something magnetic about them, they kept pulling him into their shit.
He didn’t mind working with them – they’re for sure some of the most competent people he’s ever been on shift with. It’s just everything else that makes them… bizarre.
Like this exact situation, for example. How does this group of people hang out so frequently that they have no idea why they’re there?
(Buck’s suggested Fourth of July. Athena’s shot it down because she insists she would’ve had the red-white-blue food otherwise. Also, it’s the middle of the month.)
Don’t get him wrong, he likes them, he does. It’s just that he prefers the Venn diagram of his friends, family, and co-workers to not be one big circle, thank you very much.
It started way before he became an A shift regular, he thinks. That fateful Q-word day. Maybe he did jinx himself for life.
Ravi had gone back and recounted the story to his B-shift colleagues, and they had basically said, “Yeah, that tracks,” – and that’s how Ravi began his spiral into the infamous lore of A-shift.
He should’ve known they were all disaster magnets. He listens in abject horror and fascination as they tell him about the rebar, the tracheotomy, the hand-in-man’s-chest, and of course, the LSD brownies.
He stops them after a bit and decides the less he knows about these people the better. Then the treasure hunt happened, and he literally found a dead body with the group, and he guessed that counts as some kind of trauma bonding, but it still kept him wary.
And then the sniper situation unfolded, and Ravi got to temporarily be on A shift for a bit. It was an experience for sure (and getting shot is one of the less goofy things to happen to the group) but they pulled through, and Ravi was ready to go back to B shift.
But then Chimney left to chase the love of his life, and Ravi gets it, he’d do the same, so he was still stuck on the opposite shift.
It was then that Ravi started realising how little personal space these six people actually had. He somehow kept getting invited to events – Chimney’s brother’s firefighter test being the most random of them all – but he was too polite to decline them.
Somewhere between the dead author and prison riots, he'd been adopted as the token normal guy of the team; somehow, he didn't mind.
“Alright now, enough!” Athena’s voice cuts through the commotion and snaps Ravi out of his wine-induced introspection.
“It doesn’t matter what we’re here for. This was bound to happen at some point. Let’s just enjoy this party and plan better for the next one.”
The garden murmurs in agreement as they raise their glasses again.
“To family,” Bobby announces.
“To family!” Ravi choruses with everyone, clinking his glass with Hen and Maddie’s.
The air is thick with barbeque and joy. The patio lights twinkle in time with Bobby’s 60s mix playing in the background, and the idle chatter of his friends make the wine settle gently in his belly.
Family, Ravi thinks, despite himself. I don’t hate the sound of that.
