Dinner with Dean

I picked Dean up from work today. I figured I owed him that much for how he’d been with me and, besides, him and Angie had just split up and I knew he could do with the company.
I emailed him in the day and said I’d buy him dinner later. Would pick him up around 5:15pm. Don’t be late, I said.
He wasn’t late. There he was, standing in the cold without a coat on. He didn’t recognise the car and I realised I’d never driven him anywhere in it before. We’d always met up on the train or in bars, never needed a car before.
I pulled up close to the kerb, facing the oncoming traffic, and wound down the window. It was still light, but the sky was a dishwater grey and the rain had begun to fizz down. Dean said later that the raindrops felt pretty cold on his face.
He seemed surprised to see me, did old Dean. Said he imagined I’d have a bigger car, a silver one. I replied that I only needed a small one, and the colour didn’t matter to me. He sloped round the back and got in the front passenger seat. I didn’t know how he’d be, and I suddenly worried I wouldn’t know what to say.
He saw that we were facing the wrong way. “Has this thing got full airbags?” That’s the first thing he said and I cracked up, just like if we were at a bar, or on the train going out to meet our girls. He started laughing too and I turned the car around when the road was clear enough.
“You want to come back to mine?” I asked him. “There’s not much in, but we could order a pizza, watch TV, hit the Playstation maybe?”
He shook his head. “Mind if we drive for a bit, drive up to Southport?” I didn’t know what there was to do in Southport, but it was only half an hour away, so I agreed.
On the way I tried to talk to him a bit, asked him what he was up to in work, did he see the game on Sunday? He answered but he could barely tear himself away from the side window. I don’t know what was so interesting out of that window.
When we got to Southport the rain had eased off and the sun was doing that thing with the clouds that makes it look like heaven’s coming through. I parked by the seafront.
The tide was out, but it was coming back in. We both got out and held onto the red metal rails in front of the beach and braced ourselves against the wind.
Gulls were weaving and filling their wings like sails so that it seemed at times they were flying backwards. We pointed things like this out to each other and then wandered along the front to where the van selling burgers was parked. We asked the man there for extra onions and mustard, to give the food some taste. Then we strolled back to exactly where we were before but braced ourselves with one hand now, ’cos we were eating.
The heavens opened as I was finishing the last of my burger. We had to scramble back into the car. We got extra wet because I couldn’t find the button which opens all the doors.
Inside the car I could see that Dean was crying. It took me a few seconds, but I heard him sniffing the tears back. I asked him if he was okay and he said he was, but he kept crying. I looked at the steering wheel and thought about putting the keys in the ignition. I put them in, but I didn’t start the car.
Instead, I turned to Dean and hugged him for as long as he wanted me to.
He said some things in that time, some of which I heard, some I didn’t. Then, when he was ready, he somehow made it clear that I could break off.
On the way back we listened to the radio. I dropped him off at his mother’s house. As he got out he looked back in and thanked me for dinner.
“It was only a burger,” I called back, but he’d turned round already and gone on into the house.

-----

If you enjoyed the tale, you might like this one... The Kraken Sleeps