Short Story (part 1 of 5)

[Here's a short story I wrote last year. I've developed my writing a bit since, so I ask for patience. I plan to one day pull a (polished) novel from this short.]

“Somebody call Vin.”

“Vin is dead,” I answered.

“Yeah, fuck Vin.” Pablo added.

We all missed Vin dearly and hadn’t heard from him since his girlfriend moved in with him. He’d been an avid fan of liquor, but one night he’d indulged a bit too hard and decided to not drink ever again. That and his girlfriend was a tee totaling wet blanket who had him by his balls.

“Let’s take a shot,” I said.

“To what?”

“To Vin.”

It’s not that we really considered him dead. We were happy for him, where ever he was. We were all single most of the time so I guess we were jealous, or we resented the fact that he stopped calling, but that’s the nature of the beast, right? Friends lose touch in time and sometimes it coincides with one of them being taken by a lover. I resented him deeply for that.

After several shots we sometimes called Vin. Well, I never called him, I’d no intention of speaking to him again, but Pablo didn’t have a problem dialing the number. Vin would never answer, of course, and so ensued Pablo’s default message: “Hey, Vin, it’s Pablo, we’re hanging out at Kent’s house drinking beers around a fire. You should come over.”

“Hey, remember that time after the movie when we wanted to go to a bar?”

“When Vin looked to his girlfriend for permission?”

“Ha, yeah.”

“Did you know he transferred to CSUN?”

“What the fuck! When?”

“Last year.”

“Wow. How’d you find out? Oh, when you still talked to his girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you stop--oh yeah, you told me. So why does she hate us?”

“Her dad’s an alcoholic, her grandparents died of lung cancer.”

“Makes sense.”