The lot of them left Charlie behind to continue putting his treadmill together while they picked up various necessary supplies, and that provided him with ample distraction. ‘Tiny screws… I ‘hate’ tiny screws.’ Charlie thought as he dropped one for the fifth time in a row to watch it ping off of the floor and roll around in a circle on the ‘big’ end of it. ‘I should have just paid the guy to put this together.’ He rolled his eyes more than the screw itself as he tried to fit the pieces together that didn’t seem to go together until he actually did succeed.

As he worked, time went on, but it wasn’t until the knock at his door that he glanced over his shoulder at the orange glow of late afternoon that he realized how much time had really passed.

“It’s open!” Charlie shouted as he plugged the treadmill into the wall and hit the on switch on the console.

The knob twisted and they came chattering among one another into his room, they were all holding thin plastic bags that were straining to hold the supplies. Mark, Philip, and Sye held large boxes full of high bottles. On the front of all of them was a white demonic figure leaning with its arm resting outside of a circle and holding a large frothing mug in its free hand. “Arrogant Bastard Ale for the win!” Sye announced, his freckled face tense as he held the brown box at the handles, his arms hung down so that the box was pressed against his thighs making him walk with short, small steps. He puffed a little and was breathing hard compared to his larger companions.

“I thought you hated dark beer?” Charlie asked as he took a few tentative steps on the treadmill and it slowly started to move beneath his feet.

“You’re nuts, I’ve always loved it.” Sye grinned.

“Well at least you’re sensible.” Charlie said with a wink and turned the treadmill off.

“You can put them in the kitchen on the counter, but what took you all so long?” Charlie asked.

“Huh? We’ve been gone for all of thirty odd minutes.” Josef said when he ducked his head under the door frame to enter the room.

“Okaaaay…” Charlie shrugged, “I guess it doesn’t matter, I’m just grateful for the help.” Charlie said as his friends entered the kitchen following the path framed by garbage.

While the others went in, Josef stopped, set his bag down, and reached into his pocket to pull out a black card which he then held out to Charlie. “Listen, I don’t like to think of you spending the night here like this, there’s no way we’ll finish and we obviously can’t stay.”

Charlie opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and gave a small, even tiny jerking nod of his head.

“You always refuse my offers to let you stay at my place-” Josef said, but when he sighed with annoyance all Charlie thought was…

‘When did you ever offer that?’

“But,” Josef continued, “if you won’t do that, at least stay in a hotel just for the night, promise me that, and we’ll be happy to help you out tomorrow, we can get this done then.”

Charlie’s shoulders finally slumped forward. “Fine, fine, fine…” he looked up at the giant of a man and closed his fingers over the extended black card. “I’ll stay at a hotel after we’re done with whatever we can do.”

“Good.” Josef said when Charlie took out his wallet, put the card back in its place, and laid the wallet down on the table.

“Alright!” Josef exclaimed loudly enough to call the others into the living area and have their full attention. They looked up at him as they filed back in, and he rubbed his hands together like he’d found a mountain of gold, “It’s been a while since we’ve had a drinking game, so… Here’s what I propose. Every time we chuck a bag, win a beer… but the trick is, before ‘anyone’ can drink, we have to have ‘all’ thrown a bag away.”

“Well shit. We’re going to die of alcohol poisoning.” Sarah muttered, briefly drawing a laugh from the rest of their friends while Charlie rubbed the back of his head.

“There are worse ways to go…” He said with a shy sort of glance away from them and out over the sea of refuse.

“OK! Let’s get to it!” Judy shouted and grabbed the box of black trash bags like it had tried to nick her wallet. She yanked a bag out and snapped her wrist sharply to crack open the bag before tossing the box to Charlie.

He fumbled around, his hands bouncing it back and forth between chest and palms several times, his lower lip curling out and his entire body leaning back while he struggled to get hold of it. He snorted as he caught it and smiled triumphantly before yanking a bag out and tossing it to Philip.

Philip did the same and passed it to Sarah, who did the same and tossed it to Sye, who did the same and passed it to Mark, who did the same and finally passed it to Josef by smashing the box aggressively against Josef’s sternum. Mark then looked up to Josef with his arm still locked out and holding the bag in place and said, “Race you.”

“You’re on.” Josef answered with vigor.

Bags cracked open like rifles ready for inspection, their sharp noise split the air and one of them paused only to turn on their phone, switch on some hard rock, and then they got to work.

A flurry of activity that was worlds apart from Charlie’s trudging, tired desperation, and the tide of battle turned against the filth and grime and mire of his own existence. Gloves snapped into place and they took on various areas like a military unit, scavenging the refuse and flinging it into place in the big open mouths of their collective garbage bags.

“Hey Charlie?” Josef asked as he cinched a bag tightly shut.

“Yeah?” Charlie asked as he heaved a pile of spoiled crusty pizza ends into his bag.

“Is the bin outside, and is it open?” Josef asked.

Charlie got up on tip toe and looked down, “Yeah, yeah it is.”

“Great, we’ll shove the bags out there and save time.

“Fine, if you say so.” Charlie replied, and Josef did exactly that, strolling over and without any evident effort, he raised his arm up and shoved the bag out the window. For a moment the bag froze against the side, briefly stuck with its bulk holding it back.

“Get out.” Josef demanded of the inanimate object as if it was refusing of its own free will, and then he spread his palm over the base of the bag and shoved, it tumbled out, the top of the bag catching the window sill for an instant before it toppled and fell end over end and landed with a crash in the empty bin below.

“One for me!” Josef answered.

And so it went for the next few minutes until everyone had thrown out one bag.

Everyone pulled off their sweat inducing gloves, turned on the water to the sink, and with a sigh of relief they began popping off bottle caps using lighters, counter edges and fists, actual bottle openers, or in Mark’s case, a quarter.

A sense of ease filled Charlie’s soul as he stood in the circle of the group rather than outside of it, and raised his bottle to the middle with the rest of them.

“Thanks for the beer!” They said in unison and clinked their bottles together.

Charlie gave a polite ‘host-like’ bow. “I’d say ‘any time’ but then you’ll drive me to bankruptcy, so instead I’ll just say, you’re welcome, and thank you for the help.”

The rich beer flowed smooth and even ‘savory’ over his tongue, it mellowed into a sweet sort of butterscotch finish before it reached his throat and the hint of bitterness and little bite was a delight. ‘I shouldn’t, not if I want to lose this weight but… better to hold off on that than lose the moment.’ he reasoned, and so he had his first beer with his friends in far, far too long.

Along the way as they took their first short break, Charlie tried to pick up little details about their lives since his absence.

As he learned about birthday parties, celebrations, promotions, new nieces and nephews, even a group trip they’d tried and failed to invite him on, the fullness of the lost time began to hit him hard.

“Damn Judy… I’m sorry… really, I had no idea…” Charlie said when she was blinking back tears.

“Yeah well… thanks. He wasn’t diagnosed until after you left and I didn’t want your work to suffer for my problems… the rest of them were great. He passed away peacefully at least. I did try to tell you… texted you even. That’s why I ended up changing my number. After I got nothing from you even though you’d come back, I figured it would be easier to pretend you couldn’t reach me rather than that you didn’t care to.”

“Judy I-” Charlie started to say, stepping closer to her, she put a hand on his flabby bicep.

“No, if I’d known you were having your own problems, I’d have understood. If we’d known what you were going through…” She glanced over her shoulder where Mark was busy losing an arm wrestling competition with Josef while the others were taunting them both, “we’d have shown up sooner. We should have checked on you. I guess we should apologize for that.”

Charlie refused her apology, “No. I mean if you had… who knows? But maybe I wasn’t ready. But thank you anyway for saying it. Everybody makes mistakes and you’re here now.”

“True.” She said, her tears had vanished and she said, “Maybe after you’re ready, we can do something again.”

“Maybe so.” Charlie said and brought his beer up to his lips to finish it off. He slapped it down on the counter at the same moment Josef slammed Mark’s hand down on the table.

“Back to it?!” Mark said before anyone could tease him over the inevitable loss.

Beer bottles came down on surfaces like soldiers ending a unified march.

And then Charlie woke up, his eyes cracking open to the sound of chirping outside his window, it was immediately obvious that wherever he was, the bed he was in was not his own.