Larry looked at the table, it was a rare day that they came down to their local and didn’t indulge in a game. Usually it wasn’t only them wanting to sink a few pockets, the younger crowed also enjoyed a game, the groups working around each other and their cold pints.
Tonight it remained untouched, the balls still in their triangle waiting to be broken. Two cues lay on the felt, one down each of the longer edges of the table.
The five of them sat around one long table, the empty seat and missing pint acutely felt by them all.
“Should we play?” Al nodded towards the table.
“Not sure what’s worse, not playing to remember him or playing in his honour.” Sean was the first to respond but there was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the table.
“He never did like to see a table going unused though did he.” Added Adrian.
That was true thought Larry. If there was any of them that was always keen to play on an empty table it was Brian.
“He was the youngest of us. Had the most energy.” Greg said. And while it might have been true that Brian was younger than them it was only be a few months. Larry remembered the day in school they’d realised Brian was born just four months earlier than him, and Al a few months later on the same date. The 17th for all three of them. It was rare he supposed. Rarer still was three men reaching their sixties and remaining close friends, but that’s what they’d done. Greg had joined the group in university, and then followed them back to their hometown reasoning that he had no family of his own so he might as well start over where he had friends. Sean had been married to Al’s wife’s younger sister in their thirties and began tagging along since then. Adrian was the most recent addition, but even he had been in the friendship group for close to a decade. They knew each other well these five men, had grown together, supported each other through good and bad. Not much had been as bad as this though, losing one of their own.
“Let’s play.” Larry said. Placing his half-finished pint down on the table.
“Al should play you first.” Adrian suggested, knowing that they were the two hit hardest by Brian’s loss.
A Rosie Viewpoint 