Nick's a great guy... hell, we're both great guys. But the thing is, we're both... well, you know...
guys
. Which is why what happened that night caught me so off guard. Let alone what....
Sorry. Let me explain.
To begin. Everyone calls me Finn, a play off my middle name, which I hate. I first met Nick a few years back when I hired him. It was seasonal work for an organization I worked for, as part of their summer festival--the kind of gig that provided a massive amount of hours over a 2-month period, which made it a popular summer job option for college students. I had taken that track myself and stayed with it, working my way up the chain of command and scoring a permanent position on the full-time staff. At age 26, I had risen to become the head manager, in charge of hiring, training and supervising the event staff.
And I have to say I was in the prime of life. Far out enough from college to have my shit together, but still young enough that there were wide-open possibilities for life. I worked out fairly regularly to keep myself in good shape, coming in at 6 feet tall, with a trim athletic build covered with a dusting of body hair I never bothered to manscape. With good looks and an upbeat personality, I was popular within my social circles and had notable luck with the ladies. I tried to keep a professional look going for work, but at heart I was a scruffy, T-shirt and jeans kind of guy. All in all, life was good.
Hiring for the summer was a whirlwind. Because we had to hire a sizable number of people in a short period of time, we ran group interviews, with me and a couple other co-workers I brought in to get feedback on the applicants. All was going well, perfectly mundane and orderly... and then Nick came in for his interview.
His effect on the two women sitting in on the interview was... considerable. And juuuuuust this side of embarrassing. As for me? Well, I never thought of myself as anything but a perfectly normal, red-blooded straight guy... but even I gaped. He was the living embodiment of the All-American Guy. He was handsome, at that exact middle point between being a pretty boy and a rugged hunk. His eyes were... I dunno, bright. With a killer smile. And it was clear from the way his clothes hung on him that he had a strong athletic frame. More than anything, there was an air of casual, effortless masculinity about him. And loads of friendly charm.
Nick also had an air of... cockiness...? going on. Certainly confidence. He filled up the room. We learned he was part-way through law school, and he gave off a vibe that he was very comfortable in his opinions, and that any argument was his for the winning. Not exactly a red flag, but notable. I took a chance and hired him; when I told the others who helped interview him, one of the women gave me a lurid grin, and made a pointed request to let her know if he ever got "naughty" and needed to be "disciplined."
Once the summer season got under way, I started to have second thoughts about my new hire Nick. What read as "confidence" in the hiring process became "being insufferable" during the work shifts. And what at first felt like "filling up the room," became excruciating, know-it-all blathering. Jesus, the man argued about
everything
. He always had "better" ideas and was a walking suggestions box. Everyone was rapidly losing all patience with him.
In one of my better moves as a supervisor, I decided to take a different approach with Nick. Ok... if he was going to bristle against authority and loudly announce how our systems were all screwed up, why not make him put his money where his mouth was? One day, I approached him at the start of a shift and said, "Hey Nick, let me ask you something. You know the supply tent is a nightmare. We try to organize it, but it ends up being trashed again by the end of a shift. We need to organize it so folks can get to the supplies fast, but it needs to be set up so that it stays organized and is easy to maintain. How would you go about it?"
Put this way, as a problem we trusted him to fix, and I swear the guy was a better problem-solver than MacGyver. He threw himself into the project and totally changed how we organized everything, leading to massive time-savings. Doing inventory became... fun. And soon he was doing this with every idiot project we dropped in his lap to keep him busy.
And along the way, he went from being a jerk to being among our more popular employees. I think it was a case where once he felt like he was being valued, he became more comfortable in his skin and stopped trying to "prove" himself all the time. He relaxed, and the real Nick came out. He went from being a know-it-all to just an interesting guy, with a huge range of interests and quirky tastes.
Over time, we actually became pretty good friends, and stayed in contact well after the summer ended and he headed back to law school. We weren't what I'd think of as best friends, and we had our own social circles, but when we did get together we'd have a blast. We both dreamed about travel. He had absolutely thrown himself into becoming a grill master, and we started comparing notes on new, improved rubs and sauces as he worked out his various ideas. Similarly, I had starting branching off into making hand-made, craft cocktails, and he enthusiastically sampled my latest mad-scientist concoctions and provided helpful feedback.
Time passed. A few years later, after I found the perfect girl, Nick and I were still close enough that I invited him my wedding... and a year or so after that he returned the favor for his. We had the kind of friendship where we didn't see each other for long stretches at a time, but when we did meet up things fell right into place. It also helped that our wives got along, too.
Nick and I had been in one of those quieter, low-power phases when out of the blue I got a message from him. A good friend of his named Hunter was trying to organize a weekly game night with another of their friends... would I have any interest in rounding out the foursome?
I contemplated. I knew Hunter somewhat; our paths had crossed professionally a few times, and I knew him to be a good guy. It could be fun. But I was also very much aware that I hadn't played board games for years... I had no idea about these new, hard-core games with a zillion pieces and rule books as thick as a novel. But in the end, I was intrigued enough to agree. Guys, after all, are horrible at making friends after college, and as much as I loved my wife, I was looking forward to male companionship... where we could drink a bit too much, eat food that would rot our guts, swear a bit too loudly, and generally be ourselves.
I agreed, and Game Night was on!
And in short order Game Night was a cornerstone of our lives. All in all, it was a good group of guys, with us four regulars and a shortlist of "extras" who drifted by as they could. We agreed to a fixed, recurring night every week, and with rare exceptions stuck to it.
And... well, one of the reasons I loved my pack of hoodlums was that we ended up being there for each other. No matter how brutally competitive we were on the gameboard, no matter how many red-faced shouting matches we got into, we were always bedrock in each other's' corner. As time went by, we helped each other navigate layoffs, personal disputes, rough patches, and the birth of a couple of kids. But we didn't do so in that gauzy, bubble-bath way that women support each other. I mean, we almost always talked about our problems indirectly; the more personal it was, the more studiously we fiddled with the dice or worker tokens. The more pain involved, the less eye-contact we made. And yet in our indirect, manly way we had each other's backs... all the while studiously doing something else. Plus, we kept up rough language, spilled drinks, ball-busting, trash talking, and humor that would have had to be considerably elevated to be considered "low."
And through it all, Nick and I keep up a strong friendship of our own. Outside Game Night we'd continue to shoot each other news stories or movie clips if we thought the other one would be interested. Our wives became friends, and more than once we would do all rounds of bar trivia. I also sometimes got the vibe that he... huh, I don't know quite how to explain it. Like he really looked up to me, like a big brother thing. I chuckled that he seemed to feel that way; I had only been his boss for like 3 months, nearly 10 years previously.
***
One evening, Game Night got all changed up. Hunter, the usual host, had to give way, as his in-laws were in town to dote on Hunter's son, and a crew of loud guys ragging each other about this or that misplayed move was in no way going to fly at his house. That week, my wife was going to be out of town for a long weekend, so we shifted to my place, with Hunter getting a temporary Leave of Absence to join us. We ended up moving Game Night to Friday night to take advantage of my empty house. Well, at least Nick and I could take advantage of it... neither of us had kids to rouse us out of bed at dawn. I appreciated one particular aspect about hosting--I was free to get shit-faced on my own cocktails for a change. I ordered up a shit-ton of Chinese food for us to devour, and got the house ready.
