Rough Prompt Fiction by Lauryn Lambert
The Lonely Crowd
“It’s called a painkiller!”
“A what?” he leans towards me, obviously finding it hard to hear over the laughter at his table.
“A painkiller.”
He nods at me and smiles, “Looks good!”
“As advertised.” I look back to his table, there’s about ten of them crammed in there. I can’t quite work them out. “Work function?”
His face relaxes and a genuine smile extends across his face that I can’t help but return. “No actually, more like a social club. We’ve been meeting for maybe two years now.”
“Did you know each other before?” From here they look like they have been friends for ages, talking animatedly sometimes over the top of each other, then interrupting the person talking to grab someone else’s attention.
“No, we were complete strangers, it took some of us a while to warm up, but we’ve clicked.”
“Here you go sir.” The bargirl lines up his drinks. “Let me get you a tray.” It looks like he has bought for at least half the table.
“If you aren’t meeting someone, feel free to join us?”
I narrow my eyes, sorely tempted, but still wary. There were so many kinds of social clubs around. “What kind of social club is it exactly?”
He chuckles, and looks away blushing. “Well, it started because we were all single, looking to just make friends and hang out.”
“Socialising singles?”
“Yeah. We call ourselves ‘The Lonely Crowd.'” He shrugs loading the drinks on to the tray.
I look down at my drink, and back at the table and shrug. “Okay, I could use some more friends.”
