Forty, Well-Worn

A birthday invitation for a fortieth that happens at a long table in the back of a steakhouse, with a reservation made two weeks out and a head count that changed four times. People arrive in order of how far they drove. The man of the hour orders the same cut he has ordered for a decade, medium rare, and nobody attempts to talk him out of it. The boots under his chair are older than one of the marriages at the table.

The first toast is short. The second one is not, and it gets to the part about the truck, the fence and the pair of boots that went in the creek and came back out. Somebody disputes a detail. The detail is not resolved. Dessert arrives late, the whiskey goes around once more, and three people stand in the parking lot for another forty minutes because the story was not finished inside.